Evening star., 1940-03-28
South and West Will Pick Up at Least Six House Seats
Lost by North if Census Count Goes as Predicted
Reopportionment,
Struggle Is as Old
As the Nation
(Second OF a sertes.)
BY MORGAN NJ. BEATTY.
Associated Preas 9taff Wrtter

Associated PfeSA Stan writer
Political heads will roll In the
1910 battle Of the census!
How many heads Is problematical
1t depends on:
How fast Southern mothers pro-
duced children during the last 10
years.
How many Joad families swapped
misery in Oklahoma for misery In
California.
How many Southern lads and
lassies chose the old homestead for
their port in the storm Of the de-
preston, instead Of the big cities
in the North.
Moreover, congressman must
decide what to do about the decen-
nial man-under- -the-bed - reappor-
tionment!
At Least Six to Lose Jobs.
If you take Cd the latest mathe-
matical doodles of the Census Bu-
reau. put EN- on a slide rule, and
(2) assume the automatic reappor-
tionment law of 1929 will survive
the battle Of the census, then you
find at the end of your trail
gibbet for six congressman.
At least six Legislators from the
Northeastern and Midwestern States
will lose their l0,0O0-a-year jobs
And six Congressman from the South
and Far West will grow where no
Congressman have sprouted since
1910.
That means a gain of at least IL
votes in the House of Representa-
tives for the South and Far West
by 1912. They'll pick up six actual
votes, and benefit also by the death
of six Northern votes.
You can find plenty of statisti-
clans who figure the Northeastern
States may lose more seats than
that. Some say 10 or even IL seats,
instead of 6. But the mathematical
wizards who figured out reappor-
tionment for me took the conserva-
tive side of the street.
Always a Struggle.
The decennial battle of the census
is as old as the Nation.
AS regular as death and taxes,
one of these struggles has rolled
around every 10 years for $50 years
running. Most of the fights have
been settled behind the locked doors
Of congressional committee rooms,
without the public shedding of polit-
ical blood.
But the last two! Whew! And
right out in the open, where any,
body could get ringside seat.
Roughly speaking. these battles
were miniature civil wars-the South
VS.. the North. The men from down
under defied the Constitution and
the Founding Fathers in 1920. They
blocked any reapportionment at all
and thereby saved themselves from
losing seats to the growing North.
In 1929, the struggle was even
harder, and dirtier. The South tried
to bar aliens from the reapportion-
ment count given to Congress by the
Census Bureau. The East has several
million aliens. The North retaliated
by trying to bar Negroes Both
amendments to the reapportionment
law passed. 1t took three days of
sizzling conferences to kill both.
Today, the same old struggle is
brewing, only the shoes on the other
foot most of the time. The South S
depression-d damned emigrants and
high birth rate, and the Vests mi
grations. should give the Southern
ers and Westerners six more seats
if everything goes according to
Hoyle
Enter Senator Tobey.
But that's where Senator Charles
William Tobey's sideshow on the in
come questions comes in. For if
enough citizens respond to the Sena-
tors eXcitement--and excitement
over ones private affairs is a pretty
contagious kind-then the regular
census might conceivably suffer from
errors and slammed doors.
Some Congressman might take the
same view as Representative Daniel
Reed of upstate New York, when he
says:
THE Census Bureau has had the
respect and confidence of the peo-
pie of this country for $50 years.
- However, just as sure as no
action is taken by Congress to stop
this snooping program into income,
outside the census law, it is going
to end in such way that the value