THE CONGRESS: The Author & the Crocodile

On the floor of the U.S. Senate last week, Democrat Paul Douglas of Illinois bewailed the economic state of the nation and lugubriously pictured the U.S. housewife hunched over her electric stove, the burden of taxes weighing heavily on her shoulders. Up from behind a paper-littered desk rose Colorado's Republican Senator Eugene Millikin to trade political insults. (Douglas chided the G.O.P. for a recent Government pamphlet on Ways to Cook Rabbit. Millikin recalled a Democratic treatise on the love life of a watermelon.) Then Gene Millikin stumped to the rear of the chamber, puffed on a cigarette, and licked his lips in anticipation of a good fight. He watched Douglas for five minutes, then stumped out his smoke and moved painfully (he suffers from arthritis) down the aisle on the Democratic side; Douglas went to meet him. For the next five hours two of the Senate's ablest debaters faced each other in poste and riposte which, if not instructive, was vastly entertaining. Their subject: taxes, especially the proposed cuts in excises (TIME, March 15-22).

Millikin waggled a finger under the Douglas nose. Douglas waggled right back. Clearly outreached, stubby Gene Millikin retired briefly. Douglas accused the Republicans of sponsoring tax measures which would benefit only the wealthy. Rejoined Millikin: "Dear Senator, if that did not come out of your mouth. I would call it sheer claptrap—and it is still claptrap, even though it comes out of your mouth." From his safe distance, Millikin waved a long yellow pencil at Douglas.

23 Skiddoo! Snapped Millikin: "Let us cut out the bunk about how this tax bill is for the benefit of the rich, and how it oppresses the poor." Douglas pointed to a proposed reduction in the federal tax on cabarets. Asked he: "How many workingmen go to the Stork Club, the '23' Club,* and other such places, where gay blades like the Senator from Colorado are wont to congregate?"

That brought a youthful glint into old (63) Gene Millikin's eyes. "The Senator from Illinois," said he, "causes me to think very nostalgically . . . His mind is preoccupied, for some strange reason, with the Stork Club and other fancy clubs, where, I assume, curvaceous and attractive girls gather."

Douglas broke in: "Let me say that I have never been in a nightclub in my life." Wistfully, Senator Millikin replied: "Nor have I, for many, many years . . . The Senator from Illinois has stimulated my imagination. His mind is strangely preoccupied with elegant clubs like the Stork Club and the '23' Club—is that the right name?" Douglas had the answer at the tip of his tongue. Said he: "The '23' Club, according to Walter Winchell!"

Come On, Six! Millikin stayed in his dream world. "At any rate," he said, "that is what the Senator is thinking about. There bejeweled women congregate—I suppose. There is a very toothsome chorus line out in front—I suppose. They have acts of various types."