What our legislators actually do, and how they do it, most of us have only the haziest notion. Believing that a complete description of a typical day in the life of a legislator might create a clearer concept of the processes of government, Stephen Kemp Bailey and Howard D. Samuel spent some time with the junior Senator from New York, Herbert H. Lehman, and supplemented this by a number of interviews with two members of his staff, Julius Edelstein and Thomas Brunkard. Much of the material published here will be found in one of the chapters of their book, Congress at Work, soon to be published by Henry Holt and Company, which aims to give a concrete picture of our Congress today.
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It was a morning in mid-August 1951, and Washington had been enjoying surprisingly cool weather. Senator Lehman had been driven from his home to the Senate Office Building in a Cadillac sedan with a New York license plate, “USS 2,” which stood for United States Senator, the number denoting the fact that he was New York’s junior Senator. Arriving at his office at 9:20, he let himself into his own room, off the fourth-floor corridor, with a key, avoiding the reception room where two visitors were already waiting. (This latter room was dominated by a ten-foot vertical white pennant, with large black letters reading “United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration”; at its foot a brass plaque announced that this was the “pennant flown on first UNRRA ship carrying relief supplies to Europe.” On the walls were two dozen framed photographs and cartoons having to do with Lehman’s days as governor and lieutenant governor of New York. Several of the photographs showed him with Franklin D. Roosevelt. On one wall were eight framed certificates of election: two for lieutenant governor of New York; four for governor; and two for United States Senator.)
To the left of the reception room was the “working room,” with desks for six secretaries and stenographers, and also serving as the office of Thomas Brunkard, Lehman’s executive secretary, and Julius Edelstein, his administrative assistant. Brunkard had served Lehman in the same capacity since 1933, when the latter began his first term as governor of New York, and most of his work concerned matters local to New York State-patronage, requests for aid by constituents, speaking invitations, etc.
About a third of the room, partly closed off by a flimsy screen, served as the domain of Lehman’s assistant, Julius Edelstein. He sat behind a desk loaded with documents, letters, newspapers, copies of hearing reports and the Congressional Record. The bookshelves at his right were similarly overflowing.
The Senator’s personal office, separated from the working room by a short corridor, was neat and orderly. With its high ceiling and marble fireplace, it looked like an old-fashioned parlor. Although containing a huge desk, seven chairs, and a large leather couch, the office seemed restful and empty compared to the physical chaos of the one next door. On his desk, when the Senator sat down, was a pile of letters and reports totaling perhaps fifty pieces, which the Senator immediately attacked. For the next twenty minutes he worked in silence.
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A United States Senator today is not only a person: he is also an institution. (There may be some truth in the recent remark of an elder statesman that every legislator discovers that his career has three stages: he runs for office; he runs an office; his office runs him.)
The offices of Senator Herbert H. Lehman of New York are located in seven rooms, in four buildings, in two cities. In New York City, at 41 East 57th Street, three people work for him full time, handling his relations with individual constituents. In Washington, D.C., a woman works for the Senator in an office in the Library of Congress, devoting most of her time to requests for private bills. In the Capitol, in a tiny, narrow room formed by a partition cutting off the end of a corridor, three research assistants prepare data, speeches, and testimony for him. Eleven people in the basement of the Senate Office Building process the Senator’s mail and expedite requests from his constituents. And, on the fourth floor of the Senate Office Building, in a suite of three rooms, ten more staff assistants work for Mr. Lehman, including the executive secretary and administrative assistant—and the Senator himself.
To pay his staff assistants, Senator Lehman, whose own official salary is $12,500 annually plus a $2,500 tax-free, non-accountable expense fund, was allowed approximately $65,000 a year of federal funds. This amount, which includes the salaries of more than $10,000 each received by his two top assistants, Edelstein and Brunkard, is sufficient to pay for the services of about twelve assistants and secretaries, which is about the size of the staffs of most Senators. Senator Lehman, however, has found it necessary to hire sixteen more assistants and secretaries, whom he pays out of his own pocket, so that his total staff numbers twenty-eight people.
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Senator Lehman receives more mail than any other member of the United States Senate. The principal—probably the only—reason is that New York has more people, and a wider range of interest groups (as well as a greater ethnic diversity) than any other state. One-tenth of America lives there. And if Lehman receives more mail than Senator Irving Ives, his senior colleague from the Empire State, it is because he is a resident of New York City and, to judge from the election returns, gets most of his support from that place. Most New York State mail to the Senate comes from New York City, and most of that goes to Senator Lehman.
