Mr Borah Turns Practical

...There was one historic occasion when he put through a proposal to investigate the office of the Alien Property Custodian only to have it discovered later that he had neglected to insert any provision for the funds with which to carry on the inquiry...

...Last June when Borah introduced his famous resolution proposing to restrict the present tariff revision to the agricultural schedule and directly related commodities, it was generally interpreted as nothing more than a grandstand play...

...But Borah is too accurate as a political prophet to be suspected of giving serious attention to the latter hypothesis so far as the immediate future is concerned...

...The reason the resolution did not pass was that Borah, as usual, was thinking several months or years ahead of most of his colleagues...

...Borah, it was said, was merely trying to alibi himself with those to whom he had made promises in the 1928 campaign that the Hoover administration would be most solicitous about the woes of the farmer...

...It is only a little more than a year since the senator from Idaho was roaring up and down the country campaigning for Herbert Hoover on the twin issues of prohibition and farm relief...

...Perhaps it will be suggested that he manifested considerable staying power in the battle against ratification of the Versailles treaty...

...Their feeling is illustrated by a story told concerning a personage so highly placed politically that his name may not be mentioned without danger of the appointment of an investigating commission...

...That was what surprised the Old Guard leaders, some of whom had predicted that if Borah ever found himself voting with a Senate majority he would change his position immediately...

...His plan of operation in years past was to stray into the Senate Chamber like a god wandering from Olympus, make a speech that would pack the galleries and fill the front pages, and then leave with a feeling that his job was done...

...This anonymous personage, then, was asked if Borah believed in the Bible...

...Whatever may be his reasons, there can be no doubt that Borah just now is having all of the opportunities to oppose things that anyone could want...

...But Borah attends conferences today...

...The resolution was rejected -by one vote-but out of it has grown the present triumphant coalition...

...When Borah finally reascends Olympus it might be appropriate to cannonize* him as the patron of political mischief-makers, for Washington will be a far duller place without him...

...Carrying the idea one step further it may be said that Borah, more than any other individual, contributed toward making Herbert Hoover President of the United States...

...There are some in Washington who believe that Borah's willingness to drudge with the coalition is merely an outgrowth of his realization-perhaps subconscious-that by cooperation with others he can give freer rein to his passion for opposition...

...Had the Republican leaders permitted his resolution to pass, their industrial constituents would now have no fear of losing many of the tariff privileges which will be taken from them if the coalition's amendments are ultimately written into law...

...He didn't write it...

...We do not know whether our correspondent spelled the word "cannonize" with the extra "n" which so aptly suggests Senator Borah's political alliance during the presidential campaign with a certain political bishop from Virginia, more generally associated with the dry laws than with purely ecclesiastical canons, but in any case we have decided to let the word stand as written.-The Editors...

...It was Borah more than anyone else who was responsible for the Senate's defiance of the White House on the export-debenture feature of the farm relief bill...

...It was rather an apt description at the time it was written, and for several years thereafter, but it would need drastic revision to be applicable today...

...Others conceive that he visualizes the present coalition as the nucleus from which may develop a new political party embracing the agricultural regions of the West and South and held together by an economic liberalism opposed to the conservatism of the highly protected East...

...Of course not," the reply is said to have been...

...If Borah tells them his predictions are nearly always carried out...

...This is something new in his senatorial career...

...and Borah, more than any other individual, has placed obstacles in the way of the President's reelection in 1932...

...Such a party, it is suggested, might be casting about in 1932 for a candidate whose name is a national power...

...Borah's emergence as a practical, hard-headed political strategist is the current wonder of the national capital...

...He simply would not be bothered with such drudgery...

...Borah made a few thunderous speeches at the outset of this engagement but as soon as he found that he had signed up enough recruits to rout the Old Guard, he threw away his drum and settled down to the dull monotony of keeping his forces drilled and contented...

...He beat the big bass drum in front of recruiting headquarters while others, inside, signed up the recruits...

...When such sessions are over it is to Borah that the newspapermen -and other senators-go for information as to what will happen in the Senate tomorrow...

...And now, less than a year after the President was inaugurated, Borah has definitely broken with the White House on both of these issues...

...Things are different in the present battle over the Hawley-Smoot tariff bill...

...Ever and anon he would introduce resolutions proposing to investigate some real or ostensible iniquity but he seldom took the trouble to bring his resolutions to a vote...

...It is true that he was consistent in his opposition to that treaty but in that battle he was working with the Republican senatorial machine, with a Republican majority in the Senate, and with a well-financed and highly efficient publicity campaign operating throughout the nation to discredit the League of Nations and the Wilson administration...

...Moreover he is able to indulge in the peculiar Borahesque pleasure of tearing down something which he was instrumental in building...

...As one of the leaders of the Democratic-Insurgent coalition which has wrested control of the Senate from the Republican Old Guard he has shown qualities which neither his friends nor his enemies had ever suspected him of possessing...

...Several times a week he gathers his insurgent group about him and goes into private session on some complicated problem of strategy connected with the tariff bill...

...It was Borah more than anyone else who forced the White House and the Wickersham Commission into the present prohibition tangle...

...It has been traditional in the Senate that Borah would never attend conferences...

...Incidentally, it was Borah alone who induced President Hoover to promise an extra session of Congress, which turned out to be the session in which Borah precipitated the organization of the coalition which has shattered the administration's control of the Senate and threatens to shake its hold on the House...

...He had sensed, what is now generally conceded to be a fact, that the nation is not interested in a general tariff revision...

...Borah contributed much to the inspirational side of that controversy but the hard drudgery of lining up votes and keeping them lined up was attended to largely by others...

...HE WINDS himself up but he never strikes twelve" were the words used a few years ago by a distinguished Washington correspondent to describe the Honorable William E. Borah, senior senator from Idaho...

...Outstanding among them is the demonstration that Borah is capable of sustained cooperation with other senators, including many whose viewpoints and interests differ widely from his own...

...Moreover, had Borah's advice been followed, President Hoover would not now be facing the probability that he will have to choose between affixing his signature to a law taking away his own power to change tariff rates or becoming the first Republican President to veto a tariff bill passed by a Congress of his own party...