A most beautiful and very mysterious lady, insured for millions of dollars and guarded closely by battalions of police and soldiers, was then in Washington on a royal tour of America from Europe. Millions had already paid court to her before her imminent sweep off to New York. Her name? Mona Lisa. ‘Shall we all go and see her as we do the city?’ asked the charming guide who had come with us from the Foreign Student Service Council in their unpretentious centre almost opposite the White House.
‘Count me out,’ I said ungallantly and at that everybody looked at me without an ounce of Christian forgiveness in their eyes.
‘Oh, Mr Clark knows his way around and has more interesting friends to see.’ Barbara Van de Velde put it all very neatly, and I knew I was lost for ever.
For the Parvin Group the following day was Senate and House of Representatives Day. I was late again, although Eldon Crowell had let me in very early from my late night outing, and Mimi had again taken the extra care of running me from her Georgia suburb district to Capitol Hill. So there was a terrible show of temper and official frowning when I reported at the office of Representative Frank Thompson, a Democrat from New Jersey. He had already finished briefing his guests about the job of being a Congressman when I arrived. Since nobody around exactly approved of my late arrivals, all we had was a brief exchange of greetings. Which was double loss to me, having before at Princeton missed seeing Representative Thompson, then a candidate seeking re-election to Congress, make a snowball of his rival at a public debate sponsored by the League of American Women Voters. All I could therefore admire of the man was the complete secretarial service and large office facilities he enjoyed as of right with other Congressmen.
In Westminster and Lagos, I recalled, Members of Parliament have to file up behind one another to dictate letters to joint hands at a common typing pool. For them, pennies for stamps to answer irate letters from one constituent or another totalled up to a pretty tall bill, whereas a Congressman merely had to frank his mail and it was as good as the Treasury Seal. The one damper to the occasion was the fact that I could not help admitting to myself, more so as we entered deeper into the heart of the establishment, that America really is a white country, with blacks merely there on terms worse than sufferance. For walking from members’ offices through the endless corridors to the close committee rooms and more or less empty halls, all with paintings and photographs of America’s past and present great presidents and parliamentarians proudly mounted on their walls, I looked out steadily for a black face among that vast concourse of Congressmen and their staff, but had not the good fortune of running into one.
As we left at last to catch up with our tight and tedious schedule, Mr Thompson’s personal assistant or secretary announced to me that somebody wanted me on the telephone. I could not readily think of anyone who would page me there, but Barbara knew already even before I picked up the receiver: ‘Oh, some of his smart set!’ she said, and everybody laughed. It turned out, however, to be some lobby correspondent or worse sponge wanting to report back home to the chain of newspapers that kept him in hire in the federal hive. He had heard that I was there, a fellow newspaper man, with another from Poland, and could we tell him what we thought of the US and of Congress in particular, now that we had visited it. For once I did not fly off the handle but had the sense to stall and soft pedal, eventually being rescued by Barbara and two other ladies who came along as gracious guides from the International Visitors Information Service. ‘Come on, we must be going!’ they shooed me out. And that done, they were hot with questions: ‘Who was that calling? What did you tell him?’
‘Oh, nobody or anything special,’ I poured cold water on them.
‘Really?’ they shrilled together. ‘Well, the man is in a hell of a mood this morning.’
The party moved straight from there to the Senate building, not without first going on a merry-go-round type of trolley train shunting passengers to and fro underground across the streets above. After such pains and expectations it was not a particularly impressive meeting of the Senators of America we saw that day on slipping into our seats in the visitors’ gallery. Apparently nobody was sure of a quorum. So a rollcall or something had to be taken. None of those few distinguished personages directly involved in the matter seemed to pay much attention, however. But unmistakably present for all to see was the ultra-dyed-in-the-blue Conservative and Republican Senator Barry Goldwater with his clear American conscience right on his sleeve for all Yankees to view as a sure Presidential prospect. Also there was young Senator Edward Kennedy fresh from Boston in Massachusetts to complete, as he quipped like a proud junior to a dazzled coterie of bejewelled hostesses, the family picture in Washington DC. Minority Leader Senator Everett Dirksen, the veteran spell-binding orator from Illinois, was another distinguished figure I did not miss in the sparsely-populated gallery. At the height of Congress Elections combined with that of the Cuba Crisis, I remembered vaguely, he valiantly apropos of nothing spiced a speech of his with memories of some happy meeting he had had with either the President of Nigeria, then still not appointed, or the Prime Minister of Ghana!
One or two Russian graduate exchange students at Princeton (they never travelled outside a radius of seventy miles except with special permission from the State Department) had come to join our group. Apparently, the proceedings in the vast echoing hall below did not impress them much.
