WASHINGTON, July 2.—Speaker William B. Bankhead suddenly forced adjournment of the House until next Tuesday today when a bitter floor dispute over the Committee for Industrial Organization threatened to develop into a free-for-all.
The outburst, one of the most violent in the House this year, was touched off by an address by Rep. Maury Maverick, Dem., Tex. in which the Texas congressman vigorously defended the CIO and attacked its critics.
Before the adjournment move was rushed through Maverick demanded that remarks of Rep. Eugene E. Cox, Dem., Ga., be taken down to determine whether Cox had violated House rules by casting personal aspersions upon him.
In another interchange, Rep. Jerry O'Connell, Dem., Mont., demanded to know whether Rep. Clare Hoffman, Repn., Mich., was challenging him to go outside and fight.
Maverick opened hostilities by attacking Cox, who has criticized the CIO in recent House speeches.
Cox retorted that Maverick was more "interested in buffoonery than in moulding sound public opinions."
"I demand that the gentleman's words be taken down," shouted Maverick. The House, however, by a voice vote declined to consider whether the Cox statement violated House rules.
"I assume the gentleman believes in some form of government and is not thoroughly Russianized," continued Cox.
Maverick again asked that the words be taken down.
Maverick earlier demanded that the Democratic party keep its campaign pledges to the workers, farmers and small business men to prevent being swept from power in the 1938 and 1940 elections.
Asserting that he was not praising CIO leader John L. Lewis, Maverick said that there were "no evidences" of Communistic leadership in the present strike disorders.
Maverick singled out Representative Cox, who has made two bitter attacks on the CIO on the House floor in the last week, for sharp criticism.
Cox charged the CIO was being led by Communists and was attempting to establish a "labor despotism" in the country.
"If the gentleman from Georgia might be interested, Georgia and surrounding states have seen 150,000 textile workers, young ladies already joining the CIO and the 'flower of Southern manhood' stood by," Maverick shouted. "There was not a single killing."
Maverick said criticism by Cox of Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins was "wholly unwarranted and without any basis whatever."
Maverick called Cox's speech "hysterical," designed to bring "bloodshed and disorder, and stir up racial prejudice in the South."
Berkeley Daily Gazette, July 2, 1937, p. 1
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