Independent Man: The Life of Senator James Couzens

• 23. THE ONE-MAN BLOC
• Chapter
• Wayne State University Press
• pp. 141-151
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CHAPTER XXIII

THE ONE-MAN BLOC

He was a marked man in the Senate from the very beginning. His career in industry as well as in municipal government, plus his wealth and his reputation as a fighter formed a combination that caught the public fancy.

One news service, unaware of his Canadian birth, sent out during his first month a story to the effect that he was “a natural candidate for President in 1924.” “If the Democrats pick Ford, the Republicans are sure to seize upon Couzens as the only man who has a chance to beat him,” said the story.¹

Indeed, he rivaled in public attention, quite successfully, that distinctive feature of the year 1922—the “flapper.”²

2

The Washington newspaper writers as a group immediately liked him, in particular such journalists as Thomas L. Stokes, Paul Y. Anderson, and Ray Tucker. Many senators were cautious in permitting the press to quote them, but not Couzens. Consequently, he was often good for a “story.” The journalists, especially those of a liberal bent, flocked to his office. On the basis of one such meeting in his first week, William Hard wrote: “He is a perfectly non-political type of person . . . comes close to being the perfect independent.”³ This was sound prophecy.

3

He never mastered the art of oratory. For the most part, parliamentary procedure was a complete mystery to him. But he worked hard at his new career, attended every committee meeting, unless ill. He naively attempted in the beginning to function in the Senate as an executive, and never fully reconciled himself to the fact that this was impossible. Indeed, quite early in his career he remarked to a colleague: “This senator thing is not my line, and I probably won’t be here long. There is too much talk, talk, talk.”⁴

“He goes for the point like a bullet. He’s a man of strong likes and dislikes. He’s far from patient. Riled, he manifests it with plenty of vigor and urgency. Called to order, he effervesces like a shaken-up bottle of soda water. If you have business with Senator Couzens, make it snappy. He’s there to transact it, and he’s very accessible, but he doesn’t want a conversation to drool along. . . . Efficiency, efficiency. That’s Senator Couzens.” So one observer wrote.⁵

In those first weeks, he spent considerable time searching in books to try to learn what a senator should do and be.⁶ Finally, he gave up the study—and decided to be himself.

4

When he was sworn in by Vice President Calvin Coolidge on December 7, 1922, to become “a real live senator,” as he wrote Madeleine, Harding was still President. The Secretary of the Treasury was Andrew W. Mellon. Many believed he functioned as the real power of the Harding administration. Charles Evans Hughes was Secretary of State. Herbert Hoover still headed Commerce. William Howard Taft was Chief Justice.

In the Senate itself, there was still Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts, a link with an era long past. The venerable Mr. Lodge’s celebrated whiskers were fading somewhat, but he remained the grandee of the Old Guard, symbolizing a strong hold on the government by old line conservatives. As faithful lieutenants in the Senate, Lodge had James Watson of Indiana, Reed Smoot of Utah, David Reed of Pennsylvania, George Moses of New Hampshire, and Simeon Fess of Ohio, all fervently devoted to the policies that President Harding had termed “normalcy.”⁷

With Wilson’s party largely in a state of coma after the defeat of James Cox and Franklin D. Roosevelt for President and Vice President in the 1920 election,⁸ the Old Guard leaders, for all practical purposes, were the Senate of the United States throughout the first half of the Harding era.⁹

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It is true, however, that by 1922, the Republican stalwarts found themselves confronted with a challenging force, even so. In the Senate then were men, mainly Republicans from the West, who appeared to have been infected with the virus of Populism which many believed had been annihilated in the first Bryan campaign of 1896. These included Senators Robert M. La Follette, Sr., of Wisconsin, George W. Norris of Nebraska, Hiram Johnson of California, William E. Borah of Idaho, and, to some extent, Albert Cummins of Iowa, Arthur W. Capper of Kansas, and Charles L. McNary of Oregon. As the result of a kind of political dust storm in Iowa, the 1922 elections had even turned up a supposedly peculiar Republican who was pictured as a cross between John Peter Altgeld of Illinois and Nicolai Lenin—Senator Smith Brookhart, whose middle name was “Wildman.”

