Tired Mule

One tune lilted all last week through the heads of the 500-odd members of the U, S. Congress: Home, Sweet Home. Senator LaFollette, who had spent the previous weekend yachting with the President, broadcast to the press his view that Congress should stay in session until a ''comprehensive legislative schedule" had been enacted. He said that he spoke only for himself, which in one sense was true since he is the only member of the Progressive Party in the Senate, but Senator Barkley, the new majority leader, who had also been on the yachting party was promptly quizzed by Republicans.

"I am very anxious to know . . ." sarcastically murmured Senator McNary, [whether] we are to follow the leadership of the Senator from Wisconsin. . . . I have felt since the capitulation [on the Court Bill], under the management of our able Vice President that we would probably adjourn ... by the fifth of August. ... I doubt that he [Senator La Follette] spoke the voice of the President."

Two nights later Senator Barkley, Speaker Bankhead and Leader Sam Rayburn of the House waited on the President to hear his views at first hand. Vice President Garner who not only favored swift adjournment but was in the doghouse for his part in killing the Court Bill (TIME, Aug. 2) was not there. Nor was Senator Pat Harrison, who had been remarking in the cloakrooms that Congress ought to adjourn before it gets into "another state of confusion." But the visitors at the White House were quickly shamed out of any hasty desire to go home.

President Roosevelt asked them what they had done so far to justify Congress' seven months sojourn in Washington. Speaker Bankhead started to rattle off a list of bills passed--bills for the most part neither important nor publicly known. The President squelched him with a roar of laughter. Presently the visitors came out and gave the press a list of five bills to be acted on before adjournment.

1) A minimum wages, maximum hours bill.

2) The Wagner Housing Bill.

3) The New Court Bill.

4) A loophole-plugging tax bill.

5) A bill to set new sugar quotas in place of those expiring next December.

Nine-tenths worn out by the Court struggle and Washington heat. Congressmen had so little inclination for attacking any new problems that the New Deal was reported anxious to postpone the revised Court Bill for fear that Congress would just lie down like a tired mule once it was disposed of. The result was something approaching a new deadlock, this time between the Presidential will and Congressional fatigue. There was some talk about adjournment and reconvening in October as a way out, but everybody except possibly the President and most ardent New Dealers was just a little too tired to make an issue over anything.

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