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All last week Speaker-presumptive Garner shuffled and shifted committee lists in an effort to work out a scheme that the whole party could support at its caucus Dec. 5. What pointed up the bargaining politically was the fact that patronage worth $2,000,000 per year in wages for constituents was at stake.
Program. One of Congressman Garner's first declarations was that, if Democracy organized the House, it would accept full legislative responsibility and present a program of its own. What that program was, continued to remain his secret last week. Undoubtedly it would contain plans for farm and industrial relief. Prime uncertainty: taxation. Democrats in the House where such measures must originate, had no desire to sponsor a tax upping bill which might handicap them in the campaign. They much preferred to wait and see what President Hoover—who is, after all, responsible for Federal finance—would recommend. If he wanted an increase in taxes to meet the deficit House Democrats might give it to him—and the blame as well.
Minority. Almost academic last week became the Republican minority's squabble as to who should head what in the next House. Congressman John Quillin Tilson of Connecticut, last year's Floor Leader, and Bertrand H. Snell of New York, Rules Committee chairman, struggled for the empty honor of being nominated by the G. 0. P. for Speaker and then defeated by Democrat Gamer. Cheesemaker Snell, hard-boiled and reactionary when the Republicans are in complete control, went about last week conciliating and winning over Progressive votes to his candidacy with oversized promises of liberalizing the House rules. After eight ballots in a party caucus he won the Speakership nomination which meant he would be minority Floor Leader in the 72nd Congress.
John Nance Garner had two anniversaries last week—his 62nd birthday and his 36th wedding. He observed both by going to his office before 8 a. m., working until supper time. Since his birth into a poor family on a lonely farm in the Red River County of North Texas, "Jack" Garner has come far but changed little. He is, as he likes to repeat, a man of the common people. As a youngster, he was puny. He got little or no formal education. A touch of tuberculosis sent him down to the hilly ranges of South Texas where it is higher, drier. There he punched cows, hunted, fished, slept under the stars. Outdoor life brought him a robust, ruddy-cheeked vitality he has never lost. Nights he began reading law, at 21 was admitted to the Texas bar at Uvalde. For a while he was a local judge, then went to the State Legislature where he served four years.
On the theory that Southern Democracy would be materially strengthened if Texas was, as it constitutionally could be divided into four new States with eight new Senators, he rammed through a bill to that end only to have it vetoed. Even now he still agitates for this change (TIME, May 26, 1930). But monster Texas, proud of its size, only laughs at him, thinks such a reform is one of Jack Garner's best jokes.