THE CONGRESS: Hell & Close Harmony

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On July 14, Joe Robinson, still struggling to reunite his Majority, dropped dead of heart failure and therewith the ties of loyalty to a strong Leader dissolved. The final blow to unity was the election of Alben Barkley. For if a 5-to-4 opinion of the Supreme Court is an undesirably close decision, what was the 38-to-37 election by which Barkley was chosen Leader (TIME, Aug. 2)? And every Senator knew that but for the pressure exerted by the New Deal, the choice of the Majority would have been popular Pat Harrison. Thus Alben Barkley not only succeeded to the command of a broken Majority, but succeeded in a way that widened the very split which it was his job to repair.

Man Barkley. "He has two great gifts," wrote Franklin Roosevelt of Alben Barkley in his letter read at the harmony dinner, "for which he ought to be thankful and for which we are truly grateful—a sense of perspective . . . and a sense of humor. ..." Alben Barkley's perspective originated in a log cabin in Graves County, Ky., where he was born in 1877. Son of a poor tobacco farmer, he worked his way through Marvin College, studied at Emory (Ga.) and the University of Virginia Law School, got his first job in 1901 in the Paducah law office of Judge W. S. Bishop, whom his fellow townsman Humorist Irvin S. Cobb fictionized as "Judge Priest." Four years later Lawyer Barkley conducted a muleback campaign that made him a county prosecutor. In 1912, a horse & buggy carried him around on his winning canvass for a seat in the House. Since then, Alben Barkley's home has been in Washington, where he currently drives his own car, entertains moderately but often in his Cleveland Avenue home. Elected to the Senate in 1926, Alben Barkley broke a long Kentucky precedent by getting re-elected in 1932.