A BILL to establish government ownership of the basic industries, banking and transportation would obtain between thirty and forty votes in the present House of Representatives. The men who would cast these votes, disbelievers in the existing economic order, form the true opposition to Roosevelt. Most of them feel they are men of destiny; they believe that, within the reasonably near future, they will be the majority, and form the government.
During the present session they have acquired the group name of mavericks, a name given them by Washington correspondents because Maury Maverick of Texas summoned their first meeting, last February, and, with Gerald J. Boileau of Wisconsin, drafted their manifesto. The temptation to give them a name meaning unbranded cattle was irresistible. However, some of the older members of the group, who were fighting for a changed social order when Maverick was a schoolboy, are not altogether pleased by it.
If the group possesses a leader, it is the ghost of Mayor LaGuardia of New York. The mavericks descend directly from the little band of congressional condottieri that LaGuardia led through the long, fat Coolidge years. At present LaGuardia would probably be the group's choice for third-party candidate for President, chiefly because he lives in New York and therefore is supposed to have the support of the labor unions of the East to a greater degree than, for example, Olson of Minnesota or Philip La Follette of Wisconsin. However, it is a question how much longer LaGuardia can continue to be Roosevelt's errand boy—as he apparently feels he must be in order to get funds for New York's unemployed—and still retain the group's confidence.
Among the members of the House group, the foremost figure probably is Ernest Lundeen of Minnesota. He was first elected to Congress in 1916. Follower of the elder La Follette and Representative Lindbergh, the aviator's father, he voted against America's entry into the World War. He was viciously assailed by the patriots of those days, threatened with violence and defeated for reelection in 1918. An experience of that sort either destroys a man or hardens his character to iron. Nothing now frightens Lundeen or can sway him.
Early in the session, Lundeen introduced the so-called workers' unemployment-insurance bill, endorsed by many Left groups. In effect, it would have guaranteed a minimum standard of living to industrial and agricultural workers, regardless of booms and depressions. No bill with such deeply cutting implications was ever before seriously considered by Congress. The contrast between the Lundeen bill and Roosevelt's faint-hearted unemployment-insurance measure, the Wagner-Lewis-Daughton bill, drove the House leadership into silence. No Roosevelt supporter dared attack the essentials of the Lundeen bill; on behalf of the administration measure Daughton could only say that it represented a first step, and could be strengthened later. The Lundeen bill received fifty-two votes. This is the highest vote against the traditional capitalist order yet polled.
Lundeen is a product of the Minnesota Farmer-Labor movement, which itself is the child of the Scandinavian labor and coöperative movements. The Scandinavian tradition helps to explain the placid conviction with which Farmer-Laborites attack the present order. That capitalism is not perfect is no new idea to them. It is something they learned from their parents and grandparents.
Maury Maverick is the inheritor of an equally strong tradition. Members of the Maverick family have had liberal sympathies, but for many generations the family, as such, has been part of the dominant, owning class. General Sam Maverick, the man who wouldn't bother to brand his calves, possessed a fabulous domain in Texas. The family to which Maverick's mother belongs, the Maury's of Virginia, were likewise great landowners and even more lordly than the Mavericks.
Maverick himself is one of the genuine heroes of the War, in which he was horribly wounded. He spent months in a military hospital and escaped death by an eyelash. His wounds have left him with a permanent stiffness of his upper body. He is a lawyer, and was president of the San Antonio Bar Association at twenty-three. He engaged in the lumber business, and made money at it. In 1929 he was one of a group that overthrew the San Antonio political machine and cleaned up the town.
He is the only Southerner, and only Democrat, in the House radical group, as well as the only one without a working-class or small-farmer background. A first-termer, without effort he has become one of the most conspicuous men in the House. His best job has been the exposure of the utility company intrigues against the T.V.A. He announced that an agent of the Alabama Power Company was occupying the office of Representative May of Kentucky, chief opponent of the T.V.A., and left May spluttering with ludicrous rage. At a committee hearing, he abruptly checked an attack on the T.V.A. by identifying a suspected power lobbyist in the audience and demanding that he be thrown out. Maverick is sponsor of a drastic neutrality bill, designed to keep us, as far as laws can do it, from being dragged into another European war. He had a large share in the fight to prevent the administration's measure against war profiteering, drafted by B. M. Baruch and General Johnson, from being jammed through the House without amendments—a fight in which the radical group won a clear victory.
Three members of the House radical group are important for their relative youth. These are Vito Marcantonio of New York, only thirty-three, Thomas R. Amlie of Wisconsin, thirty-eight, and Paul John Kvale of Minnesota, thirty-nine. All have a full generation of active political life ahead of them, during which they will presumably have a part in far-reaching events. Marcantonio represents LaGuardia's old Upper East Side district in New York. He lacks LaGuardia's exuberance, but he also lacks LaGuardia's moody, erratic quality. He is better grounded in economics than most of his colleagues, and has a contemptuous wit that makes him extremely effective on the House floor. In the debate on the rule under which the administration's social-security bill was to be voted on, Marcantonio informed Daughton: "You say you are giving us a wide-open rule; you are giving us a wide-open bag, and you have got this measure in it."
