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Twelve

    THE REPUBLIC OF MONEY:
    THE PUBPOLS

   As everything thus far inquired into has obviously flowered under the benign providence of government it is evident that government and politics have more than a little to do with the gaudy blooms of extreme wealth and poverty in the feverish American realm. It has not, to begin with, prevented whatever is the case. What it has ministered to, and how and why, will now be our theme.

   How the government of the United States functions in all its ramifying complexity is the theme of ponderous treatises running into the proportions of Sears, Roebuck catalogues--composed by academicians somewhat left-handedly known as political scientists. Whatever they say is almost invariably correct in a formal sense as anatomical description, apart from any decorative filigree provided by such heady words as "democracy" and "freedom."

   What we are really interested in, however, is process, function--political physiology, as it were. Although many political scientists profess to deal with this aspect as well, they all tend to lose sight of the actual ball in play or to avert their eyes in horror at the clinches. They are as physicists would be who had never been in a laboratory, as members of a vice squad who had never been in a brothel or taken money under the table from a madame. They themselves were never in the celebrated smoke-filled backrooms, never on hand when the price was set, the bodies buried, the papers burned, the ballots destroyed, the payoff made, the double entendre arranged, the people bilked.

   Like nearly everyone else in this sphere, the political scientist is dependent on reports, rumors, memoirs, documents, statistics, interpretations, deductions and more or less shrewd surmise. And, like everyone else, he is limited by his position as a strict outsider. Journalists are far more privy to what goes on than he, and indeed he depends on journalists for much of his information. It is one field where certain participants know more about it in its nook-and-cranny aspects than those self-dedicated to its systematic study.

   The difference between government as reported by political scientists and government as it actually takes place is much like the difference between learned descriptions of amour and amour itself. The difference is far greater than that between description in general and phenomena in general, between symbol and act. The political scientist is in much the same outside position as a biologist or psychologist studying amour. What each says may be entirely correct, moderately enlightening or even exhilarating; but what the dedicated acolyte misses are the nuances these experts haven't been able to encompass even by delicate imaginative projection. Their often assumed delicacy is elephantine. Again, they often misinterpret simple rutting for amour, intrigue for politics.

   Even more than the theoreticians of amour, who sometimes have the advantage of being tentative practitioners themselves, the political scientist is at a disadvantage: For he has never actually been in the situation, does not occupy a privileged position denied, say, to the editors of the New York Times. The terrain, clearly, belongs in the particular jurisdiction of someone else, as amour lies in the jurisdiction of the poet or madman. A poet, even a madman, now and then has something revealing or poignant to say about amour; it would be astonishing if a political scientist ever said anything about government that approached a Machiavelli or a Hobbes who, be it noticed, were nonscientific "insiders."

   The indubitable experts I call upon to bear witness in this chapter (leaving to one side the delicate question of my own expertise) will all be far, far closer to what goes on than any political scientist has ever been, valuable though the compilations, commentaries, commonplaces and occasional insights of these gentry may be as aides-memoires and reference classifications.

   As most people have some more or less accurate conception of the gross mechanics of the United States government, seen mostly in rose lights and soft-focus, I omit the citation of basic supposed facts on which we might be improbably supposed to agree in advance. Let us simply descend on the phenomenon oozing in its habitat.

   In much of what follows for quite a way I lean heavily on first-hand analysis by the erudite and resolutely democratic Senator Joseph S. Clark of Pennsylvania, until his election in 1956 the Democratic burgomeister of dingy Philadelphia, magna cum laude, Harvard, '23--in brief, a man of parts. Having Clark on hand is pretty much like having a literate psychoanalyst stationed right on the vice squad itself, an entrancing and unexpected combination. Here and there I shall set the focus a little more sharply than does the truly able but somewhat romantic senator. He, although sufficiently forthright, is a gentleman and becomes queasy at spelling out certain details which I, here as a pathologist, will have no more hesitancy in scrutinizing in the light of the evidence available than has a coroner in examining a mildewed cadaver.

   As Senator Clark has made microscopically clear, no doubt to the consternation of the more polite observers, each house of Congress is under the tight control of a dour inner clique, the general intended aim of which is to cater to favored ultra-acquisitive interests and to frustrate the general lightheartedly nonacquisitive interests. As far as these cliques are concerned, the general populace can go and slide on its collective buttocks if it has any complaints to make--and stick its finger in its ear for good measure.

   To these twin cliques, composed to a man of self-certified back-country patriots, we owe the gamey tax laws, among others. Senator Clark stylishly refers to the cliques as "The Senate Establishment" and "The House Establishment." They run Congress, when necessary with a heavy hand, at times in opposition to any president, sometimes as under Lyndon B. Johnson in close harmony with him. When they are in full-blown opposition, the government simply deadlocks, freezes, as far as rational adjustment to events is concerned.

   The special merit of Senator Clark's analysis is that he shows at first hand the precise inner mechanics of Establishment control, so that even a child can understand it.

   The senator endorses the conclusion of James Macgregor Burns that there are always two governing parties in power, a Congressional party and a Presidential party. The Presidential party is national, necessarily concerned with broad interests, and is at least halfheartedly oriented toward carrying out the cloudy party platform submitted every four years to the bemused voters. The Congressional party is devoted to particularistic self-seekers (as shown by near-the-spot sources other than Senator Clark); these include most of the members themselves as on-the-sly entrepreneurs. It is bipartisan--a coalition of standpat Republicans and Democrats. It is generally opposed, usually by indirection, to the party platform, most of which it covertly sabotages. The function of the party platform is only to stir enthusiasm in Presidential voters. After serving this purpose it is subject to discard.

   The Establishment, moreover, is as permanently and fixedly in power as the Communist leadership in Russia. Nothing about it alters over the decades except the fall of a few of its aging personnel by the wayside. Only extreme force and violence could remove it. It is anchored, in sober fact, in extra-legal violence, intimidation and terrorism as religiously practiced especially throughout the South but visible at times elsewhere.

   The findings of Senator Clark were expressed at considerable personal risk. For no professional can ever give such pointedly documented critical testimony to the outside heathen without thereafter having every hand of the Establishment secretly raised against him. All that can now save Senator Clark from political oblivion is the popular constituency--by itself a weak reed, as every practicing politician knows.

   Barriers to the expression of majority will at the governmental level are, among others, the following:

   Many persons do not vote--some for the intelligent reasons that they suspect the electoral process is rigged or they do not know enough about the issues or candidates; most from indifference, apathy, intimidation, terror stemming from localized violence, simple mental or physical ill health or because they are barred from voting by peculiar residential requirements devised by local politicos with little enthusiasm for voting.

   Only a bit more than 60 per cent now vote in presidential elections (presidents have never been true majority officers). On statewide bases, the voters always number fewer than 50 per cent in purely congressional elections and range downward to less than 10 per cent in other elections.

   In 1962 only 46.7 per cent of civilians of voting age cast ballots for House congressmen, a record high in a nonpresidential year. ¹ In many states (all Establishment Country) the percentage of voters was far lower: 13.7 per cent in steamy Mississippi; below 20 per cent in Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana and Virginia; between 20 and 30 per cent in Alabama, Florida, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas; and between 30 and 40 per cent in Kentucky, Maryland and North Carolina. The largest statewide vote for House congressmen that year was in Idaho with 66.5 per cent. Only eleven states attained 60 per cent or better. ²

   In 1964 even the presidential vote was below 40 per cent in Alabama, District of Columbia, Georgia, Mississippi (33.3 per cent), and South Carolina. Usually it attains lower levels in these and some other states. ³

   It is often said that the Democratic primaries are the true elections in the South, the election itself just a formality. But even so they do not involve a significantly large segment of the population. Again, it is often said that the poor showing in the South is traceable to the exclusion of Negroes; yet most of the abstentions are of low-grade whites. In 1960, Mississippi, with the largest proportion of Negro population, had less than 40 per cent Negroes in its population of voting age. ⁴ So it is not only the exclusion of Afro-Americans that accounts for the poor voting record of the South. It is mainly whites (or pinks and rednecks) who abstain from voting, in part because they are culturally as retarded as the sepia shades and in part because they are dissuaded by the local padrones.

   The vast disparity of participation between presidential and congressional elections--in 1960 the presidential vote drew 64 per cent--reveals the degree of purposeful abstention and lack of ardor in many people for an electoral process widely suspected of being greased and rigged and at least ineffective as a means of producing tangibly gratifying results. Too many people have seen too much remain the same after too many high-flown elections to be carried away by the prospect of another.

   Many of those who vote do not vote their interests intelligently, perhaps do not even know what they are. Again, many of those elected obviously do not themselves know what the score is, as they show by asinine pronouncements. One must be very much of a mystic to believe that, at variance with rational criteria, there is something intrinsically valuable about a popular vote. It is at best a rough way of selecting somebody, even a Lyndon B. Johnson.

   Having voted for one of the two handpicked puppets of backroom schemers (except where there are open primaries), usually with some childish ethnic or religious bias most prominently in mind, the functioning portion of the electorate favors a man (as often as not deemed unfit by the community for other walks of life) who is then thrown into close working contact with others of like mind arrived in the halls of government by the same dubious road. There are some 750,000 elective offices in the land and, considering the fact that there is at least one aspirant arrayed against every incumbent, it is evident that the mere filling of offices amounts to quite an industry in an economic sense--gives employment to many people.

   Despite all hosannahs to the collective sagacity of the people (what politician or newspaper editor would publicly question it?) the arrangements under which popular elections have been held since their inception have been as crooked as a fixed wheel in a low gambling house. Long asserted by the tough-minded, denied by the tender-minded, the plain fact was only recently underscored in terse decisions by the United States Supreme Court. Various transparent devices, the Court found, were traditionally used in many states to keep Negroes and other a priori undesirables from voting, thus trammeling gloriously free even if obtuse popular expression at the very source. A wider and subtler abuse was found in the legislative districts, federal and state, which had been traditionally gerrymandered by one-party and two-party establishment-controlled state legislatures so that in some cases enormous numbers of distraught voters, mostly urban and suburban dwellers, had only one dubious representative; while in other cases very few voters, mostly functionally illiterate rural hinds, also had a dubious representative. A handful of rustics thus were the means for stifling the representatives of thousands of trapped city patsies. The consequence was that even if a majority of a legislative body was allowed to prevail (not always the case, as we shall see) the majority did not reflect the majority of the voting population either in its wisdom, folly or confusion.

   Although the Court has now issued its ukase against these practices, the men borne to prominence by them will remain on the scene and in office until they wilt; and there is no guarantee that something equally objectionable, or more so, will not be devised by the always cunning pubpols.

   Americans, it is often said unthinkingly, believe in majority rule. Yet, oddly, they never have had it; they have always had oligarchic rule, usually of a rather low order. The farther one moves away from a gerrymandered, intimidated, meagerly educated, emotionally immature and partly disqualified electorate the fewer become the participants in any decision until in the legislatures it is always and invariably far less than a majority, either representatively or among those present. For all those brain-laundered with the doctrine of majority rule this is, admittedly, a strange, even unpatriotic notion. Yet it is an exact statement of the case.

   "The primary and overriding duty and responsibility of each member of the House of Representatives is to get re-elected," it has been well said by Adam Clayton Powell, long a proficient preacher of the Gospel and a successful and highly affluent congressman since 1945. ⁵

   The Establishment legislator in Congress-and some not so classifiable--has three further informal, off-the-record duties: (1) to work loyally with the legislative Establishment as an organization man; (2) to insure his own position whenever possible as a member in good standing of the affluent sector of society by acquiring any available cash, securities, real estate, franchises, market tips or whatever else may be of value; and (3) to share his affluence with indispensable offstage key figures of his home district organization grouped around the state or district party chairman. Nobody, it is plainly evident, plays the game alone.

   Not to do this is to leave himself at the mercy of the shifting whims and moods of a potentially unstable constituency, wide open to the claims of eager rivals for his office, Despite careful planning by the legislator, he is at times the victim of political upsets and internal feuds. Yet if he is of the Establishment he is never wholly extinguished even if he has not had time to become affluent, because he has made many Establishment friends who remember him as a "regular." They see to it that his post-legislative life is enriched by various appointments suitable to a "lame duck"--commissionerships, judgeships, receiverships, lobby clients and the like. He belongs to a bund.

   The Congressional Establishment, as Senator Clark proves, has a life of its own, policies of its own, aims of its own. These either have no connection with the needs or desires of the nation as a whole or harmonize with them only occasionally, fitfully, incidentally and, as it were, accidentally. It is a parasitical oligarchy. It produces results of its own predetermined stamp. It explains much about the chills, fevers and shudders of American society--its volume of crime, riots and lynchings.

   "The trouble with Congress today,". writes Senator Clark, "is that it exercises negative and unjust powers to which the governed, the people of the United States, have never consented. . . . The heart of the trouble is that the power is exercised by minority, not majority rule." ⁶

   As in Soviet Russia and Red China, power is in the hands of solidly installed intriguing manipulators, with the difference that in the United States the intrigue takes place behind a facade of reasoned if blurry constitutionality. In Russia and China the bayonets show through the periodic purges. The difference is enough to make the reasonable man prefer the American system with all its blemishes, about as one would unjoyfully prefer dysentery to cholera.

   "Our forms of government are heavily weighted against any kind of action, and especially any that might alter significantly the status quo. It takes too many units of government to consent before anything can be done." ⁷ This, of course, is a truism. The constitutional bulwarks against tyranny, placed there by the Founders' hands, are used to produce a creeping, low-key tyranny.

   It is the third branch of government, the legislative, where things have gone awry. Whether we look at city councils, the state legislatures or the Congress of the United States, we react to what we see with scarcely concealed contempt. This is the area where democratic government is breaking down. This is where the vested-interest lobbies tend to run riot, where conflict of interest is concealed from the public, where demagoguery, sophisticated or primitive, knows few bounds, where political lag keeps needed action often a generation behind the times, where the nineteenth century sometimes reigns supreme in committees, where the evil influence of arrogant and corrupt political machines, at the local and state level, ignores most successfully the general welfare, where the lust for patronage and favors for the faithful do the greatest damage to the public interest.

   . . . the legislatures of America, local, state and national, are presently the greatest menace in our country to the successful operation of the democratic process. ⁸

   Lest the sheltered reader, tucked away in his bower, think that Senator Clark here delivers himself of an extravagant opinion or resorts to hyperbole, it is a settled conclusion among seasoned observers that, Congress apart as a separate case, the lower legislatures--state, county and municipal--are Augean stables of misfeasance, malfeasance and nonfeasance from year to year and decade to decade and that they are preponderantly staffed by riffraff or what police define as "undesirables," people who if they were not in influential positions would be unceremoniously told to "keep moving." Exceptions among them are minor. Many of them, including congressmen, refuse to go before the television cameras because it is then so plainly obvious to everybody they are what they are. Their whole demeanor arouses instant distrust in the intelligent. They are, all too painfully, type-cast for the racetrack, the sideshow carnival, the back alley, the peep-show, the low tavern, the bordello, the dive. Evasiveness, dissimulation, insincerity shine through their false bonhomie like beacon lights.

   The New York Times, customarily referred to as staid, has vouched editorially that the Massachusetts legislature is the most corrupt in the country. If this is so, the Commonwealth lawmakers have nosed out many others, including neighboring Rhode Island, merely by millimeters, The Times based its opinion on a solid report of the Massachusetts Crime Commission, submitted by impeccable leading citizens of the Bay State to Governor John Volpe in response to frenetic public clamor. "Corruption permeates the state, the report said, from town governments to the state house and involves politicians, business men, lawyers and ordinary citizens." ⁹

   This official report, a state document, cited wide-scale bribery by corporations and lawyers and the fact that legislators are on the payrolls of companies doing business with the state. Corruption was encouraged, the report said, because of "the lack of backbone" in the legislature.

   As to this particular legislature, the Boston Globe analyzed it during the week of April 11, 1966, revealing elements of a pestilent tale. Most of the legislature, the Globe indicated, is composed of Babbittian local real estate dealers, insurance brokers, fixing lawyers, loan sharks, used-car entrepreneurs, miscellaneous fast-buck operators and obscure local hangers-on and roustabouts--many of them types who if they could not become attached to a public payroll, there to divert commerce their way, would be local misfits and perhaps panhandlers, vagrants, con men, family dependents, procurers or on local relief or unemployment rolls. The net impression given by the Globe (a rather reserved family paper) was of a political lumpenproletariat, a scabrous crew.

   As to other legislatures, Senator Estes Kefauver found representatives of the vulpine Chicago Mafia ensconced in the Illinois legislature, which has been rocked by one scandal of the standard variety after the other off and on for seventy-five or more years. What he didn't bring out was that the Mafians were clearly superior types to many non-Mafians.

   Public attention, indeed, usually centers on only a few lower legislatures--Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, California and Illinois--and the impression is thereby fostered in the unduly trusting that the ones they don't hear about are on the level. But such an impression is false. The ones just mentioned come into more frequent view because their jurisdictions are extremely competitive and the pickings are richer. Fierce fights over the spoils generate telltale commotion. Most of the states are quieter under strict one-party quasi-Soviet Establishment dominance, with local newspapers cut in on the gravy. Public criticism and information are held to a minimum, grousers are thrown a bone and not many in the low-level populace know or really care. Even so, scandalous goings-on explode into view from time to time in Florida, Texas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Missouri and elsewhere--no states excepted. Any enterprising newspaper at any time could send an aggressive reporter into any one of them and come up with enough ordure to make the Founding Fathers collectively vomit up their very souls in their graves. ¹⁰

   The territorial base of the Establishment lies in the low-down one-party states. Ten have been found by careful political scientists to be generally one-party. They are Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas, Vermont and Virginia. Twelve were found to be practically one-party: Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, New Hampshire, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Dakota and Tennessee. ¹¹ Ignoring for the moment still others that alternate over long periods as one-party jobs, like Florida recently, it is noticeable that the above array is nominally Republican as well as Democratic. Among the clearly Republican one-party strongholds are Vermont, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Oregon and South Dakota. At least twenty-two states, then, or nearly half, are one-party setups, with some dozen others coming very close to qualifying. Public political scandals, it will be noted, are much less frequently heard of in the one-party states. Here it is as in one-party countries.

   The single point to emphasize here is that Senator Clark is entirely correct, even reserved, in his sweeping reference to the legislatures. He does not exaggerate. As the lawyers would say, he is a sound witness. He does not, however, delve into the processes that brought such uncomely personnel into the legislative bodies. How did the honest electorate come to elect such canaille? That is, manifestly, another story, and is left to the next chapter.

   As Senator Clark sees it, there is no continuing discipline in Congress whereby a majority of the members of a party are able, by simple vote, to discipline recalcitrant members interested only in blocking national measures and in feathering their own nests. The recent Powell and Dodd cases were token ceremonies. Although the parties have various committees, the policy committees give out no policies, the steering committees do not steer but block; and, in general, every man is for himself. And yet, important decisions are made.

   The Congressional Establishment "consists of those Democratic chairmen and ranking Republican members of the important legislative committees who, through seniority and pressures exerted on junior colleagues, control the institutional machinery of Congress. . . . The official leadership group of the Congress--Speaker of the House, Senate Majority Leader, et al.are usually captives of the Establishment, although they can sometimes be found looking out over the walls of their prison, plotting escape." ¹²

   "It is important to note that the views of the Congressional Establishment are not shared by a majority of their colleagues, who, left to their own devices, would be prepared to bring the Congress into line to cope with the necessities of our times." ¹³ This, as we shall see) may be gravely questionable.

   The Senate Establishment is "almost the antithesis of democracy. It is not selected by any democratic process. It appears to be quite unresponsive to the caucuses of the two parties. . . . It is what might be called a self-perpetuating oligarchy with mild, but only mild, overtones of plutocracy.

   "There are plenty of rich men in the Senate, but only a few of them are high in the ranks of the Establishment; and none of them would admit [sic!] to a belief that the accumulation of great wealth is a principal object of life. This is another distinction between the American and the Congressional Establishments. The former [consisting of the prime beneficiaries of the status quo] has, despite its slightly liberal orientation, definite overtones of plutocracy, although its tolerance is much more for inherited than for recently acquired wealth." ¹⁴

   Senator Clark now comes to the ties that bind the Congressional Establishment. They are: a common militant belief in white supremacy, a stronger devotion to property-ownership rights than to rights of the person, strong support of the military establishment at all times, marked belligerence in foreign affairs and an absolute determination to block internal congressional reform.

   "A substantial number of the members of Congress in both parties are the product of political forces which give them a rural, pro-business, anti-labor, isolationist, conservative perspective with an attitude toward civil rights which ranges from passive unconcern to outright hostility." ¹⁵

   It is plain that the legislative strength of the Big-Business Establishment is, ironically, mainly in the agrarian districts. What are the "political forces" to which Senator Clark here refers in a somewhat opaque manner? They may be summed up in a word: money. The rural legislator--not directly tied to the business system, which is invariably weak in his home district (few stockholders, consumers, corporation employees or factories are found there)--has something to sell: his vote. And he sells it in a circumlocutional way, wrapped in some rococo principle such as states' rights, sacred privacy, economy, government anti-centralism, economic individualism or plain pure Americanism. This is the kernel of support by rustic solons for softly regulated big-city industrialism.

