The Majority Rules

As it must by law,* the House first picked up the challenge flung by Harry Truman. Its first item of business was the President's veto of the tax-cut bill (TIME, June 23), which House Republicans were determined to override. They got a shock. Democratic Leader Sam Rayburn had done a fast job of rounding up diffident Democrats. He had also corralled two rebel Republicans—Wisconsin's stolid ex-Progressive, Merlin Hull, and Minnesota's sharp-faced Carl Anderson. When the vote was counted, and breathlessly recounted, Hull and Anderson represented the margin of Administration victory. If they had stayed with their party, the Republicans would have squeaked through with the two-thirds vote necessary to override.

Cheers & Boos. For two days Congress waited for the President's decision on the labor bill. The day the message came, House & Senate galleries were packed, mostly with union sympathizers. In the House they cheered the veto message when it was read. Some Congressmen looked up and yelled "Boo" at the galleries. The vote in the House was quick and overwhelming: 331 to override (225 Republicans and 106 Democrats); 83 to sustain (11 Republicans, 71 Democrats and New York City's man of the Labor Party, Vito Marcantonio).

It was up to the Senate after that and the Senate unrolled an extraordinary show. First, Republican Whip Kenneth Wherry tried to get an agreement on a time to vote. But Oregon's dapper New Dealing Republican Wayne Morse, who had opposed the Taft-Hartley bill from the beginning, objected to any closing of debate. Republican Morse joined with Democrats Claude Pepper, Harley Kilgore, Glen Taylor to filibuster.

Their intention was not to prevent a vote; it was just to postpone it. They were out to wage a delaying action in the hope that President Truman's radio appeal to the U.S. public (see above) would stir up another torrent of telegrams to the Senate and possibly win a few uncertain members to their side. Alben Barkley, Democratic leader, tried to dissuade them. "Sometimes pressures do more harm than good," he said. But the little band of desperate men would not listen.

Communists & Cough Drops. At 3:10 p.m. Florida's glib, long-nosed Claude Pepper began to speak. Between interruptions, he droned on until 6:50 p.m. Idaho's Glen Taylor, the Singing Cowboy, took the stage. He went into a routine of detailed statistical exposition, interspersed with sallies at Senators, the price of autos and the difficulties of living in a truck. He told a yarn about a Communist he worked with in a war plant in 1944. It took about 500 words and several minutes for Taylor to reach the point: ''The Communist would go around talking to everybody, saying that he was for Bricker for President. He said to me, 'Do you know why I have been arguing for Bricker? Because if we can elect Bricker we will have a revolution in short order.' " Ohio's solemn Senator Bricker joined in the laugh.

Cowboy Glen munched a cough drop, took a sip of water and rambled on about how he once ate jack rabbits, and about the iniquities of Wall Street.

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