THE EDUCATION OF A SENATOR

...The two veterans rose to the fray as i( to deal with a buzzing, annoying wasp...

...There are times," Humphrey says today, "when you need to give a speech for your own peace of mind and have it in the Record...

...Truman, incidentally, enjoyed the occasion hugely...

...Nor has he lost the oratorical gift that allowed him to rip the rafters from Philadelphia's Convention Hall in 1948...

...Among a half dozen poorly reported Humphrey stories in Washington, this has been perhaps the most flagrant example of omission...

...Two things spoiled the story, however, and the three major wire services of the country didn't carry a line that night...

...As this is written, Humphrey is bringing together Gray and Magnuson's successor, Dr...

...Humphrey's spadework with George brought a voice to the northern Democrats, all of whom have been barred from membership on the potent Finance Committee...

...I had to help clean up the Democratic Farmer-Labor Party in Minnesota, to get rid of the Commies, to take on the reactionary wing on the other side...

...otherwise none...

...Item: A similar intervention with the White House and the State Department brought audiences at both places for the head of all Protestant missions in India at the height of U. S.-Indian bickering last August...

...Here, intense, brilliant, and staccato, was a new voice, the voice of an ideological liberal, child of the depression and the dust bowl, apostle of the New Deal and the millenium, scourge to reaction...

...Take labor...

...Heaviest item on it was a two-and-a-half hour session with 39-year old Hubert Humphrey, Democratic Senator from Minnesota...

...Humphrey, though clearly on Magnuson's side in the latter's insistence on using private physicians where they were available rather than understaffed hospitals in every Congressman's district, held his subcommittee's investigations in executive sessions to avoid dramatizing the issue in terms of the clashing principals—Administrator Gray and the medical services chief he was ousting, Magnuson...

...He has not made a speech, in Washington or out, on the labor-Wilson split, and there have been only two brief handouts on the meetings of his subcommittee...

...One of those days somebody, friend or enemy, is going to jump up and holler...

...But in fairness to the reporters here, it must be said that Humphrey has not helped them...

...That's Humphrey, head of a Senate subcommittee going from President Truman to Wilson to manpower director Arthur Fleming to Eric Johnston, the stabilizer, to labor leaders George Meaney and James Carey, to Maurice Tobin and Frank Graham in the Labor Department, trying to weld labor and management together in the mobilization effort...

...As bipartisan support grew and smothered the distaste of Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Tom Connally for the project, Humphrey dropped back to being merely one of the co-sponsors...

...I do find a conflict of personalities and a legitimate grievance on labor's part that it was brought into the mobilization picture as window-dressing after the big policy decisions had been made...

...A year ago Hubert Humphrey tangled on the floor of the Senate on a ta» bill with the Democratic and Republican lie,ids of I he tax-writing committee, George of Georgia and'Millikin of Colorado...

...Any other course," he explains, "might have jeopardized the support that was building up...

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

...But I'm looking for at least inch-by-inch progress every month, and I'm getting the reports...

...II He certainly was...

...Humphrey turned the whole affair an effective, working, yet un-Politiclel "watchdog" arrangement, through which, on orders from Sec-retary George Marshall himself, every camp and station reports to Marshall and a group of liberal Senate Democrats the month by month progress on the forward-looking Fahy Committee recommendations of 1950 for better utilization of Negro personnel...

...Here was the clash of labor and business, and in this corner the tough bellwether of business, Wilson, and in the other corner the fire-eating, labor-backed Fair Dealer, Humphrey...

...I was class president or nothing, captain of the debate team or not on the team...

...I came down here all wound up...

...They ended the interrogatory with the closest attention to the Humphrey facts on a subject they considered sacred to themselves, and pretty soon Millikin, the very epitome of the GOP elephant, crossed the aisle to stand with his arm around Humphrey...

...Humphrey has made it in two years...

...He has been doing a job as U. S. Senator for which his particular experience has fitted him...

...Item: When the State Department bungled the visit of Mayor Reuter of Berlin, symbol of the hottest tension spot in Europe...

...Item: The movement toward racial integration in the armed services...

...I had been on the stump really ever since 1943, with mayoralty elections every two years...

...Army camp incidents involving the Minnesota National Guard brought protests to Washington and to Army Secretary Frank Pact...

...Daily News, and taught for a while at the University of Illinois...

...Add to that what the other nine don't have—the Humphrey mind and the Humphrey oratory—and Minnesota and the Democratic Party are doing themselves proud here...

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

...Humphrey's colleagues were impressed but no more relaxed...

...I like that role, because I like people...

...Things were looking no better, he told newsmen...

...Humphrey speeches on the subject: none...

...It takes that long for him to do things...

...What hasn't happened should be obvious to anyone who ever knew Hubert Humphrey — he has not stopped being a liberal...

...But extract from the Humphrey-Wilson effort to harmonize labor's role in the mobilization its real significance for the career of Hubert Humphrey and you've got an exhibit (but only one) in the education of a United States Senator...

...Items A steadily evolving Humphrey-Truman relationship centering on subject matter rather than on politics...

...I do not find a sense of hostility toward labor in Mr...

...What has happened is that Hubert Humphrey, in a pace far outstripping that of nine out of ten first-termers, has learned what it is to be a Senator...

...Success behind the scenes was achieved just as two Republicans, Smith of New Jersey in the Senate, and Javits of New York in the House, grabbed the ball...

...W. McNEIL LOWRY, The Progressive's Washington correspondent, ranges over a wide field of the top news producing areas in the nation's capital in his role as chief of the Washington Bureau for the four dailies owned by former Gov...

