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Cold Dawn. In the Republican dawn, Ohio's Congressman Clarence J. Brown, campaign director, crowed: "We will open with a prayer and close with a probe." But Joe Martin, the blacksmith's son, approached the New Day with a little more caution.
He would be Speaker of the Republican House, and as such he had much more responsibility and a lot of work. The Steering Committees of both Houses would meet this week. One of the party's first, minor jobs would be to throw out some 600 Capitol police, messengers, elevator operators, etc., and distribute that patronage among deserving Republicans. Leslie Biffle, Secretary of the Senate, whom even Republicans liked and admired, would be a casualty of the patronage system.
A majority leader would have to be elected. Charlie Halleck, of Indiana, thought that was already decided: "Hell, I am the next majority leader. Clarence Brown 'hasn't got a chance." But Brown, who is National Committee Chairman Carroll Recce's man, might not know it. Joe had to hammer out harmony.
There was the question of the La Follette-Monroney reorganization bill, passed by the 79th Congress, which reduced the old hodgepodge of 81 Congressional committees to 15 in the Senate, 19 in the House. The 80th Congress, however, was not bound to go through with this streamlining. Many would prefer the old committee system, because there were more chairmanships to go around. A fight was due over that.
And with a new sense of responsibility Joe looked over the men who would run the committees in his House. Were the Republicans in line for the jobs the best the party had? There was, for instance, John Taber of New York, due to head up Appropriations. Bull-tongued John Taber, blaring away in a speech on wage-hour amendments in 1940, had restored the hearing in the deaf ear of the late Congressman Leonard W. Schuetz of Illinois. Schuetz had been deaf since birth. The effect, Schuetz said at the time, made him dizzy. "I had spent thousands of dollars on that ear." But that was one of the few outstanding things John Taber had ever done in Congress.
There was Harold Knutson of Minnesota, due to be chairman of the Ways & Means Committee, which handles all tax and tariff legislation. Before Pearl Harbor, Knutson opposed nearly every defense measure, once proclaimed: "Hitler is displaying a forbearance that might be emulated by statesmen of other countries.
Personally I cannot see much difference between Germany's action in Norway and the New Deal program in this country."
Taber and Knutson had been merely obstructionists when their party was in the minority. Would responsibility sober them up? These were things for Joe Martin to worry about. But Joe does not worry much. He knows how to handle his colleagues. He also knows that he will have some excellent committee chairmen (Jesse Wolcott of Michigan, Charles Eaton of New Jersey, et a/.) and that he will have some good new blood in the House. One of the freshmen, Connecticut's John Davis Lodge, put the problem of the Republicans.
"Now we will be on the inside receiving brickbats, instead of outside throwing them. We must be alert and liberal in the sense of Abraham Lincoln's concept that the individual is the complex heart of society. We must not be a stuffy and pompous party."