While the Senator was sitting at his desk reading his mail, eleven staff assistants in Room 5-B, in the basement, were already sorting this day’s first load, which had been brought in on a wooden tray before 9 A.M. (There are four deliveries daily.) Among the two hundred letters and postcards, Lehman’s experienced staff immediately noted two or three piles that were alike in size and form—an almost certain sign of organized pressure mail. All of the mail, however, even that marked “personal,” went through the same efficient processing. (It is impossible to expect Senator Lehman to receive a letter unopened.) Once opened, the letters were read and distributed among various cubbyholes in a large shelf running along one wall.
One cubbyhole was for “departmental and service” mail, and contained requests for special assistance in dealings with government agencies. Some letters came from businessmen in need of restricted materials or seeking government contracts; their mail was directed to one or another of the special defense agencies. Other correspondence asked about such things as eligibility under the Selective Service Act, the status of reserve personnel, or contained special requests—by people already in the armed services. Still others wrote for information about pensions and similar matters, most of which concerned the Veterans Administration. All these letters were forwarded by the Senator’s staff assistants through regular departmental and agency channels.
Letters from friends of the Senator, or from Democratic party officials, were stowed into another cubbyhole for special attention. Most of these would receive personal replies, seen and signed by the Senator himself. Some of the items in this category, such as requests for the Senator’s presence as a speaker, or for patronage, would go directly to Thomas Brunkard, who would draft replies for the Senator’s signature. Each week Lehman receives an average of eight applications from young men seeking appointment to West Point or Annapolis, and an average of fifteen invitations to address meetings or dinners. (Among his many extracurricular activities are those as a leader of the community, Jewish and otherwise; he is a vice president of the American Jewish Committee; honorary chairman of the Joint Distribution Committee and the United Jewish Appeal of Greater New York, as well as of the Jewish Child Care Association; a trustee of the Jewish Theological Seminary; and a director of the National Conference of Christians and Jews, as well as of the National Association for Advancement of Colored People; this list is by no means exhaustive. He is, moreover, a frequent speaker at the functions of these and many other organizations. The example of Senator Lehman’s active identification with his community has undoubtedly done much to lay to rest anxiety about the risks of the public light of office to “minority” security; for even in the charged climate of political conflict, this openly Jewish financier has been left almost untouched by bigotry.)
Another cubby-hole received requests for hearings, documents, copies of the Congressional Record, and gallery passes to the House and Senate. One staff member spent his full time dealing with these.
Most of the cubby-holes, however, were reserved for letters affecting current issues and legislation, for these made up the bulk of the Senator’s incoming mail. The volume of correspondence received advising and urging some course of action, giving information about some aspect of legislation, pleading for intercession on some current issue, is so tremendous that, long ago, Senator Lehman and his staff had to resort to form letters instead of individual replies in dealing with such mail. “Dear Friend,” read the typical form reply: “This will acknowledge receipt of your letter of recent date. . . .” Succeeding paragraphs describe the status of, as well as Senator Lehman’s own views on, the legislation in question. Some of these form letters are two pages long. A form letter on a particular legislative issue is decided on once the Senator begins receiving as many as half a dozen letters a day on it. Ruth Cohen, who heads the staff in the basement office, then draws up a reply in accordance with the Senator’s views. Usually she receives research help from the Senator’s staff assistants, and Edelstein and Senator Lehman himself go over the draft. In the 2nd session of the 81st Congress (1950), Miss Cohen prepared form replies on 157 separate issues. In the first seven months of 1951, she prepared them on 80 issues. On each of a few of the more important issues, several different form letters were prepared, to keep abreast with the progress of the legislation. On the economic controls battle, for example, Miss Cohen prepared a first form reply in January, at the beginning of the first session of the 82nd Congress. As the controls bill passed through its successive legislative stages—through Senate conference and final passage—successive letters were prepared, until by June Miss Cohen had drafted five form letters on this single issue.
Every month of the legislative session between 4,000 and 5,000 form replies went out to Senator Lehman’s correspondents. Some of these latter were far from content with the form letters they had received in answer to their queries; and as a matter of fact neither Senator Lehman nor his staff were particularly satisfied themselves with the system. But so far no better means has been discovered of handling this flood of mail.