‘Not at all like our Supreme Soviet,’ they smiled. ‘We are much too serious.’ And later outside, on our way to lunch at the Methodist Building, close by the place where the great prohibition onslaught on America’s drunken habits was launched and won for a short time in the thirties, Dan Passent, the Polish Parvin, had a more open laugh: ‘Now, he said, ‘we know where power actually lies in the United States!’ The Colonel and his wife did not like this at all; nor naturally their co-patriots acting together as hosts and guides. So immediately the group returned to the grand tour, with a first and major stop at the offices of Senator Harrison Williams, the Colonel summoned all of us together behind closed doors, and gave us a good talking-to about the intricate, almost God-ordained, system of the US which is a strict, judicious one of checks and balances, between the three arms of government on the one hand, and on the other between the government and citizens of America, a people, some of us may not know or care to acknowledge, that are the fiercest in the fight for individual freedom and opportunity, unlike in other lands where millions live like cattle behind iron and bamboo fencings. In any case, their system, contrary to the criticism that it is run by a handful of men with all the money and power, has served them for hundreds of years of prosperity before or since then unknown to man elsewhere on the globe, and if some of us there did not know already, he would venture to mention that the American people have suffered no change of régime for more than a century and indeed were enjoying the most ancient government in the world with the monarchy in Britain possibly excepted.
Altogether the Colonel made a capital job of it, with the surprise manner in which he sprang that briefing on us, not to mention its deep sincerity of voice and respect for facts. His colleague, usually more accommodating, also gave a little speech but coming after the Colonel’s, his was an anti-climax with a very sharp ‘i’ as only Americans themselves know how to call it.
Only the entrance of Senator Harrison Williams, another Democrat from New Jersey, broke the tension of the meeting, and although he did not know it, he saved everybody a further dress-down and worse. Freshly returned from some Parliamentarian Conference in Lagos, he was full of praise for Nigeria and the international trade fair she had mounted while he was there. His one regret however, he chuckled in his baritone voice, was the terrible crush to get inside for the Ghana-Nigeria Soccer match played in Lagos. ‘But it was sure great fun,’ he assured me. Such was the warm, personal way the Senator handled each guest. And when a young colleague of his just elected from Dakota or some far out Mid-West State came in to pay a courtesy call with many a ‘Sir’ and ‘my Senior’, he introduced him to us, and after more pleasantries saw us all to the door, shaking and waving hands all the time.
The group called on several more Congressmen as each asked that we look up his honourable friend at the next corner for another hard sell, but the one other stop that day I recall now was our visit to a Senate Committee hearing on some medical matter. I am not certain if it was not an aspect of the famous Medicare Bill itself. Anyway, it was a most crowded and heated affair, the Senators impanelled at one end of the hall, the interested lobby groups and members in the middle floor, and herded behind, close to the wall and doorway, sat and stood members of the general public, jostling and whisking past one another for space and every available seat. Cluttered in the midst of all this was a battery of audiovisual and public address equipment with cables all littered around, and cameras and film screens flashing now and again as a very high-powered delegation from the doctors put across their case.
For the way groups can persuade the American legislative system there is no better description than that offered voluntarily and proudly by the American National Theater and Academy in their brochure. I take die liberty to quote it in all its full length: ‘A Federal Charter is not granted lightly,’ the account opens grandly. In the history of the Congress of the United States, only a very few Congressional Charters have been granted to worthy organizations. This distinguished roster includes only one organization devoted to the theater arts: ANTA, the American National Theater and Academy.
‘Years of complex negotiation lie behind ANTA’s struggle for Congressional recognition which began at a quiet luncheon one day in November 1932. Mrs Amory Hare Hutchinson and Miss Mary Stewart French were discussing a new theater project in Philadelphia and, from this meeting came the conviction that these plans could effectively be converted into a national theater organization, complete with Congressional Charter. With the cooperation of J. Howard Reber and Miss Clara Mason, the idea was first presented to President and Mrs Franklin D. Roosevelt at Hyde Park in August 1933. Mr Reber drew up a prospectus according to the President’s enthusiastic suggestions. Support and interest began to widen. Largely through Mr Francis Crane’s personal friendship with the President, a second interview with him at the White House in February 1934 was successful in obtaining his support for the ANTA Charter, as opposed to various other similar projects which were being discussed in Congress at that time. Further appointments with Secretary of Labor, Miss Frances Perkins, and Secretary of the Interior, Harold L. Ickes, helped to develop a plan of ‘incorporators’ – a small sponsoring group, of about forty-five people, representing all national theater interests, but individually well-known as patrons of the arts But it was not until a small White House luncheon on April 25, 1934, that official administrative assistance was definitely promised.