Under Old Bob La Follette’s magnetic personal leadership, these men had formed a Progressive bloc to make war on the clique around Harding, the “curious crew,” as Senator Norris called them.¹⁰ Senator Moses called this progressive group “Sons of the Wild Jackass,” with Couzens to be included in the epithet.¹¹

This group contrived at times to stir up heated controversy. They inveighed against domination of government by big business and flayed Wall Street and the power trust. They championed the cause of the western agricultural areas, which somehow did not share fully in the blessings of Harding’s “normalcy.” They opposed the administration tax policies. And finally, they turned the spotlight on evidence of corruption that made the Harding regime comparable to that of President Grant, uncovering a scandal, in the Teapot Dome oil leases, that rivaled any governmental venality the nation had known before.¹²

William Allen White thought he saw in this Progressive bloc, mainly Republican, a movement “that portends revolution—not noisy, bloody and disorderly . . . but a nice, decent, and dangerous revolution that will take a long forward trek toward economic justice for those who have been hankering to see something smash something.”¹³ This was optimism, for the basic calmness of the over-all political scene was really little disturbed just then. It would be ten years before the “nice and decent revolution”—that of Franklin D. Roosevelt—was to come.

6

Couzens himself was anxious for action. He gave a hint of this by his behavior when he was sworn in by Coolidge. When his name was called, he loped down the aisle so swiftly that retiring Senator Townsend, supposedly his escort, had to hurry to catch up.¹⁴

But the general listlessness of these early 1920’s was a definite handicap to him. His nature demanded that he strive to be outstanding, to leave his mark. The criticism which had been voiced to Governor Groesbeck that Couzens was a “lone handed player” was accurate, and therefore he could not wholly identify himself with any group in the Senate and gain satisfaction from the activities of the group—much less his party. He had to be on his own. He was at his best when tackling major problems, as in the case of the streetcar issue in Detroit. But the Senate as a whole was slow then in facing up to major problems.

7

As might be expected, he became an almost constant thorn in the side of his own party. His enemies never said anything more accurate about him than that he was a Republican “in name only.” He himself later summed up his partisanship: “I am a Republican, but not like Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover!” Inasmuch as these three were the titular heads of his party throughout his senatorship, a fair question would have been: “Republican? What kind?” A newspaper headline of the period came closest to pegging him properly:

JAMES COUZENS—ONE-MAN BLOC¹⁵

Curiously enough, despite his progressive record as Detroit’s mayor, he did not immediately commit himself as to which group he would line up with. But which group could he line up with? The Old Guard, under Lodge? The Progressives, under La Follette?

One of the first things he did was deliberately to insult Senator Jim Watson of Indiana by pretending to him that he had never heard of him before and asking him what party he belonged to. A Republican organ in St. Louis reflected Watson’s reaction by observing: “Evidently, this new specimen of the political fauna from the wilds of Detroit intends to make it plain that he was formerly associated with Ford by trying to out-Ford himself in arrogance. It is safe to predict that he will fade away from Washington just about the same way as Multimillionaire Senator H. A. W. Tabor of Colorado.”¹⁶

8

Couzens’ first vote as Senator was in opposition to a ship-subsidy bill, which the Harding clique supported with great fervor. This bill was an outgrowth of World War I, during which the government had acquired a great merchant fleet operated by the U. S. Shipping Board. The Ship Subsidy Bill of 1922 provided that the vessels “be turned over to private companies on generous terms and that substantial appropriations be voted to help them operate on a comfortable margin.”¹⁷

Although it is debatable how well this jibed with the popular idea that the government should get out of business, it certainly was good business for the companies that were to get the ships and the generous subsidies, estimated at $850,000,000.

