"Fighting Clothes"

Congress was supposed to be in hot revolt against his domination when, in April 1934, President Roosevelt got back from his Southern fishing jaunt. Yet 30 Senators and 200 Representatives were at the station with a band to greet him. To them he then addressed, in grim good humor, his famed "tough guy" speech: "I have come back with all sorts of new lessons which I learned from barracuda and sharks . . . etc., etc." (TIME, April 23, 1934). Within a few days the revolt was over and Congress settled down to whip through the President's long list of "must" legislation.

Last week Franklin Roosevelt again returned from a Southern fishing trip to another revolting Congress. There were no Congressmen on hand to greet him, only a few members of his private and official families. Without any speechmaking, the President bundled into a closed car, sped to the White House.

The sulking Congress had already had a warning of his temper. Aboard his special train as it rolled up from the South day before, he had volunteered to newshawks the information that he was determined to press afresh the aims outlined in his Madison Square Garden speech last October. In that speech, angriest of his campaign, he had said that in his Second Administration he hoped that "the forces of selfishness and lust for power'' would "meet their master."

Congressional leaders summoned to the White House a few hours after the President's return, verified his truculent mood. First conferee was gruff Senate Majority Leader Robinson. Emerging after an hour, he growled: "The battle will go on."

He was followed by the House's Speaker Bankhead and Floor Leader Rayburn. ''The President," said they, "has on his fighting clothes."

In 1934, Congress' flouting of the President's wishes during his vacation absence consisted of nothing more serious than overriding his veterans' pension veto, taxing Philippine coconut oil, extracting teeth from the Stock Exchange Bill. The nation was still in crisis, Franklin Roosevelt was still its supremely popular leader. Congressional elections were only half a year away.

Last week President Roosevelt was in his second--always less potent--term; the Depression was over; elections were distant. And the causes of Congressional discontent were far broader and deeper than three years ago. Lesser of them was Economy. There Congress was at odds not only with the President but divided within itself. Last week a House Appropriations subcommittee lopped $500,000,000 off the President's recommended $1,500,000,000 for Relief. This looked like a sign of real revolt. But the House knew that all President Roosevelt really cared about was to keep the CCC going. And the full House Appropriations Committee, reportedly after telephone calls from the South, swiftly cancelled its subcommittee's action by restoring the half-billion Relief dollars.

Meantime, in two instances where President Roosevelt would have been glad to see economies effected, the real obstacles to Economy were glaringly highlighted. Tennessee's Senator Kenneth McKellar, a recent convert to Economy, managed to persuade the Senate, which was supposed to be paring down the $83,000,000 Second Deficiency Bill, to authorize and make the initial appropriation for a new $112,000,000 TVA dam near Gilbertsville, Ky. --just across the line from Tennessee. Chairman Robert L. ("Muley"; Doughton of the House Ways & Means Committee, who because a new tax bill would bear his name has been one of the hottest champions of Economy, grew livid last week when he learned that the House Appropriations Committee had halved a $5,000,000 Interior Department item for further work on the Shenandoah-Great Smoky Mountains Park highway--which runs through his district and close by his farm.

Distracting though it might be, Economy was only a froth on the turbulent riptide of Congressional feeling about the President's Court Plan. Son-Secretary James Roosevelt, who sped South last week to join his father at Fort Worth, and Postmaster General Farley, who boarded the Presidential special at Indianapolis, reportedly were both dispatched by Senate leaders to tell the President that his Plan seemed headed for defeat, to beg him to accept a compromise. Polls continued to show the Senate so evenly split that forecasters were suggesting that Vice President Garner might have to break a tie. And many a loyal Administrationist feared that though the President might still succeed in ramming his Plan through intact, in doing so he would "win the battle and lose the war" by splitting his Party beyond repair. Already it was plain that resentment against the Court Plan had put Congress into a negative, do-nothing temper.

Such was the set-up to which President Roosevelt turned last week, demanding action. The president's program of "must" legislation was this:

1) A full $1,500,000,000 for Relief.

2) Economies of $300.000.000 or $400,000,000, Congress to decide where and how, to effect a "layman's balance"* of the Budget in 1938.

3) A beginning, even if only a modest $10,000.000 one, on reduction of farm tenancy.

4) Regulation of wages & hours, prohibition of child labor, in interstate commerce.

5) A two-year extension of current excise taxes.

6) A plan for a national Power policy, including soil conservation, flood control, navigation.

Finally, overshadowing all the rest, the President called for a finish fight on his Court Plan. Dictating a statement after his White House Conference, Senator Robinson declared: "I see no prospect at this stage of any adjustment or agreement."

Did "adjustment" mean "compromise," he was asked. It did.

Did "at this stage" mean the President might compromise later?

"Strike out 'at this stage,' " barked Joe Robinson.

Blunt even for him was Postmaster General Farley's statement of the case: "Why compromise? The Democratic Senators were elected on the basis of supporting the President's program. It's up to them to back it now."

At week's end came two more headlines, fillips to the case. In the same day 78-year-old Justice Willis Van Devanter, one of the Supreme Court's most stalwart conservatives, submitted his resignation, effective June 2, under the new Pension Law, and the Senate Judiciary Committee, as expected, cracked out a 10-to-8 adverse report on President Roosevelt's Court Reorganization Bill.

* Excluding interest on the public debt.

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