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He voted consistently against parity and subsidy payments. He opposed the 1937 Wagner housing act. He voted for the 1938 Wage-Hour Act. but he voted for most bills (Smith-Connally, Hobbs, Case, the President's emergency strike bill) which sought to put some kind of control over labor. He voted for price controls during the war and against price controls after the war.
He said yes to the British loan. He has voted both ways on questions of reciprocal trade, conscious of a new need for international amity and conscious of his party's tradition of protective tariffs and his district's manufacturing interests.
Joe Martin was less troubled than some by the eternal dilemma of a Congressman: should he vote for the best interests of his district or his country? Martin sees no particular conflict. "What's good for one section is pretty much good for the country," he says.
In his stub-toed policeman's shoes he trotted around the chambers of Congress, a squat little man with a black-browed, square Irish face. Occasionally he slicked himself up. He appeared at Roosevelt's third inaugural wearing his blue serge coat, morning pants, wing collar, black tie and bowler. The rain came down in sheets, filling the little derby's brim.
In Washington, Joe lives at the famed
Hay-Adams House, across Lafayette Park from the White House. He never shuts off his phone at night, with the result that he is frequently awakened early in the morning by constituents demanding favors or just in need of conversation. He doesn't mind. "I go right back to sleep," he says. He is casual, genial and wears well.
His old suite in the Capitol is three dark cubicles off Statuary Hall. He may keep the suite; he hates to move. But he will also have the use of the regular Speaker's office, vacated by Sam Rayburn —a room with vaulted ceiling and elaborate crystal chandelier, thick red rug, pictures of staring, bearded, long-dead Congressmen.
A long-dead President-elect, George Washington, once observed: "My movements to the chair of government will be 'accompanied by feelings not unlike those of a culprit who is going to his place of execution." Joe Martin had reason to feel the same trepidations. Daily, after Jan. 3, he will climb the stairs to the lofty throne which is the Speaker's chair. More than 71,000 voters in the 14th District of Massachusetts put him there. Millions of Americans will have their eyes on him.
One of his closest friends describes him thus: "He is middle-of-the-road. He was not an opponent of the New Deal because it recognized problems and tried to cure them. He opposed the methods of the New Deal, because he believed the New Deal robbed Congress of its dignity and authority." Now Congress has more authority than it has had since the late '30s, and Joe Martin, the blacksmith's son, the politicians' politician, will be in charge.
*Not to be confused with "clam bake": clams baked over hot rocks and seaweed, preferably outdoors. "Clam boil": a mess cooked in a kettle.