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When he first arrived in Washington as a Congressman, he was, he says, taken for "just another cattle thief from Texas" by the House leaders who assigned him to minor committees. His loud protest brought a transfer to the Committee on Foreign Affairs. Beside him at the foot of the Committee table sat a dapper young Republican member from Ohio named Nicholas Longworth. They shook hands and thus began a great, understandable friendship of the aristocrat and the commoner. In those days House partisanship ran to blows and black eyes. The bloody shirt still waved but "Jack" Garner and "Nick" Longworth only grew closer together. "Nick" roseto the Speakership. "Jack" led the Democratic attack. Yet off the floor these two would link arms in the lobby, crack little jokes in the Speaker's office. Longworth's death brought sincere grief to Congressman Garner who now moves up into his friend's high seat. The Speaker's automobile—"our car" in their friendly joshing—has been sold and a new one will be bought for Speaker Garner.
Federal finance became Congressman Garner's legislative hobby. He got him self transferred to the Ways & Means Committee, rose to No. 1 minority position. His fiscal belief: the rich, being rich, should pay the heaviest taxes. In 1924 he tore into the Mellon tax plan, ripped it apart, forced it to be rewritten along Democratic lines. Ever since then the Secretary of the Treasury has been his particular target of attack. He has flayed the Treasury's tax refund system, charged that it favored G. O. P. contributors. A familiar House sight in recent years has been Congressman Garner before the rostrum, his body bent in the middle, his arms waving, his bushy eyebrows bristling, his face a bloody red, his high-pitched voice fairly denunciation of shrieking "Uncle out Andy.'' One of the good-natured ablest rough-&-tumble debaters in the House, a smart parliamentarian, an aggressive fighter, he was a perfect leader of the Opposition, to which position he succeeded Finis Garrett of Tennessee in 1929.
Society holds no lure for him. He wears grey suits, slightly wrinkled, and big blunt-toed shoes. Often he appears on the House floor in need of a shave. It was only by the greatest persuasion that Mrs. Garner induced him to order a cutaway ("one of those coats with half the stuff cut off") last month. He arranged to return it if not elected Speaker.
To Mrs. Garner, a tall woman with greying hair, he refers as "the Boss." During his whole Congressional career she has been his active secretary and stenographer. She collects the Garner pay check, pays the bills, finds the lost papers about the office. Together they arrive at the Capitol about informal. 7:30 a. m. Their home life is easy informal where "Nick" Longworth used to fiddle, "Jack" Garner sings cowboy songs. He is old-fashioned enough to read Scott while Mrs. Garner embroiders.