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During the first six months of 1951 the four issues attracting Lehman’s heaviest mail were: increases in postal employees’ salaries; price controls; civil service pay rates; the draft. But a fifth issue, which involved no pending bill, drew the largest correspondence of all—the dismissal of General Mac-Arthur. During the first six months of 1951, Senator Lehman received 98,000 pieces of mail on other national issues; 24,000 on Mac-Arthur; and approximately 5,000 requests for assistance, invitations, etc. This made a total of 127,000 pieces of mail.
What effect did this daily avalanche of written opinion have? On issues of national importance, such as MacArthur, Senator Lehman’s stand was hardly affected. His views on foreign policy, and on most domestic problems as well, had been formed over long years of public service, and were known to his constituents. The assumptions and ideals that had guided him since first entering upon public office in 1928 continued to guide him in the Senate. If he were to be influenced by mail from home, it would be by the particular impact of a single letter rather than by opinions reiterated in thousands of them. Occasionally, on a comparatively restricted or local issue, one thoughtful and informed communication could persuade the Senator to delve into it more deeply. An example came up on this cool summer day. One section of a pending bill would have changed the rates and procedures for parcel post packages. Indirectly, this section affected the Railway Express Company, which had requested its employees to write to their Senators on the matter. That morning Senator Lehman received eleven letters, all in Railway Express envelopes. Although obviously the result of organized pressure, they constituted the first evidence that the proposed change in parcel post rates would arouse much interest.
Later that morning, Ruth Cohen telephoned one of Mr. Lehman’s staff assistants in the little room in the Capitol for more information on the bill and for an indication of the Senator’s own views. The researcher she called had already spoken to some people about the subject and had read the bill carefully. During the next two or three days the matter would be discussed with Edelstein, and Miss Cohen might frame a form reply. Before it was finished, however, Senator Lehman would have to give his approval, and both he and his staff, as a result of the eleven letters from the Railway Express employees, would have clarified their views on one more issue before Congress.
Julius Edelstein entered Lehman’s office at about 9:40 that morning, bringing with him a folder of mimeographed material. At 10 A.M., Senator Lehman was expected to testify before a subcommittee of the Public Works Committee on a giant power project on New York’s Niagara River. For twenty minutes before the hearing began, the conversation between the Senator and his administrative assistant abounded in such esoteric terms as “grids,” “transmission systems,” and “wheeling.” Senator Lehman had begun to acquire familiarity with the technical problems of hydro-electric power during his terms as lieutenant governor and governor of New York, while Edelstein had immersed himself in the subject ever since he had become Lehman’s assistant, two years before.
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Besides the Niagara River project, however, Senator Lehman, in the first seven months of the 1st session of the 82nd Congress, had been a sponsor of 75 other bills or resolutions. Twenty of these had been private bills. In a majority of the public bills and resolutions, Lehman had been a co-sponsor, once with as many as 43 other members of the Senate. Seventeen of the bills he had sponsored, including six private bills, had become law. The 55 public bills and resolutions covered a wide variety of subjects, including the St. Lawrence Seaway project, the District of Columbia, labor relations, the Senate cloture rule, handicapped children, the disabled, small businesses, India, Israel, and defense housing. Eight bills dealt with civil rights.
There was a different story behind the introduction of each bill and resolution. Some of them were old-timers, introduced at every session of Congress for many years, like the St. Lawrence Seaway project and the civil rights bills. There may have been a few changes in wording, or some new efforts made to enlist outside support, but usually the only problem remaining so far as these bills were concerned was timing. The civil rights bills, for example, which had been introduced that spring, had been prepared by Senator Humphrey’s office, along the lines of legislation introduced at previous sessions, and he, Lehman, and a few other interested Senators had consulted with organizations like the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
The fact that Lehman was only a co-sponsor of a measure did not mean that he did not take an active part—or even a leading one—in promoting its passage. The principal sponsor of the bill providing food for India had been Senator Smith of New Jersey, a Republican; Lehman, with Edelstein, had however thrown himself heart and soul behind the effort to push it through the Senate, conferring with church groups, with a private ad hoc committee formed to enlist outside support, and with government agencies that had provided information for use in floor debate. Neither the State Department nor the President were willing at first to support the bill, largely out of fear of the possible consequences of failure, but Lehman nevertheless succeeded in getting their help.
