THE CONGRESS: Vocation with Vacation

Like the turtle, the bureaucrat, hunched up within the comfortable armor plate of civil-service regulations, seldom moves at a pace faster than a lumbering lurch. But head, neck and unwinking eye can zip out with wondrous speed—to snap at a taxpayer, look out a window at a parade, or sip a slow cup of coffee at the nearest Government cafeteria. Last week the Senate heard another little-noted fact about his living habits: he can, and frequently does, enjoy the equivalent of about ten weeks of paid vacation a year.

Illinois' Senator Paul Douglas—a rare animal himself, being an economy-minded Fair...