   Politics, popularly thought to consist mainly of elections, really begins only after elections, when those elected come together to divide the spoils. The meetings of any legislative body, as of a floating crap game, must be under rules, which like laws themselves must emanate from the legislative body itself. The Constitution does not stipulate how Congress must govern itself. This is a "political question," wide open.

   One of the Senate rules is that there may be unlimited debate; no senator may be silenced, unless, under Rule XXII, two-thirds of the senators present vote to terminate debate. With all senators present, this rule requires 66 votes to end debate. If only 35 refuse to limit debate, those who have the floor may go on talking endlessly, in relays. Such filibustering blocks all business until an agreement is reached to withdraw some proposal disliked by a sometimes very small minority.

   As Senator Clark notes, the United States Senate is the only open legislative body in the world under such an extravagantly absurd rule, which calls to mind the veto power held by any member in the House of Nobles of the old Polish Kingdom. There the rule, more severe than ours, so effectively paralyzed the country as to leave it an easy prey to neighboring Prussia, Russia and Austria.

   From 1789 to 1806 the Senate rules included the motion for the previous question, as provided for in Jefferson's Manual. On two occasions it was used to close debate. Since 1811 the motion has been used frequently in the House to end debate and is provided for in House Rule XVII. Virtually all the state legislatures allow the procedure, which, as Jefferson pointed out, was used in the British Parliament as early as 1604. It is not, as Senator Clark reminds us, alien to hallowed Anglo-Saxon parliamentary procedure. It is, in truth, almost sacred and not to allow it full rein is ground for the deepest suspicion.

   May a majority of the Senate at the beginning of a new Congress vote to terminate debate in order to pass on a change in the standing rules? This question was put point-blank as recently as 1963 by the vice president as the presiding Senate officer. In response there were only 44 ayes and 53 nays, with no roll call. The Establishment had triumphed, by a clear majority. (The question has since been put at the opening of every term with a similar outcome.)

   Early in 1964 on a cloture petition that would have ended further debate on the question of a change of the rule--and which, under the rule, required a favorable vote of two-thirds of those present--the Clarkian majority lost by 54 for and 42 opposed. Senator Clark draws comfort from the fact that, including 4 absentees, the Senate at the time stood 56-44 in favor of cloture, only 10 short of the necessary two-thirds. But the earlier vote, with 53 nays, showed the full fire-power of the Establishment on the bedrock issue. On such showdowns the Establishment has thus far been able to muster far more than a third--pointedly, more than a half.

   The Establishment itself is not a majority but it can, owing to the many strings in its octopal fingers, pull many unhappy non-Establishment senators into line when all the chips go down. On basic questions affecting its own power it is, in sober fact, a majority.

   The sole contemporary full-face defeat of the Establishment was on the Test Ban Treaty, which came to a vote September 24, 1963, after a long debate. Two-thirds of those present and voting were required for ratification under the Constitution. The vote was 80 to 19 in favor.

   Those who voted "No" at the time constituted the stone-faced core of the Senate Establishment in Senator Clark's view: Russell and Talmadge of Georgia, Stennis and Eastland of Mississippi, Long of Louisiana, Byrd and Robertson of Virginia, Byrd of West Virginia, McClellan of Arkansas, Thurmond of South Carolina, Curtis of Nebraska, Goldwater of Arizona, Simpson of Wyoming, Jordan of Idaho, Margaret Chase Smith of Maine, Bennett of Utah and Tower of Texas. Most of these were from rule-by-terror states, nearly all from one-party states. Mundt of South Dakota, who usually votes down the line with the Establishment, defected.

   But for changes in Rule XXII and cloture all of these, with Mundt, voted "No," including the following Establishment people who had defected momentarily on the Test Ban Treaty: Ellender of Louisiana, Hayden of Arizona, Holland of Florida, Johnston of South Carolina, Hill and Sparkman of Alabama, Cannon of Nevada, Cotton of New Hampshire, Williams of Delaware and Dirksen of Illinois. Half of these were also from rule-by-terror states; most were from one-party states.

   It is the men mentioned in these two paragraphs, according to Senator Clark, who constitute the nucleus of the present Senate Establishment, which has its counterpart in the House. How one stands on Rule XXII determines whether one is for or against the Establishment.

   A few of those mentioned are not present as of 1968. Such absence makes no difference to the Establishment because fresh replacements are always available approximately from the same states. When death approached Byrd of Virginia, the ailing senator retired and had his fifty-year-old son appointed in his place--an hereditary senator! Hardly any of the states represented by Establishment senators are industrialized--only Illinois and Delaware. The rest are predominantly rural and agricultural or extractive; most are nonurbanized and are of exceptionally low general educational levels--defective schools, few libraries and bookstores, mediocre newspapers, poor radio-television programs, etc. Money for these is shot away nationally in wars. The core of the group is the southern Democratic bloc, which has been said to be the South's revenge on the rest of the country for the loss of the Civil War. But it has many members from parts of the country that are as economically and culturally retarded--in general, the Bible Belt, which tends to look indulgently on terror and intimidation.

   The Establishment people are not men of parts; they are devoid of generally esteemed talents. None, possibly excepting McClellan and Sparkman, is a persuasive speaker. Many such as Eastland show themselves conspicuously deficient in reasoning powers, confidently propounding howlers in elementary logic that would shame most college freshmen. Nearly all appear to be quite innocent of acquaintance with semantics. Although most are members of the bar, none is rated high as a practicing lawyer. Few seem to be well read. None, as far as the record shows, is a writer; Goldwaters books of shabby notions were ghost-written. Few if any are soundly schooled. Their knowledge of the world--and of the language itself--appears to be meager. Their talents lean almost entirely to simple intrigue. Everett Dirksen is their prototype of a prophet. They are a drab crew.

   If these people did not band together as they do behind Rule XXII, if they relied on their own capabilities in open debate on the merits of issues, they would stand forth in all hollowness among more talented men. And this is one reason for the Establishment: It is a refuge for the untalented, a closed trade union of the meagerly endowed.

   What do Establishment members want? Are they merely interested in preserving the ties that bind them together and give them factitious substance: Rule XXII, white supremacy, the celebration of property and military derring-do and a truculent stance in foreign affairs? So to suppose would be to credit them with very limited, purely symbolical objectives. Actually, as Senator Clark stresses, many members of the Establishment go along with other measures, some with quite liberal measures, as long as Rule XXII and white supremacy remain inviolate. They are political traders, keen for cheapjack opportunities.

   When blockages arise under Rule XXII, the Establishment is in a position to trade. In return for concessions it becomes its turn to make demands, to enforce its gloomy will on the country.

   Customary analyses of Congress distinguish Republicans from Democrats, Southerners from Northerners and Westerners and conservatives from liberals. The latter distinction suggests, misleadingly, that there are reasoned attitudes present rather than rationalization for narrowly pecuniary self-interest. Political scientists are united in believing that national party affiliations are meaningless, that congressmen nearly all stem from purely local state and district factions. ¹⁶ Nor is the regional distinction fundamentally any more important than that of party.

   There are, in truth, more fundamental distinctions to be observed. There is, first, the Establishment and anti-Establishment distinction that Senator Clark brings to view, with most of the Establishment people organization men from Soviet-style one-party districts or states. As unchaperoned strangers in them quickly discover, most of these states have extremely inquisitive polizei. Few such states are industrialized, few are very rich, and the rich ones, like Texas, are largely absentee-owned, obvious colonies of Wall Street and State Street. In all, organized politics offers one of the few sure roads to personal affluence, functional latitude and renown. In the industrial states there are many such roads.

   Much about American politics would be clearer if one thought of a metropolitan and a colonial or provincial United States. Metropolitan United States consists of southern New England, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, California, perhaps the state of Washington and the very eastern portions of Missouri, Iowa and Minnesota. just about everything else is nonmetropolitan, culturally below par and holds nearly all one-party politics. It is more like eastern Europe than like eastern United States.

   Economically, this division is generally made as between agrarian and industrial states. Yet the congressional politics of the representatives of the agrarian states are not distinctively agrarian. Elected by a politically illiterate, often very small electorate unaware of the true drift of affairs and with few vital demands of its own to make, congressmen from these states are far freer than those of the metropolitan states to place their votes where the most money is, on the side of big property. For doing this they are allowed to join the propertied class by backstairs methods and are impressively referred to as conservatives.

   Leadership in the nonmetropolitan states is noticeably below par (one of their basic deficiencies) owing to the steady drainage of homegrown talent into the metropolitan sector. It is not that the nonmetropolitan region fails to produce talented leadership material. It does produce it but discourages it and loses it steadily to the metropolitan sector, culturally more attractive. New York, Chicago, Boston, San Francisco and other metropolitan centers fairly crawl with talented people from Georgia, Mississippi, Kansas and other retrograde provinces. On trips back home they are careful to keep a tight rein on their tongues lest they face the prospect of being expertly tarred and feathered and ridden out of town on a rail by the local authorities, acting through local thugs.

   Many organization politicians inside and outside Metropolia are known to feel, self-righteously, that their party ties provide a democratic device for the distribution of some of the industrial wealth--to themselves. They are sadly mistaken. No distribution of wealth to public-spirited connivers is taking place by this route. What is available, in various ways, is only a small percentage of the untaxed industrial revenues in the form of "campaign" contributions, gifts, fees and retainers. These are tips to menials.

   It is not being suggested here that members of the Establishment and their veiled supporters are in all cases primarily trying to gain affluence for its own sake. Rather is it a fact that they must have affluence in order to function on their chosen level. The organization men split their "take" with other organization men in the home party organization. Many, it can be plainly shown, are eager estate builders--Johnsons, Dodds, Dirksens, Kerrs et al. Some, probably most, are a combination of the two. The prospect of money is definitely in the picture except in a very few cases.

   Money is needed to get into electoral politics. Money is needed to remain there. And money is needed to carry one over the bleak days if one is voted out.

   In saying this, one is not saying something that would have astounded the Founding Fathers. Under the Constitution as it originally stood, there were property qualifications for voting even for members of the House of Representatives and the state legislatures. Only as the various states gave the franchise to the nonpropertied in the early nineteenth century was this qualification removed, thus opening the way to office for poor men. This was a dangerous development because the poor newcomers to politics, seldom themselves partisans of the poor, needed money going far beyond the paltry pay of office, originally designed purely as honoraria for men of property and still on this level in many jurisdictions. The unpropertied man in politics was in time, according to an unwritten convention, expected to use ingenuity in providing for himself. Imaginative and defensible schemes were devised by some, but the sheer logical possibilities of making adequate monetary provision outside of meager salary without going beyond the law or the proprieties are few and largely boil down to writing, lecturing, making after-dinner speeches or practicing ordinary law--all of which take some talent. Promotions in which the name of the officeholder was used to confer prestige were legitimate--when the promotions themselves were legitimate. But for most of the new off-the-soil officeholders, always with noteworthy exceptions. it all boiled down to acquiring money in some questionable way. They were necessarily purchasable men. In the practice of law the purchase price took the form of heavy retainers from big interests.

   In order to attain congressional or any political office one must, as many experts have attested: (1) be independently wealthy either as an inheritor or a builder of better booby traps; (2) have the backing of a wealthy individual, group or organization; or (3) have the backing of a local party organization which in turn has access to suspect supporting funds. Sometimes a "bad" organization supports a man of impeccable probity as a way of disarming critics. The supporting funds, it is true, could come from thousands of "little people" chipping in quarters or dollars; but the "little people" are either not sufficiently interested, do not understand or cannot afford to contribute--or a combination of the three. They have money for booze, soft drinks, tobacco, cosmetics, gadgets, high installment interest rates and the whole range of stuff at Woolworth's but not a cent as expense money for their tribunes. They may well suspect, too, that the candidates have already been spoken for by higher bidders.

   What I say here is by no means original with me, arising from some internal distemper. It is the consensus of sophisticated observers. "Many people are asking the question," says Drew Pearson in his nationally syndicated column, "'Do Congressmen steal?' Our answer is that they do not unlawfully take money from the government but they do take money lawfully for representing 'anti-government' interests. In this sense they do steal the right of the voters to have a man in Congress who represents them, instead of representing his law firm and its big business clients." ¹⁷ There are, however, many ways of legally putting money into a congressman's hands apart from attorneys' "fees" and "campaign" contributions. Attention will be given this lush aspect of standard garden-variety "democratic" politics further along.

   How does the Republican-Democratic Establishment extend its will over the rest of the Congress? It does this, first, by its power to block anything, which forces others to trade with it. But its general control derives from its minute control over committee appointments. As the work of Congress is quietly done by committees, not through rational debate on the floor, such control is fundamental.

   Any newcomer to Congress, whatever he has rashly promised his constituents, has as much to say over surrounding affairs as if he stepped into the rush-hour crowd at Grand Central Terminal or into the midst of a Bombay riot. If he managed to get the floor to make the most rousing speech ever delivered, there would be nobody present to hear it except the bored clerks and some flabbergasted tourists in the galleries. As soon as he rose to deliver himself of his deathless remarks, all the members would walk out as they customarily walk out on each other.

   What he must do, Senator Clark informs us, is to keep quiet and watch what goes on. And the way to "get along," he further tells us, is to "go along"--with the older hands. If he continually "goes along" with those who are solidly ensconced, he will soon find that he is a member of some friendly bloc. It might seem that the smart thing to do would be to join the Establishment at once but this cannot always be managed because Establishment ideas are under some dispute in the more crowded and variegated parts of the country. The next smartest thing to do is to be against the Establishment on the record but to support it on showdowns, as many do in voting that a majority of a new Senate may not vote to close off debate in order to pass on a change in the rules. He can, also, be a "maverick" like the fortyfour senators of 1963, although not many of these are very far-ranging.

   If the new member continually "goes along," particularly with the Establishment, he finds that he is able to get various things done of interest to himself and to his standing in the eyes of his constituents. He may even be allowed to get his name on bills--the "Sascha Schmaltz Bill to Exterminate Poverty in Our Time" or something similarly astonishing. Also, his bank account, if he so desires, will steadily improve. His banker and broker will know he is now running with a well-heeled crowd.

   Committee appointments, especially the powerful chairmanships over (not of) the most powerful committees, are commonly supposed to go to the members with the most seniority. Senator Clark shows conclusively, citing chapter and verse, that the Establishment freely deviates from the seniority rule whenever it wishes to push some member for reasons obscure to the observer.

   Committee appointments are made by two party groups--the Democratic Steering Committee and the Republican Committee on Committees. The Establishment holds a majority of both, and, through its ability to entice new members, holds its power as an hereditary fief.

   The Democratic Steering Committee varies in composition from time to time. By custom its members serve until they die, resign or are defeated at the polls, the last not likely in the one-party states and districts from which they emanate. As of 1959 it had fifteen members, seven southerners plus Lyndon B. Johnson, majority leader, and Carl Hayden, president pro tempore of the Senate, thus giving the Establishment a majority of nine. Johnson all along has been a 200-proof, sour-mash Establishment man.

   Because the composition of Congress changed with the election of 1960, bringing in more Democrats, Senator Clark wanted the Steering Committee changed. He did get himself and three others put on, but the Establishment still controlled with nine votes. In 1963 at a Democratic Conference, composed of all the Democrats in the Senate, he proposed that the Steering Committee be increased to nineteen members.

   Such an increase would have brought about geographical and ideological balance, in Clark's view, and Majority Leader Mike Mansfield promised to support him. "To my chagrin and surprise, Mansfield opposed my motion and [Hubert] Humphrey failed to support it. They told me later Bobby Baker had told them the votes were not there to approve the increase. Perhaps this was right. . . . Had the Majority Leader and Whip supported Senator Anderson and me, I believe we would have won." ¹⁸ The point, though, is that they did not. On the secret ballot the Establishment vote was highest.

   Within the Democratic Conference itself on a secret ballot the forces of reform represented by Clark were outnumbered nearly 2 to 1. The Republicans, the nonurban element of them Establishment people from the cradle up, have no need of such stacking in their Committee on Committees, which Senator Clark finds to be regionally and ideologically representative. With the Democratic Party in the majority, the Republicans get few committee appointments anyhow. Yet their members plus the southern Democrats constitute the Establishment power.

   As the Republican Party has been deflated to a minority since 1932, it is clearly the congressional wing of the Democratic Party that is now the chief block to legislative forthrightness. Yet the Democratic Party is the one that is popularly regarded as liberal, even radical. When the Republicans have a president he usually sees pretty much eye to eye with the Establishment; but since the accession of Democratic Lyndon B. Johnson as president, the Establishment is now in closest harmony with the White House. On the basis of Senator Clark's analysis, it would appear that the Establishment controls all the positions except the Supreme Court.

   Through its power of appointment the Establishment in both houses "stacks" the committees of Congress with its supporters. "In the Eighty-sixth Congress [House] members from seven [backward] states controlled 97 of the 153 committee votes." ¹⁹ As Senator Clark shows, the Establishment dominates all vital committees and keeps off non-Establishment men with seniority.

   In the crucial committees of both houses there is a frequent installation of the same pro-Establishment men, although in the Senate no person may be a chairman of more than one committee. A small percentage of pro-Establishment men hold majority votes, with few exceptions.

   The effect throughout, from the party committees to the standing legislative committees, with only minor exceptions, is as though a permanent bureaucracy were installed, Senator Clark notes. In Russia the same sort of phenomenon, differently arrived at, is known as the Politburo. What Senator Clark calls the Establishment is indeed very much like the Politburo in its permanence and indestructibility, although not perhaps in its specific objectives. The methods of holding and wielding power are similar. But one does business in rubles, the other in dollars.

   Owing to the large number of intra-party and legislative committees the Establishment people sit on, they are heavily worked. Russell, leader in recent years of the Establishment as the most senior member, always managed the opening-session struggle against changing Rule XXII, master-minded meetings of the Democratic Steering Committee, was active in the Policy Committee, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, was a member of the Appropriations Committee and chairman of its subcommittee on defense, member of the Aeronautical and Space Sciences Committee, the joint Committee on Atomic Energy and a member of the commission to investigate the Kennedy assassination and of the Boards of Visitors to the Military, Naval and Air Force Academies. And similarly with other Establishment people. ²⁰

   Senator Clark makes much of the distinction between liberals and conservatives in the Senate, but just how little it signifies was shown in 1966 on the vote to allow the Foreign Relations Committee and Appropriations Committee to share supervision of the Central Intelligence Agency with Senator Russell's Armed Services Committee. Russell was opposed to the change; Senator Fulbright, chairman of Foreign Relations, favored it.

   Russell won on the show-down, 61 to 28. While no Establishment people sided with Fulbright, plenty of liberals sided with Russell, namely: Anderson of New Mexico, Douglas of Illinois, Magnuson of Washington, Neuberger of Oregon, Pastore of Rhode Island, Ribicoff of Connecticut (all Democrats) and Kuchel of California. (It is this sort of thing that earns liberals the label of "fuzzy-mindedness.") Clark and Scott of Pennsylvania were not present-not that it would have made the slightest difference .²¹

   The CIA is ideologically a straight Establishment agency, designed as an identical opposite number to the Soviet para-military intelligence network. Whatever its model, the Soviet apparatus, does the CIA can and does do as well--or better.

   The committees of the Senate are rated in order of prime importance about as follows: Finance (taxes), Armed Services (military supplies), Foreign Relations (world markets), Appropriations (domestic allocation of money), Rules and Administration, Banking and Currency (monetary policy and credit), and judiciary and Government Operations. Committees such as Agriculture and Forestry, Commerce, District of Columbia, Interior and Insular Affairs, Labor and Public Welfare, Post Office, and Civil Service and Public Service are far less important (possibly excepting Agriculture) because they exert less leverage.

   It is the power to block plus leverage in vital situations, often involving stupendous amounts of money, that makes certain committees paramount. Chairmen of committees are powerful because they are permanently installed as the senior member, are alone empowered except in the case of a very few committees to call committee meetings, and alone set agendas, call up bills for consideration, regulate bearings and terminate committee debates. Within the jurisdiction of each committee the chairman is almost a dictator. He can kill any bill in his jurisdiction by simply pigeon-holing it. Although it is possible to call meetings at the demand of a majority of committee members, practically this is rarely done because most committee members are more handpicked than the chairman, with whom they have many convenient understandings. They may even have been picked by the chairman himself. Until a bill is reported out by a committee it cannot come before the Senate unless two-thirds of the senators want it out. A bill could be ordered out on a majority vote, of course, but only if the Establishment approved.

   In the House the chief committees are Rules, Ways and Means (taxes), Armed Services, Interstate and Foreign Commerce, Banking and Currency, Appropriations and Judiciary. Before going to the floor, unless a hard-to-get majority votes to bring it out, a bill must first be reported out by the Rules Committee. Most proposed bills, many of them having wide public approval, are never reported out. Filed with the Rules Committee, they might just as well have been dumped in a wastebasket. A majority of the House may order a bill discharged from committee, but ordinarily such a majority is hard to get.

