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Self-Made. Jimmy Byrnes, now 63, could well say that the rigors and sacrifices of a wartime economy can best be understood by a man born to simple wants. Jimmy was born to near-privation; his father, a municipal clerk, had died several months earlier. His mother taught him shorthand; at 21 he won a competition as court reporter at Aiken, S.C. He kept the court job for eight years, studied law at night. His eyes were on politics. In 1908 he was elected solicitor (district attorney); two years later he made the jump to Congressman, winning by 57 votes.
Fourteen years in the House made Jimmy a seasoned legislator; from a vantage point on the Appropriations Committee he absorbed thousands of details of Government operations, learned much about his country. He learned much about war in 1918 as a member of the subcommittee which passed on all war appropriations.
Harmonizer, Fixer? Jimmy Byrnes's real talents for politics were best displayed when he reached the Senate in 1930. His talents were those of a compromiser; his friends call him a harmonizer; his enemies, a fixer. A celebrated Byrnes statement of principle: "You've got to sacrifice your opinion to your party on minor questions, or you'll lose all your influence on big issues. But if you start giving in too much on the big issues you might as well go home."
Never a political theorist, Jimmy Byrnes's value as a Senator lay in his ability to get Administration programs translated into action. When Secretary of State Cordell Hull was pressing for renewal of the Trade Agreements Act in 1940, Jimmy Byrnes—who carried a complete catalogue of every one of his colleagues' likes, dislikes, habits, thoughts and prejudices in his mind—took a quick survey, found the agreement would not pass the Senate because of opposition of Western mining and beef Senators. He bluntly told Cordell Hull: the beef and copper trade provisions with Argentina and Chile would have to go, otherwise the agreements would founder. Jimmy seemed to take no side in the controversy: he merely knew what could and could not be done. Secretary Hull gave in.
As de facto leader of the Senate, much of Jimmy's work was done in a small, private room just off the Senate corridor. The room held nothing but a desk and a few chairs; the desk held nothing but ash trays and, sometimes, a bottle of Scotch. Here Jimmy Byrnes best exercised his persuasive powers and charm.
They were used to great advantage after the start of World War II, when Jimmy pushed most of Franklin Roosevelt's war measures through the Senate. In earlier years he had, with equal determination, opposed many a Roosevelt project (Wage & Hour Law, the 1938 purge, relief spending), but the two men never lost their respect for each other. He was a Roosevelt-before-Chicago man in 1932; campaigned on a Roosevelt & Byrnes platform for re-election in 1936; next to Harry Hopkins, he did more than any man to stage-manage the third-term nomination in 1940.