Along with Brookhart, Couzens caused this bill to be shelved in the Senate just when its passage appeared near. For he and Brook-hart obtained enough signatures to a round robin to get the subsidy measure taken off the calendar in favor of a farm-relief measure.

This ship-subsidy issue had been prominent in the 1922 Congressional elections, a number of members having been defeated primarily, it was said, because they had favored it. Now the Lame Duck Congress was given its orders to pass the bill before the new members took their seats—a maneuver that inspired Senator Norris later to begin his long and finally successful fight for the so-called “Lame Duck Amendment” to the Constitution.¹⁸

Harding made a personal appearance before Congress on behalf of the subsidy.

It was no wonder that the Couzens-Brookhart action produced a sensation. As stated by the Baltimore Sun:

This was the most novel experience the Senate has had in many years. Here were two senators who had hardly acquainted themselves with the methods of getting in and out of the Senate chambers and yet they had become leaders in fact in the subsidy fight, if not in name.¹⁹

The staunchly Republican Philadelphia Public Ledger headlined the incident:

POLITICAL CHAOS NOW REIGNS IN WASHINGTON²⁰

9

That Couzens in his first week had helped to incite all this seemed to mean that he, too, was an insurgent Progressive. Additional evidence along this line appeared when the Senate began considering an offer by Henry Ford to buy the Muscle Shoals, Alabama, facilities (later the basis for the Tennessee Valley Authority). This offer, which had enormous popular support, was almost accepted by Congress.²¹ Couzens asserted bluntly that neither Ford nor any other private individual ought to have the government-owned nitrate and power development, but it should be held by the government for the benefit of the public.

In this, of course, he shared the view of Senator Norris, “father of TVA”, who at just this time issued a report that called Ford’s offer “the most wonderful real estate speculation since Adam and Eve lost title to the Garden of Eden.”²²

Couzens felt so strongly on this issue that he gave it as one reason for giving up his interest in the Bank of Detroit just before he took the oath as senator. “I am going to fight Mr. Ford on Muscle Shoals and I don’t want my stand to embarrass the bank,” he told the directors of the bank.²³

His attitude helped to bring about a sharp decline in Congressional sentiment for the Ford offer, and helped to save Muscle Shoals for the later T.V.A. As the Detroit Free Press put it: “That Senator Couzens, former business partner to Ford, is opposed to the offer . . . has convinced Republican leaders that it would be a mistake to put the Ford offer before the Congress.”²⁴

Even so, Couzens’ vote on the Ship Subsidy Bill, his outcry against the Ford offer, was not yet a safe indication of his political thinking. He had acted against the subsidy bill merely upon impulse. Later, he said, “If it is the business of the United States to see that we have a Merchant Marine, then we ought to assume the responsibility and not transfer it to private interests, augmented by taxes.”²⁵ But in December 1922 he had merely been annoyed that the business of the Senate had come to a stop while senators orated for days on the shipping bill.²⁶

10

Political success is often corrosive of political principles. When the rebel, the iconoclast, the independent, finds himself in a position of high influence, there is a tendency to retract the horns, to prove that, after all, he is “safe” and “sound”; a kind of self-reformation of the reformer occurs. With some, this change lasts only a short time; with others, the weak ones or the opportunists, it becomes permanent.

Couzens experienced this change temporarily. He demonstrated at the outset an unwonted sensitivity to the charge that he was not a “regular Republican.” It was commented upon that his social companions, at lunch and at golf, were all of the Old Guard, men like

Frederick Hale of Maine or the steel millionaire Lawrence C. Phipps of Colorado.

When he was in the company of Progressives like Norris, “he developed streaks of orthodoxy,” one observer noted.²⁷ Another, in talking with him, suggested that he would naturally be classified as a Progressive, citing his record as mayor of Detroit, but Couzens on this occasion was evasive. “I don’t want to be classified at all,” he said. “If this bloc you call progressive is for something I believe in, then I’ll be with them, but I’ll not commit myself to any group. The standpatters are not always wrong.”²⁸

11

Early in his Senate service, he cast a vote that was odd for a man considered a “Bolshevik” back home.

