BOSS OF THE SENATE

...Russell's power is the measure of his responsibility...

...Two years later another election reduced the majority of the Democratic Party in the Senate to two and wiped out any semblance of control by the Administration...

...It is true that the Georgia Senator did not get to be called a "Dixiecrat leader" by accident...

...The defeat of Sen...

...Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin...

...Fourth, and most important, the fact of Russell's power behind the scenes will give military and foreign policy leaders in the Administration an opportunity to evaluate the nature of Congressional support in the crisis...

...His voting record has endeared him to the Senate's most reactionary Democrat, Harry F. Byrd of Virginia...

...Murray and Magnuson, that in filling the vacancies on the Majority Steering Committee, you appoint Sens...

...Soon he will be held responsible for what the titular leader, McFarland, and the senior Southern Democrats do, or even fail to do...

...We can not too strongly express our sense of urgency that the country's, as well as the party's, interest requires the most serious consideration of these requests...

...Truman would not have been pleased at this choice...

...Just to enforce the Northern Democrats' impression that they were being hammered further into a minority status, Sens...

...They can counton all but two or three of the Northern and Western Democrats...

...Many of Mr...

...But, as always, opportunity has brought responsibility...

...The times, even more than last November's election, have changed the Senate's prospects...

...From Philadelphia the Dixiecrats went to Jackson, Miss., and the States Rights convention...

...But Russell himself crushed the move...

...Taft and the Republican minority leader, Sen...

...My sources in the White House are not very good,'' Russell will tell reporters with an amused smile on his face...

...Wherry...

...But fairly or unfairly, McFarland and the Steering Committee elders have not received all the blame for widening the Democratic Party split in the Senate...

...Could Russell have acted alone in the organization of the Senate, Capitol Hill reporters have little doubt that he would have sought to win the support of the liberal Democratic group by more liberal committee assignments...

...In the absence of McFarland, they would settle for young Lyndon Johnson of Texas, the new party whip in the Senate, but he, too, was unavailable...

...By the masterful, fact-dredging way he handled the spurious charges against Anna Rosenberg for the Armed Services Committee, he was the first Senator ever to put the lock on Sen...

...Officials in the Pentagon and the State Department had better see that Russell can not say the same of them, or there will be needless confusion in the mobilization effort and, in the long run, hell to pay on the floor of the Senate...

...The telegram dispatched Jan...

...Now the leadership belonged to Russell if he merely nodded his head...

...Thus did Majority Leader McFarland—or his Steering Committee seniors, George of Georgia, Mo-Kellar of Tennessee, Hayden of Arizona, and Connally of Texas— fail to grasp the olive branch held out to him by the liberal Democrats...

...We ave sought to reach you this afternoon and tonight with these requests, and are telegraphing them to you to register our views in advance of any final action...

...ocrats of the North, is perhaps the least impressive Senator the Democrats have on the floor...

...Daily News, and served for a while on the English faculty of the University of Illinois...

...But it will not be only the measures coming from his Committee on which Russell will rule...

...Third, other domestic measures, to be successfully sponsored by the Administration, will have to be the kind which can appeal to Russell or the GOP policy leader, Sen...

...In what are already seeming like more peaceful days, the dominant picture made by the junior Senator from Georgia in the Senate was of a latter-day captain of the Confederacy, rising in his place as if a charger rose under him, stubborn armies at his back, and the satisfied smile of having already out-maneuvered the Yankee enemy plain upon his face...

...Russell for one of the dailies he represents in the nation's capital is the Atlanta Journal, largest in the Senator's state...

...Mr...

...And the new chairman, when he rises to open debate on a defense measure, will be armed in turn by his de facto position as floor leader...

...If, moreover, the school of Democrats typified by Bernard Baruch, Joseph C. Kennedy, Gov...

...In the entire Middle West, where the Hoover-Taft foreign policy is drawing strong support, there are but four—Douglas of Illinois, Humphrey of Minnesota, Gillette of Iowa, and Henning of Missouri...

...The unexpected defeat of Truman's majority leader, Scott W. Lucas of Illinois, was not the only political accident last November...

...If they can—and will—work with Russell's cooperation, they can get enough Southern support to carry a roll call, with the small number of GOP votes which foreign policy measures have continued to pick up...

...The Democratic Policy Committee posts went to Sens...

...The object of their search was the amiable, somewhat tenacious but unassuming new majority leader of the Senate, Ernest McFarland, Arizona Democrat...

...If Russell would not budge, Talmadge couldn't either, and Russell s continued silence was the one factor which carried Georgia for Truman...

...President," he would say, "there are men on this floor who know their rights under the rules of the Senate and are prepared to claim them if need be...

...Lowry is chief of the Washington Bureau of the four newspapers owned by former Gov...

...and his Party, even if they were not -obliged to retreat on these issues as a result of the military crisis or the power of the South in the Senate...

...Impending events could now change that picture once and for all...

...Within definite limits, however...

...So McFarland, who has never voted against the Southerners on either cloture or civil rights, has the title of majority leader with Russell's approval...

...It has been nothing short of incredible that this able veteran of 18 Senate years has had national attention only as a spokesman for the South...

...Murray of Montana did get a place on the Steering Committee, but the other new posts went to Sens...

...At 7 p.m...

...Throwing the Southern Democrats now behind the Administration, now behind the GOP, he will wield the balance that will count for majorities on all crucial roll calls...

...The most brilliant parliamentarian in the Senate, with a keen and objective mind that is insatiably grounded in hard facts, Russell now has the opportunity to lead the Senate, of which he is so proud, toward a sober and unpolitical view of the nation's crisis...

