National Affairs: Brisk Business

• Share

Compared with the Senate, the House was little more than a minor sideshow. Nobody bothered to watch it organize, except members' families and a few sightseers turned away from the big top at the other end of the Capitol. For the first time, the routine was televised (see RADIO); Harry Truman saw it on a ten-inch screen beside his desk.

There was a little clowning before the opening. Ohio's George H. Bender gave each of his G.O.P. colleagues a new broom tagged: "Here's yours—let's do the job." But when the gavel fell, the House put on its best party manners.

As planned long in advance, the House chose Massachusetts' Joseph William Martin Jr. as its 45th Speaker. It was a straight party vote (244 to 182). Retiring Speaker Sam Rayburn paid his successor a compliment: he is "a friend of mankind, a man of unquestioned character, of demonstrated ability, with a great, fine heart." Then Sam Rayburn broke precedent, swallowed his pride and reverted to the minority leadership.

To oppose him as majority leader the G.O.P. quickly put in Indiana's Charles Halleck, who was once a Willkieite but has steadily become more conservative. Halleck's designation was a clear snub to the Taft forces in Congress, but it was not the clean-cut Dewey victory which some observers seemed to think. Tom Dewey had merely jumped on the Halleck bandwagon after it was well ahead.

The good faith of the House was promptly tested and proved. Speaker Martin crushed an attempt by one of his own party, New York's professorial W. Sterling Cole, to upset the streamlined rules provided in the La Follette-Monroney Reorganization Act. It was a good omen. The new rules stand; House committees are cut from 48 to 19.

Minnesota's beefy Harold Knutson then introduced the first bill: his pet project to cut 20% off taxes on personal incomes up to $302,000, and 10½% above that. In quick succession came revised versions of the Case bill to clip the powers of labor, and a measure by Michigan's anti-labor Clare Hoffman to throw out portal-to-portal pay suits (see BUSINESS), even those already pending.

The House was ready for work.