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Presence Denied. By contrast to Knowland's troubles with senatorial prima donnas and his relative lack of experience (nine years in the Senate), Joe Martin has been a Congressman for 29 years and commands great respect from the House's feudal barons, the committee chairmen. By his gift for teamwork, his influence over chairmen, his control of the traffic-regulating Rules Committee, and by the tightness of the House's rules, Joe Martin has kept his House in order.
It was not always so well ordered. In the last century filibusters were frequent, and minorities refused to vote, making action impossible for want of a quorum. Speaker Thomas Reed changed all that one wild day in 1890 by counting members present, although they sat mutely in their chairs when their names were called. Shouted a Kentuckian named McCreary, "I deny the right of the Speaker to count me present." "Czar" Reed shot back with devastating logic, "The Chair simply stated the fact that the gentleman from Kentucky appears to be present. Does he deny it?" With that, members bolted for the doors. Reed ordered the doors locked. Pandemonium gripped the House of Representatives as members hid under desks, shouted curses at Reed and beat down the doors. But Reed had his quorum, and he kept a tight control of the House.
The powers he amassed, particularly the Rules Committee chairmanship, were stripped from his successor, "Uncle Joe" Cannon, in the revolt of 1910. The speakership was whittled down almost to its purely procedural functions. Since then the Speaker's powers have been gradually increasing again, with Joe Martin's (and before him, Sam Rayburn's) subtle cloakroom tactics substituting for the brazen railroading of Czar Reed.
Pork Expended. Joe Martin was born 69 years ago in North Attleboro, Mass., across the street from the smithy where his father worked as long as 16 hours a day for $15 a week. Joseph Martin the elder was a Presbyterian of Scots descent; his wife, Catherine Katon Martin (now 93), an Irish Catholic. Some of their eight children were reared as Catholics, some as Presbyterians. Joe, the second child and eldest son, was one of the Presbyterians, but he belongs to no church now.
Joe played end on the Attleboro High School football team, and his snappy work at shortstop brought an offer of a scholarship to Dartmouth. Joe turned it down, decided instead to help out the family by reporting for the Attleboro Sun and playing semi-pro baseball for the town and local industrial teams.
At 24, he had saved $1,000. With it, and some more raised from fellow towns men, he bought the North Attleboro Evening Chronicle (circ. 4,000), which he still publishes. The next step was politics. He served three years in the Massachusetts house of representatives (and on a committee chairmaned by Calvin Coolidge), three years in the state senate. On the side, Joe paid for the Dartmouth education of two younger brothers, Ed and Al. He also bought an insurance agency, now run by a nephew. It has no salesmen because Joe does not want his constituents to think he is pressuring them.