...The de facto leader of the Senate in the 82nd Congress is Russell of Georgia...

...The true Dixiecrats were still with Russell when the Democratic National Convention opened in 1948, and the Georgia Senator was the one member of his party to allow his name to be placed in opposition to Truman's...

...Before going to Washington he was associate editor of the Dayton (O...

...Byrd of Virginia seeks a Republican stalking horse for a separate 1952 Presidential ticket in the South, they will turn in vain to Russell for the political generalship such a move would require...

...Cooperative working of the majority depends upon fair representation of all elements in organization of the Senate...

...However deep the crisis, two years would not completely alter the name of Truman as a symbol in the South, and Russell could not afford to be advertised as a Truman lieutenant through the Presidential campaign of 1952...

...Chapman of Kentucky and Kerr of Oklahoma, the first a second-string center on the Southern Democratic team, the latter an able but vindictive oil millionaire who has never forgiven the Northern Democrats for the defeat of the Kerr-Thomas natural gas bill...

...And he has already demonstrated that he can do the job...

...Chavez of New Mexico, El-lender of Louisiana, Holland of Florida, and Frear of Delaware...

...Two facts stood in the way—his own relations with President Harry Truman and the supremacy of the Talmadge forces in his home state...

...Russell is the one man who in 1948 could have taken Georgia into the Thurmond-Wright States Rights camp, and chose not to...

...Douglas of Illinois, Lehman of New York, and Humphrey of Minnesota were embarked on a man-hunt...

...In the Roosevelt regime Russell helped tie the Senate into knots on any piece of legislation aimed at Congressional intervention into Negro-white relations in the South...

...James Cox in Ohio, Florida, and Georgia...

...No man on either side of the aisle is better qualified for this post than Russell, whose great pride in the Senate of the United States is second only to his zeal for the nation's defense...

...The Democratic liberals may have received "serious consideration" of their requests, but they did not receive favorable action...

...Russell holds the balance of power between the Northern Democrats and the Republicans—which makes him the Senate's leader in fact...

...And with the 82nd Congress fated to consider mobilization and foreign policy measures rather than the programs of the Fair Deal, Russell could well have taken the leadership for two years...

...His support of much of the domestic and foreign policy legislation of the Roosevelt and Truman Administrations makes the label "Dixiecrat" meaningless if applied as an epithet...

...2 party caucus...

...To no other Senator does the change bring greater opportunity than to Richard Russell...

...Lehman and Benton were denied the Finance and Foreign Relations Committee assignments which the liberals had urged for them...

...Taft, or both...

...the three dispatched to McFarland's office in the same building the following telegram: "The undersigned urgently request that in filling the vacancies on the majority policy committee, you appoint Sens...

...Millard Tydings of Maryland has made Russell chairman of the powerful Senate Armed Services Committee...

...Given the civil rights controversy, the vote at Philadelphia, and Russell's support of the Taft-Hartley Act, it is fair to say that Mr...

...The language of the Illinois Quaker, Douglas, grew more and more un-Friendly as McFarland and Johnson continued to elude him...

...James F. Byrnes of South Carolina, and Sen...

...Contrary to the impression of many people, including some in the South, Russell has fairly well supported most economic legislation of the Roosevelt and Truman Administrations...

...From New York to Illinois, if the ineffective Frear of Delaware is excepted, there is not one Northern Democrat to speak for the people of that region...

...Second, the most extreme measures of the Fair Deal are dead for two years—civil rights, compulsory health insurance, the Brannan Plan...

...Truman's Congressional friends, and at least one powerful member of his Cabinet, have argued that dropping his emphasis on those measures will be all to the good, politically, for the President...

...II Sen...

...III The implications for the country are clear and significant: First, the composition of the Senate itself can be made to work to the benefit of the South, and Russell will be perfectly willing to see it do so...

...Russell retired to Georgia as hot as ever against the civil rights program but still a Democrat...

...More important, it appeared to brush off the very men who will stand most readily against Sen...

...When the Truman civil rights program hit Congress, Russell locked all but two southern Democrats into a caucus that has never been dissolved...

...Neely, Kilgore, and Anderson, and that in assigning posts on standing committees of the Senate, there be adequate additional liberal representation on the Finance, Interstate and Foreign Commerce, Judiciary, Appropriations, and Foreign Relations Committees...

...But they went without Russell...

...The three Democratic liberals, spokesmen for at least 16 of their party's representatives from the North, were carrying their demands for recognition in the organization of the 82nd Congress to the leaders they had voted against in the Jan...

...Even in these early days of the 82nd Congress Russell is being pin-pointed in the press as the Senate's actual leader...

...Even in the flush of Truman's victory, the name of Russell was hopefully put forward by Western Democrats in the Senate for the post of majority leader in 1948...

...Young Herman Talmadge kept a foot in each camp by allowing his mother to go with Thurmond and Wright...

...4 by the three Northern Democrats went to the right title but the wrong man...

...Richard B. Russell is the man the Northern press invariably and inaccurately calls leader of the "Dixiecrat forces in Congress...

...Russell, and the nation itself, can be congratulated on the fact that the defense and security of his country are far beyond those limits...

...Frear, who has voted more often with the Southern Democrats and the Republicans than with the DemW. McNEIL LOWRY, The Progressive's Washington correspondent, has had an unusual opportunity to follow the work of Georgia's Sen...

...The actual result, however, threatened to split Douglas, Lehman, Humphrey, and 13 to 15 other Democrats into a separate caucus of their own...