‘Late the preceding fall, Miss Blanche Yurka who had been deeply interested in the idea of an American National Theater, was returning to Europe on the same ship with Senator Robert F. Wagner of New York. She so impressed him with the importance of the bill that he not only pledged his enthusiastic help – he further agreed to introduce the bill in the Senate. He was as good as his word. On April 22, 1935, ‘S. 2642’ – the bill proposing the incorporation and chartering of the ANTA – was presented by Senator Wagner to the Upper House.
‘More than a month of steady Senate opposition served only to spur the unceasing efforts of Senator Wagner and Mary Stewart French, who had even taken up residence in Washington to be on hand for the fight. The cooperation of both labor and craft unions was enlisted. Conferences with Frank Gilmore, President of Actors’ Equity Association, and William Green, President of the American Federation of Labor, brought invaluable assistance. Mr Green, who had signed the application for the Charter, and Mr Gilmore wired and wrote countless exhortations for support to influential members of both Houses of Congress. After several long and earnest conferences with Senator William H. King of Utah, leader of the Senate opposition, Senator Wagner was able to convince him of the importance and necessity for such an organization as proposed in his bill. Eventually, Senator King withdrew his arguments and, on May 28, 1935, the bill was passed by the Senate. The first battle was won!
‘Representative Charles F. McLaughlin of Nebraska agreed to present the bill to the House of Representatives and, a few days later, H.R. 8214 was introduced. Difficulties and delays began in earnest. The bill was resting in the hands of the Judiciary Committee, whose Chairman, Representative Hatton W. Sumners of Texas, vigorously opposed its approval.
‘At a special hearing before Representative Sumners in June, a group of distinguished supporters spoke ardently in favour of the bill. Impassioned pleas were made by Representative McLaughlin, Miss Frances Starr (representing Actors’ Equity Association), Mr Hushing (Legislative Representative of the American Federation of Labor), the Honourable Frederick Delano, uncle of the President and earnest worker for ANTA, and a host of others. Additional and unexpected opposition appeared when Representative William I. Sirovitch of New York testified that its passage would interfere with his own bill to found a Department of Science, Art and Literature. At the next meeting of the House Judiciary Committee a few days later, the Committee ruled against Representative Sirovitch and the bill was brought out of the Committee and placed on the House Unanimous Consent Calendar. Twice its passage was blocked by Sirovitch or his friends. Finally, a special rule was obtained from Congressman John J. O’Connor of New York, Chairman of the Rules Committee, allowing the bill to come up at any time and not just on a calendar day. On Saturday afternoon, June 29, Congressman McLaughlin was recognized by Speaker and, after a short debate on the floor of the House, ‘H.R. 8214’ was passed. The bill was signed by Speaker Burns for the House of Representatives and by Vice-President John Nance Garner for the Senate.
‘On July 5, 1935, the formal bill incorporating the American National Theater and Academy was signed by the President of the United States, and ANTA was officially recognized.’
So ends the epic and saga of one pressure group. It carries its own comment, and all we can say after is that God help that American cause without the right type of connections and resources. Against this backdrop the tragedy of the Negro cause comes nakedly across the footlights.
Lobbies range from the country’s most powerful and influential business and Brahmin groups, like the American Bankers Association, the Chamber of Commerce of the US, the National Association of Manufacturers, and professional propertied guilds like the American Medical Association that is ensuring the death of free state medical care for the old all acting in their own behalf and interest, to private public relations companies and individuals in the employ of South American dictators and Oriental tyrants, many of them financed to begin with by the American tax-payer.
In 1962 alone as many as 367 new lobbies and agents officially registered at both Houses of Congress, that is, at the rate of one per day of the leap year, a sure sign of a going business! Nor are all subtle and velvet-gloved like ANTA. Indeed the operational methods the American Federation of Labor – Congress of Industrial Organizations uses for pushing its points up Capitol Hill can be quite drastic, if not actually crude and full of the bludgeon of the bully or apprentice. Representing some eighteen million white workers and spending some one million dollars on TV time a year, the organization, despite the somewhat churlish image it cuts in the press, really is no underdog on the American cockpit of dog-eat-dog. It has a full-time staff of 21,000 enjoying the ideal of a five-and-a-half hour day in a five day week, a minimum weekly pay of $103, and free health services extended fully to the family.