   Even though the House does not allow unlimited debate it has a more complex set of rules than the Senate. These rules are used to strangle or whittle down proposals unwanted by the House Establishment.

   "Committee and subcommittee chairmen have more naked power in the House than in the Senate," Senator Clark notes. "There is no tax legislation if Wilbur Mills of Arkansas, chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, doesn't want any, nor a wilderness bill against Aspinall's wishes." ²²

   The various committee chairmen are kingpins in the House and form the nucleus of its Establishment. "While power seems more fragmented in the House than in the Senate," Senator Clark remarks, "it is probably because the former body is so much larger. Thus it is easier for chairmen to become more powerful. For the same reason there is less cohesion. There appears to be less sense of a 'band of brothers.' While the South is to some extent in the saddle, it seems less obviously so." ²³ Still, the men from the nonmetropolitan sector rule.

   Yet the Establishment coalition "operates on many an occasion even more effectively in the House than in the Senate" and has killed or whittled down a long line of useful bills--federal aid to education in 1960, area development in 1963, the Mass Transit Bill and Youth Opportunities Act, health care for the aged in earlier versions, improvement of foreign aid. "It cannot stop civil rights legislation because of the urban and suburban Republicans. But it can usually stop if it really wants to what the Establishment likes to call 'spending programs.'" ²⁴

   It did not, however, stop or whittle down Administration requests in 1965 and 1966 for additional appropriations for the undeclared presidential war in Vietnam. Although costing some $20 billion or more annually, the Vietnam operation is not construed as a "spending program." It is, more properly put, a patriotic program. Opposed to expenditures for domestic improvement programs, the Establishment in both houses is religiously devoted to all military spending, sometimes votes more than is asked for by the president.

   Committee control and the two-thirds rule are only part of the Establishment method. The American constitutional system at best, as all scholars know, yields a cumbersome government that operates much like a Rube Goldberg threshing machine. With everybody giving his best the machine will work according to the intention of the designers, not efficiently but surely. But when the delays inherent in the checks-and-balance system are added to, as by Rule XXII and other contrivances not found in any parliamentary manual, the machine simply stops.

   Rule XXII and the dominance of committee chairmen in the House by no means constitute the only devices of delay.

   As Senator Clark notes, certain procedures have been adopted that use up more than half the time of Congress with a view to keeping new business from coming up even if it could be dislodged from the dilatory committees. There is, first, a requirement that the Journal of each Senate session must be read the following day unless unanimous consent to skip it is obtained. Says Clark: "It is utilized only for purposes of delay . . . ." ²⁵ Next, the morning period reserved for minor business, using up a valuable legislative hour or more, "makes for delay." ²⁶ Senators speak at exhaustive length; Clark believes speeches should be limited to two hours. Often the subjects talked about haven't the remotest connection with anything taking place; they may be a description of the scenery of the solon's native state, memories of boyhood, a disquisition on the culinary arts, the national flower or the care of dogs--all with a view to using up time.

   Again, "A motion to take up a bill on the calendar made by the Majority Leaders should be determined by vote without debate. At present such a motion is subject to unlimited debate, thus giving the opponents of the bill two chances to filibuster instead of only one. . . ." ²⁷

   Establishment senators, with a keen instinct for wasting time, introduce all manner of irrelevancy in their speeches, violating the rule of Jefferson's Manual that "No one is allowed to speak impertinently or beside the question, superfluously or tediously." Says Clark: "No other legislative body in the world, so far as I have been able to discover, operates without a rule of germaneness." ²⁸

   Clark's staff in a survey of the Congressional Record for 1961 found that nongermane speeches, excluding written insertions made only for the record, took up one-third of that gangrenously swollen publication.

   While the Senate is in session, committees may not sit. Thus committee work can be delayed. When quorum calls go out, senators check in on the Senate floor, then fade out, leaving nobody to vote on measures. Thus arises the amusing distinction between a "live" quorum and a pro forma or on-the-record quorum.

   The Appropriations Committee, however, sits continuously. It obtains unanimous consent at the beginning of each session to sit at any time whether or not the Senate is in session. It would be just too bad if appropriation bills were not ready for railroading on time.

   Still another way of slowing down the legislative process is by requiring separate House and Senate hearings on the same bills, thus making witnesses appear twice at different times. As Clark points out, such time-consuming duplication could be eliminated by joint hearings.

   Again, when there are joint House and Senate conferences with a view to harmonizing different bills, Establishment leadership sees to it in both houses, very often, that the representatives of the stronger bill are men who voted against it and are unsympathetic to it. These men tend to favor the weaker bill and to compromise accordingly.

   It is sometimes an election ploy by a rival for his seat to charge a House congressman especially with a long series of absences from roll calls and votes, implying that he has not been attending to business. But if he is not a member of the Establishment and does not have many committee appointments, there is really no need for him to be present most of the time. He knows the votes on most matters coming up are cut and dried in advance. There is no issue on which his presence can make a difference. The sensible thing to do is to be absent until such time as he can function meaningfully.

   It would look better on the record, it is true, if he hung around and answered the roll calls. But such roll-call response can be misleading with respect to the significant activity of a congressman. Some merely sit and read and entertain visitors in their offices between roll calls and votes.

   I have given here only a taste of Senator Clark's revealing work. The student of American government, steadily fed on formalistic pap, can do no better than turn to it, read it, memorize it, put it into blank verse and set it to stately music.

   Why doesn't somebody, it may be asked, point out in detail to the senators themselves precisely what is taking place? As men of goodwill, the naive will suppose, they will quickly respond and mend their ways. Senator Clark, however, has already performed this bootless task, without avail. ²⁹

   Clark's books offer many concentrated grotesque details--tabulations on the stacked committees, on the ages of the principals, etc. Congress in truth is ruled by a collection of old men, like a primitive tribe. The average age of chairmen of leading Senate committees in 1963 was 67.5 years, with one chairman aged 86 and the youngest 51. ³⁰ In the same year the average age of chairmen of the important House committees was 68.7 years, with the oldest 84 and the youngest 54. ³¹ A reason advanced by agile Establishment spokesmen against the invariable application of the seniority rule is that it would, unless relaxed from time to time, leave senile dodderers in charge. Yet such are in fact left in charge despite variations in application of the rule to others.

   In general, these committee chairmen are unimaginative, insensitive, uncultivated, set in their ways and nurture a vision of social reality long since vanished--always with the inevitable exceptions such as J. William Fulbright of the Foreign Relations Committee, Clinton P. Anderson of the Aeronautical and Space Sciences Committee and perhaps a few others.

   The preponderance of the lawless South on key committees is clearly evident. There were twenty-three Democratic senators in 1963 from Dixie--eleven Confederate states plus Arkansas and Oklahoma (23 per cent of the Senate). Yet they held 50 per cent of the seats on the Appropriations Committee, 42 per cent on Armed Services, 55 per cent on Finance, 42 per cent on Foreign Relations, 47 per cent on the Democratic Steering Committee and 33 per cent on the Democratic Policy Committee--this last their true proportion among sixty-seven Democrats. ³² Among Democrats on the committees their disproportion is far greater than given above.

   Something not realized by Senator Clark and his on-the-record anti-Establishment cohorts (generally styled liberals and reformers in both parties) is that they themselves lend plausibility to the Establishment game, which is to seem part of a representative body. Without Clark and his stalwarts, playing according to the democratic book, Congress would be visible to all as a heavy-handed affair, like a Russian Constituent Assembly, redolent of the hangman. As it is, the anti-Establishment opposition makes it look at times like a representative legislative body, full of enticing nuances and shadings. The opposition gives the Establishment a brisk dialectical workout from time to time, keeps it on its toes. Whenever it wishes to, the Establishment can submit its power to a test vote, play for real and knock the opposition through the floor with solid "democratic" votes.

   Agreeing with Senator Clark's analysis, up to a point, I must dissent from the final chapter of his magnum opus. There, no doubt remorseful for the way he has thrown a scare into the stray American reader by showing how he is ruled by nothing very different from a grim Politburo, he gives way to optimism and looks forward to changes. Simply the many required conditions for changes that he mentions show that it is an all but impossible dream.

   Actually, if only thirty-five senators were as demonically opposed to Rule XXII as the Establishment is in favor of it they could destroy it in a matter of weeks, perhaps days. All that a determined opposition need do is to start filibustering on the first item of Establishment business brought to the floor. When there finally came a call for a termination of debate, by the Establishment this time, on the showdown vote there would not be the necessary two-thirds. The hardy thirty-five (or more) would stand adamant. So the filibuster would go on, if necessary for weeks, and Senate business would grind to a halt. Appropriation bills would not get passed and the government would need to resort to financing through the banks in a large way.

   As the price of ending the filibuster all the opposition would do is to demand the end of Rule XXII. If the rule stayed, the filibuster would continue.

   It is highly doubtful if thirty-five senators, or even fifteen, are this resolutely determined to end Rule XXII. They have, it is true, no mandate for such action from their constituencies. The latter for the most part do not even know of Rule XXII. The non-Establishmentarians are not so determined to abolish it as the Establishment is to keep it, nor are they sufficiently numerous. It follows that the Establishment rules completely, with no sign of an early break in its grip. Such a break--when, as and if it comes--is not likely to develop on the basis of a Clarkian appeal for fair dealing. It can come only as a consequence of some profound upheaval in American society.

   The discarding of Rule XXII would not in itself break the power of the Establishment, although the alignment of forces within it would no doubt shift. One sees this by looking at the House, which is run by full-time self-centered intrigants without resort to unlimited debate as a threatening weapon. Rule XXII, while convenient, is not really needed.

   The remedy for all this, some will say, is in the electoral process before the people. How inadequate a refuge this is one can see by noting that most of the members of Congress occupy "safe" seats, are always virtually sure of election. In the House, supposed paladin of the people, hardly more than a hundred seats are ever in doubt, as Senator Clark admits. More than three-quarters of the occupants know they will invariably be re-elected. An even larger proportion of the Senate holds completely safe seats. Under the impact of a social cataclysm as awesome as the Depression, seats change hands slowly, and after the cataclysm the new incumbent is usually in for the rest of his life.

   Such exceptions as there are can be cited from only a few highly competitive, transitional and variegated regions, mainly California and New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, etc. Inertia in the stuporous electorate is a large factor in holding seats. Not only do the voters usually dislike change but they see no reason for it, can discern no more merit in new contenders than in incumbents. All promise heaven. Unless one can raise the strong suspicion that an officeholder is a Communist, a homosexual, a freethinker, a dabbler in science, a sexual athlete, a practitioner of divorce, a reader of prohibited books or something equally esoteric, he will be hard to dislodge if he has conducted himself according to the established routines of the electoral game.

   Senator Clark, like others who feel as he does, lays great stress on public opinion, the need to mobilize it in order to put the government on a course conducive (as he sees it) to the long-term interests of the people and the very safety of the Republic. Such stress on the need for an informed public opinion is an indirect confession of the inadequacy of representative government. If everyone must be fully informed on every question and press insistently for government action, it means we simply now have a more cumbersome form of the New England town meeting when the populace as a whole was the legislative body. If public opinion must be so rampant, and at variance with its own standards, what is the need of representatives? Why not submit all proposals to direct popular vote?

   Devoted conscientiously to blocking adjustments in the ramshackle status quo, the Establishment can be cooperative and quick-moving when it wishes. It is most cooperative and retiring, Senator Clark points out, in time of war. Then it endorses anything asked for remotely likely to help in crushing the enemy. War, in fact, seems most effective in unlocking its springs of action, in quickening its pulse, in arousing its ardor. It is as bellicose as any Prussian Junkerverein. It equates patriotism with war.

   Bills affecting its special pets among the finpols also get rush-order treatment. Thus, the emergency bill to exempt Du Pont stockholders from the capital gains tax in the distribution under Supreme Court mandate of General Motors stock held by E. I. du Pont de Nemours was galloped through prestissimo, as Senator Clark notes, It was as though the Establishmentarians knew that now they were being watched by the gentry and were anxious to show what really fine work they could do--all of which was no doubt very reassuring to Wilmington, Delaware.

   How the Establishment works to ensnare the country in something the electorate finds distasteful is more interesting and more revealing of Establishment ways and is best shown in the matter of taxes.

   Congressmen in general are not well informed on taxes--or on much else, for that matter. They are, to put it bluntly, conveniently ignorant and depend on the word of floor leaders, whips and committee chairmen.

   Needless to say [as the infinitely expert Eisenstein remarks] members of Congress are not as well versed in taxation as they should be. Of course, they are also inadequately informed on other matters which are entrusted to their care. It is no secret that votes are commonly cast without a firm grasp of the issues involved. In taxation, however, knowledge comes with unusual pain and suffering. The statutes are enveloped in a peculiar verbal fog of their own. The Internal Revenue Code, indeed, is a remarkable essay in sustained obscurity. It has all the earmarks of a conspiracy in restraint of understanding. The conspiracy never ends because amendments never cease. Year after year many minds combine anew against the grave danger of being understood. . . . Surely, the nimblest member of Congress can hardly hope to perceive in a day what the alleged experts are unable to understand over the years. Most members are soon lost and bewildered when they move beyond the rates and personal exemptions. As Representative Patman gently understated the ignorance of Congress, "the tax laws are passed with the Members not knowing exactly what they mean." ³³

   Rank and file Republicans and Democrats, right and left, complained at its submission that they did not understand the tax law of 1954, ³⁴ which still provides the main base.

   A vote on a tax bill, then [says the legist Eisenstein] is an act of faith. With few exceptions the members of Congress helplessly approve whatever the tax committees may choose to offer. They "must take the word" of the committees. While the committees usually provide reports for each bill, the reports hardly qualify as guides for the perplexed. As a rule, they merely fortify the sense of organized confusion. If the members look for enlightenment during debate, they rarely learn much more. Complex tax bills are poorly discussed and hastily enacted. At times there is no discussion at all. . . .

   The House, in fact, proceeds on the theory that individual members should generally abstain from thinking for themselves. This principle of parliamentary behavior is known as the "gag rule." The members are discreetly denied the right to offer any amendments or to vote on separate sections of a bill. They can only accept or reject the bill as a whole. Since their function is so limited, they have little incentive to be enlightened. In any event, too many questions cannot be asked because debate is carefully curtailed . . . too often the explanations on the floor sound as if the halt were leading the blind. ³⁵

   Within the tax committees and among their technical staff writers--the people who compose taxese or tax prose--there is a clearer view of affairs. Among them, Republicans and Democrats alike, there is full understanding of the workings of special dispensations or "loopholes." ³⁶

   "The story is always the same," Hubert Humphrey admitted when he was a senator. "Higher rates are imposed and at the same time loopholes are carefully framed which permit the wealthy to get out from under the higher taxes." ³⁷

   Says a leading tax expert: ". . . the average congressman does not believe in the present high rates of income tax, especially those applicable in the upper brackets. When he sees these rates applied in individual cases he thinks the rates are too high and therefore unfair. . . . True believers in these rates would long ago have torn down the tax shelters and resisted all pressures for special relief. Instead, the reverse is true." ³⁸

   Astronomic rates, headlined hysterically by newspapers, impress the general public. The rich , it is presumed, are being made to bleed and disgorge by a stern socialistic or at least fanatically liberal government. Rightists fulminate. With the left hand, however, a trucksize loophole is chopped that cancels the high rate, in some cases allows no tax at all to be paid.

   For one oil and gas virtuoso, for example, on a total income of $14.3 million in five years, all subject prima facie to a 91 per cent tax, the total taxes were only $80,000 or 3/5 of 1 per cent. Still another artist in oil did even better. He tenderly groomed properties that brought in nearly $5 million one year--on which there was no tax due. "In escaping tax on his oil income, he also escaped tax on most of his other income. His total taxes for the period were less than $100,000, but his income from sources other than oil averaged about $1 million a year." ³⁹ At the same time the lowest rates for ordinary taxpayers, the fevered patriots in the streets--rates they could not escape--ranged from 19 to 23 per cent. Theirs not to reason why. . . . Some ultra-large oil companies find the tax at times so infinitesimal that they do not even list it as a separate item in reports to stockholders. ⁴⁰

   The politically illiterate common man pays what others do not. The government always gets all the money it says it needs. It never permits a "raid" on the Treasury.

   The committee process by which the rambling Internal Revenue Code is amended is childishly simple, yet difficult and fatiguing to follow, much like a long-drawn tournament between chessmasters. Like a chess game, too, it is tedious to describe in its inwardness for noninitiates owing to the ramifying effects of simple little moves.

   It is in committee hearings that one sees men of C. Wright Mills's executive "power elite"--all figures of distinctly secondary rank, many of them subject to the pleasure of the president as temporary appointees in the Executive Branch. If committee chairmen or members feel like it, they rake them with sarcasm, challenge them point blank, give them the lie direct.

   Before these committees a good deal of careful deference is shown by visiting executives and lawyers. It doesn't all run one way because there is a good deal of reciprocal respect and there is the knowledge among committee members that the witnesses are, after all, connected as underlings with big distributors of pecuniary patronage. Such knowledge is not always controlling because, as the front men in well-entrenched one-party state political factions, the committee members already have plenty "going for them" both politically and financially. If he felt sufficiently irked, one of these committee chairmen could tell the Du Ponts, Rockefellers and Mellons combined precisely where to head in and never feel even slightly threatened by the possibility of any successful electoral reprisal. It has been done, simply as a bravura finger-exercise.

   Critics charge that the major tax forces represent narrow and selfish private interests as against public and presumably broad and generous interests, But as Eisenstein points out, it is not possible to isolate public and private interests as separate determinate essences.

   In the eyes of these critics, "The taxing process emerges as an unceasing struggle between good and evil. The 'general taxpayer,' the 'general public,' the 'People' are on one side; 'organized groups,' 'special groups,' 'pressure groups,' on the other." But "The 'public' or the 'people' necessarily consist of individuals, and individuals fall into various groups. Not even the adherents of ability insist that all taxpayers should be similarly treated. If they are not to be treated alike, they must be treated as distinctive groups." ⁴¹

   Some groups, each of the tax proponents feels, are more vital to the public interest than others, and are entitled to special consideration. This, basically, is the point. Some people count, most do not.

   How it plays out is well shown by Eisenstein:

   The same generalities are perennially repeated because they are vacant expressions. Everyone may freely put into them whatever he wishes to take out. That is why they are beyond dispute. For the same reason they are also very useful. Dispensations may be broadly condemned and then selectively approved without fear of engaging in any contradictions. Senator Wiley of Wisconsin, for instance, declares that taxes "should be as fair and equitable as possible." They should be "based primarily on ability to pay," and they should not discriminate "as between different groups." But at the same time the senator also maintains that taxes should, "as a matter of principle," provide a "reasonable incentive to earn, to grow, to expand." Therefore, he warmly recommends such special dispensations as a credit for dividends and a reduced rate for income from foreign investments. Apparently dispensations which remove barriers and deterrents do not discriminate "between different groups." The public interest similarly enables Congressman Mills to distinguish between one dispensation and another. Our income tax, he charges, is "riddled with preferential benefits." The statutes are "full of special provisions through which a shrewd or lucky taxpayer can often escape paying anywhere near his full share." But having said all this, Congressman Mills indicates that it would not be "desirable to eliminate all the special provisions that we now permit." Those who fail to pay their "full share" may also serve the public interest. ⁴²

   Whatever is said at these tax hearings, and whatever one may think about what is said, the result (whether explicitly intended or not) is clear: Most of the tax burden is shouldered over, directly and indirectly, on the nonpropertied, free-spending labor force, which constitutes the main body of patriots upon which the future of the Republic depends.

   After protracted hearings the tax committees go into "executive session," excluding the profane. Staff writers get their instructions. Whatever is not of sentimental appeal is put into the customary opaque language, but what is of sentimental appeal such as high rates on the big incomes and baited deductions for blindness, medicine, children and superannuation is left crystal clear.

   When ready the bill is reported out on the floor near the end of the session, when a great many other bills, equally suspect under careful analysis, are also awaiting passage. There is here the usual "logjam" of important legislation, with members impatient to get home to sweet-talk low-IQ voters. The "heat is on" for swift passage.

   If anyone wishes, he may suggest amendments, which may or may not be voted down. The votes are there, the floor managers know, to pass the bill. The word is passed to the stalwarts, all ready to act. At the signal, the bill is easily pushed through.

   The Senate Finance Committee in 1966, of which Russell Long, an Establishment stalwart, was chairman, consisted of 17 members. Six were identified by Senator Clark as of the Establishment core, 6 were from the South, 8 were from one-party states and 12 were from outside Metropolia. Only 7 were clearly non-Establishmentarians and only 6 would ordinarily be classified as liberals or rationalists.

   The House Ways and Means Committee under the redoubtable Wilbur Mills of Arkansas had 11 members out of 25 from one-party states, many more from one-party districts, 8 from the South and 13 from outside Metropolia. The back country was clearly in the saddle. As the committee is under the mesmeric control of Mr. Mills, much like the New York Philharmonic under Leonard Bernstein, it is not necessary to carry the analysis further. It is all an Establishment affair.