Many of the measures sponsored by Senator Lehman amended existing or pending legislation. Earlier in the year, some friends in the American Federation of Labor had called the Senator’s attention to a bill affecting veterans’ life insurance that had been introduced in the House of Representatives. He agreed that the House bill needed certain changes. Two amendments were prepared, and Lehman attempted, without signal success, to gain the support of the veterans’ organizations. But with the help of friendly Senators, enough strength was brought to bear behind the amendments to persuade the chairman of the Senate committee handling the bill to accept them.
Several bills had been introduced by Senator Lehman, not with any hope of passage, but only for the sake of the record. He was aware, for example, that the size of the opposition to the civil rights measures would probably prevent them from reaching the stage of committee consideration, let alone floor debate and passage. Nevertheless, because civil rights legislation was an intrinsic part of his public platform, he felt obliged to share the responsibility with like-minded senators in introducing these bills.
Almost every mail from New York brought the Senator one or more requests for the introduction of a bill or resolution. A few of these requests, usually from friendly organizations, were followed up; most, however, were impractical, legally or politically, or else undesirable—in some cases downright absurd, as when the Senator was asked to sponsor a measure offering “bounties” for the apprehension of certain kinds of criminals.
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The Niagara River project had a fairly brief background. A year before, Lehman and Representative Franklin D. Roosevelt, Jr., of New York had introduced companion bills in both houses for a power development on the Niagara. When the House bill came up before the House Public Works Committee for consideration, the New York Power Authority, a state body whose chief function is to promote the St. Lawrence Seaway proposal, approached Lehman with some suggested amendments. They also submitted these to the House Committee. The latter took no action on them and when Lehman reintroduced his bill at the beginning of the 82nd Congress, it did not contain the Power Authority’s amendments; he had rejected them, both because he felt they were impractical, and because they were at variance with his own beliefs on public power. The Senate Public Works Committee scheduled the project for consideration in mid-August. About ten days before the hearing, Senator Irving Ives, Lehman’s Republican colleague from New York, introduced a new bill, at the behest of the New York Power Authority, containing the amendments it wanted. Lehman had had no warning of the Ives bill, which was expected in any case to complicate the problem of obtaining Congressional approval for the Niagara project.
Even without the added complication of the Ives bill, Lehman did not expect Congress to give immediate approval to the costly Niagara project. It involved some legislative precedents, and these might cause several years’ delay while the Senator did extensive “missionary work” among the members of the Public Works Committee. Nevertheless, the testimony he had prepared presented a forthright defense of his bill, and he had also rounded up some influential witnesses to support his views. Edelstein, who prepared the statement, had worked well into the night and over the previous weekend, and the Senator had reviewed it and given it a final polish the day before. It had required several days, in addition, to arrange for the appearance of the supporting witnesses. At 9:55 A.M., Lehman and Edelstein, having finished their preparations, walked down the corridor to the Public Works hearing room.
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When Senator Lehman entered the room, it already contained forty or fifty people, including Senators, witnesses, spectators, newspaper reporters, and staff assistants. A news photographer immediately posed Lehman with a few visiting officials and dignitaries from New York. Seated in the front row of the spectators’ section were executives of some of New York State’s public utility companies. Behind them sat several state and federal officials. Five newspapermen were seated at a table to one side. As the crowd settled down, Senator Ives, who was to follow Lehman’s with his own statement, joshed his colleague about the length of his testimony. (Lehman’s 16-page talk had been mimeographed, and copies handed to committee members, correspondents, and interested spectators.) Senator McClellan of Arkansas, chairman of the subcommittee conducting the hearing, asked Lehman if he would read his statement or merely insert it in the hearing record and summarize it for the committee. Lehman said he would read it; McClellan looked disappointed, but waved him on. Lehman read aloud for thirty-five minutes, and then answered a few desultory questions from committee members.
At 11 A.M. Chairman McClellan called on a colonel in the Engineers, who stood up before a large map of the Niagara project and began to describe, in considerable detail, the history and geography of the area and the background of the complex project Three-quarters of an hour later McClellan asked him to suspend his discussion so that Senator Ives would have time to testify before the Senate session began at noon. The colonel took his seat and Ives began to read a brief statement supporting the project but differing with the method suggested by Lehman for its accomplishment. He was still reading when a buzzer sounded in the back of the room, indicating that the Senate was in session. Three of the committee members quietly got up and left the room, leaving McClellan and one other member at the table. Lehman remained in his chair.