Senator J. Thomas Heflin of Alabama, a lesser figure of the species of “Pitchfork” Ben Tillman and Tom Watson, had made a remark, during debate on an agricultural credit bill, which the Old Guard took as a special slur. He was in the Senate, Heflin said, to “represent the people . . . not the bond sharks, the big financiers of Wall Street.”²⁹ Senator Lodge especially was outraged, asserted that Heflin had violated the Senate rules against impugning the motives of colleagues, and demanded that Heflin be refused further use of the floor. Vice President Coolidge so ruled. A vote was taken—and Couzens voted for suppression of Heflin.³⁰

In one respect, this vote could have been deemed praiseworthy, even for a Progressive. For Senator Heflin could by no means represent personally a cause worth a Progressive’s martyrdom. In the words of a quite moderate observer: “Congress had its quota of strong men, weak men, and fools, and foremost of the fools was . . . Heflin . . . the national idol of the Ku Klux Klan.”³¹

Yet, in a larger view, the silencing of Heflin was an attack on free and open debate, a principle Couzens always championed.

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Heflin turned on Couzens. He said sarcastically that he knew the explanation for Couzens’ vote. It was his money. He had heard it said that, though Couzens was a multimillionaire, he was progressive. “I said, ‘Say that to me again and say it slow.’ . . . Mark what I tell you. . . . When the big interests are attacked, you will see him go over and take his place with the bellwethers of the standpat party.

“I saw him do it this morning—my good friend Couzens of Michigan, parading himself down here as a Progressive, and this morning he walked right over and sat right down under the whiskers of the Senator of Massachusetts.”³²

Although another man might have laughed, Couzens characteristically lost his temper. He stood up in the aisle to answer Heflin, “his posture that of a bulldog.” In angry tones he made a demand that startled everyone. The Senate reporter should be instructed to read the record of the remarks just made by Heflin, because, he explained, Wadsworth of New York had advised the Senate at an earlier time that Heflin had edited certain remarks he had made about Wadsworth.

“I do not propose to give him the opportunity to go in the night time, in the dark, and change the references he has made to myself. If Senators are free to get up here and tell the galleries and the American people that the motives of a senator of any state are to be questioned, we might as well stand up here and call everybody thieves and liars!”³³

There ensued a scene which was, according to the New York Herald, “reminiscent of Socialist outbreaks in the Reichstag, the French Chamber of Deputies, soap-box events in Union Square and Hyde Park, London.”³⁴ Undoubtedly, this was an exaggeration, but by dropping the pose of a dignified Roman Senator as soon as he was attacked, Couzens certainly had transformed the Senate into something resembling the rowdy Detroit city-council meetings when he was mayor.

Nine senators were on their feet at once, all clamoring for recognition and arguing loudly one way or another about Couzens’ request. The upshot of all the furor was that both Couzens and Heflin withdrew their remarks. Couzens found himself praised by a group whose praise he would not appreciate for long—the clique around Harding, to whom Big Tom Heflin was especially obnoxious. The Old-Guard press hailed him as “a hero.” Couzens was all right after all, they decided.

13

But at just this time he also gave Harding and the Old Guard newspapers cause to regret his presence in the Senate. For he had deliberately attacked Harding’s leadership on the subject of government ownership versus private ownership of the railroads.