   Oddly, what radicals call Wall Street tax laws are largely put into final form by men from the swamps, bayous, tundra, bogs, crossroads, pastures, plains, bills, ravines, badlands and backwoods of the country. These men with some exceptions have not attended fancy law schools or studied at the leading universities; there is about few of them any taint of sickly intellectuality. They are, one might say, as common as any drug-store loafer. Nor did any of them, so far as I can ascertain, ever have to meet a flabbergasting payroll in private business. None was ever a super-salesman, a super-lawyer or a big-time entrepreneur. One can safely say that none has had either firsthand or theoretical knowledge of economics, finance or business affairs. As far as taxes are concerned they only know what they may have alertly picked up by hearsay in their committee rooms from visiting monetary sophists.

   Yet, when all is said and done, they are well able to distinguish campaign contributors from unsound, unkempt and uncouth, not to say openly literate, ivory-tower theorists.

   Contrary to common supposition a majority of those in the House and Senate enjoy incomes vaulting far beyond their relatively modest salaries of $30,000 a year plus office expenses, travel allowances and other extras. Merely at this salaried minimal they are already in the upper 1 per cent of income receivers. ⁴³ Income-wise they make members of the Mafia look like bashful Boy Scouts.

   Much of this congressional income--by all signs probably most--is obtained in ways that, although technically legal, would be condemned by almost any citizen having ordinary claims to respectability and even by many of the more high-toned swindlers who comb the bistros for hard-to-get victims.

   So many, indeed, are the ways on record congressmen have of funneling furtive lucre into their pockets that they defy description at any seemly length. Some attempt must be made, however, to comprehend what goes on among political entrepreneurs in order to understand the weltaunschauung of the men who confect our tax laws.

   Congress is largely but not exclusively staffed by assiduous off-the-soil moneymakers who use government as a tool in their profit-seeking operations with the gusto of a pack of hypertonic pickpockets assailing a convention of paralytics. In so doing, manifestly, its members are engaging in wholly unfair competition with the business and professional classes, especially with the small and medium-sized portions. Most business people, high or low, and even Mafians, do not have such ready toll-free access to the inner valves and spigots of government.

   I am far from contending that money-making congressmen (who must be distinguished from a civilized minority genuinely concerned about the fate of the Republic) are primarily athirst for lucre. So to say would involve me in a bootless squabble with degree-flaunting sages about the tenuous and wholly irrelevant question of primacy in motivation--of possible interest only to psychologists. Whether congressional absorption in money-making is first or last in order of emphasis it is patently materially the largest and most assiduously pursued of all congressional interests.

   These possibly truistic prefatory remarks are inspired not by some hostile, foreign, pagan and blasphemous un-American influences such as the godless writings of Karl Marx, Nicolai Bakunin, V. I. Lenin or Leon Trotsky but by first-hand, on-the-scene, carefully put together reports in such solidly established, churchly bourgeois publications as the New York Herald Tribune and the Wall Street Journal. On the score of method it would be difficult to find sources more homey and comfy unless one had it all in the form of a unanimous opinion of the United States Supreme Court certified in blood by the National Association of Manufacturers.

   A bastion of old-line conservatism that yearned for the return of the mansard roof and the Stutz Bearcat, the Herald Tribune was until its demise the nonpareil Republican organ of the country.* (* The discontinuance of the valued Herald Tribune was announced as the consequence of a prolonged, complicated strike involving ten labor unions and two other newspapers. New York Times, August 13, 1966; 1: 6-7.) The Journal is to Wall Street what Pravda and Izvestia are to the Kremlin, although it is a tremendously better paper professionally. None of this, of course, is a guarantee of pinpoint accuracy. But neither publication could be suspected of unorthodox or vagrant leanings in politics or social conceptions. If there was error in the political facts it sprung from inadvertence rather than ignorance or un-American, pro-intellectual bias. Although ornaments of the corporate press (the Tribune was owned by John Hay Whitney, a vintage super-millionaire), they are not to be confused with the "mass media," the chief task of which is to portray the world as a never-ending sideshow while fostering mass illusions about the great day that is just around the corner, due to dawn right after the election of John ("The Louse") Outhouse.

   Such publications belong to what sociologists modishly dub "the elite press." Of such there are some dozen to eighteen in the country (I myself lean to the first figure). Among hundreds this is not many but it represents the level of press seriousness. Although sections of this elite have been accused from time to time of editing news in favor of their own point of view, it has never been so much as whispered that they are "un-American" or anything but wholeheartedly committed to the Constitution, profits and godliness. Error, yes; heresy, never.

   Even though these elite papers are corporate entities, and as such are subject to the usual reservations, in recent years their owners, who once felt safe under Mark Hanna and Calvin Coolidge, have become dimly but increasingly aware that they are insidiously threatened simply as flesh-and-blood by much that is taking place--by events internal, external and technical. As a screwball society of demoralized citizens gradually comes unglued under ideologically justified neglect by its repeatedly sworn dung-hill guardians, the wealthy and their family members are also affected. Long unable to trot their horses through Central Park owing to the descent upon it of hordes of the demented, they, too, in or near the vicinity of their homes now are increasingly robbed, assaulted, raped, kidnapped, blackmailed, swindled, intimidated by servants and plug-ugly labor leaders, assassinated, run down by unregulated cars, poisoned by offbeat drugs and foods full of additives, overcharged, misled, misdirected, engulfed in half-shot planes and the like. One could compile imposing lists of wealthy victims within just the past five years, some with prolonged pedigrees and valuable Roman numerals after their names.

   Again, this isn't the half of it. They are now, wealth or no wealth, subject to common industrial hazards of the population as a whole: air pollution, smoke inhalation, water pollution, unpleasant regional odors, public-service strikes, gratuitous noise, equipment failures right and left, chemical leakages, explosions, water shortages, area "blackouts," public crowding, riots, radiation poisoning, possible atomic warfare and the like.

   And if elected government officials are conveniently purchasable, it is always possible, even probable, that they will be purchased by adversely hostile interests burrowing under established cushy positions.

   As there is no Stock Exchange quoting officials' prices (which would be a great convenience) one never knows for sure at what figures the political bidding begins and ends. Nor does one ever know when one has a firm acceptance. Bought men sell out again at higher figures--which makes sense. All of which promotes much displeasing uncertainty and anxiety even among general beneficiaries.

   Established wealth, in order to realize its potentialities to the maximum, needs orderly, intelligent and principled government. It does not have that now, but is caught in something of a more efficient continuation of the catch-as-catch-can nineteenth century; government is now more systematically and organizedly wayward than it once was. Although after the Civil War the rising magnates engaged in plenty of funny business with the politicians, the latter had not yet organized on a rational semi-corporate basis to put the vacuum cleaner systematically on rich and poor alike. Hence, in part, the rising concern in what are, seen from the street, high places.

   If government is thoroughly unprincipled and is at the same time pretty much out of control, if the butler and the rest of the help are freely helping themselves to the vintage stuff and giving their lip to their betters, established wealth is itself in some danger of being clipped. As the Herald Tribune somewhat primly observed, "An anarchistic moral climate prevails in Congress." The complaint is not, then, that the congressmen are Bolsheviks but that they are dedicated anarchists, which is surely just as bad or worse. If government men kick up their heels in wild abandon, the rule of the jungle, using government as a handy bludgeon, has returned and, as Thomas Hobbes said, life for everyone tends to become "nasty, brutish and short." If, as it turns out, government officials are surreptitiously enmeshed in a tangle of distractingly profitable involvements, where anyone comes out in the ensuing melée is chancy. Here the problem of government takes on particularly seamy hues, as much--in some ways, more--for the rich as for anyone else.

   But if the elite press expected a public uprising on the heels of these probing exposures, recalling the best efforts of the old-time "muckrakers" such as the famed Lincoln Steffens, the editors showed little knowledge of the political system or the public. Proved money-grabbing by elected officials in the atomic age piques a disoriented public far less than the latest amours of the Hollywood set, ax murders in Brooklyn or the birth of two-headed quintuplets. As long as there seemed some possibility of sandwiching "call girls" into l'affaire Bobby Baker a few years ago, public interest momentarily stirred. It faded as soon as the impresarios failed to produce the cash-minded damsels in undress. Tabloid readers sulked at being deprived of an American Profumo Affair.

   In what follows it should always be remembered that there is no question of illegality involved, Everything reported is strictly legal, just as Hitler's extermination of the Jews was legal--a little point I mention merely to suggest how much weight one may attach to the notion. And until further notice everything that follows is taken from the unreservedly patriotic Herald Tribune of June 9 through June 15, 1965.

   "Anyone who wants any legislation, buys it with cold, cold cash. I don't mean you go up to a Senator and ask him if he'd like to make $5,000 by voting for your bill. That's out today. So are broads and booze."

   The words were those of a well-known veteran Washington lobbyist who was explaining his modus operandi.

   "What you do is arrange to meet him alone somewhere--but not at his office. I almost never go up on the Hill, except maybe to show friends or relatives around.

   "You don't tell him what you want. He knows. You tell him you understand he has a tough campaign coming up--or he has had a tough campaign--and you'd like to help cover the costs. Then you leave an envelope with cash in it. The real reason you are giving the money is never mentioned.

   "Of course, you can't do this with all Congressmen. But generally it takes only a couple of votes in subcommittee to swing a bill one way or another. After you've been here awhile you know who to deal with." ⁴⁴

   As there are more than 4,000 registered lobbyists in Washington, nearly eight to a congressman, it is evident that there are plenty of paymasters. While bribes are illegal, random gifts are not; but to be fully legal they should be reported on income-tax returns. Presumably they are not. And presumably they come out of capacious expense accounts provided lobbyists by their principals, whoever they may be. "Campaign" contributions are legal but should be reported; many are not.

   An al fresco way of receiving gifts was disclosed by T. Lamar Caudle, an assistant attorney general who was convicted in 1956 of tax-fraud conspiracy. Caudle told the FBI that he customarily parked his car with the window open and was always pleasantly surprised that "somebody kept putting presents" in the back seat. The Herald Tribune doubted that congressmen use this method, which seems overly conspiratorial; the congressional deals are more apt to be right over the counter, thus disarming untutored observers.

   Lobbyists stand so high in Washington that they constitute an informal branch of government. Thus, Dale Miller, long a successful lobbyist, "is one of President Johnson's closest friends. The president accorded Mr. Miller, a fellow Texan, a signal honor by naming him chairman of the 1965 inauguration committee. Myron Weiner, lobbyist for the ocean freight forwarding industry, shared his Washington apartment for a while with Sen. Harrison Williams, D., N. J. During the Bobby Baker investigation it was disclosed that Mr. Weiner split a fee with Mr. Baker, even though the former Senate majority secretary reportedly performed no special service for it."

   And so it goes. The Herald Tribune continued:

   The relationship between Congressmen and lobbyists is based on reciprocity.

   Lobby organizations are the big campaign contributors and the buyers of most seats at political fund-raising banquets. In an age of skyrocketting campaign expenses, Congressmen need the financial handouts which lobby groups offer. ["Campaign expenses," while real, are in part a euphemism. As Frank R. Kent mordantly noted long ago, campaign-fund collectors have "sticky fingers"--that is, they pocket part of the money and divide it with cronies. Frank R. Kent, The Great Game of Politics, Doubleday, Page & Co., N.Y., 1923, pp. 131-33--F.L.]

   On their part, lobbyists require the support and votes of the lawmakers if their clients are to prosper in the fiercely competitive business world. [What happens when face-to-face competitors each bid for lawmakers' support was not inquired into.--F.L.]

   Generally, lobbyists solicit aid through "persuasive education," stressing the merits of their position; by wining and dining lawmakers and their aides, and by subtly offering rewards.

   The era of the outright bribe, when the little black bag stuffed with greenbacks was left on the desk, is fading with age.

   Few lobbyists try brazenly to buy votes with cash across the table. Instead, the lobbyist seeks to make the Congressman beholden to him. Should the lawmaker be on the fence, uninformed or indifferent concerning a measure, it is presumed he will feel obliged to favor the stand promoted by his lobbyist friend.

   One lobbyist said the latest ruse among his colleagues was to work through lawyers.

   "The lawyer-client relationship keeps everything confidential. The lawyer, who is never registered as a lobbyist, simply calls up the Congressman and says he represents a client on a matter in which the Congressman might be interested." ⁴⁵

   Corporation lobbyists have two main objectives: to influence legislation and to dampen enforcement of existing laws by federal corporate regulatory agencies such as the Federal Power Commission, the Federal Communications Commission and a long string of others the average rank-and-file nitwit believes to be standing vigilantly on guard. Simple inquiries by congressmen have the effect of deflecting the hand of law enforcement, because all these agencies are financed through appropriations voted by congressmen. The hostility of even one congressman can lead to severe reduction of an agency's needed funds, can even cause official heads to roll. In consequence, virtually all regulations on the books are only selectively applied.

   As to legislation, it was brought out in 1963 that John R. O'Donnell, a promoter of Philippine sugar interests, had bankrolled more than twenty congressmen in 1960 to insure passage of a dubious $73-milhon Philippine war claims bill for which he expected a fat commission. (Cases cited are only typical examples from among many offered; this text does not profess to be an exhaustive treatise, which would fill volumes if it went back over more than two or three years.)

   O. Roy Chalk, president of Trans Caribbean Airways, the D.C. Transit System and other projects, is a chum of Representative Abraham Multer, Democrat of New York, the Herald Tribune asserted. Multer achieved a certain amount of notoriety as an echo of Chalk's views, so much so that when a subway system to which Mr. Chalk is piously opposed in Washington was suggested Mr. Multer owlishly warned all and sundry that building it would surely increase the capital's crime rate.

   Stanley L. Sommer, a Washington public relations man associated with Morris Forgash, head of U.S. Freight Forwarders, admitted, said the Herald Tribune, that "many Senators" have been entertained on board the Forgash yacht "Natamor." Among other tidbits which the paper said Mr. Sommer related, he had picked up the tab for Senator Everett M. Dirksen, Mrs. Dirksen and her sister for a frolicsome Labor Day weekend in 1963 at the Carousel Motel, Ocean City, Maryland. The hotel was owned by Bobby Baker, ousted former secretary to the Senate Democratic Majority of which Majority Leader Lyndon B. Johnson was a free-wheeling ringmaster.

   It is noticeable throughout that it is mainly Establishment and fellow-traveling Legislators who are enmeshed in this sort of far-ranging entrepreneurial activity. The Establishment forms the spiderweb out of which operations are conducted and to which the operator returns for protection. Men banding together for protection are one source of Establishment power.

   Members of the House and Senate are of several economic categories. They are, first, of independent, partly or wholly hereditary means, well educated, who have acquired a general rational interest in government; some of the best ones, intellectually and morally, can be found in this group. In their various outlooks many of these recall the Founding Fathers, nearly all men of property. Unfortunately, they are greatly outnumbered by the dung-hill climbers whose political task it is to gyp their dung-hill constituents. There are, too, moderate-sized business and professional entrepreneurs, most of them unable to distinguish between their business and governmental duties; they use government as a tool of their businesses, a practice openly defended by the late Senator Robert Kerr of Oklahoma, an oil man who was often referred to as "The King of the Senate." There are, finally, those without means or firm business connections. Most of these, excepting only the conspicuously educated, are "on the make," looking upon the government much as brokers look upon the Stock Exchange: an opportunity to feather their nests and thus gain witless public esteem, status. A difference, however, is that brokers do not function under oath.

   And it is because congressmen have taken an ostentatious oath that one is entitled, without listening to any sophomoric mush about "human failings" as the orchestra plays "Hearts and Flowers," to subject them to sharp scrutiny and judgment. What one might be inclined to overlook in a broker, or even a banker, one cannot sensibly treat as "just one of those things" in a legislator or other official if one values reasonable civil security.

   In the passing of loaded legislation, many instances of which were cited by the staid Herald Tribune, the lawmakers manifestly act either for their own account or, as brokers, for the account of others. As the record shows, they function in both roles.

   Apart from direct gifts of money, which perhaps are what give most Establishment congressmen their financial starts, the prime way outsiders, mainly corporations, mobilize their zeal is by means of retainers through their law firms. Of 435 representatives and 100 senators, the Herald Tribune noted, 305 are lawyers. The firms of nearly all are under lucrative multicorporate retainer.

   While one cannot show in every case that a lawyer-congressman is supporting a client of his firm on the floor or in committees, it can be shown in many cases. In some instances one would be hard put to show a one-one connection between a client and a legislative beneficiary. The client-attorney relationships of the congressmen, however, show that both client and attorney are running out of the same corporate stables, flying the same battle flags. The congressmen, if not full-fledged corporate men, are so close to it in their thinking that they are indistinguishable from the officials of the United States Chamber of Commerce. Nobody has to tell the congressmen how to think, for example, on the subject of taxes if they think about them at all; they think that way spontaneously.

   The law-retainer racket, often combined with threatened extortion, is very old and is touched upon by Charles Francis Adams II, one-time president of the Union Pacific Railroad, in his Autobiography (1916). In Washington on business for the railroad Adams at once encountered "a prominent member of the U.S. Senate" who was still alive, retired, when Adams wrote: ". . . he has a great reputation for ability, and a certain reputation, somewhat fly-blown, it is true, for rugged honesty. I can only say that I found him an ill-mannered bully, and by all odds the most covertly and dangerously corrupt man I ever had opportunity and occasion carefully to observe in public life. His grudge against the Union Pacific was that it had not retained him--he was not, as counsel, in its pay. While he took excellent care of those competing concerns which had been wiser in this respect, he never lost an opportunity of posing as the fearless antagonist of corporations when the Union Pacific came to the front. For that man, on good and sufficient grounds, I entertained a deep dislike. He was distinctly dishonest--a senatorial bribe-taker."

   This sort of thing is virtually standard legislative practice in the United States and was the thought in the mind of the The Nation (June 26, 1967) when it charged that the nature of the case made against Senator Thomas Dodd before he was censured by the Senate had been largely a cover-up. John Stennis, chairman of the Ethics Committee, The Nation charged, had steered the Senate away from considering the more serious charges against Dodd: "that he had (1) threatened to investigate the movie industry but, after taking a political contribution from the Motion Picture Association, dropped the probe; (2) threatened to investigate the television industry, but dropped the matter after taking money from a major member of the industry; (3) taken money from insurance companies while supposedly investigating them; (4) taken money from the firearms industry, and thereafter cooled in his ardor to control interstate shipments of guns; (5) used an airplane belonging to McKesson & Robbins, the drug makers, while sitting on an antitrust subcommittee investigating the drug industry; (6) taken a gift from Westinghouse's lobbyist while sitting on a judiciary subcommittee probing price fixing in the electrical industry; (7) sought favors and jobs for a number of groups and individuals who had contributed to his seemingly bottomless need for money."

   Dodd, in fact, was a fairly typical legislator, fitting right into the history of the American congressional system.

   Apart from the incentives of surreptitious gifts, campaign contributions and law retainers, congressmen ferret out independent legislative and bureaucratic incentives strictly for their own account. Not only brokers, they are entrepreneurs and promoters as well. They are especially concentrated in the building-and-loan, television, insurance, local banking and credit fields, all subject to regulation and franchising by governmental agencies. Some are also personally interested in a variety of other government-regulated business activities, including the juggling of oil lands. They are, not to put too fine a point on it, estate builders. Estate building represents their philosophic horizon.

   First a word about law firms.

   Aware that some question of propriety might arise, some congressmen are related to two-name law firms. There is, first, their original firm. There is, also, a newer firm listing all partners' names except their own but occupying the same office, employing the same personnel, using the same telephone number and the two sets of names on the same door. The Herald Tribune photographed some of these novelties.

   It is presumably through the newer firm that business about which there might be some question is siphoned. The congressman does not participate on the books in such business. But, also presumably, his partners in the old firm are grateful. Presumably he is given a compensatory share in the old firm, doing business with nongovernment-connected clients, and is excluded from direct participation in the juicy second firm. Thus appearances are preserved.

   But, even so, the single-name law firm prevails. Most congressmen don't care about appearances.

   As the Herald Tribune noted, Senator Everett Dirksen, a big Establishmentarian and like his close friend Lyndon B. Johnson an ardent public partisan of prayer and God, is a member of the obscure Peoria, Illinois, law firm of Davis, Morgan and Witherell. This little firm numbers among its clients the formidable International Harvester Company, Pabst Brewing Company, the National Lock Company and the Panhandle Eastern Pipeline Company, a sprawling giant.

   "During a 1959 Senate debate on pending legislation to bar pressures on Federal regulatory agencies, Sen. Dirksen said he would continue contacting them for constituents until such time the law provided he could be 'put in jail for doing it.'" ⁴⁶

   "In addition to his public chores, he is a . . . director of the First Federal Savings and Loan Association of Chicago. . . .