...To all but the most liberal members of the Senate, his own brilliant rise to national prominence had put Humphrey in an exposed position . . . "When he cleared his throat and delivered his first major speech...

...Joel Boone, with an emphasis on the policy of utilizing private medical specialists wherever possible...

...I'm not looking for miracles," Humphrey says, "nor for the milen-nium...

...What has happened to Humphrey-" Humphrey will know-how to handle that when it comes...

...If the caricature of Hubert Humphrey drawn by his political enemies were not a distortion or if Humphrey today were the Humphrey fresh from the 1948 campaign, the March 7 conference could have been the biggest lion vs...

...The next day Wilson flew back to the capital and a heavy agenda...

...But areas of compromise exist, as Eric Johnston has effectively demonstrated...

...But the Senate is where things are finally done...

...Here, said the veterans, right here in the hallowed Senate chamber, was what Roosevelt had raised up for them...

...Over the Department's misgivings, he appealed directly to President Truman and took Reuter for a 45-minute audience with the President which turned the whole affair into a mission of confidence for both Berliners and the watching German-Americans...

...It is true that if I work too much behind the scenes, people may start saying, 'What has happened to Humphrey?' But I think I have found a balance: If I am to serve even the most humanitarian groups, I have got to do it in terms of long-range accomplishments...

...It reached a peak during the Far Eastern crisis last September and October...

...What I am trying to do is to get the facts direct and not filtered through the press...

...The unheralded achievements of the young Minnesota Democrat in these early days of the 82nd Congress have involved detailed, behind-the-scenes activity which only separate articles could treat fairly...

...And there might be others behind him knocking at the door for entrance...

...and that you can get them to stand up and be counted...

...A few weeks ago, when George brought out a complicated contract renegotiation bill...

...And that story, as it is daily being illustrated here by the junior Senator from Minnesota, is as exciting as any to come along...

...Two amendments tightening possible loopholes in excessive war profits were accepted by George and the Senate, one written into the bill itself, the other taken as a bargaining lever to the conference with the House...

...Item: The Gray-Magnuson row over the Veterans Administration medical services...

...The Senate of the United States is a good forum but a poor audience...

...tiger story of 1951...

...Most of these take several years to make the transition from being an administrator to being a legislator, and some never make it...

...There are many men who come to the U. S. Senate from administrative roles, chiefly former governors, occasionally a mayor...

...Humphrey has mastered it, and done so despite the fact that his most effective work prior to his Senate career had been done amid a blaze of publicity...

...There is room here for someone to take the role of interpreter in a conflict that can be solved and has got to be solved...

...I found in that experience...

...Humphrey speeches on the subject: none...

...Two years ago this correspondent wrote in The Progressive, in part: "It is an understatement to say that the Senate was laying for the 37-year old Minnesota Democrat when he rose to be sworn in...

...Thye...

...I think, is number one in the evolution of Humphrey as Senator...

...Generally I prefer to plant the seeds out in the country, and of course chiefly in my own state, and then come on down here and get the harvest...

...in January, 1949...

...But I found it was easier than I thought once I had begun it...

...But not all Senators can master effective teamwork, and many shun the job because of lack of stamina or because of their preference for the easy publicity of speechmaking, much of it irresponsible...

...Humphrey's GOP colleague...

...That...

...Humphrey picked up the ball...

...But the man who gives it to them has himself got to have breadth...

...It was a tough adjustment for me to contemplate," Humphrey says, "and I don't suppose it ever will be fully completed...

...When the South attempted to rewrite the so-called compromise civil rights plank at the 1948 Democratic convention, it was Humphrey who led the spectacular battle in defeating not only the move, but also in rewriting it in the other, more liberal direction . . . "In the first days of the 81st Congress, the junior Senator from Minnesota moved cautiously...

...And I came here right out of a continuous campaign...

...The second was merely that Humphrey is Humphrey and not the caricature frequently used...

...There are few men who come to the Senate who do not realize after a time that the vital and effective work—for their country, for their party, for themselves, in the last analysis—is done behind the scenes, in committees, in spadework before the committee stage...

...When you are acting as a community leader- a private citizen or mayor - you are essentially a person who should inspire people, project broad outlines, and release other forces in the community to action...

...It is very superficial," says Humphrey, "to look on this crisis in relations as a clash between business and labor...

...Humphrey speeches on the subject: an introduction to Reuter's speech at the Cleveland convention of Americans for Democratic Action...

...1 have a sincere belief that there is more good in people than there is bad...

...There's a reason that a U. S. Senator has a six-year term...

...Throughout 1950 Humphrey carried this job alone, at first, out of hesitation in tackling Acheson and Truman, with the State Department's India desk, with Assistant Secretary McGhee, then with Undersecretary Webb, Acheson, and the President...

...Humphrey hadn't waited for the floor debate to put in his licks...

...The first was the fact that neither Humphrey nor Wilson sought publicity on the meeting...

...If one compares a Humphrey Senate speech of Sept...

...got the publicity on the protests...

...The Education of a Senator By w. McNEIL lowry Washington ON March 6 mobilization boss Charles E. Wilson emerged from a Key West conference with President Truman at which he had reported on the split with organized labor back in Washington...

...Item: Grain for India...

...Humphrey says today, "that you could project on the floor an argument that was not dramatic, that required a lot of hard work, that wouldn't get any attention whatsoever, and yet would serve to do an educational job...

...13, 1950, with the two Truman foreign policy speeches in the second week of October (at San Francisco and at the UN in New York), one can only conclude that whoever drafted the Truman speeches had studied Humphrey's sentence by sentence...

...Before I came down here, I had never been in a legislative role...

...People need confidence and inspiration...