When the Wagner labor-disputes bill was debated, he proposed that it be extended to include agricultural workers, and gave a merciless description of the terror under which Arkansas sharecroppers are living. The Arkansas delegation, backed by the Democratic majority, retaliated with insults and threats of bodily harm, but Marcantonio persisted. Single-handed, he forced a debate on the recent kidnaping of Robert Minor, Communist leader, at Gallup, New Mexico. Last month Marcantonio and Lundeen, in a joint interview in New York, proposed the immediate formation of a national third party.
Amlie is a slow-moving, kindly giant, with something of the manner that Lincoln supposedly had in his earlier years. However, Amlie is better educated, and much more sophisticated, than Lincoln. He is more radical than the La Follettes, and probably represents the Wisconsin idea in its present-day form more accurately than they do. He is one of the directing spirits of the Farmer-Labor Political Federation, an organization of increasing influence intended to weld together the farmers of the Northwest and the organized workers of the East. Like Marcantonio, Amlie expects the formation of a new party. Kvale has inherited the seat of his father, O. J. Kvale, one of the Farmer-Labor champions. While both Amlie and Marcantonio are taking a largely independent line, Kvale is a loyal supporter of Governor Olson, with whose fortunes, for the immediate future, his own are linked.
Of the remaining members of the House group, George J. Schneider of Wisconsin stands out for the same quality of moral courage possessed by Lundeen. Boileau of Wisconsin is an able lawyer whose experience in practical affairs makes him extremely useful. The most entertaining figure, perhaps, is Usher L. Burdick of North Dakota, raised among the Sioux Indians, a friend of Sitting Bull and one of Minnesota University's great right-ends. Burdick's North Dakota colleague, William Lemke, once a strict believer in Non-Partisan League tenets, has now strayed, or appears to be straying, into the sheepfold of Father Coughlin.
The radicals' voting strength is too slender for them to hope to carry a program through into legislation. Their function is to serve as a ginger group. During the present session, this has been of great importance. Unquestionably the threat of the Lundeen bill helped to force action not only upon the administration's social-security bill, but upon all labor measures. The stringent House rules of procedure have hampered the radicals surprisingly little. They are always on the House floor, always ready to speak, and some of them, like Marcantonio, have a gift for making their case in a few scarifying sentences. The level of debate in the House this session has been extraordinarily high.
The most important thing about the group, however, is the fact of its existence. The Lundeen bill, and the manifesto drafted by Maverick and Boileau, represent a clean break with the past policies of the Democratic and Republican Parties. The principles that they express demand for their fulfilment the rise of a wholly new political movement, of which the House has constituted itself the advance guard and upon which they have individually staked their fortunes.
During the present session they have acquired the group name of mavericks, a name given them by Washington correspondents because Maury Maverick of Texas summoned their first meeting, last February, and, with Gerald J. Boileau of Wisconsin, drafted their manifesto. The temptation to give them a name meaning unbranded cattle was irresistible. However, some of the older members of the group, who were fighting for a changed social order when Maverick was a schoolboy, are not altogether pleased by it.
If the group possesses a leader, it is the ghost of Mayor LaGuardia of New York. The mavericks descend directly from the little band of congressional condottieri that LaGuardia led through the long, fat Coolidge years. At present LaGuardia would probably be the group's choice for third-party candidate for President, chiefly because he lives in New York and therefore is supposed to have the support of the labor unions of the East to a greater degree than, for example, Olson of Minnesota or Philip La Follette of Wisconsin. However, it is a question how much longer LaGuardia can continue to be Roosevelt's errand boy—as he apparently feels he must be in order to get funds for New York's unemployed—and still retain the group's confidence.
Among the members of the House group, the foremost figure probably is Ernest Lundeen of Minnesota. He was first elected to Congress in 1916. Follower of the elder La Follette and Representative Lindbergh, the aviator's father, he voted against America's entry into the World War. He was viciously assailed by the patriots of those days, threatened with violence and defeated for reelection in 1918. An experience of that sort either destroys a man or hardens his character to iron. Nothing now frightens Lundeen or can sway him.
Early in the session, Lundeen introduced the so-called workers' unemployment-insurance bill, endorsed by many Left groups. In effect, it would have guaranteed a minimum standard of living to industrial and agricultural workers, regardless of booms and depressions. No bill with such deeply cutting implications was ever before seriously considered by Congress. The contrast between the Lundeen bill and Roosevelt's faint-hearted unemployment-insurance measure, the Wagner-Lewis-Daughton bill, drove the House leadership into silence. No Roosevelt supporter dared attack the essentials of the Lundeen bill; on behalf of the administration measure Daughton could only say that it represented a first step, and could be strengthened later. The Lundeen bill received fifty-two votes. This is the highest vote against the traditional capitalist order yet polled.
Lundeen is a product of the Minnesota Farmer-Labor movement, which itself is the child of the Scandinavian labor and coöperative movements. The Scandinavian tradition helps to explain the placid conviction with which Farmer-Laborites attack the present order. That capitalism is not perfect is no new idea to them. It is something they learned from their parents and grandparents.