Like all the committee members who had listened to him, Senator Lehman belonged to at least two Senate committees, and had discovered early that committee meetings took almost as much of a Senator’s time as Senate sessions themselves. He was a member of the Senate’s committees on Labor and Public Welfare, and on Interior and Insular Affairs. In addition, he was chairman of the Labor and Public Welfare Committee’s standing subcommittee on health. He would have preferred a seat on the Foreign Relations Committee, but freshman Senators were not likely to win an assignment to this much sought-after group. He had had to settle instead for the Labor and Interior Affairs committees, both of which held jurisdiction in fields of legislation in which he had long experience. (One of the functions of the Interior and Insular Affairs Committee was to handle the public power projects of the Bureau of Reclamation.)
Lehman had become chairman of the subcommittee on health when the previous chairman, James Murray of Montana, had moved up to take the chairmanship of the parent Labor and Public Welfare Committee. The three other Democrats on the seven-member subcommittee, all of whom had seniority over Lehman, were already burdened with chairmanships in other committees or subcommittees. Senator Lehman had found that the three professional staff members of this subcommittee could be depended on to keep it operating on a day-to-day basis. Its two principal tasks were to consider Senate bills dealing with aspects of the nation’s health, and to undertake such investigations as its members felt to be necessary. In the first seven months of 1951, twenty bills had been referred to the subcommittee, of which only seven or eight had been given serious consideration. About once every two months Senator Lehman presided at an executive meeting to discuss new bills and decide whether to amend them, hold hearings on them, report them out to the full committee, or pigeonhole them. The Senator might have preferred to hold these executive sessions more often, but it was not easy to get a quorum together. At the most recent meeting, on July 30, five members of the subcommittee had appeared, and in one hour of discussion disposed of eight or nine items. Between meetings, the professional staff assistants, headed by Kenneth Meiklejohn, analyzed the views of the federal executive departments concerned on pending health bills, summarized the pros and cons, prepared the agenda for meetings, investigated current health problems (in 1951 the principal one was health facilities at defense installations), and served as a sort of a general clearing house for the dozens of official and private bodies interested in public health. On this particular day in August, Meiklejohn and his assistants were finishing the arrangements for the subcommittee’s first public hearings of the current session of Congress.
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When Senator Ives had finished his testimony, both he and Senator Lehman answered some questions from Chairman McClellan seeking clarification on the differences between their two Niagara bills. At 12:20, McClellan recessed the hearing until 2 P.M., and Lehman hurried over to the Senate chamber to answer the first roll call. When it was over Senator McClellan arose to request unanimous consent for another meeting of his subcommittee during the afternoon while the chamber was in session. This was granted without comment. Lehman remained on the floor as Majority Leader McFarland described the Senate’s agenda for the next few weeks.
He did not speak up on this occasion, but during the previous months of the session he had entered Senate debate on a number of topics. Unlike other Senators who made themselves heard emphatically only on issues of particular interest to their home states, Lehman had given his views on a wide variety of subjects, including Selective Service, food for India, the assignment of troops to Europe, subversive activities, the District of Columbia, health, economic controls, and public housing. It is unlikely that many other members of the Senate had entered debate on such a wide range of controversial topics. This catholicity of interest was due both to Lehman’s own long experience in public life and to the multifarious interests of his constituency; but it had led one of his sympathetic critics, the columnist Marquis Childs, to write that he “spread himself too thin.”
At recess Senator Lehman ate lunch in the Democratic cloakroom, and then returned at 2 P.M. to the Public Works Committee hearing room instead of the Senate floor. In the first half hour of the hearing the colonel finished his description of the Niagara project. While he was answering questions he was again interrupted by the Senate buzzer. This time it was a roll-call vote, and Chairman McClellan hastily adjourned the hearing for twenty minutes. Lehman, with his fellow committee members, descended in an elevator to the single-track subway of the Senate Office Building, rode on one of its cars to the Capitol, and reached the Senate in time to cast his vote.
The issue on which he voted was a motion to recommit a shipping bill that, in part, affected New York State. He had received several letters and telegrams about it from upstate labor union groups. Though the Democrats had not made it a party issue, Lehman had already decided to vote against the Republican motion to recommit.
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The fact that Lehman’s voting record almost invariably followed known administration views had led some of the Senator’s critics to dismiss him as subservient to the administration. Actually, he led just as much as he was led. The aims and principles followed by the administration had been Senator Lehman’s own for many years. This was why he had a more consistent voting record as an administration supporter than some of the party’s titular leaders in the Senate.