In a special message to Congress, Harding had referred to the government’s administration of the railroads during the war as “folly.” For the railroad brotherhood’s newspaper, Labor, Couzens prepared a sharply critical statement on the President’s message.³⁵ He also carried on the attack in an address before the Philadelphia Real Estate Board.³⁶

He did not commit himself definitely in favor of government ownership, but he made it plain that he resented the idea that government ownership was evil per se. In this same address, to make the point that private business could be worse than government, he ripped into the Lincoln Motor Car Company for the profit it made on its contracts to produce Liberty airplane motors during World War I.³⁷

He strongly refuted the propaganda line put forward by The Railway Review, that those who even considered government ownership of the railroads were subversives, in league with “the most dangerous organizations of radicals in the country.” But, as the Kansas City Star said:

“Couzens has the background of many years of successful business experience and . . . is the wealthiest man in the Senate. It will be difficult for foes to brand any plan he puts forward as coming from a ‘wild-eyed radical.’ “³⁸

The Progressives were exultant. “Jim Couzens is one of the greatest men in Washington!” Senator Brookhart exclaimed.³⁹ La Follette and Norris paid him an unprecedented compliment, for a first-termer. They backed him, though unsuccessfully, for chairman of the Senate Committee on Interstate Commerce.⁴⁰

14

It was inevitable that Couzens and Harding should eventually be at loggerheads. They were antithetical figures: Harding, the prince of good fellows, had, in the words of William Allen White (who liked him), “the harlot’s virtues”;⁴¹ Couzens was the epitome of the rigidly ethical. Indeed, at their first meeting there was an air of suppressed hostility.⁴²

Just at this time, Harding appointed James G. McNary, a Texas banker, to the office of Comptroller of the Currency. Couzens, as chairman of a subcommittee of the Senate Committee on Banking and Currency, had the duty of investigating McNary’s background. When a banker himself, he had adhered to certain rules which he considered basic: A banker must not borrow from his own bank, nor must he permit associates in his bank to make loans to themselves.⁴³ To his amazement, Couzens came upon evidence which indicated that Harding’s choice for Comptroller had violated these rules in an extravagant fashion as president of his bank in Texas. Couzens was advised for example, that “for a period of more than five years, McNary was a continuous borrower from the bank of which he was president. . . . At one time 88 per cent of the capital and surplus funds . . . was loaned directly to the officers and directors.” Couzens immediately went to the White House to tell Harding to withdraw the McNary appointment.⁴⁴

Harding, however, adopted the position that McNary’s background, instead of disqualifying him, proved him “a very practical man,” the kind “needed as Comptroller of Currency.”⁴⁵ Couzens stood firm. “I agree with you that Mr. McNary is a very practical man. I am afraid he is too practical to be the kind of disciplinarian that the Comptroller of the Currency should be.”⁴⁶

Despite Couzens’ opposition, Harding insisted that the Senate confirm McNary. He was angry that Couzens had made public the Senate committee’s findings on McNary, evidence obtained in “executive session.” To have made it public was “in violation of the long-established conception of wise procedure,” he wrote Couzens.⁴⁷

The strongest possible pressure was brought on the Republican leaders in the Senate to push the nomination through, for McNary was an important cog in the Republican organization of the Southwest, described by William Allen White as the party’s “field agent” in Texas and New Mexico.⁴⁸

On the last day of the session, Couzens, carrying on a singlehanded fight, threatened to filibuster unless the McNary appointment were withdrawn. He so informed “Jim” Watson, Harding’s floor leader.⁴⁹ Rather than see other legislation lost, Harding yielded, and the appointment was withdrawn. Daniel R. Crissinger of Marion, Ohio, Harding’s home town, who later became Governor of the Federal Reserve Board, was named instead.

15

That a Republican senator could be responsible for such an affront to a Republican President revived a familiar question. Was Couzens a Republican? He himself raised the point in a talk at Bay City, Michigan. “I would like to be considered a member of the Republican party. . . . But, if being a Republican means kow-towing to the President, I do not care to be a Republican.”⁵⁰

From then on, he was the old Couzens. No one would ever again be able to say that he sat under the whiskers of Senator Lodge or any other standpatter. He dropped the pose of not knowing the difference between the Progressives and the Old Guard. To a reporter for Nation’s Business, who inquired about statements that he was a radical, Couzens said, “Yes, I’m radical as hell when I see an evil that ought to be ended.”⁵¹

To the Saturday Evening Post he became “The Scab Millionaire.”⁵²