   "Sen. Dirksen's business ties meshed neatly with his politics, earlier this year, with the appointment of Carl E. Bagge, a Chicago railroad attorney, as an industry-oriented member of the Federal Power Commission. It was on the Senator's recommendation that President Johnson appointed Mr. Bagge." ⁴⁷

   The Herald Tribune then recalled that the Dirksen law firm represented Panhandle Eastern Pipe Line, which "falls within the jurisdiction of the FPC." Dirksen, therefore, is seen to play a variety of roles. Everybody--legislator, president, law firm, corporations, commissions and lobbyists--is rolled together in the same capacious bed.

   Dirksen, although nominally a Republican, bobbed up in several parts of the Herald Tribune inquest. In 1962 he received, according to this rockribbed Republican newspaper, concentrated campaign contributions from members of the pharmaceutical industry: officials of the Warner-Lambert Pharmaceutical Company, the Olin Mathieson Chemical Corporation (Squibb) and G. D. Searle and Company, drug manufacturers.

   "During this period," said the Herald Tribune, "Sen. Dirksen was leading the opposition against Sen. Estes Kefauver's campaign to regulate the cost and safety of consumer drugs.

   "In his book, The Real Voice, on the late Sen. Kefauver's drug fight, author Richard Harris says that Sen. Dirksen became known as the defender of the medical and pharmaceutical interests." ⁴⁸

   Representative Claude Pepper, Democrat of Florida, former senator, a practicing lawyer with three Florida offices, and an officer and director of the Washington Federal Savings and Loan Association of Miami Beach, in 1963 introduced two bills authorizing savings and loan associations to buy tax-exempt securities. He was at the time a member of the House Banking and Currency Committee which passed on the bills. Sitting on the board of Pepper's Savings and Loan Association was Arthur Courshon, one of the chief savings and loan lobbyists in Washington. One bill was enacted into sacred law in 1964.

   Pepper lost his Senate seat in 1950 after fourteen years' incumbency in an election that achieved some fame owing to the novelty of the charges against him by George Smathers. The latter bawled to the swampwater electorate that Pepper had a sister who was a "thespian" and before his own marriage had "practiced celibacy." One wonders what would happen in the outlands if some candidate were ever accused of being a carnivore, heterosexual and biped who had caused his wife to undergo parturition. Very probably he would be lynched before a dictionary could be ordered from Sears, Roebuck. Many congressmen, in sober fact, are paranymphs.

   Not a few statesmen like Senator Smathers, Democrat of Florida, although no longer active as lawyers, nevertheless "promote legislation favorable to their law firm's clients. Over the years Sen. Smathers has supported bills beneficial to Standard Oil of New Jersey, International Telephone and Telegraph Corp., Pan American World Airways, the Florida East Coast Railway and several insurance companies, all clients of the Miami law firm which bears his name." ⁴⁹ He is a real corporate fan.

   Senator Sam J. Ervin, Jr., Democrat of North Carolina, a member of the judiciary Committee which had held hearings on four of nine sitting Supreme Court justices, argued as a paid attorney against the government before the court for the Milliken textile interests. ⁵⁰

   Two businessmen-Senators--Wallace F. Bennett, R., Utah, and Edward V. Long, D., Mo.--have successfully blocked the "truth-in-lending" bill which Sen. Paul Douglas, D., Ill., and a host of other Senators have been sponsoring since 1960 [said the Herald Tribune ]. Sen. Bennett, former president of the National Association of Manufacturers, is head of an automobile distributorship and director of an insurance company. Sen. Long, a director of a St. Louis bank, has been a vocal supporter for savings and loan institutions since he served in the Missouri legislature. [More recently he has been shown tied up with James Hoffa's Teamsters' Union.]

   U.S. Controller of Currency James Saxon once commented that about two-thirds of all Congressmen are involved in savings and loan associations. An aid later reported Mr. Saxon's estimate was somewhat exaggerated but that a substantial number of Congressmen were indeed connected with savings and loan groups.

   He said that of the 1,200 or so inquiries which the Controller's office receives annually regarding bank charters and branch applications, at least half come from Congressmen. Most of the inquiries, the aid said, were simple requests for information without any suggestion of pressure.

   But as pointed out by George B. Gallaway, author and government expert, "A telephone call from a Senator or Congressman can paralyze the will of a government executive and alter the course of national policy.

   In other cases, Sen. Jennings Randolph, D., W. Va., an insurance company director, has taken an active role in debate on proposed medical insurance legislation. His deciding vote killed medicare in the Senate in 1962.

   Rep. Multer, chairman of the subcommittee on bank supervision, is privately associated with banking operations. ⁵¹

   Senator B. Everett Jordan, Democrat of North Carolina, is chairman of the strategic Rules Committee and frequently has argued on the Senate floor against allowing increases in competing foreign textile imports as recommended by the Tariff Commission. Increasing such imports is part of a supposed national policy of knitting together a raveled world.

   The senator is himself a domestic textile man, an officer and director of the Sellers Manufacturing Company of North Carolina.

   It was before his committee that the case of Bobby Baker, hired secretary to the Senate Majority, was brought for investigation. Baker was accused of improperly using his position in personal out-of-bounds windfall moneymaking schemes. And it was Senator Jordan who abruptly closed the inquiry as the trail grew hot with the historic remark: "We're not investigating senators."

   "Would Bobby Baker have been able to engage in shadowy business deals if his Senate bosses had been above reproach?" the Herald Tribune asked rhetorically. ⁵² Baker, in the view of sophisticates, merely paralleled the operations of his masters, from whom as a very young man he had learned everything he knew about anti-public skulduggery.

   Alluding to the Bobby Baker case, the Herald Tribune said it "raised doubts about the moral fiber of the government right up to the steps of the White House." ⁵³ It was, indeed, precisely as attention was directed toward the Senate group of which Lyndon B. Johnson had been a rabidly prayerful member that Senator Jordan abruptly closed off the tepid Baker investigation.

   The television industry embraces many congressmen. It has been estimated that 75 per cent of congressmen have interests in television-radio broadcasting franchises. The Herald Tribune found that nine senators and fourteen representatives had direct or family-related interests in broadcasting stations. "While he was in the Senate, the family of Lyndon B. Johnson held the only television broadcasting license in Austin, Tex."

   According to the Wall Street Journal, Mr. Johnson's large-scale property-dealing activities began when be was a representative back in the 1930's. ⁵⁴

   "Unofficial estimates," said the Herald Tribune, "pegged the President's fortune, accrued mostly through his radio-TV holdings, from nine to 14 million. Last August in a public statement he listed his net assets at $3,484,098. A month later, Mr. Humphrey, who sometimes refers to himself as an 'unemployed druggist,' reported his net worth as totaling $171,396." ⁵⁵

   Earlier Barry Goldwater, Republican presidential candidate, disclosed that he and his wife were worth $1.7 million mostly in stocks, all of it inherited money.

   Johnson, by contrast, was a poor boy who made good-in politics. Back in the 1920's he worked on Texas road gangs as a laborer and was variously employed in catch-as-catch-can jobs until he went to Congress in 1934 after a brief stint as state director of the depression-born National Youth Administration. Those were lean days but, as the Democratic song promised, happy days were returning and soon everything would again be as it was before the dismal crash of 1929. Once on the government payroll Johnson, like many of his colleagues, was never pried loose.

   The Johnson fortune, and the miracle of its growth despite the monkish immersion of its architect in steamy affairs of state, came in for a great deal of sudden press attention. What figures are available on it were unprecedentedly disclosed during the presidential campaign of 1964. This revelation resulted from many rumors of the vast magnitude of the Johnson holdings and particularly from a cold-eyed 7,000-word analysis in the Wall Street Journal of August 11, 1964. The editors of this elite feuilleton had assigned a three-man assault team of ace reporters to invade Texas and find out what caused all the aroma. Their report heightened the worst fears abroad in the land, leading to the later somewhat perfumed self-disclosure reported in the New York Times on August 20, 1964.

   The Journal led off its findings with the following rollicking heading:

           LYNDON'S PALS
   HIS HOMETOWN COTERIE
   WHEELS AND DEALS IN
       LAND AND BROADCASTING
   THEY BUY INTO AUSTIN BANKS,
       TRADE PROPERTY WITH LBJ
       AND PLAY SOME POLITICS TOO
   DIRECT LINE TO THE WHITE HOUSE

   What engages our attention here is not what might interest a political partisan: the fact that this was about the holder of the highest competitive office in the land. It would be a grave mistake to look upon Mr. Johnson's financial affairs as rarely exceptional. They are, rather, a baroque pattern of a Congressional Establishment man's affairs. I remarked earlier that none of these men operate alone. One man could not juggle all this stuff. Behind practically each Establishment figure is organization: a standard political organization of the Republican or Democratic variety and a personal political-financial organization of long-time cronies.

   This area of our politics has not been studied, as far as I am aware, by our political scientists. What shows on the surface in Washington is only the tips of the various icebergs. These personal political-financial networks show what politics are about to most of their successful professional practitioners: chiefly a way of self-enrichment. The pubpols are trying to become junior finpols.

   So, taking what the Journal found out as a paradigm of approximately what would be found in practically every Establishment case, there was disclosed the following:

   The Johnson affairs revolved around the hitherto obscure Austin law firm of Clark, Thomas, Harris, Denius and Winters, "patronized by giant national corporations." A separate lawyer, A. W. Moursund of Johnson City, was found to be Mr. Johnson's personal attorney, realty partner and a key figure in his affairs. He was "linked by private telephone circuit to the LBJ Ranch and the White House." All the lawyers interviewed talked themselves down, jocosely. "I'm just a country lawyer," said Moursund. "I'm just a poor boy, born and raised in East Texas, trying to make an honest buck," said Don Thomas of the law firm. Said Mr. Ed Clark: "Spell my name right--I need the business."

   Mr. Johnson, the Johnson family, these lawyers and other cronies, the Journal found, held parallel or interlocking interests in television-radio properties, vast tracts of land made valuable by federal electrification and Johnson-sponsored dam projects over the years and shares in clusters of Texas banks that gave the group enormous credit resources. Said the Journal: "According to experts of the American Bar Association it is unusual for law firms to invest substantially in bank stocks, but perfectly legitimate."

   There was, first, the Texas Broadcasting Company, a name substituted for The LBJ Company when Mr. Johnson unexpectedly became president of the United States. This outfit owned the various radio and exclusive television stations of the Johnsons. A "competing" radio station, working out of the same address, had been long before set up by Johnson associates and employees: John Connally, now governor of Texas, Walter Jenkins, Merrill Connally, Willard Deason, Melvin Winters (the Johnson City contractor who is a trustee of the Johnson foundation), Robert L. Phinney (an old Johnson college roommate who became Austin's postmaster and more recently director of the Internal Revenue Service for the region), and various other Johnson employees or associates.

   The Journal was piqued by two contrasting strands it found in Johnson affairs: the pattern of monopoly as in the television broadcasting station and concentrated bank holdings, and the pattern of apparent competition within the group itself.

   The broadcasting enterprises are housed in a modern office building at Tenth and Brazos Street in Austin owned by the Brazos-Tenth Street Corporation, a holding company held in the name of Don Thomas of the law firm. Mr. Thomas denied point-blank that he was just a "front man" for LBJ. Yet he is also the secretary and a director of the broadcasting company, and a trustee of The LBJ Company Profit-Sharing and Incentive Plan and of the Johnson City Foundation, an LBJ creation.

   The Brazos-Tenth Street Corporation, the Journal found, figures in baffling big land deals with Mr. Johnson. Court records showed that it bought property from The LBJ Company and resold it the same day to Lyndon B. Johnson in person. It engaged in a series of such land deals with the then vice president, as local records showed, and in some cases acted as the buyerseller in deals between Mr. and Mrs. Johnson. The Journal explained them as possible tax maneuvers through a "conduit agency."

   Other deals were recounted in which parcels of land were sold over the years in a circle extending through Johnson companies and employees and then winding up again in the hands of the original owner, Donald Thomas of the law firm.

   Money for the various deals, said the Journal, was supplied by banks in which the "members of the Johnson inner circle have an interest and a voice."

   Mr. Moursund himself was found to be a big dealer in land tracts, held fifty-fifty with The LBJ Company. According to Mr. Thomas, the president owned about 5,000 acres of land, most of it ranch land but 27 acres of it bought back in the 1930's for about $300 an acre and now worth about $20,000 an acre, a rise from $8,100 to $540,000. In addition to being a partner of LBJ in big land deals Mr. Moursund was a trustee of the broadcasting company stock and of the Johnson City Foundation, the philanthropic distributions in one year of which were found to total $8,000 out of $11,000 income and an increase of $89,000 in asset value.

   Both Mr. Moursund and the law firm were found to be extensively interested in regional banks, and the Journal reporters found the belief strong in the muted region that Mr. Johnson was an eminence grise in the background. Mr. Moursund, his mother, his law partner, Mr. Thomas of Austin and the Brazos-Tenth Street Corporation acquired control of the Moore State Bank of Llano, Texas, soon after Messrs. Moursund and Johnson had paid it a visit.

   "Lyndon's associates own or manage stock in all eight of Austin's banks," said the Journal. "Here in Johnson City, at about the time Lyndon Johnson was being inaugurated as Vice President, Brazos-Tenth acquired four-fifths of the stock of the town's only bank, Citizens State (resources: about $3 million). On the board sit Mr. Thomas, Mr. Moursund and another key member of the inner circle, Jesse Kellam, president of the Johnson broadcasting company." Kellam is a college chum of Johnson's, succeeded him in 1934 as Youth Administration director, helped him with his first congressional campaign, now owns stock in four Austin banks and is a director of one of the biggest, the Capital National.

   But the big man at Capital National was Ed Clark of the law firm, a former Texas secretary of state, lobbyist and political and legal troubleshooter for Mr. Johnson. Clark and his partners are big stockholders in Capital National.

   Mr. Moursund is a director of the American National, another big Austin bank of which the Johnson Profit-Sharing Plan and the Johnson City Foundation are also stockholders. "The Johnson foundation also has holdings in three other Austin banks; its total of bank stock comes to roughly $137,000."

   In Austin National, the biggest bank in the region, Brazos-Tenth has a stockholding foothold.

   John Connally served as the first president of the ostensibly competing radio outfit, KVET. Connally had been secretary to Representative Johnson prior to 1948 and was manager of the presidential bid of LBJ in 1960. As governor of Texas he is now conceded to have complete Establishment control of the state, having routed the liberals. Connally originally subscribed to half of the new radio station's stock for $25,000, which he borrowed from Ed Clark's Capital National Bank. Mr. Clark was also a founder of the radio company that entered the field against the Johnsons' KTBC, headed by Mrs. Johnson.

   The Federal Communications Commission, the Journal noted, apparently did not notice KVET had the same address as KTBC and numbered among its founders KTBC personnel. It is illegal for the owner of one station to hold even minority interest in a competing station in the same town. Walter Jenkins, later an administrative aid to President Johnson, was an early stockholder in the Connally station.

   Difficulties in Washington connected with the new station were quickly cleared. Its bid for a wavelength held by a San Antonio station, seventy miles away, was quickly resolved by the FCC; KVET got the desired wavelength. "Then the Civil Aeronautics Administration complained erection of the 210-foot broadcasting tower would 'present an undue hazard for the safe operation of aircraft.' But two weeks later it changed its mind.

   "KVET, like Lady Bird's KTBC, had no trouble getting network affiliation, signing up with Mutual. To this day these two remain the only network outlets in Austin, though the city now has seven radio stations."

   Connally in 1955 became attorney for Sid Richardson, the multimillionaire Fort Worth oilman, thus cementing the relations of the group with the inner-circle depletion-allowance crowd, of which Mr. Johnson in the Senate was always an ardent supporter. At this time Mr. Connally turned over his control in KVET to Willard Deason, old Johnson school chum.

   "Those who drop in to visit station president Deason nowadays can hear his cheerful view of competing with the Johnsons and his cozy recollections of how it all came about. They can see two pictures adorning his office. One is a brown-tone photo taken in 1932, of schoolmate Lyndon. The other is a large autographed portrait of the President of the United States."

   It was hard on the heels of this instructive report that Mr. Johnson took an unprecedented step for a president of the United States by disclosing figures on his financial position. The principal, assets shown consisted of the Texas Broadcasting Corporation and real estate. The total valuation placed on them was $3,484,098. Ownership titles were split among the family so that the president apparently held $378,081 of assets, his wife $2,126,298 and the two minor daughters close to $500,000 each. No mention was made of the Johnson City Foundation.

   As the Times pointed out, original ground-floor costs were used in arriving at valuations and the auditors themselves noted that the method used was "not intended to indicate the values that might be realized if the investments were sold."

   Unfeeling and obviously partisan Republicans called the valuations "incredibly low" and charged that the method used was "like the city of New York listing the value of Manhattan Island at $24," the original price supposed to have been paid to the Indians.

   Financial analysts in general contended that merely the holdings shown were worth up to $15 million or more.

   There were internal discrepancies in the report as published. Texas ranch properties listed among total balance-sheet assets were set at $502,478, a figure carried forward from an erroneous computation that on the basis of the itemization given should have added up to $1,445,822. Either the total given is wrong or the items composing it are erroneously stated, as anyone may ascertain by consulting the Times.

   In the preceding decade the family had received admitted cash income exceeding $1.8 million, irrespective of the pro forma quadrupling in value of assets. The original cost of the broadcasting enterprise was $24,850 in the period 1944-47. Undistributed profits of $2,445,830 after the deduction of purely potential capital gain taxes were solely used to bring its valuation to $2,470,680. Capital gain tax will never be paid unless the broadcasting enterprise is sold.

   The broadcasting company, it was shown, is wholly owned by Mrs. Johnson and her two daughters. It owned or had an interest in broadcasting facilities in Austin, Waco, Bryan and Victoria in Texas, and in Ardmore, Oklahoma.

   Both in type of personal holdings and those distributed among kin there was nothing to differentiate the statement from that of any Wall Street tycoon except the numerical details. The president and his wife held respectively $159,270 and $239,270 of tax-exempt state and local government bonds. Each held ranch properties valued at $227,114 and minor amounts of "other assets."

   Properties owned by Mr. and Mrs. Johnson were placed in trust in November, 1963, immediately after he assumed the presidency. They will be so held until he no longer holds federal office. Yet, he held high federal office before the creation of this trusteeship, which has the sole effect of placing the properties under the management of nominees. It does not represent a divorce.

   Knowing he is the beneficiary under this trusteeship, is the president's mind so free of property influence that he is likely to come out for, say, strict government regulation of television advertising or the end of tax-free oil? Is he likely to agree with Kennedy appointee Newton Minow that television is a "wasteland"?

   Said the New York Times editorially on September 25, 1964, about this arrangement:

   The property has been placed in trust while the President is in office, and Mr. Johnson will unquestionably take special pains to avoid any charge of improper influence over the F.C.C. But a conflict of interest remains as long as the nation's chief officeholder possesses a stake, direct or indirect, in a property he is charged with regulating.

   This property was acquired when Mr. Johnson was in Congress. He was doing what many other Congressmen . . . have done. There is, unfortunately, no law against Congressmen owning television and radio facilities or having a financial interest in other franchises or businesses that are either regulated by Federal agencies or dependent on Government contracts. But the very fact that Mr. Johnson set up a trust when he assumed the Presidency indicates that ownership of Government-regulated business suggests a conflict--for members of Congress as well as for the occupant of the White House.

   The Times suggested "divestiture" of the property as a way out, without suggesting the nature of such legerdemain. If it were sold the president would realize a handsome profit. If it were given away for charity it would defeat the intended purpose from the beginning.

   The insight given by the Johnson financial statement, as far as it went, into the affairs of a big Establishmentarian and career politician who thirty years before was as poor as the proverbial church mouse enabled reflective observers to see where rhetoric leaves off and substance begins in the thinking of the Establishment. The energy devoted to putting together from scratch and sheltering these properties should be some guide to personal motivation. What was disclosed bore none of the earmarks of a part-time hobby.

   What is even more strange is that even as president Mr. Johnson has continued large-scale land and cattle purchases through agents, paralleling value-bringing state highway and bridge-building projects, according to the New York Times in an extensive report of December 26, 1966 (23:2-3). This report of total holdings more recently of 14,000 acres in five separate ranches led Washington wits to say that Mr. Johnson has been the biggest real estate operator as president of the United States since President Jefferson's "Louisiana Purchase."

   Despite his single-handed involvement of the United States in a big Asiatic land war, long held by the Chiefs of Staff as something to be avoided at all costs, Mr. Johnson is nevertheless hailed by many as the architect of "The Great Society," an apparition that is due to materialize no doubt at about the same time as grass-roots communism appears in Russia and the Soviet state "withers away." just how much stock one should take in the Great Society fantasy was suggested at the annual get-together of the American Political Science Association in 1965, as reported by the New York Times:

   Although a high proportion of them unquestionably voted for Mr. Johnson last fall, the comments of the political scientists indicated a shocking skepticism about Washington's earnest belief that this President has introduced--through his Great Society programs, his style of vigorous personal leadership and his invocation of the virtues of one "great big party"--a dramatic new element in American politics.

