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Louis John Taber (National Grange)— "Agriculture is suffering from iron debts and rubber money."
Only occasionally did Senator Harrison dip into this flow of testimony. Once he got a vigorous assent from Mr. Duffield when he asked: "If the coming special session got to work, composed its differences, balanced the Budget, passed constructive measures and then adjourned quickly, in two months, would not that have a good effect on the country?" And Pat Harrison jokingly advised Mr. Houston to "get off that subject" when the onetime Secretary of the Treasury began to hector Senator Smoot on the evil effects of the Hawley-Smoot Tariff Act. But for the most part Senator Harrison sat back and listened, with what seemed to be complete agreement, to the expression of conservative business opinion.
A Cross-Cut of the first week's hearing suggested these conclusions: 1) currency inflation is the biggest fear of U. S. business; 2) R. F. C. has been a sharp disappointment; 3) the Government is pouring money down a rathole in trying to support 1929 capital values; 4) first-raters are more humble in presenting their remedies than second-raters; 5) it is easier to criticize Congress than to advise it.
Pat Harrison. The important part he will play in the leadership of the new Democratic Senate has done much to sober Pat Harrison and tighten his loose-hitched tongue. At 51 he has become almost owlish under the prospective burdens of statesmanship. The great lung capacity he first developed as a barefoot boy hawking the Memphis Appeal & Avalanche about the dusty streets of his native Crystal Springs, Miss, seems to have deserted him. He still makes windy speeches outside Washington about "mah countree" and views Republican doings with "amaze-munt" but he is no longer the Senate's loudest wit.
He was christened Byron Patton Harrison but Pat has become his common-law name. At Louisiana University he earned his tuition as a mess hall waiter while pitching on the college baseball team. Later he taught school, studied law, served as a local district attorney and, at 29, was elected to the House. In 1918 he performed a political miracle by defeating notorious James Kimble Vardaman for the Senate and taking over the seat once occupied by Jefferson Davis. His first ten years in a Republican Senate were ones of irresponsible fun at the expense of the G. O. P. He teased and tormented Henry Cabot Lodge. He smeared President Harding with mock sympathy. He tweaked and twitted President Coolidge. He first put in circulation the "dammed, drained and ditched" joke on Engineer Hoover. But his gibes were always in loud good humor and after a particularly spirited attack he would stroll off to a ball game arm-in-arm with Republican Leader Watson. Always the smart politician. Democrat Harrison played close to the Brown Derby in 1928, was an early passenger on the Roosevelt bandwagon.