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Carl Hubbell is a ballplayer's ball player; Count Basie is a swing artist's swing artist; bounding Burt Wheeler is a Senator's Senator. Forged in the furnace of Montana politics, in the long fight with Montana's absentee owners, tempered by blows in & out of the Senate that would have long since destroyed anyone of lesser steel, polished by the saving grace of a swift mind that has dwelt long on the ironies of politics—Burt Wheeler has lived a half-dozen lives, every one at top speed, except for brief intervals of catnapping on his office couch. "Nearly everything, except perhaps dinner, seems less important after a nap," says Mr. Wheeler.
From a Massachusetts Quaker family 300 years old came Burt Wheeler, on Feb. 27, 1882. From the start he was on the scramble. Out of Michigan Law School in 1905, he went west, there heard the fabulous tales of attorneys' fees in Butte, Mont., where F. Augustus Heinze, copper baron, and Amalgamated Copper Co. (the "Standard Oil crowd") were at war for control of "the richest hill on earth." But by the time young Wheeler settled in Butte the fight was over and the fees had fled. He became a law clerk, then hung out his own shingle: in a couple of years he had a profitable practice—mostly personal injury cases against the railroads and Anaconda Copper Co.
Lawyer Wheeler sought a bigger arena, was elected to the State Legislature in 1910 as it was engaged (under old practice) in choosing the next U. S. Senator. Wheeler voted consistently for mustachioed, fearless Thomas J. Walsh. Copper legislators beat Walsh, but Burt Wheeler acquired a powerful friend. In 1912 Walsh was elected in a direct primary and in 1913 Woodrow Wilson appointed Burt Wheeler U. S. District Attorney.
During World War I the young D. A. got into serious trouble with war-hysterical citizens. He refused to be "diligent" in prosecuting "pro-Germans" whose crime was mainly their accent. Once at Dillon, Mont., a mob drove him out of town when he tried to speak. On the outskirts he stopped, tried again, again was driven away, heckling his hecklers over his shoulder as he left.
In 1922 Wheeler captured the U. S. Senate seat he has since retained. Bounding Burt was hot stuff from the start. In late 1923, as his colleague Walsh lifted the lid of the G. 0. P.'s Teapot Dome, Senator Wheeler began to pry into the man who made Warren G. Harding Pres ident : Attorney General Harry Daugherty. Daugherty's FBI agents toothcombed Montana for Wheeler dirt; finding none, they made some, concocted a charge that Wheeler had used his Senatorial influence to obtain illegal oil leases for a client. After waiting a year for the case to come to trial, Wheeler was acquitted in ten minutes. As the verdict came in, a tele gram arrived from Washington telling of the birth of a daughter. Wheeler named her Marion Montana, the Marion after "Fighting Bob" (Robert Marion) La Follette Sr. On his 80th birthday, in Colum bus, Ohio, Jan. 26, old man Daugherty said he bore Wheeler no ill will, thought he would probably make a good President.