   Nelson Polsby of Wesleyan University captured the prevailing view when he remarked:

   "There's nothing new about all this. All you really have is a swollen Congressional majority, that Barry Goldwater handed the Democrats, passing programs that have been kicking around since New Deal and Fair Deal days."

   A colleague from Wesleyan, Clement E. Vose, compounded the heresy, saying that the Johnson record "is not one of innovation, but of ratification of ideas that have been germinating since the time of Henry Wallace." ⁵⁶

   So much for "The Great Society."

   Before closing the books on the Horatio Algers in politics, some further nuggets from the valuable Herald Tribune series, Put together by ace reporter Dom Bonafede, should be exhibited:

   "Civic participation" by applicants is one of the yardsticks used by the Federal Communications Commission in granting TV licenses, and being a congressman is interpreted as "civic participation" given weight in licensing--a doctrine that Democratic Senator William J. Proxmire of Wisconsin called "an amazing proposition." ⁵⁷

   Representative William E. Miller, Republican candidate for vice president in 1964, was on the payroll of the Lockport Felt Company while in Congress, where he had "openly promoted legislation favorable to the company on the floor." He was made a vice president of the company two weeks after leaving Congress. ⁵⁸

   Senators Spessard Holland and George Smathers of Florida and B. Everett Jordan and Samuel J. Ervin, Jr., of North Carolina were co-sponsors of a bill in which the Florida Power and Light Company was "the prime mover" to exempt from federal regulation private utilities not directly linked with outof-state transmission networks. ⁵⁹

   Until he recently sold the bulk of his holdings, Sen. Warren G. Magnuson, D., Wash., the Commerce Committee chairman, was part owner of a Seattle broadcasting station. One of the committee's functions is to oversee operations of the FCC.

   Sen. John L. McClellan, D., Ark., the famed rackets-buster, is chairman of the subcommittee investigating the Federal banking system, even though he is a bank director in private life. Another subcommittee member, Sen. Sam J. Ervin, D., N.C., also holds a bank directorship.

   Rep. William C. Cramer, R., Fla., spoke against the Administration's war [sic!] on poverty almost from the program's inception. But his protests appear to have been muted ever since a laundry service he heads in St. Petersburg was awarded a contract with Women's job Corps. ⁶⁰

   Although the Corrupt Practices Act of 1925 requires congressmen to report campaign contributions and expenditures, limiting what can be spent to $5,000 for representatives and $25,000 for senators, large numbers of members of both Houses report "none" on the required forms after each election. ⁶¹

   Yet carloads of money are nevertheless spent, or at least collected, in congressional campaigns. Only $18.5 million was formally reported as collected for the 1962 "off year" campaigns, but an expertly estimated $100 million was collected. ⁶²

   Political money is really tossed about in a large way.

   "Newly elected Rep. Richard L. Ottinger, D., N.Y., a multi-millionaire in private life, spent almost $200,000 through 34 committees to win his seat. Yet, his campaign report lists expenditures of $4,500 and no contributions." ⁶³

   Although there are criminal penalties prescribed for negligent failure to file a report or to file a false report, there has never been a prosecution under the Act of 1925.

   "Ingenious methods of raising campaign funds are developed. . . . Card games are held in which a portion of the pot from each hand is set aside for a campaign committee. For many years, Rep. Michael J. Kirwan, of Ohio, House Democratic Campaign Committee Chairman, staged a St. Patrick's Day party for the purpose of soliciting campaign funds." ⁶⁴

   Cocktail parties are a standard fixture where lobbyists are panhandled for handouts to support democracy. One lobbyist told the Herald Tribune that it usually cost him $100 for a single drink "and a "cold shrimp on a toothpick," which was perhaps cheap.

   A generally favored swindle is to run $100- to $1,000-a-plate testimonial dinners, production cost about $10 apiece, and to send twenty-five to a hundred tickets to various corporate people, who generally grab them like manna and distribute them to the office help. If the corporate boys fail to remit they suspect an undeserved demerit may be entered against their names in some little black book.

   While a direct gift of money in excess of $3,000, except (as the courts have percipiently ruled) expensive presents to a lady friend, are subject to tax, a gift in recognition of "public service' is not so taxable. Although such gifts are not lavished on low-paid scientists, artists, military officers and profound cogitators, who may be supposed to have rendered some public service, they are rife in the case of officials, especially congressmen. It is not necessary to pass them money in some back alley. What is done is to stage a glittering public affair, with hundreds of well-heeled customers present, and to present the modest recipient with a large certified check as the cameras flash the scene for posterity. What results are photographs reminiscent of Renaissance paintings titled "Adoration of the Infanta." Diners leave with the vague semi-alcoholic feeling that they have participated in a religious ceremony, have at least paid homage to a glorious Republic once sadly betrayed by wicked, wicked, wicked Benedict Arnold.

   Lest any strait-laced, dyspeptic methodologist charge that I am drawing my data from only two sources which, although highly orthodox, could be wrong or wrong-headed, let the future historian know that among many other sources on congressional skulduggery there are the nationally syndicated Washington columns of Drew Pearson, a practitioner of the journalistic craft for more than forty years.

   Not only do we encounter many members of the cast we already are familiar with in the Pearson columns but a host of new names ooze into view week after week.

   "Any pressure group that is rich and powerful enough can find a champion in Everett Dirksen," said Pearson. "It is his conviction that the special interests are entitled to a voice in the Senate. His office has been headquarters for almost every major group--the drug industry, gas and oil combine, food packagers, etc.--that has had a legislative problem.

   "To no one's particular surprise, Dirksen's law firm in faraway Peoria, Ill., has collected retainers from many a giant corporation whose interests the Senator has served in Washington." ⁶⁵

   A few other nuggets from the Pearson columns--the nuggets alone would fill a book--are as follows:

   Representative William H. Harsha, Jr., Republican of Ohio, has been a strong opponent of the Federal Mass Transportation Act, designed to develop rail and commuter services for clogged cities. His law firm represents the Greyhound Bus Lines. The congressman favors limiting imports of residual fuel oil. His firm represents Phillips Petroleum and Ashland Refining Company. ⁶⁶

   Representative Charles Chamberlain, Republican of Michigan, introduced a bill to repeal the manufacturers' excise tax on cars and trucks. His law firm represented the United Trucking Service and the Detroit Automobile Inter-Insurance Exchange as well as the Panhandle Eastern Pipeline Company of Texas, which like other companies appears to make use of many congressional law firms. ⁶⁷

   In the 1940's Representative Victor Wickersham, Democrat of Oklahoma, asserting "I am a poor man," advocated increased congressional salaries. Despite still moderate congressional salaries, he was more recently set on getting back into office. In an application filed with the Federal Communications Commission to buy radio station KREK in Sapulpa, he stated his current net worth at $1,579,789, placing him among some 90,000 millionaires. Pearson traced various typical flourishes in the financial efflorescence of Wickersham over the years. ⁶⁸

   Upon the impending retirement of Representative Oren Harris, chairman of the House Commerce Committee, to accept a presidential appointment as a United States judge, Pearson noted that Harris was a stockholder in Station KRBB of El Dorado, Arkansas, and as a close associate of Ham Moses of the Arkansas Power and Light Company "had introduced more special-interest legislation than any member of Congress."

   Because of the inability to find a suitable replacement for Harris, said Pearson, the lobbyists asked Senator McClellan to intervene and hold up at the White House Harris's appointment for the stated reason of a "ticklish" election in Arkansas. The president obliged.

   "This will help Madison Avenue, but it puts the President in a bad light in regard to his family radio-TV property in Texas. He has claimed that he has kept aloof from influencing the Federal Communications Commission; but now he continues in power the congressional chairman who has slapped down the commission on behalf of the big networks.

   "Note--It's significant that Mr. Johnson has been very chummy with the big networks, as witness the repeated White House dinner invitations to network executives. . . ." ⁶⁹

   How it may work out when anyone drives a high-placed official into a tight corner was shown in the case of Senator Thomas J. Dodd of Connecticut, as reported by Pearson. The FBI had been informed of documentary data in Pearson's hands and photographed and rephotographed it.

   [Pearson's subaltern had] been working with half a dozen prospective witnesses, all former Dodd employees. . . . These were young people who had been shocked at what was happening in Dodd's office and departed. They felt under moral obligation to report what was happening.

   The G-men called on the witnesses all right, but didn't ask a single question about Dodd, his conduct, whether he had diverted funds from testimonial dinners to his own pocket or whether he had acted on behalf of an agent for a foreign power, Gen. Julius Klein.

   Instead, the FBI crossexamined these young people about the alleged theft of Dodd's documents. They also heckled them about other stories Jack Anderson and I had written.

   As fast as the FBI discovered the identity of the witnesses, they were bullied and badgered, hounded and harassed. One lost his job on a House committee; the news of his dismissal came from Dodd's office. Another . . . since submitting his resignation . . . has been unable to find another job. Others have had their jobs threatened. One woman, seven months pregnant, was grilled by agents for three hours.

   Agents hauled some witnesses right into Dodd's office for cross-examination and behaved as if they were working for the Senator. Other witnesses were alternatively soft-soaped and threatened with Federal prosecution.

   I have been around Washington a long time, but have never seen such an example of police state operation.

   Such investigations, of course, do not happen by accident. They usually go beyond the Attorney General, Mr. Katzenbach, an awfully nice guy but a bit wishy-washy when it comes to standing up to the White House or the Senate Judiciary Committee, of which Tom Dodd is a member.

   Such investigations usually go right up to the President himself. Johnson has on his desk a direct private phone to J. Edgar Hoover. They are very old friends, dating back to the days when I used to visit in Johnson's home when he was a gawky young Congressman from Texas living just across the street from Hoover's well-appointed bachelor abode.

   Johnson is not only a friend of Hoover's but he is a friend of Dodd's. It takes a real friend to make the two trips he made to Connecticut to speak at testimonial dinners which raised $100,000 for Tom's personal bank account.

   Johnson did all right for Tom. He hoisted him to a choice position on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, ahead of other Senators, a vantage point from which he was able to work more effectively for Gen. Klein. And he almost picked Tom to run with him for Vice President. ⁷⁰

   While much more along the same line could be cited it is time to close the books on this phase of our quest for enlightenment. Suffice it to say that a majority of members in both Houses are tainted with what is euphemistically known as a "conflict of interest." There is, however, as readily seen, really no conflict of interest involved. The line of interest is clearcut and unambiguously pointed in one direction--to personal nest-feathering at public expense. Nor are only overt Establishment people involved. Democratic Senator Thomas Dodd was never a recognized Establishment man, perhaps one reason he was made an object of gingerly inquiry by the Senate for actions little different from those of others except that he involved himself with a registered agent of unholy foreign interests and stepped into delicate areas subject to foreign policy and the jurisdiction of the Foreign Relations Committee under vigilant Chairman J. William Fulbright.

   But where is the line to be drawn on congressional self-dealing? What difference does it make whether the havoc caused is international or domestic?

   Some fairly feeble solutions have been proposed for this parasitism at the heart of the political system. One is that congressmen be required to disclose their personal financial holdings so that the public may evaluate their votes, thus determining whether they are cast on the merits of a case or for personal Profit. This proposal has been supported by Senators Clark, Wayne Morse, Paul Douglas, Clifford Case, Jacob Javits, Kenneth Keating, Maurine Neuberger and others--all non-Establishmentarians In the House it was supported by Edith Green, Ogden Reid and John V. Lindsay. Senators Clark, Hugh Scott of Pennsylvania, Stephen Young of Ohio, William Proxmire of Wisconsin, Morse of Oregon and Mike Mansfield of Montana have voluntarily disclosed their personal financial holdings and Paul Douglas rendered an annual public account of his income and expenditures. They have had few emulators.

   Senator Dirksen predictably objected to the proposed law on the clownish ground that it would be "an invasion of privacy" and would make him a "second-class citizen" into whose private affairs every vagrant Peeping Tom could penetrate.

   Apart from the fact that the Establishment, as a sovereign force effectively unchecked by any knowledgeable electorate, will never enact such a measure, if it did who would enforce it?

   Again, if congressmen disclosed their holdings, such disclosure would not portend much even if it was made annually. For the source of the poor-boy congressman's original stake consists in most cases obviously of under-the-counter gifts, ambiguous campaign contributions, legal retainers, public testimonial awards and benevolent bank loans. And all such, if subject to disclosure, could be kept in the names of wives, parents, daughters, sons, cousins and the like.

   Actually, any man may have vast holdings with nothing set down anywhere in his name. A man can own a million shares in a big corporation without his name ever appearing on the books. The stock can be held by obscure paid nominees who have signed, in blank, stock transfer certificates allocating these shares to whoever holds and fills in the certificates.

   Any person interested in concealing assets can do even better than this, as we are reminded by that old reliable, the Wall Street Journal, of recent decades a most informative newspaper. Money can be transferred to one's own neutrally named holding company, a "shell" company, in any one of a number of places--Lichtenstein, Luxembourg, Panama, the Bahamas--and deposited in a numbered Swiss bank account, the owner of which the bankers are forbidden by strict Swiss law to disclose. The Swiss bank, conducting all operations in its own name, can buy or sell securities, realty or other titles in any market without anyone knowing for whom it acts. Profits are transferred to the owner direct or to the "shell" company, which cashes checks and turns money over to the true owner. The "shell" is in charge of low-paid employees, glad to perform this less than onerous occasional service. The money, if wanted in the United States, is simply carried home in one's wallet or is brought back by couriers.

   This method, as a device for evading American income, capital gains and inheritance taxes, is already used by many American business and professional men, Las Vegas gamblers, racketeers, some millionaires and owners of at least 10 per cent of some corporations' shares among executives, according to the Wall Street Journal. It estimates that hundreds of millions of dollars are so involved, perhaps billions .⁷¹

   The stacking away of tax-shy assets abroad is not confined to marginal elements. As the New York Times informs in a special dispatch from Luxembourg: ⁷²

   Along the Grande Rue and the Boulevard Royal, companies like du Pont Europa Holdings and Amoco Oil Holdings have nestled their "sièges sociales" (head offices) in filing cabinets next to 2,000 other Luxembourg holding companies.

   With a few exceptions, the head office is the street address of a bank or a law firm. The lawyer or the banker may be a director of more corporations than are most captains of industry anywhere.

   Some Luxembourg holding companies date back to 1929, when Parliament passed a law making it easy and inexpensive for them to be established and kept here. Not a few were or are facades for family businesses in nearby countries, shells to make possible the investment of income hidden from the tax collector.

   Since this is not such an easy contrivance anymore, the reasons for setting up Luxembourg holding companies nowadays are likely to stem primarily from difficulties in carrying on essential business operations elsewhere.

   This indeed has been the basis for the recent stir of holding-company activity by American corporate giants in this quiet, 999-square-mile Grand Duchy. With direct dollar sources of capital restricted by the American balance-of-payments restraints, Luxembourg has become a strategic base for raising needed investment capital in Europe.

   Apart from basic tax advantages, the Duchy also provides a singular freedom from business regulation.

   A holding company can be formed within weeks--days, says one American lawyer. The company is exempt from income and capital-gains taxes. Most important, Luxembourg requires no tax withheld [on payments to foreigners].

   Actually, the only chance for a significant change in Congress and the stripe of elected officials generally is to get an altogether different type of person into active politics, perhaps men of the type of the non-Establishmentarians. Considering all factors, including the fuzzy mentality of the electorate, this will be very hard if not impossible to accomplish. The fundamental difficulty is institutional: the universal equal franchise that gives the vote-to clods.

   It is not for lack of precept that congressmen conduct themselves as they do while bringing a laudably strict set of standards to bear against appointees in the executive and judicial branches. Thomas Jefferson laid down the rule in 1801 when he was vice president and Senate presiding officer that "Where the private interests of a member are concerned in a bill of question he is to withdraw." This is just what a competent judge does if there is any question of his personal involvement in a case sub judice.

   Such a rule assumes that the relevant body consists of gentlemen and, perhaps, scholars. The electorate, it is observable, does not usually support such when they appear.

   For the latter-day comers up from bayous, swamps, gutters and sties the rule was broadened by House Speaker James G. Blaine of Maine, who in 1874 asserted astonishingly that a member might vote for his private interests if the measure was not for his exclusive benefit but for the benefit of a group. (Blaine was exposed in 1884 as a bribe taker in connection with the securing of land grants for the Little Rock and Fort Smith Railroad.)

   Said the Herald Tribune significantly in concluding its valuable series:

   "Frequently a Senator or Representative's outside income results directly from the fact that he is a member of Congress." ⁷³

   That the transfer of moneys to congressmen is a long-term, standard affair is attested by the Wall Street Journal of May 11, 1966, which says that "dozens" of congressmen "allow wealthy supporters to set up office funds or let lobbyists for business and labor sponsor testimonials, anniversary celebrations, birthday parties and other occasions or excuses for fund-raising not necessarily related to campaign needs--namely, office, entertainment and travel expenses."

   Few legislators, the Journal noted, reject such helpful emoluments, which come under the heading of perquisites of office. "But a majority of legislators," continued the Wall Street Pravda, "regard contributions made outside regular campaign fund-raising channels as perfectly proper, always assuming that the recipient doesn't mortgage his independence to the givers."

   These statements come under the heading of "laying it on the line" by Wall Street for those multitudes who are under some illusion about how, and why, the government is operated.

   It is always well to remember that existing laws, passed by Congress and Congress alone, do not prohibit these activities. In fact, in many ways it would be tedious to probe, they encourage them. Congress no more navigates under any canon of ethics than does the Politburo. In this respect both bodies are on all fours. As in the case of any true sovereign, Congress is richly privileged. So, indeed, is the president.

   Whatever Congress and the president are not specifically, in detail and under penalty, prohibited from doing they may do. So they do it, whatever it is.

   The simple enumeration of powers of Congress in Article I, Section 8, of the Constitution should show any doubter that, collectively, this is an awesomely powerful assembly. Any small group such as the Establishment leaders that can by intrigue (the supreme method of practical politics) manipulate this divided collectivity internally, obviously has in its hands a formidable engine, with a wealth of modern technology at its service. The only restraints upon Congress, largely theoretical as far as immediate or individual actions are concerned, are the Supreme Court and the president. The latter, if he wants cooperation from it, must cooperate with it.

   Difficult though it is to build a fortune by engaging in new business ventures among the established corporate giants, there is a wide open road to wealth if one knows how to worm one's way into politics. By all present indications, really big new fortunes in the future will be more and more politically based, and we are already, perhaps, in the era of big emerging political fortunes. Should this become so, it will be evident that the United States is reenacting parts of Roman and later European history when fortune-building was the perquisite of men associated with sovereign powers rather than of men more directly related to the market place. Much of such political fortune-building, it is notable, was in the past related to the systems of taxation and government contracting.

   Ex-Senator Paul Douglas, a careful student of congressional ethics, does not believe it would do any good to raise congressional pay but, looking at the fat rewards given high executives by corporations to keep their wonder boys in line, one pauses to reflect. If congressmen were each paid $200,000 per year plus $50,000 expenses, all tax-free, they would at least know whence their good fortune came. They would know for whom they were working. And such pay, by visibly exalting the office, might attract many others who under the present system do not wish to engage in the shabby dodges, the money grubbing, necessary to achieve substantial emoluments--that is, so-called financial security. The total public cost would be relatively slight, only $133,750,000 annually, a bagatelle compared with sums now voted for all manner of dubious projects, far less than the cost of elections.

   Opposition to such a pay boost might be counted upon to come from two quarters--the frugal-minded rank-and-file citizens to whom the present $30,000 annually plus expenses is in itself an astronomic sum, and the very rich. The latter--or at least their advisers and lobbyists--would in many cases probably oppose the idea because such pay would make congressmen truly independent of the patronage of the rich. A senator who had served only six years could easily accumulate $1 million of his own and could thereafter safely afford to stick his tongue out at ubiquitous paymasters. True, such compensation would still not be enough for some, who would be up to the old tricks, perhaps even more flamboyantly. But threatened loss of the cushy job, as in the corporations, would be a big deterrent to skulduggery. Corporate officers, it can be shown, are personally far more straitlaced than most congressmen.

   We are now in a position to understand the basic deal, arrived at by unconscious but instinctively sure stages, among finpols, corp-pols and pubpols in the welfare-warfare economy.

   In return for substantial camouflaged tax (and other) concessions ranging up to complete exemption for very large incomes (these being constantly sought by the spokesmen for big wealth who appear before congressional committees) and for thoughtfully saddling most of the tax burden onto the politically illiterate lower labor force, the pubpols have been heavily financed on their road to financial independence by "campaign" contributions, testimonial gifts, law firm retainers and simple donations. Without such financing the poor-boys-who-made-good in politics would never have acquired the stake necessary to set themselves up as entrepreneurs under federal allocation of licenses (which they indirectly control), in building-and-loan operations, television-radio broadcasting, consumer loan sharking, local banking and insurance underwriting and subsidized speculation in oil and mineral lands. And without retainers from grateful corporate clients many lawyer-congressmen would be hard put to divert lucrative business from some of the less directly political law firms.

