The Waterbury Democrat., 1943-03-08

Peter Edsoa ditions with fires qucnt thunderstorns,"
 Picture if you can the kind of tur- moil you might have If Senator Cot. ton Ed Smith of Lynchhurg, s, O. were Secretary of Agriculture, de- manding farm price increases; Il Senator John H. Bankhead II of japser, Ala, were Secretary Of War, reducing the size of the Army and complaining about lack of material and bad material on the African front; If Representative Paul J, Kilday Of san Antonio, Tex, were War Manpower Commissioner, drafting every skilled mechanic In the country who was not married. On the other hand, think what Con- gress would Do like with the Hon, Harold L. Ickes, the Hon, Paul V. MeNutt and Harry Hopkins oil talk. Ing At once,
 COUSINS AND KINSFOLK
 The point Is that Congressman and bureaucrat are CD brothers un. der the skin and t2 only human after all. So when ono species tries to blame It's ills on the other, 1t Is largely Q waste of breath.
 Consider the case of ex.Justice James F, Byrnes, the Director Of Economic StabiliEation, MT. Byrnes was Q Senator before ho stepped down from tho Supreme Court bench to become Q bureauorat. At the time he was made stabiliSation director, e great to.do was made of the fact that here was on ex-Sena- tor who would smooth the way of the bureaucrats with Congress be cause he would know how to handle Congressnen.
 Justice Hyrnes has been . bureau. crat for less than six months, yet In 0 recent speech to newspaper editors gathered in Washington, he took oc- casion to ask the editors to go esay on the brass hats and the bureau- crats. The speech was at first put of the record" but, on second thought, 1t was considered such good medicine that 1t was put on the record. The ex-Senator having become one of these bureaucrats himself, he is put in e position to make e speech In defense of bureau- crats--somethi a live and Kick. ing Congressman today would ratn" CT be caught dead than.
 As for handling Congress, per. haps Justice Byrnes is learning, II he did not know 1t already, that nobody can handle Congress.
 CONGRESS- DOES ITS WILL
 This is not said in any intent to disparage Mir. Byrnes, nor to sell him short. But the record on the handling of the Department of Az. riculture's war crop incentive pay ment plan indicates that, although the idea had been approved by the Office of Economic Stabilization and had been announced as def- mite part of the administrators 8 food program, 8 House Ways and Means subcommittee turned it down.
 Justice Byrnes had spoken in ia. yor of incentive payments and had presumably done much of the pre- iiminary work in selling the leader- ship in Congress on the necessity and advisability of boosting produc- ton of war crops by this device: Nevertheless, the Congressional committeeman refused $l00 mil- lion appropriation to carry 1t out. making 1t necessary for Byrnes and his ellow-bureaucratS to start all over again on some new approach.
 How successful he will be is someS thing to watch, but the moral Of the whole incident is that, even when ex-Senators become bursaucrats, they have no license to consider as an accomplished fact any executive department's program for getting something done until Congress fi- nally puts on 1t stamp of approval.
 In the case of the incentive pay ment proposal. the bureaucrats were just a little too sure 0t themselves. But if the Congressmen had been in the bureaucrats' shoes, they might have viewed the proposal more ia" vorably.