None of Lehman’s votes, of course, were cast in a vacuum. In almost every case he was exposed to the conflicting viewpoints of a host of public and private interests. These could be divided into three broad groups: the administration, with its leaders in the Senate; other Senators; outside groups, including private-interest organizations, personalities in the New York State Democratic party organization, and constituents.
During his comparatively short tenure, Lehman and his staff had developed some sort of contact with most of the departments and agencies in the government. With some organizations—the State, Agriculture, and Interior Departments, the White House, the Federal Security Administration, to mention a few—his relations had been particularly close. In the Department of Defense, Lehman had had some contact with Secretary of the Army Frank Pace, and with Anna Rosenberg, Assistant Secretary of Defense, consulting with them about civil rights and segregation problems in the armed services. The Interior Department had cooperated in laying the groundwork for the Niagara power project bill. Many of these contacts were on the staff level, with Julius Edelstein assuming the burden of gathering data and mapping strategy with agency officials.
Administration leaders in the Senate, headed by Majority Leader McFarland, had maintained fairly close contact with Lehman, but neither McFarland nor Majority Whip Lyndon Johnson had ever attempted to crack the whip of party discipline over him. For one thing, Lehman was known to side with the administration more regularly than McFarland himself. The closest approaches to an attempt to invoke party solidarity had been on a few minor issues, when McFarland had expressed the “hope” that Lehman would go along.
Like most members of the Senate, Lehman had drifted into a half-stable alliance with a number of like-minded senators that gained or lost members as different issues came up. The core of the “alliance”—it was occasionally, and irreverently, called “the sons of the wild jackasses”—consisted of Senators Lehman, McMahon and Benton, both from Connecticut, Douglas of Illinois, Humphrey of Minnesota, Magnuson of Washington, and Green and Pastore from Rhode Island. Senators Hill and Sparkman, both of Alabama, also worked with these Senators on many issues, though differing sharply on civil rights. Occasionally, one or more members of the group left the camp on a specific issue. When Lehman had sought Senate approval of a costly public works project for New York, Senator Douglas, an economy-minded foe of new projects, quietly absented himself from the Senate chamber. Senator Hill, on the other hand, moved by personal friendship, helped Lehman round up support for the measure, though it had no direct interest for the Alabaman. (Lehman’s father, incidentally, had settled first in Alabama when he arrived from Bavaria in 1848, and had moved to New York City only after the Civil War; he thus is another product of that pattern of peddler to storekeeper to—sometimes—financier to philanthropist to public servant that seems to flourish especially in the South—Brandeis, Proskauer, the Strauses, the Lazaruses, etc.—and which gave us in his own family not only “the Governor” but also two brothers, Justice Irving Lehman and the philanthropic leader Arthur Lehman.)
This group of about six to ten like-minded Senators met on an informal basis about once a month. Much of their cooperation was on a staff level, between Edelstein and the administrative assistants of the other Senators. And it was only on this staff level that the “sons of the wild jackasses” cooperated with Senators Smith of New Jersey, Ives of New York, and other liberal Republicans on a few issues.
For the simple reason that virtually every large institution had an office in New York City, the junior Senator from New York was constantly besieged by representatives of private-interest groups. They made their opinions known through the mail, through individual lobbyists, and through sizable delegations sent down from their New York quarters. They included labor unions, dairy groups, large and small business associations, veterans’ organizations, housing groups, and social welfare agencies. Lehman, and Edelstein too, had close and cordial relations with many of these groups. Quite a few labor unions, housing groups, and social welfare agencies, for example, adhered to the same ideals as the Senator, and operated in fields in which he had long been interested. The relations of such private groups to the Senator were not those of petitioner to judge, but rather of two parties cooperating to achieve a mutual goal. Lehman would call on them for help—in gathering information and arousing support—as much as they on him.
Similarly, his relations with New York State Democratic leaders were reciprocal ones. On controversial national issues, the New York party chieftains never presumed to tell Lehman how to vote. On the contrary, he would occasionally get in touch with them, tell them his stand on a particular issue, and ask their help in mobilizing public support. During the battle over economic controls earlier in the session, New York State party officials, in response to his request, had arranged rallies and meetings throughout the state to demonstrate popular support for the Senator’s position. On the other hand, when the issue was primarily of local importance the first approach would often come from the state leaders. A few weeks earlier, for example, the Veterans Administration had announced plans to transfer part of its district office from New York to Philadelphia, a move that would have affected several hundred employees. The employees had got in touch with Democratic party officials in New York, who had in turn sent a delegation of them to see the Senator. As a result, Thomas Brunkard had spent many hours marshaling facts and figures and lining up Congressional and administration support against the move.