   Just as the more impetuous racketeers when in difficult straits with the law turn to skillful high-fee pleaders like Edward Bennett Williams or Percy Foreman (in an earlier day they turned to the Max Steuers and Clarence Darrows), so the big corporations when they find themselves in a tight spot, legalistically speaking, turn to the big-league law firms of Wall Street, State Street and La Salle Street. While for routine matters the bush league of congressional law firms will do, when the action gets really serious it is necessary to bring the big guns of the big-name firms to bear. Before such luminaries, entranced judges sit properly spellbound at seeing it uncontrovertibly proved once again by law, logic and philosophy that wealth is virtue, poverty is crime. The lesser firms, however, are indispensable for routinely guiding legislation or softening the touch of regulatory commissions to a delicate pianissimo that would arouse the artistic envy of a Horowitz.

   Naturally, with the big property owners given a large degree of accommodation up to complete exemption, with loopholes liberally carved in the imposing tax wall, it is necessary to saddle the rising costs of the welfare-warfare economy onto the shoulders of the rank-and-file in the labor force. Hence the lopsided tax structure, Wilbur Mills's "House of Horrors," that we have scrutinized in only slight detail.

   The signal contribution of the democratic politician here (and this is well understood in such places as Wall Street) is that he is gifted with the ability to flimflam this large collection of taxpayers with stupefying rhetorical pyrotechnics and appeals to free-floating sentiment; he puts these gifts to work so that, even if not cheered, the public cannot grope its way out of the verbal barrage in which appear all the gems of stale oratory. In addition, to show he is friendly he kisses babies, smiles, shakes hands endlessly and gobbles strange foods thrust upon him by the local constituency.

   His brain in something of a fog, grasping desperately at some notion of a lesser evil, the common man feels that the vote he is about to cast is the best thing, everything considered, that he can manage in the hairy circumstances. So, perhaps not too happy about the whole thing, he stoutly votes for Horace "Bugsy" Latrine, "The People's Friend," and against John "The Louse" Outhouse, who slipped and allowed himself to be photographed giving candy to a Negro baby, thus fomenting the sinister rumor that he keeps a harem of lascivious Negresses contrary to the laws of God and men.

   Karl Marx, in an often quoted apothegm, thundered that "The State is the executive committee of the ruling class." Although this is merely redundantly truistic it is often disputed by bargain-counter sages. Yet the utterance has misled many self-styled Marxists to believe that the finpols or big capitalists issue direct whiplash orders to their docile minions in government, sometimes by picking up a phone in Wall Street and barking harsh instructions over the wire. Nothing could be further from the truth, even though direct wires from Wall Street to the White House have been known to exist during Republican Administrations up to the time at least of Herbert Clark Hoover.

   The process through which the finpols induce the pubpols to march in lock-step with them is much subtler than this but not so Marxianly subtle as merely being common participants in a cultural climate; nor does it consist of winning them over by powerful logical arguments in favor of the free enterprise or capitalist system. The finpols insure that the pubpols will be like-minded by making it possible for the latter to become free--that is, government-licensed entrepreneurs themselves. The fusion of thoughtways is achieved this simply. That the process is not more subtle anyone may observe by noticing how quickly a politician can change his outlook if the quid pro quo is not forthcoming. In such circumstances self-styled conservatives can be led to stand for quite radical measures, let the cultural climate be what it may.

   It is noticeable that congressmen and spokesmen for the rich in general are much more impassioned in defense of the free enterprise system of government economic support than the prime beneficiaries. One seldom hears of a Rockefeller, Du Pont, Mellon, Ford or lesser luminary of great wealth bawling wildly to the countryside about the impeccable virtues of free and easy enterprise. This task is discreetly left to recent converts.

   And while I believe there is much to be said for capitalism in some of the modified variegated forms it takes, particularly in Europe, and while I also believe there is little, humanistically speaking, to be said for the Leninist version of the vaguely outlined Marxist substitute, capitalism at its best can arouse in the sensitive observer at most a cool and moderate sort of admiration. It did not, contrary to the sly suggestion of its political friends, invent science and machine technology (industrialism), launch the Age of Discovery or put in their places the natural resources of the earth. Rather did it impress these into its service. Nor did it foster the population boom, which is greatest outside its confines. Even tried-and-true capitalist economists of any stature do not trace to capitalism all novel boons, whatever they may be, although anti-capitalists madly trace to it all evil.

   It is left to recent off-the-street converts, beneficiaries of the big quick deal, the windfall, to discover overwhelming virtues in a system that, whatever its merits, is subject to evaluative analysis that brings to light not a few dubious aspects into which it is not edifying to delve.

   Appreciations of capitalism by economists, it is always evident, are far more muted than those of its public political celebrants. For those who wonder at the emotional fervor of the politicos, the explanation is as simple as it is vulgar. Would not almost anyone except the rarely cultivated man be inclined to see, as in a Pauline revelation, vast merits in a system that suddenly, without any forewarning, showers down upon him personally, apparently from nowhere, vast rewards? Would not such a man--a Dirksen, perhaps--be dramatically and sincerely struck by the suddenly revealed beauties of the system? Would he not feel strongly impelled when the occasion presented itself to draw upon whatever eloquence he commanded to defend and extol that system? He was nothing, and he knows this; the system made him into something, perhaps a television pundit, perhaps a senator, even president. Here is ground for true belief.

   There is a more immediate reason, too, for the pubpols to see extravagant merits in the system, which plays the role of the goose that repeatedly lays the golden eggs--for them. Many economists, some in dismay, have observed how Congress is inclined to starve the public sector of the economy (as government nonmilitary operations are somewhat ornately styled) and to favor the private or corporate sector. Congressmen in general show little enthusiasm for schools, parks, hospitals, sanatoria, low-income housing, libraries and the like but immoderate enthusiasm for, say, armaments entrepreneurs and bowling alley proprietors. While structures and programs in the public sector can be "milked" to a certain extent at their inception, as in the letting of contracts and buying land, the process cannot be repeated indefinitely as with going concerns in the private sector.

   With a going concern, such as a bowling alley, it is different. It can, first, be taxed continuously--a great advantage; schools and the like pay no taxes but eat them up. Furthermore, the proprietor can be shaken down regularly for campaign contributions and off-the-cuff gifts in return for regulatory legerdemain. The proprietor is to a certain extent, at least as far as the courts will permit, at the mercy of the "democratic" politician and his little tin box.

   And if the "democratic" politician has been thoughtful enough to intersect two new superhighways at the door of the bowling alley, with mandatory long-cycle traffic lights installed, he is obviously deserving of a testimonial donation for public service from the bowling alley proprietor.

   Hasn't the business generated boosted gross national product? A politician who can do this and at the same time gain public plaudits for his sagacity is obviously a statesman who should be concretely recognized.

   Cooperation, it is evident, is necessary between finpols and pubpols if the system is to work as it does. Nor are showdowns between the two ever necessary because all that is usually required to bring most of the latter into line (if they stray) is money, the big grease of American politics. In saying this, one is not saying that all pubpols are susceptible to the monetary touch. It is not necessary to have all of them on the side of the big money. The entire operation, indeed, looks better if there are some honest dissenters, even vociferous dissenters. Such dissent appears to imply that positions have been taken, each way, on the merits of an argument. There are, perhaps, mysterious reasons on the side of the majority, which consists of sound down-to-earth men like Everett Dirksen and Lyndon Baines Johnson.

   All that the big money needs is a "democratic" majority-of a subcommittee of 3 to a legislative committee, of a legislative committee of 15 to 25, of a caucus of 50 to 100, of a legislative body of 100 or 435. This is not much to achieve in a nation of some 200 million immortal souls. And even if there is not a majority on the side of the money interest, all is not lost because any suddenly flaring opposition can be blocked and stalemated by a minority under the rules. If the money interest cannot have its way, neither can anyone else unless there has been a rare political upheaval induced by nontypical circumstances.

   So much has been written about the veritable misdeeds of the corporations, not without ample grounds, that there is a tendency among critics to overlook the indubitable fact that business enterprises sometimes, even often, like black sheep of a family, act quite legally, properly and even meritoriously and are nevertheless clipped below the belt by the pubpols. It would take hundreds of pages to detail all the harrowing cases in this vastly neglected area, so I cite a single recent major instance simply to remind the reader of what goes on.

   L. Judson Morhouse, fifty-two, an authentic Anglo-Saxon and chairman of the Republican Party in New York State, was convicted and sentenced in June, 1966, to two to three years of penal servitude on two counts of bribery, a very serious offense. The judge could have imposed a sentence of twenty years and a fine of $9,000 but, as he explained, the defendant until his conviction had an "unblemished" reputation and "has many good friends in most high places who have willingly come forward to urge leniency." The judge also noted that Morhouse "was a man who wielded tremendous governmental power and influence" which, as the judge himself volunteered, he had "perverted" for "personal and private gain." According to the prosecutor, Morhouse was an "influence peddler"--not uncommon in politics.

   The specific charge against Morhouse was that he induced former State Liquor Authority Chairman Epstein to accept an illegal $50,000 for granting the Playboy Club of Chicago a New York liquor license and that he, initiator of the deal, assisted the Playboy group in bribing Epstein. The Playboy Club was a legitimate taxpaying enterprise--not even a sweatshop--that sought to do legitimate taxpaying business in New York City. Yet it was required to pay toll to do legitimate business--a common occurrence as between small and moderate-sized businesses and politicians. This is one reason (rather than labor costs) many enterprises move from one part of the country to another, especially out of big cities, although after they get well settled in a new location they often have the "bite" again put on them by local politicos. Sometimes, though, the "bite" is smaller in one place than another so moving may be advantageous. One can refuse to pay and instead fight for one's rights in the courts, but experience has shown that this process can be so costly as to be ruinous.

   Morhouse took his sentence stoically, although his lawyer said he had been punished enough by merely being put on trial (a strange doctrine) . Against this contention, the prosecutor cited a long list of other instances in which Morhouse had received "fees" ranging up to $100,000 from enterprises engaged in legitimate endeavors, enough to give him success or what sociologists coyly refer to as "upward social mobility."

   So it is not, very evidently, necessary for a company to be delinquent in some way in order to experience the exactions of politicians, although the big corporations are seldom bustled about in the way the Playboy Club was. Morhouse would never have acted as he did in this case if the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey had wished to put up a gas station or refinery in some unseemly place. When the big corporation wants anything out of the routine--and the Playboy Club did not even ask that--it simply states its case "on the merits" in high places and gets all or most of what it wants. As a matter of tactics it asks for a great deal more than it really wants in order to be roundly rejected in some way, thus making the regulatory commission, public executive or legislature look properly vigilant in the eyes of the public--a simple instance of finpolitics. The reason the big enterprises no longer resort to crude bribery, except perhaps through remote agents in minor situations where a local ordinance bars the road, is that they have the ways already thoroughly greased all along the line through "campaign" contributions, donations-for-public-merit, testimonials, law business, foundation grants to savants and other forms of patronage involving legal tender. The request, whatever it is, in substance slips through easily all the way up to and including Congress. But if some random individual made an analogous request, he would be hailed before the nearest psychiatrist or, perhaps, jailed for jarring the dust on some moth-eaten statute.

   Morhouse, it should be made clear, did not suddenly suffer any loss of esteem among those "in the know." He had simply been caught working on a highly competitive street-New York City is Democratic and upstate New York Republican and hostile to the city; Morhouse in the city was somewhat out of the jurisdiction under his surveillance and up against rivalrous politicos. According to the well-understood rules of the game, he had to serve as a scapegoat, thereby helping to reassure the public. My own opinion of Morhouse did not change in the slightest when he was convicted because I always assumed, on the basis of a long line of similar cases, that as a state party chairman he was doing something of the sort--if not this then something else of a gamey order. What he did was hardly more than par for the course.

   Just as the businessman is not in business for his health, the typical American politician is not in politics for his health, the pay of office or because he is enamored of the public. So to suppose would, in the light of much evidence, strain credulity beyond the breaking point.

   That a great deal of money is bandied about in politics is well known. On this topic many extensive studies have been written that need not be summarized here. All, fragmentary though they are, show a steady avalanche of money. ⁷⁴

   What is now, today, causing concern about this telltale phase of American political life is the rising cost.

   It was estimated, for example, by Dr. Herbert E. Alexander, an authority on election costs, director of the Citizens Research Foundation and Kennedy-appointed executive director of the President's Commission on Campaign Costs, that the 1964 national campaigns cost at least a whopping $200 million, not counting efforts by volunteers, unpaid efforts by public officials or amateurs and sideline commentary by telecasters, newspapers and other publications. ⁷⁵ And campaign costs, as we have observed, are not the only items of political expenditure. The bill, it is evident, is running very high.

   An incisive, brief updating of the situation was written by Victor Bernstein for The Nation, June 27, 1966, under the title of "Private Wealth and Public Office: The High Cost of Campaigning." As it was shown, political money is not put up by the rank and file of citizens. In all its forms it invariably Comes from property owners and people of assured position-the upper 1 per cent of income receivers--apart from such money as has in recent decades filtered into the pot from labor leaders, themselves in the upper-income strata.

   As Bernstein made clear, the electoral system, as distinct from the extra-legal politicians' system within government (another item of big expense), is extremely costly to operate. In the 1966 off-year, for example, $175 million were scheduled to be spent solely at the state levels. Again, a Senate seat, as Bernstein testifies, can cost a million or more, and $2 million were spent to make John Lindsay the able mayor of New York. This last leaves out of account what was spent to defeat him.

   Noting that in order to be in politics one must be rich or have rich friends, some of the currently rich ones cited being the Kennedys, Harriman, the Rockefellers, Romney, Pell, Ottinger and Johnson (there are others), Bernstein raised the rather marginal question of whether democracy (by which he meant the rundown U.S. political system) is "better served by relatively penurious politicians who owe office to support by the rich" or by the rich in person. He did not note the fact, significant in my view, that Johnson like many others not mentioned grew rich while in, of, by and for politics.

   Most congressmen, all now in the upper 1 per cent of income receivers, were at least originally impecunious. This is made crystal clear in Donald R. Matthews's thorough study, U.S. Senators and Their World. According to Matthews, all except a handful of senators were the sons of men in middle-class occupations. ⁷⁶

   On the basis of the mainly blurry class indices he cites--professional, proprietor and official, farmers, low-salaried workers and industrial wage earners--I should rather say most came from lower-middle-class and middle-class occupational backgrounds. This is made evident, first by the fact that among 180 senators in the decade 1947-57 no fewer than 52 per cent were rural born ⁷⁷ and at the time of their birth none of the criteria of upper-middle-class status such as relatively high income and prolonged schooling were ordinarily found in rural areas. "Places like Centerville, South Dakota; Isabel, Illinois; Ten Mile, Pennsylvania; Rising Sun, Delaware; and Honea Path, South Carolina, nurtured more senators [in the group studied] than all the cities of the United States combined." ⁷⁸ Most of the remaining senators came from small towns, with the most overrepresented small-towners from places of 2,500 to 5,000 population. ⁷⁹ The Senate, in brief, consisted largely of pure hicks, ruling an urbanized, mechanized society.

   As to class origins, "The children of low-salaried workers, wage earners, servants, and farm laborers, which together comprised 66 per cent of the gainfully employed in 1900, contributed only 7 per cent of postwar senators. [Owing to the disparity of birth rates between the upper and lower classes, the disparity in political life-chances, as Matthews notes, was "actually greater than these figures indicate."--F.L.] Only two of the 180 men, Senators Wagner and O'Daniel, were the sons of unskilled, urban wage earners. Wagner's father was a janitor in a New York City tenement; O'Daniel's father was a construction worker. Senator Purtell was the son of a cigarmaker; McNamara, of a shipfitter; Daniel (S.C.), of a millwright; Welker, of a carpenter; Pastore, of a tailor; Cordon and Dirksen, of painters; Payne and Dworshak, of printers; Anderson, of a salesman; Myers, of a bookkeeper; Lennon, of a clerk; Margaret Chase Smith was the daughter of a barber." ⁸⁰ There were no Negroes, although Negroes constituted 10 per cent of the population.

   "Among the sons of farmers, some were born in relative poverty, yet it is virtually impossible to ascertain this in specific cases. It is still possible to conclude that very few senators were born in working-class and lower-class families." ⁸¹

   Yet 33 per cent of Democrats and 31 per cent of Republicans had fathers who were farmers. ⁸² Farmers have never been considered upper middle class. And 16 per cent of Democrats and 7 per cent of Republicans had fathers who were lawyers, not invariably an upper-middle-class index in the United States.

   That most of these men are generically middle class, and as such likely to be upward strivers and admirers of entrepreneurial as distinct from rentier plutocracy, is also shown by the fact that just prior to their debut in the Senate 102 were job-holding political officials, 88 having started out as lawyers and 97 regarding the law as their principal nonpolitical occupation. ⁸³ By percentages, 26 per cent of these pre-senatorial officeholders were in law-enforcement offices (prosecutors), 23 per cent in administrative offices, 17 per cent in state legislatures, 11 per cent in the House of Representatives, 9 per cent in the governor's chair, 9 per cent in local elective offices, 3 per cent in some statewide elective office and 2 per cent on the congressional staff. ⁸⁴

   For those hoping for a better day in politics with new upcoming men, it should be noticed that the pipelines feeding high office are now filled with similar types. Anyone looking to the state legislatures for zeal in better government can get a glimpse of the future in Congress that will induce sober second thoughts.

   While class origin may be broadly indicative of outlook it is not determining in every case, as is easily shown. Despite their humble origins Everett M. Dirksen and Margaret Chase Smith have all along been pillars of the Establishment which Joseph C. Clark and a number of other propertied patricians sharply oppose. Johnson, once literally dirt-poor, was a leader of the Establishment. Looking further afield one sees that some of the leading oppressors of all time were of lower-class origin: Hitler was a house painter, Stalin was a lower class theological student and Mussolini was a one-time school teacher. On the other hand, Thomas Jefferson, perhaps the modern world's most forceful exponent of democracy, and Frederick Engels, collaborator and financial angel of Karl Marx, were both wealthy. Nearly all the original Bolshevik leaders were middle-class and upper-class intellectuals; there was not a true proletarian among them nor, be it noted, did they produce a pro-proletarian government. Most of the Fabian Socialists and, indeed, socialists in general, have been middle class, upper middle class or aristocrats like Lord Bertrand Russell and many others duly certified as such in Burke's Peerage. Socialism is too remote in its aims for most workers to understand. Most lower-class people in politics, perhaps influenced by the cultural climate, act so as to deny their origins.

   Although class origins, especially from the middle upward, do often have an influence on political outlooks, what should be rationally determining in judging politicians is the set of propositions they are willing to implement in action. If they frame their working propositions rationally, in the light of the evidence and according to critically refined values they are, as I see it, jewels beyond price whether born and raised in a sty or a palace and whether styled conservative, moderate, liberal or radical.

   Digressing a bit, let it be noted that Matthews brings out that 84 per cent of senators went to college, and of those attending college 31 per cent went to the most highly rated institutions. No less than 45 per cent specialized in law. Of those specializing in law, 47 per cent went to law schools of the highest type. As lawyers, then, many of these men were theoretically capable of understanding what a new statute meant. They could, if they wished, spot the loophole in a tax measure on first reading as though it were the Empire State Building. The point is: The tax laws are no accident or consequence of carelessness. They are as premeditated by the Establishment as a bullet from a Colt .45, intended to kill. Most senators, in other words, usually know precisely what they are doing. What is in question is not their intelligence but their values-in-action.

   Professor Matthews is carried away by misplaced enthusiasm, however, when he notes that "Senators are among the most educated--in the formal sense of the word--of all occupational groups in the United States," with 85 per cent of them having been to college against only 14 per cent in the entire population. ⁸⁵ It is true that he qualifies with the phrase "in the formal sense of the word," which merely indicates they attended school.

   But, thorough, Professor Matthews makes clear that of those who attended but did not necessarily finish college 69 per cent attended other than Ivy League (20 per cent non-Ivy League eastern schools or the midwestern "Big Ten" universities). While some of this 69 per cent may have attended, finishing or not, rigorous schools, most of them, as Who's Who shows, attended distinctly makeshift swampwater colleges.*

   (* Matthews, in his discussion of senators and lobbyists, pp. 176-96, illustrates very well the tendency of academic political scientists to avert their eyes from obvious unpleasant facts. He introduces his genteel discussion of this phase with a lobbyist's story about two women watching a senator and a lobbyist conversing innocently in a Senate waiting room. "O-o-h!" says one of the women, awed, "Is he bribing him now?" Although a very fine study, the Matthews book on this and similar phases we have examined reminds one very much of an old-time silent film drama in which the hero chastely kisses the heroine, who thereupon proceeds to have a baby. That anything else happened between kiss and the appearance of the little stranger was not suggested. Similarly, legislation to this school of political science seems to be the consequence of immaculate ratiocination. "Slush" is a word it does not recognize.)

   That many of the senators are in no sense educated men, whatever their on-the-record schooling, I shall show by citing two salient cases.

