MR. RAYBURN SHATTERS A MYTH
Rodell, Fred
Mr. Rayburn Shatters A Myth By FRED RODELL THE FIRST week in June, 1944, is the week in which our armed forces shattered the myth of invincibility which hung over Adolf Hitler's Atlantic Wall....
...And as Speaker, he has maneuvered where possible, battled where necessary, to save progressive legislation from all the crippling amendments that a Tory coalition has recently tried to sneak through or bluster across...
...And other New Deal measures which do not carry his name—the TVA, the Wagner Act, the Wage and Hour Law, and many more—went through the House with Rayburn, unlike most of his Southern colleagues, not merely voting Aye, not merely cheering weakly from the side-lines, but shoving hard from behind every inch of the way...
...that he was elected to Congress in 1912, went to Washington with Woodrow Wilson, and has been there ever since—almost 32 years...
...that he had put himself through college and law school, and into the Texas legislature at the age of 24...
...I found that he had actually been born in a log cabin down in Roane County, Tennessee, one of 11 children of his farmer father...
...I found out, too, a few of the things he has done and stood for during those 32 years...
...It is surprising how few people outside Washington are aware of Rayburn's contributions to the achievements of the late New Deal...
...The Committee, which has really run the House through its control over the consideration of new legislation, has long been dominated by the worst of the Southern Tories plus some cooperative Republican reactionaries...
...That same week in June saw the shattering of another myth—the myth of invincibility which has hung over the Rules Committee of the House of Representatives for these many years...
...The Committee confidently expected its will to prevail, as it always had, without challenge...
...This bill—which would have taken all effective power away from such boards and commissions as the SEC, the NLRB, the Federal Power Commission, and the rest, and put it in the hands of the Federal courts which could not have begun to handle such an avalanche of business—had passed the Senate despite desperate Administration efforts to stop it...
...Fight Against The Railroads But there is another South—another group which is slowly and against tremendous odds taking political power away from the long-entrenched Tories...
...I confess I knew little about this man Rayburn—for the quiet Speaker has been strangely unpublicized—until he left his place at the rostrum to organize and command the historical assault on the "invincible" Rules Committee...
...So I looked into Rayburn's record...
...You've read a good bit about the first event, but there's been pitifully little written about the practically unprecedented slapping down of the all-powerful Rules Committee of the House by overwhelming vote of the House itself...
...And so is the Speaker of the House of Representatives —Sam Rayburn, the gentleman from Texas, who engineered and led the revolt against the Rules Committee...
...Eight years later it became a part of the Esch-Cummins Transportation Act...
...No man could be paid a higher compliment...
...was drafting a veto message...
...New Dealers were preparing to resign from administrative jobs...
...Similarly, the statute creating the Rural Electrification Administration is officially the "Norris-Rayburn Act...
...Such progressive measures as the Federal income tax, the Clayton Act, the Federal Trade Commission Act, and the Adamson Act (setting up an eight-hour day for railroad workers) got his militant support...
...And with the return of a Democratic Administration, the Texan came into his own...
...He came to the House with a special interest in railroad finances, for his family's crops and his constituents' crops were dependent on railroads to get to market ; and railroad rates bore a direct relationship to cotton prices...
...But an amazing thing happened...
...Under Wilson, Rayburn fought for all the reform legislation of three decades ago—for laws that are taken for granted today but were branded as dangerous and radical then by all the big interests and all the best people...
...During that first week in June, the Rules Committee arrogantly consented to let the urgent price control bill go before the House only after some utterly irrelevant anti-labor amendments had been tacked on by medieval-minded Rep...
...Lister Hill of Alabama is of it...
...In Rayburn's youth and in Rayburn's section of the country, the railroads represented the epitome of economic royalism...
...that when Sam was 5, the family had moved from Tennessee to Texas, from corn to cotton...
...It was probably the most meaningful and—from a progressive viewpoint—the most valuable achievement of his entire career...
...So is Claude Pepper of Florida...
...And most significantly, the Walter-Logan bill, which threatened—and was intended—to emasculate every administrative agency in Washington, was defeated by Rayburn almost single-handedly during his, first few weeks as Speaker...
...There is the South of Martin Dies and "Goober" Cox and "The Man" Bilbo and "Pass the Biscuits, Pappy" O'Daniel and their ilk...
...A Progressive Record During 12 Republican years, Rayburn helped lead every-rearguard action against the philosophy of un-regulating business and untaxing the rich...
...All Washington, throwing up its hands, conceded the bill would pass the House...
...This dramatic development confirmed the conclusion that there are two Souths—in a political sense...
...Reports from Texas indicate that the unholy alliance of the oil interests and the Jesse Jones-Will Clayton big business crowd and the old-line reactionary Southern politicians—the alliance that wants to purge the Democratic Party of its liberal elements or else split and wreck the Party—is out to get Sam Rayburn...
...and railroad finances bore a direct relationship to railroad rates...
...And the Eisenhower of the assault against the "invincible" Rules Committee was a Southerner himself—Speaker Sam Rayburn of Texas...
...F.D.R...
...In fact, the statutes involved are officially called the "Fletcher-Rayburn Acts...
...If the liberals do not know Sam Rayburn's record, the Tories—who are all too frequently politically smarter—do...
...For instance: He was one of the chief moving spirits behind both the framing and the enactment of legislation to regulate Wall Street and set up the Securities and Exchange Commission...
...That reactionary, obstructionist gang is nearer to fascism in its tactics and its ideals than any other group of comparable political power in the country today—that gang which has so outnumbered and overshadowed the South's true progressives that the very term "Southern politician" automatically leaves a bad taste in the liberal mouth...
...After helping pave the way for the Public Utility Holding Company Act, as one of the initiators of the Federal investigation of utility finances back in 1931, he led in putting across this most bitterly opposed of all New Deal laws...
...The Act itself bears the official title of the "Wheeler-Rayburn Act...
...But Sam Rayburn, combining persuasion, strategy, and courage, stopped the bill cold...
...Tories Out To Get Him Thus, the Wagner Act still stands unamended, thanks in large part to Rayburn...
...His reward was the Speakership, to which he was promoted in 1940...
...Howard Smith of Virginia...
...The House got up on its hind legs, blasted the Rules Committee, and tossed the Smith amendments into the waste-basket...
...McKellar's grudge efforts to hamstring the TVA never get very far once they reach Rayburn's House...
...And so the freshman Congressman, during his first term, pushed through the House his own bill to regulate railroad financing, only to see it die in the Senate...
Vol. 8 • July 1944 • No. 29