So although feeling not a little deserted by white-collar employees, and harassed by farmers, self-employeds, state laws, an unemployment rate amounting to nearly six million in the world’s most prosperous country, and a division of workers by colour and not skill, the labour movement in America can tread pretty heavily on the feet of any politician or businessman who crosses its path. The spokesman who addressed the Parvin party on our second official visit to Washington was most emphatic about this, his broad Milwaukee brogue serving very well to underline his point. The Kennedy-Nixon race for the presidency, he told us, offered a case of union action. Politics was not their business; all they did was adopt a fundamental, rule-of-thumb policy of reward for a friend and punishment for the enemy. And how did they decide who was which? ‘Simple,’ he said. ‘The labour unionists called for the Congressional records of both candidates and compared the individual performances of the junior Senator from Massachusetts and the Vice-President, who by virtue of his office presided over the Senate. Not on their overall showing, but how they debated and eventually voted in matters of labour and public welfare. By a simple chalking-off and head-counting process they were soon able to tell how many times one candidate was with them, and the other against them. And Kennedy emerged an easy winner.’
True to their true primitive heart, they proceeded straight-away to reward the one and to punish the other. A telephone call to one union member in this factory and a wire to this executive in that local union, with the instruction that the message be passed on to another, started what soon became a nation-wide link-up, advising the American worker which of the two candidates then on TV and rampage across the land was his friend and the man to give his vote. ‘That’s how we do it,’ the spokesman sucked at his king-size cigar – which he was quick to point out that the father of Trade Unionism, Samuel Gompers, had himself patented. And to the query that the Chambers of Commerce, their directly opposite number in the American hierarchy, had charged the labour organization with having well over eight office blocks in the capital, when those with the millions made shift with one, the labour man, showing large and rather Dickensian features, had nothing but snorts and more puffs at his huge cigar. ‘Gompers made the cigar,’ he said. It was a statement as simple and symptomatic of the American scene as when earlier in the course of that second visit the Chambers of Commerce man had said in all seriousness: ‘It is good for big business to organize but bad for labour to unite, because one is in the best tradition of free enterprise while the other is denying the individual his right to work.’
These sharp divisions and differences of interests do not however make the American worker a socialist, if they certainly consecrate the capitalist as a Conservative, with his Churchillian motto of ‘What we have we hold.’ On the contrary the only agitator America can well afford is the delinquent lone ranger fighting a losing war with society. In fact the belief seems to be that if you are smart you must surely reach the sky; the millions who happen not to have done so really have themselves to blame, and their rotten luck, not anybody else or government, or party. Those were more or less the defiant words thrown in my face by a girl friend. We had taken to each other at a warm house party in winter for a number of young people from the film industry. Many of them, it seemed, were out of a job. Indeed the joke there that night was that the party was to announce the fact that the host was out of a job again! That too happened to be the lot of the plump girl I came to date pretty often. A graduate of political science, she had nobody to blame but herself for being unemployed. I offered her a job there and then – that of typing me some manuscripts. And though she was full of thanks, offering to do a page for much less than I had been paying at Princeton, she laughed to scorn my idea of people expecting governments to do things for them. ‘Why, that will be turning Jack into everybody’s uncle, and already the family is so insufferable!’
And these are views well propped up from the other end of the ladder by those on top. On my second official trip to Washington in April, I fell talking in the train with a businessman of the Delaware Valley, a region reputed to be the most industrialized in all the US. He had a large construction business all built up from scratch by himself. And this he was going to make over to his son in the true tradition of all vast family fortunes. ‘See him?’ He whipped out of his breast pocket and notebook the photograph of a young man in military academy uniform.
‘How are you sure he wants to follow in his father’s footsteps?’ I asked.
‘He darned well will want to,’ the man said. ‘Why, he’ll all be provided for. I have built this business up for what it is today so no member of my family will lack for anything.’ And here he brought out another photograph, this time of the entire family, even with the old parents included. Radiant in the centre with a strapping son and two daughters on her either side was his wife.
‘Now, they are all pretty well taken care of, for now and the future as far as human hand can provide.’ He congratulated himself and the American system of which he was a shining ‘success’ example.
‘Don’t you think by all this provision and security, you deny them their great American privilege of paying their own way through life?’ I asked.
‘How is that?’ he showed genuine surprise and disbelief.
‘Well, I can appreciate the point of your doctors when they say they want no medicare for the old,’ I began.
‘Go on,’ he prompted me, calling out for more drinks for us both in the bar where we sat.
‘As I see it, the doctors seem to be insisting that every American citizen should have provided for himself fully by retirement age. So why ask government now to pay their full medical bills?’
‘That’s right, boy, you’ve been following pretty close our American debate,’ he cheered me on. Until I added:
‘Well, it seems to me you are denying exactly that sacred principle the doctors are insisting on by wanting to lay on everything for members of your family.’
‘Young man, are you calling all my life’s effort vain? No, no, don’t withdraw or make any apologies for beliefs you honestly hold to. But tell me, as a writer, of what I don’t know, don’t you want to make money?’
‘Well, yes,’ I hedged ‘but the money side, although most welcome, usually is secondary. The act of writing and the creation that comes out of it are what matters.’