   Senator James Eastland, chairman of the powerful Judiciary Committee, whom Who's Who reports as having attended without finishing the University of Alabama and Vanderbilt University, in 1962 published an elaborate report prepared by his staff purporting that various of the justices of the Supreme Court had in scores of cases made "pro-Communist" decisions and that the court as a whole had made such decisions no less than forty-six times. ⁸⁶

   In every instance the Eastland mode of logic adhered to the following form:

   "Communist officials are politicians.

   "Republican and Democratic officials are politicians.

   "Therefore, Republican and Democratic officials are pro-Communist."

   No educated man could seriously make such a carefully premeditated argument on a serious question.

   Former Senate Majority Leader Lyndon B. Johnson since entering the White House has shown the same sort of elementary confusion, especially on the Vietnam question, thereby disturbing the professoriate from coast to coast. The Johnsonian whirligig arguments in favor of its Vietnam action have been notoriously confused, contrary and contradictory, thus destroying the entire ostensibly reasonable structure.

   The initial Johnsonian logical error about Vietnam did not concern form but content.

   The argument was as follows:

   "If people are bombed they will negotiate.

   "These people are bombed.

   "Therefore, these people will negotiate."

   Although valid in form this argument was completely unsound because its first premise was known to be factually false. Official studies of the behavior of people and governments in England, Germany, Russia and elsewhere in World War II, all known to the American military, showed in fact that if people are bombed their tendency to resist increases. Malta was bombed almost to extinction by the Germans yet never sued for peace.

   The sound argument, dismissed out of hand by Johnson, who was probably not bright enough to grasp it, was as follows: "If people are bombed it is known they will resist more desperately (and not negotiate)."

   This, in fact, happened, showing the value of logic-if one knows it and applies it.

   Mr. Johnson's educational attainments, on the formal record, go beyond those of Mr. Eastland. Mr. Johnson holds a Bachelor of Science degree--from the Southwest Texas State Teachers College.

   Not only does the Senate (and House) consist mainly of hicks but of poorly educated hicks even though they must be conceded to possess a certain low animal cunning. The main sin of the majority consists of simple presumption in presenting themselves as leaders of men.

   As to money in politics, Bernstein quotes Robert Price, one-time hard-headed deputy mayor of New York, very precisely to the point that beyond a certain small amount from the national and county committees a congressional candidate must rely on his own efforts. "If he commands a popular following, he can raise a substantial sum from the small contributions of many people through a broadcast or mail appeal," said Price. "But usually for the bulk of what he needs he must rely on friends, or friends of friends, or labor or business. The biggest givers are likely to be firms with government contracts, or with hopes of getting one; they are what I call the predators--the guys who, if you win, will want something for their money." [Emphasis added.]

   Noting that most campaigners are not so fussy as Mayor Lindsay of New York in turning down certain large offerings, Bernstein agrees with many observers that "the higher and more influential the office sought, the more likely is the contributors' list to be studded with the names of the wealthy." These give directly to many party committees, buy a full-page ad in a party pamphlet for $15,000 at a clip (until recently tax-deductible), join the President's Club for $1,000 or more and clamor to pay high rates for places at testimonial dinners.

   Again quoting Mr. Price after reviewing the influence of money in politics, Bernstein continues:

   "'It is in seeking the nomination,' says Robert Price, 'that wealth or access to it, counts most for the candidate. Once he wins the nomination, he already has the attraction of a winner, and he has the party apparatus at his disposal; until then, he is more or less on his own.'" John F. Kennedy's triumph over Hubert Humphrey in the West Virginia primaries is given as a case in point.

   There are jungles of laws governing the use of money in the electoral process but, as Bernstein shows, they are full of holes, obviously premeditated.

   A political committee is allowed to receive or spend only $3 million in any year, but the law applies only to committees operating in two or more states--not to state or local committees and not to series of interstate committees. A candidate could legally have a hundred committees collecting $3 million each, or $300 million in all. He could have a local committee that collected the whole $300 million.

   . Every political committee under federal jurisdiction must report to the House of Representatives all contributors of $100 or more and all recipients of $10 or more, but the reports are kept in Washington (for a period of only two years) and are not subject to check or audit.

   Each Senate candidate may spend personally up to $25,000, each House candidate up to $5,000 but there is no limit on contributions receivable or on what others spend for him. Each can legally have an infinity of committees receiving unlimited amounts.

   No national bank, corporation or labor union may contribute as much as a dime to the election, primary, pre-nomination convention or caucus campaign of any federal candidate but officers of such entities may legally contribute without limit and may form any number of "educational" and "nonpartisan" organizations.

   No government contractor may contribute to a federal candidate during the negotiations for or the life of his contracts but an officer of a contracting firm may legally contribute without hindrance or limit.

   No individual whatsoever, in the entire universe, may contribute more than $5,000 to any one candidate or any one committee during any calendar year whatsoever but --any individual may make an infinite series of $5,000 gifts to as many candidates or as many committees for a single candidate as he likes.

   What all this means, behind the legalistic verbiage, is that the sky is the limit and that any individual, corporation, bank, labor union or other entity whatever can contribute by various channels as much as it wants to any single man or collection of men seeking office. The laws governing the use of money in elections, like the laws governing the use of money in rewarding public officials, are pure balderdash as far as interfering with the practice. The sole purpose of the laws as drawn is, as in the case of the tax laws, to appease uninstructed public opinion and at the same time permit popularly irksome practices to continue without let-up.

   And what all this shows most saliently is that influence over or ready access to the makers of public policy has very high cash value.

   For readers who may feel that the sources I cite on this point are not sufficiently conservative and are therefore tainted, we may turn once again to the trusty Wall Street Journal, under date of September 20, 1960. There, on the subject of campaign money, it is duly set forth:

   "Where does all the money come from? Despite growing stress on little gifts, fund-raisers still depend on wealthy contributors who give $500 or more. That's why Republican Chairman [Thruston] Morton made a special plea last week to the members of New York Union League Club, calling the party's financial problem 'most difficult.' And that's why some Democrats are worried over possible defections of Texas oil men. As a measure of concern, a Democratic team made up of Sen. Smathers of Florida and Rep. lkard of Texas last month gathered 100 Houston oil men together to reassure them: Don't worry about the platform; the Democrats won't hurt you." Smathers and Ikard spoke truly.

   One can always say this to people of wealth about both parties: Don't worry about the platform; you won't get hurt because the little old Establishment and, most likely, the president himself have everything under nice control. The platform is pure blarney.

   What would happen if Congress, for instance, passed a thoroughly equitable tax law? For one thing, the members of Congress who voted for such a law would quickly find their extracurricular emoluments ended. The rich, it is well to note, make their political contributions out of part of their tax savings, thus serving to keep public policies as they want them and at public cost. Neat. . . .

   On the score of method many political scientists would no doubt be inclined to fault me for highlighting what they call the seamy side of politics. What they are almost uniformly inclined to do in their writings is to put it all "in perspective" by sandwiching in passing reference to these dealings among a vast mass of routine formal details. The story, as journalists say, gets lost. It is buried in the salad.

   If sports writers used their method in reporting a prizefight, they would chronologically and even-handedly record every punch and movement from the beginning and terminate with the drab curt statement that the champion finally scored a knockout with an illegal punch on the back of the neck. The headline would read: FIGHT AT THE CARDEN. This would be "objectivity," but of a crazy sort.

   Instead, able (and permitted) to sift the significant from the trivial, the seasoned sports writer is more apt to begin his account:

   "Scoring a knock-out in the second minute of the ninth round with the illegal rabbit-punch, Plug-Ugly Muldoon last night retained the world's heavyweight championship as excited fans jeered and threw pop bottles. Apparently the referee did not see the illegal punch and therefore did not disqualify the champion although the blow was clearly visible from ringside.

   "From the beginning it was a dirty fight with the loser, Ratsy Schlemiel, freely butting in the clinches and Muldoon levering in low blows of explosive force. Still, the referee, for whom many have suggested an eye examination or a long vacation, did not see although he twice warned each gladiator. . . ."

   The headline on this masterpiece would read something like:

   Newspaper reporting of Congress, however, ordinarily tends to follow the drab cue given by the political scientists.

   If congressional reporting in general were as forthright as sports reporting, a headline on a congressional session might read somewhat as follows:

   The text would be similarly to the point.

   For any reader who is now ready to bring in a hanging verdict against the genus politician Americanus, let me interpose a restraining caveat.

   Under the American theory of government the people are sovereign and have the right to boot out any officeholder in duly prescribed elections. "Throw the rascals out," has been the battle cry in many rousing elections, often coming from the throats of other rascals trying to squeeze in.

   The assumption behind this apparent permissiveness is that the people (by definition good) know, or can sense mysteriously, who is deserving between two politicians. But as seasoned politicians know, meritorious service is not sufficient to retain the favor of the electorate.

   This could be shown by the citation of scores of cases but I will here cite a single recent lamentable case. Senator Kenneth B. Keating, Republican incumbent, was defeated in New York in 1964 by Robert F. Kennedy, Democrat. The electorate had no particular distaste for Keating, who had functioned as a liberal, voted for all measures preponderantly favored by New Yorkers and was roundly praised before and after his defeat by a wide spectrum of editorialists. As Senator Kennedy himself later analyzed his victory, Keating made a tactical mistake by not merely standing in dignity on his record. Instead, Keating in the course of the campaign launched a panicky attack on Kennedy as a carpetbagger from Massachusetts, thus opening the door to attention-getting verbal counter-blows by Kennedy which he could not otherwise have delivered with any good grace.

   The downfall of the civilized but non-lustrous Keating showed once again that electoral tactics and the appearance of an attractive new face may count in an election more heavily than unquestioned merit in office.

   Having seen this sort of thing happen many times, knowing the ditheriness of the electorate, the impecunious man in politics usually guards against it by clandestine counter-organizational measures and by seeing to it while in office that he gathers something of value to tide himself over in the event he is brusquely turned out. The politician, in the form of his personal profit enterprises, his organization and the various Establishments going up the line in a hierarchy, belongs to something very analogous to an underground trade union. Committed for life to the holding of public office, he does not intend to see himself unemployed or, if suddenly turned out, without ready means of self-support. He is, in brief, intelligent within his zany environment.

   If arrangements similar to those affecting the politician applied to all employees they would be forced, every two, four or six years, to debate with rivals for their jobs before company stockholders, customers and assorted cranks. If these thought a new candidate looked fresher, younger, more clean-cut, sexier or was better spoken or more churchly they would vote him in. It is precisely to defend themselves against critical judgments of that kind that workers, whenever they succeed in organizing, vociferously stress job seniority and job security. The quixotic democratic idea that an officeholder, a man of no hereditary substance, dependent only upon his salary, should be subject to offhand dismissal every few years at the hands of the hoi polloi, thereupon to join the throng of job seekers in the open labor market, is one that has little appeal for the ordinary, up-from-nowhere, jerk-water politician. He therefore guards against such a dire eventuality in every way he can think of, some highly aromatic and far out in left field.

   What happens in the case of many successful politicians is that they are so intelligently careful about their many defensive measures, and so lucky, that they reap far more than job security and carryover money for life's arduous road. They become authentically rich, in a position to thumb their noses at the foolish public, which they freely if covertly do.

   It should not be thought that I am offering an apology for the politician in thus presenting him, accurately, as a job-protecting specialized worker on his way up in the world. I am simply offering the perspective from his personal point of view. It is because of the position he occupies under oath, transcending in importance that of the physician-surgeon, that one holds him, after everything has been said on all sides, to the strictest accounting. When a physician-surgeon is able to enhance his own security by deviating from the highest canons of medical practice, as by performing unnecessary, high-fee operations, society and his peers do not forgive him merely because his financial problem is understood. In the same way we can safely condemn the typical off-the-soil politician: He is betraying his true responsibilities in order to achieve personal accommodation vis-à-vis the mob.

   In his great Republic, praised by some, derided by others, Plato laid out a reasoned scheme of government in analogy with what his primitive psychology comprehended of the individual. A man, as Plato saw it, consists chiefly of a head or rational function, the chest or spirited function (heart and lungs) and the stomach or appetitional function. People, as he saw them, were classifiable as these functions dominated their temperaments.

   Because the head was presumptively the better (because rational) part of a man, Plato deduced that the head should rule the state. Hence a philosopher or man of learning should be king, assisted by similar men of learning. Should a ruler be a man of knowledge or an ignorant man? Obviously, he should be a man of knowledge. The safety of the state and its people required it. Who would deny it?

   Subject to these rational, informed rulers--men of learning and intellectuals--would be men of the spirit, whom Plato called guardians and auxiliaries. Guardians corresponded to our civil service employees and auxiliaries to soldiers. As Plato saw them, both regarded personal honor or prestige (status) as the highest value just as the philosophers primarily valued knowledge and insight.

   These strata in the Platonic Republic would lead very ascetic lives, would own no property, would never marry and would conduct sexual relations only on rare occasions when perfect children were desired. Women as well as men were equally to be guardians and auxiliaries. Children of these strata would be brought up by special teachers, would never be left under the corrupting influence of their doting parents.

   Below these strata would be the common people, perpetual victims of their insatiable appetites, who would lead their confused catch-as-catch-can lives under rules laid down from above, although they might rise into the ascetic strata if they wished. The people of the appetites might own property, marry, have and mal-educate their own children and copulate blissfully with all the abandon of Hindus on a holiday.

   It is from Plato that we derive our high ideals of the lawgiver, rarely approached in reality, as anyone can see.

   But although Plato's scheme, intended only as a didactic device, is now widely ridiculed by trivial minds, it is worth noticing that what we have in the United States is its exact opposite--hardly an improvement.

   The rulers, in our present scheme, are people of the largest appetites, to whom most public deference is paid. While appetites exist among all, their greatest strength is obviously among the most voracious acquisitors, the rich and their sycophants in office.

   Rated considerably below these in public esteem are our guardians and auxiliaries: civil servants and soldiers.

   And, popularly rated lowest of all, are our philosophers or men of learning. One must admit that the public is a bit ambivalent and confused on this score owing to some colossal breakthroughs scored in recent years by the learned and by no one else; but as between a plutocrat and a politician on the one hand and a professor or vagrant intellectual on the other any popular survey will show that the professor, proverbially absent-minded and inept, is low man in the totem-poll. He is in most schools kept on a tight leash held by trustees. He is rarely a free agent.

   We are confronted, it is evident, with an exact inversion of the Platonic scheme. Yet some persons unreasonably expect the common people of the larger appetites installed at the top to conduct themselves like Platonic philosophers, guardians and auxiliaries, which is much like expecting a gorilla to conduct himself like a Lord Chesterfield.

   In voting, politicians have noticed, the American electorate is hardly attracted by any except the most general Jeffersonian propositions. If the inclination of the electorate were toward true Jeffersonianism, actually an inverted aristocratic doctrine, politicians would conduct themselves differently and speak differently. Any even slightly successful politician is fully aware that any office-seeker who liberally salted his speeches with specific Jeffersonian views, or composed his speeches of actual Jeffersonian quotations, would be lucky to escape with his life from the nearest functionally illiterate mob. Radicals and civil-righters of various stripes have tried it again and again and have been deluged with rotten eggs, overripe fruit, stones and local police attentions. The broad public is simply not democratic, would find Jefferson repugnant if they could read him. If any stray reader doubts this let him dip into Jefferson's writings here and there or select common topics from their indexes.

   For Jefferson, extolled in the abstract at annual Jefferson Day fund-raising dinners of the Democratic Party, was very close to being a political bedfellow of at least one prominent side of the later-coming Karl Marx and practically the antithesis of Lyndon B. Johnson and almost every American president since Lincoln.

   Even more than in the Declaration of Independence Jefferson elsewhere explicitly preached an inherent popular right to make revolution, by force and violence, without awaiting a green light from the Supreme Court. The Confederacy acted precisely according to this doctrine although it did not in its support of slavery (its true love) subscribe to the notion of equality. Nor is civil equality the ideal of the broad populace today, as one can See from popular reactions to the ordinary claims of Negroes, Puerto Ricans, Mexicans and a variety of other ethnic or national minority groups.

   As anyone can readily detect, such sentiments are subversive and are hardly subscribed to by any discernible portion of the electorate, which instantly identifies them as akin to Bolshevism and unconducive to job security and quiet viewing of night baseball on TV.

   Two unequal strains have been woven through American politics from the beginning. There has been patrician Jeffersonianism, largely given lip service except by patricians themselves here and there. And there has been Hamiltonianism. Alexander Hamilton (1757-1804), our first Secretary of the Treasury, was an ambitious poor boy in politics, a self-appointed spokesman for plutocracy and outright corruption in politics as a way of insuring its hold. Hamilton detested the common people with more fervor than is usual among those who have emerged from among them and did more than anyone else at the inception to give American economic affairs and much of political affairs their gamey flavor.

   Slain in a duel with Aaron Burr, Hamilton fittingly lies buried in Trinity Churchyard at the head of Wall Street.

   As far as ascendant trends are concerned, in the United States one openly talks John Locke and Thomas Jefferson but surreptitiously acts Alexander Hamilton.

   It is not the duty of the critic to suggest ways of improving a bad show. After he has pronounced upon it his job is finished. A wide public, however, thinks otherwise and believes it stymies a critic when it says: "How would you improve the script?" The presumption is that this would be difficult or impossible to do.

   Many cut-rate sages on the political fringes adopt this attitude and say: "Democracy [meaning the present system] may be imperfect but it is the best system possible."

   Denying this completely, I shall here, for the benefit of skeptical cogitators, sketch in a few strokes significant improvements that could easily be wrought in the American system, although such improvements would by no means produce everlasting salvation.

   It cannot be denied that the best government would be that which was run by the most qualified men. As we see in the case of the medical profession, the. greatest proportion of qualified men is produced by rigorous attention to their education and training. Standards are imposed which prospective doctors must meet--in the medical schools, in post-school training and in state licensing examinations. Nevertheless, some bad hats slip through event in the strictest jurisdictions, and some degenerate into bad hats, which cannot readily be guarded against.

   If a set of proper educational standards for officeholders were adopted, those who met them could be assigned to a public panel from which all candidates of any party would have to be chosen. In reply to nitwit sages who will say that this bars poor boys, the instruments of major corruption in politics, my reply is: Poor boys unable to afford schooling might qualify merely by passing the examinations given to the schooled. ⁸⁷

   Just as one would not think of licensing a man as a surgeon on his plea that he was too poor to afford medical school, so one would not in a well-ordered polity think of licensing a poorly schooled office-seeker.

   Under the scheme I here propose bad hats would slip through but their number would be so significantly reduced that they would have a hard time finding enough fellow-travelers to caucus.

   Again, no matter how strict the qualifications were, they would by no means intercept all inept politicians. While I can readily devise qualifications that would block out a Harding, a Coolidge, an Eisenhower, a Johnson and a horde in Congress, I do not, unfortunately, see any way of devising qualifications that would block out a Wilson or Hoover without at the same time blocking out some very good men.

   In the matter of qualifications, law-school training would, as I view the prospect, count for very little but first-class degrees from first-class schools (the emphasis being on first-class) in social studies, humanities and general thought processes would be essential.

   In the matter of improvement, attention should also be paid to those who select officeholders, those who vote. Improvement beyond the present level could here be attained by a simple scheme of weighted voting. Every citizen would have one vote, as at present. Those who finished grade school would have two votes, high school four votes and college sixteen votes. As the educated population is not evenly spread through all voting districts I would take the national average and re-weight the voting strengths in each election district so as to conform to the national average, distributing the voting power pro rata. Those who did not have the formal schooling might be admitted to higher voting brackets by passing the same examinations passed by the schooled.

   An ancillary good effect of this scheme would be to enhance the status of learning in the populace by equating it with political power. Any two-vote citizen could readily convert himself into a four-vote citizen simply by meeting high school requirements through self-study or part-time attendance at any of the many schools. The four-vote citizen could similarly convert himself into a sixteen-voter.

   The more sophisticated the voter the more able would he be to decide on candidates on the already thoroughly screened panel.

   I would extend the scheme to jurors, who would be full-time professionals, publicly salaried, of specially educated men sitting on public panels. Six-man juries, judges of the facts in every case, could probably do the job. Barred would be the present catch-as-catch-can juries of the witless who return too many dubious verdicts. The trained jurors, all skilled in evaluating evidence under the law, would provide a reservoir of future aspirants to elective office.

   Such a scheme would not eliminate interest biases and class biases from voting, but it would soften them and would tend to eliminate much of the present chicanery and gullibility from politics.

   Let not any reader suppose that I believe these extremely excellent ideas, for which I obviously deserve a high decoration and an ample public pension, will be seized upon and put into effect by the powers-that-be, who have other fish to fry. I simply set these notions down to make it evident that the present system does not contain the ultimate in entirely workable and sensible political ideas. And, who knows, in some happier day they may bear fruit for the Republic.

   Only those who would deny that the ascertainably most qualified persons should run the government and should have greater weight in selecting government personnel can rationally oppose this plan, which can be put into force without any great disturbance to fundamental institutions.