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On the House side, Minority Leader Bertrand Snell, the Potsdam, N. Y. cheese baron, never did a thing to help Senator McNary harass Franklin Roosevelt and divide his cohorts. But last autumn old "Bert Snell retired. Into his place stepped Joseph Martin of Massachusetts, smart, vigorous and unaffected. In no time he was in tune with McNary, and besides 81 new Republican House votes, other new factors favored. The defeat of the one man purged by Mr. Roosevelt, New York's hard-boiled O'Connor, slid the omnipotent Rules chair under ancient Adolph Sabath of Illinois, for whose leadership even New Dealers had scant respect. With Sam McReynolds sick (he died last fortnight), the Foreign Affairs chair went to prognathous Sol Bloom. Far up by seniority on most committees were Jack Garner's old Southern crowd, men who had been in Congress before Franklin Roosevelt was even a gleam in Jim Farley's eye. And Garner was still Charley McNary's close chum and ally. What with inept House leadership and disaffected House strength, Joe Martin had but to keep his little phalanx solid and alert to triumph on many a border raid.
After so many long-laid coalition mines exploded all at once last week, a smiling, nonchalant McNary told reporters he had booked train passage for Oregon's cool woods before August 1. Joe Martin who has not taken a real vacation since 1935, planned to work most of the summer as usual after a brief visit at his home in North Attleboro, Mass. In September comes an executive meeting of the G. O. P. national committee; a speech to small-businessmen at the New York World's Fair. Joe Martin, glutton for work, summarized last week's performance by saying, "Congress is improving with age. If we only had a couple more months, life would really be worth living."
Only Democrat who really sounded as though he knew what had happened to the powerful Administration majority of only a year ago was anguished Adolph Sabath. Last week he screamed: "You Democrats! Can't you see the Republicans are using you?"