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After casting their votes—the result was a. defeat for the Republican motion to recommit the shipping bill—Lehman, McClellan, and one other committee member returned to the hearing room in the Senate Office Building. The chief of the Rural Electrification Administration had completed his testimony and answered a few questions, when, half an hour later, the buzzer sounded again, indicating another record vote. It was almost 4 P.M., too late to continue the hearings after another recess, so McClellan adjourned the meeting until the following morning and the Senators once again dashed over to the Senate chamber. This time the vote was on an amendment offered from the floor, a measure presenting some difficulties to busy legislators since most of them had had little time to appraise it or discuss it with other members. Lehman stayed on after the vote, listening to debate, until Julius Edelstein walked in and whispered to him that he had appointments at his office with visitors from New York.
Since 9:30 that morning, about twenty-five people, including several family groups—all of them tourists, as their informal clothes showed—had dropped into Suite 455. They had been content to gaze at the reception room, pick up passes for the House and Senate galleries, and depart. The subway cars that had brought them over from the Capitol usually provided the chief amusement. Starting at 9:30, however, Lehman’s office had also been visited by a dozen out-of-towners, most of them from New York, who really wanted to see him—whether about legislative matters, or personal problems with government agencies. Lehman’s secretary had asked most of them to put their requests in writing. Brunkard had talked to a few others. Two people were given appointments to see Edelstein the following week.
None of these visitors, however, got to see the Senator, who had been away from his office since 10 A.M. On easier days, however, perhaps when there were no committee meetings in the morning, or when the Senate session ended earlier, Lehman would see as many visitors as his schedule allowed. All of them came by appointment only, and often they included delegations of twenty-five people or more. During school vacation periods he was inundated with visits from high school classes, whose members would shower him with questions. There are no statistics, but it is probable that more visitors come to Suite 455 than to any other office in the Senate Building.
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Lehman got back to his office at 5:30 P.M. and required only a half hour to dispose of his two appointments that afternoon. One was with three representatives of a New York City social welfare agency who were spending some time in Washington promoting a minor health bill. The other visitor was a Democratic party county leader from upstate New York who talked about patronage matters. Usually, Lehman steered clear of patronage struggles, being guided by an old adage that with each appointment, a Senator “makes ninety-nine enemies and one ingrate.” When jobs were open, whether for federal judge, United States attorney, marshal, or collector of internal revenue, he would seek recommendations from the Democratic State Committee and often would pass them on without comment to the appropriate executive department. Postmaster-ships—there had been 200 appointments in New York State during his year and a half as Senator—were sometimes more complicated. The initiative in picking a nominee for a local position like postmaster rested with the appropriate county committee, which in turn sent its recommendation to the state body. From the state committee the nomination went to the Post Office Department, which sent it to Lehman for approval. (Senator Ives, being a member of the minority party, had no voice in patronage.) Usually Lehman approved it, but occasionally the first announcement of a nomination would be the signal for an intra-party battle in the county concerned, and then Lehman would delay his approval until the dust had settled. A cardboard box of small library cards in his office contained information on all past, current, and future postmaster appointees. A typical card showed the name of the applicant, his county, and his references. Less typical was the card that bore a note at the bottom: “Watch this one.”
At about 6 P.M. Lehman called in Julius Edelstein and discussed the day’s activities with him. Both were satisfied with the progress of the hearings. Edelstein informed the Senator of some recent developments that he had heard about from the administrative assistant of another Senator, and Lehman checked his plans for the following day. As he talked, he idly glanced through the stack of mail and documents on his desk. To each letter was attached a slip filling in the necessary background; most were accompanied by draft replies. When Edelstein returned to his own desk at 6:15, he left Senator Lehman sitting alone in his office, rapidly reading through the mail, making notations on memo slips for some, signing his name to others. He did not finish until a few minutes before 7 P.M., when he stuffed some papers into his briefcase, let himself out the side door, and went downstairs to his car, which was waiting at a side entrance. Julius Edelstein and two secretaries were still working; when Edelstein at last left the office, switching off the lights and locking the door behind him, it was 8:10 P.M.
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