Maury Maverick is the inheritor of an equally strong tradition. Members of the Maverick family have had liberal sympathies, but for many generations the family, as such, has been part of the dominant, owning class. General Sam Maverick, the man who wouldn't bother to brand his calves, possessed a fabulous domain in Texas. The family to which Maverick's mother belongs, the Maury's of Virginia, were likewise great landowners and even more lordly than the Mavericks.
Maverick himself is one of the genuine heroes of the War, in which he was horribly wounded. He spent months in a military hospital and escaped death by an eyelash. His wounds have left him with a permanent stiffness of his upper body. He is a lawyer, and was president of the San Antonio Bar Association at twenty-three. He engaged in the lumber business, and made money at it. In 1929 he was one of a group that overthrew the San Antonio political machine and cleaned up the town.
He is the only Southerner, and only Democrat, in the House radical group, as well as the only one without a working-class or small-farmer background. A first-termer, without effort he has become one of the most conspicuous men in the House. His best job has been the exposure of the utility company intrigues against the T.V.A. He announced that an agent of the Alabama Power Company was occupying the office of Representative May of Kentucky, chief opponent of the T.V.A., and left May spluttering with ludicrous rage. At a committee hearing, he abruptly checked an attack on the T.V.A. by identifying a suspected power lobbyist in the audience and demanding that he be thrown out. Maverick is sponsor of a drastic neutrality bill, designed to keep us, as far as laws can do it, from being dragged into another European war. He had a large share in the fight to prevent the administration's measure against war profiteering, drafted by B. M. Baruch and General Johnson, from being jammed through the House without amendments—a fight in which the radical group won a clear victory.
Three members of the House radical group are important for their relative youth. These are Vito Marcantonio of New York, only thirty-three, Thomas R. Amlie of Wisconsin, thirty-eight, and Paul John Kvale of Minnesota, thirty-nine. All have a full generation of active political life ahead of them, during which they will presumably have a part in far-reaching events. Marcantonio represents LaGuardia's old Upper East Side district in New York. He lacks LaGuardia's exuberance, but he also lacks LaGuardia's moody, erratic quality. He is better grounded in economics than most of his colleagues, and has a contemptuous wit that makes him extremely effective on the House floor. In the debate on the rule under which the administration's social-security bill was to be voted on, Marcantonio informed Daughton: "You say you are giving us a wide-open rule; you are giving us a wide-open bag, and you have got this measure in it."
When the Wagner labor-disputes bill was debated, he proposed that it be extended to include agricultural workers, and gave a merciless description of the terror under which Arkansas sharecroppers are living. The Arkansas delegation, backed by the Democratic majority, retaliated with insults and threats of bodily harm, but Marcantonio persisted. Single-handed, he forced a debate on the recent kidnaping of Robert Minor, Communist leader, at Gallup, New Mexico. Last month Marcantonio and Lundeen, in a joint interview in New York, proposed the immediate formation of a national third party.
Amlie is a slow-moving, kindly giant, with something of the manner that Lincoln supposedly had in his earlier years. However, Amlie is better educated, and much more sophisticated, than Lincoln. He is more radical than the La Follettes, and probably represents the Wisconsin idea in its present-day form more accurately than they do. He is one of the directing spirits of the Farmer-Labor Political Federation, an organization of increasing influence intended to weld together the farmers of the Northwest and the organized workers of the East. Like Marcantonio, Amlie expects the formation of a new party. Kvale has inherited the seat of his father, O. J. Kvale, one of the Farmer-Labor champions. While both Amlie and Marcantonio are taking a largely independent line, Kvale is a loyal supporter of Governor Olson, with whose fortunes, for the immediate future, his own are linked.
Of the remaining members of the House group, George J. Schneider of Wisconsin stands out for the same quality of moral courage possessed by Lundeen. Boileau of Wisconsin is an able lawyer whose experience in practical affairs makes him extremely useful. The most entertaining figure, perhaps, is Usher L. Burdick of North Dakota, raised among the Sioux Indians, a friend of Sitting Bull and one of Minnesota University's great right-ends. Burdick's North Dakota colleague, William Lemke, once a strict believer in Non-Partisan League tenets, has now strayed, or appears to be straying, into the sheepfold of Father Coughlin.
The radicals' voting strength is too slender for them to hope to carry a program through into legislation. Their function is to serve as a ginger group. During the present session, this has been of great importance. Unquestionably the threat of the Lundeen bill helped to force action not only upon the administration's social-security bill, but upon all labor measures. The stringent House rules of procedure have hampered the radicals surprisingly little. They are always on the House floor, always ready to speak, and some of them, like Marcantonio, have a gift for making their case in a few scarifying sentences. The level of debate in the House this session has been extraordinarily high.
The most important thing about the group, however, is the fact of its existence. The Lundeen bill, and the manifesto drafted by Maverick and Boileau, represent a clean break with the past policies of the Democratic and Republican Parties. The principles that they express demand for their fulfilment the rise of a wholly new political movement, of which the House has constituted itself the advance guard and upon which they have individually staked their fortunes.
Jonathan Mitchell, The New Republic, June 19, 1935
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