Shoestrings & Saddlebags

The President revived an old, familiar problem: gerrymandering in congressional election districts. Last week he asked Congress to lay down a strict set of rules for redistributing the states' allotted Representatives more equally among their populations, as tallied in the 1950 census.

Harry Truman had the weight of facts and logic on his side. Politicians had outdone themselves carving out weirdly shaped districts designed to increase their power at the expense of their opponents. Illinois had "saddlebag" and "beltline" districts; Mississippi had a "shoestring" district, 40 miles wide and 600 miles long; and Massachusetts still has a scrawny, lizard-shaped district, resembling the original gerrymander, laid out in 1812 to preserve the political power of Governor Elbridge Gerry. In Ohio's 22nd District, Representative Frances P. Bolton served 698,650 constituents, but in the 10th District, Representative Thomas A. Jenkins spoke for only 180,482 people.

What President Truman wanted was specific legislation outlawing the gerrymander and requiring the states to divide their districts into compact units of between 300,000 and 400,000 people (the census basis on which seats would be apportioned ideally). While few Congressmen would argue about the unfairness of the existing system, there was little chance that they would enact the anti-gerrymander legislation in a hurry. The hard political fact was that too many of them owed their jobs to the shoestrings and saddlebags.

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