The Washington times., 1938-01-01

hsory-he year when the popular President suffered
the greatest defeat
The story of that defeat began February 5 with the
Supreme Court message and ended only when the curtain
rang upon the pickering and abortve special session
of Congress December 2 All that transpred between
part of the same story.
And in profit by the mistakes of the past and
chart omniscient for the future let's review
the details of the story.
w Roosevelt came into the
Started Year With wear of 1887 fresh s;t from an
Vofo nf Tonfidpncp overwhelming vote of conf
dence and with the largest
maorities in Congress given American President
Believing he had clear mandate from the people to pro-
ceed with his previous policies, and having made secret
of his previous opposition to the Supreme Court Roosevelt
sent to Congress- month later his famous message
asking for the reorganization of the judiciary.
As to the necessity of sending such there
no proper challenge No President could
have sat the sdenes watching the Supreme Court hack
down the things had built up by without fighting
back Not for years will historians be able to eVauae the
economic loss wrought upon the nation when Nine Old Men
sereney down all the safeguards for the control OF
agriculture industry and materials which the present
Congress has been struggling to rebuild
But having his message to Congress- the President did
what he has done many of his other policies brilliantly
poorly executed He went fishing He left the
generashp of this, the most important of all his battles IN
the hands of diplomatic old gentleman in the Justice De-
partment whose guiding star is compromise, and to the
senior Senator from Arizona whose greatest gift wise
cracking and who aptv describes himself as the dean
emeritus Of inconsistency"
He allowed his leaders in the House to sabotage him by
passing the buck the Senate and he allowed the opposition
House Passed Buck bate interminaby While he visited
tn tho SonntO at Warm Springs or flshed in the
." WV ~ Gulf of Mexico
Big issues cannot launched and then left dangling in
midar or entrusted to inferior leadership.
And while the Supreme Court bill danged three important
things happened. .
l. Chief Justice Hughes ceverest straegst of them ALL
quietly reversed the court. Shrewdy retaining the courts
power to overturn Congress- he checkmated the die
hards McReynold Butler Sutherland and Van Devanter,
thereby cutting the ground from under Roosevelt.
9 Every reactonary interest in the country combined IN
4ho nd now
lobby in years.
g. And most important Roosevelt woke up to the fact
that large number of Democratic Senators not for him.
He had known this general sort of but during the
Supreme Court fight slapped him in the face with re-
sounding whack The force of that blow has influenced po
litical desnies since.
It is the chief milestone in the story of 1887
The Democratic stawarts who aimed and executed that
blow essential of the historical picture Let's call
the roll:
There was Senator Harry Byrd of Virginia. biggest apple
grower the States payer bare subsistence wages
feudal baron agricuuray and machine boss politically
Not iota of common interest
11keS 10 Bosom existed between Byrd and Roosevelt,
U;f;o1;c Tr;t;c yet the latter boosted Claude Swan
out of the Senate and into the
Navy Department give Byrd Senate seat thereby taking
to his bosom his most vroc and vtuperatve OF critics
Again there Josiah Bailey of North Carolina champion
of the utilities the tobacco companies and other landed
gentry Nor there common denomnator between nm
and Roosevelt except the Democrat Nevertheless,
the President Baeys when he funkng
in 1886 primaries thus affodng him xyear rostrum
for attacking everything Roosevelt stands for.
Also there was Tom Connay, friend of the big Texas
rancher whom Roosevelt helped return to the Senae and
Miard Tydings of Maryland and Burke of Nebraska,
whose election the Senate Roosevelt aided; and Cotton
Ed Smith of South Carolina, who still lives in the gone
forever days when Cotton King which he thinks he
can bring back again
All of them Democrats but all further from the man
at the helm of their party than Vandenberg Landon
These the who drove the first wedge into the
Roosevelt program In doing they waved the banners of
constitutionasm and claimed they defending the
Founding Fathers American Institutions the tradition of
freedom. But they not They defending the
freedom of the scrubwoman to work for starvation wages
freedom of the farmer gu the market with surplus
crops against his own interests the freedom of children
be sweated the freedom of industry to ignore collective
bargaining, the freedom OF enrenched interests 10 run
roughshod the rights of mankind.
The wedge which they drove has been widening ever
since 1t widened by the postpOnement over wage
hour legislation the Congressional session last
It wdened by further pickering at the special session
just closed. And it will continue to widen.
Roosevelt has started to pick up the broken pieces
pieces dropped through his overconfidence and the
opposition of his party.
But picking up the pieces slow, laborous job, and
never you regain all the ground you lost when