Sam Rayburn: An Old-Fashioned Texas Democrat
SAM RAYBURN, born on a farm in Roane County, Tennessee in 1882, grew up outside Bonham, Texas and became a famous and powerful Speaker of the House in Washington, D.C.
Rayburn was the eighth of eleven children of a proud, decent cotton farmer who scratched out a living in Tennessee, then moved his family west and scratched out a living 11 miles outside Bonham. Sam’s father was also a proud Confederate veteran and he raised his children to hate Reconstruction, to hate the rich and the railroads and the banks. The Republican Party, Sam learned as a boy, were the architects of Reconstruction and the willing tool of the monied interests, and he never strayed far from that orthodoxy.
Farming was hard work, and they never had much money. Sam decided money wasn’t important. The first year the Rayburns planted cotton on their 40 acres outside Bonham, they harvested just two-and-a-half bales of cotton. Floods and boll weevils got the rest. Sam went to school just four months a year, to a one-room schoolhouse. Picking cotton day after day as a boy, his hands were often raw and bleeding.
But it wasn’t the work or the poverty that was hardest on Sam; it was the lonely quality of being out on a farm. Sam was a people person. His parents were proud of Sam but frugal with signs of affection. Often, when his chores were done, he would sit on a fence post and hope someone might ride by on a horse, or drive by in a buggy, just to see another human being.
Rayburn used to say, “Poverty only tries men’s souls. It is loneliness that breaks the heart.”
Rayburn’s life was changed when he was 12 years old, on the day he saw Joseph Weldon Bailey speak steadily for two hours at the Bonham Evangelical Church. Bailey was a great populist orator and the stemwinder he delivered that day was one Sam Rayburn never forgot.
An ambitious young man, Rayburn got a pamphlet from East Texas State and enrolled at that college. He graduated in 1903. At age 24, only 5'6" tall but with a big head and massive shoulders and neck, Rayburn was elected to the state legislature after campaigning on a brown cow pony, riding from farm to farm.
Before long, he was Speaker of the Texas House of Representatives.
Then in 1912 he got himself elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. Rayburn loved the House, and never had any interest in being a U.S. Senator.
In 1937, Rayburn became House Majority Leader. In 1940, William Bankhead of Alabama died abruptly, and Sam Rayburn became House Speaker. For almost the entire period from 1940–1961, Rayburn served as Speaker — almost 17 years in all.
Rayburn honored the House tradition of the “Board of Education,” where powerful members of both parties slipped into a hideaway room in the Capitol for bourbon, gossip and horse trading. As a Congressman, he was a frequent visitor to the Board of Education meetings and in 1940, when Rayburn became House Speaker he began hosting the meetings. Vice President Truman was at the “Board of Education” in 1945 when word reached him to return to the White House immediately. There Truman learned that President Roosevelt was dead and that Truman was the new president.
When Rayburn learned Harry Truman was about to become president, Rayburn warned Truman that he was going to have a presidential staff telling him, day in and day out, that he was the smartest man in the world, and “The truth is, Mr. President, you and I both know it’s a damn lie.”
There were two brief periods of Republican majority in those years — 1947–1949 and 1953–1955. During those aberrant periods, Rayburn couldn’t stand the phrase “Minority Leader” and insisted on being called “Democratic Leader” instead. When the Democrats lost control of the House in 1952, the Board of Education meetings stopped, because Joe Martin, the Republican Speaker was a teetotaler, but when the Democrats got back in the saddle in 1954, Rayburn continued hosting Board of Education meetings, and did so until his death.
Rayburn became the modern ideal of a Speaker of the House: stubborn but honorable, partisan but fair. Asked how many Presidents he’d served under, he would reply that he’d served WITH eight presidents. He had no problem speaking sharply to a president and did so at least once to President Roosevelt when he felt the President wasn’t listening properly.
He disliked the telephone and took pride in keeping all phone calls brief. Even presidents found Sam Rayburn winding up their phone calls within two or three minutes. Often he’d save time by not introducing himself or greeting the man on the other end of the line. Straight to business.
He would not tolerate being lied to. “There are no degrees in honorableness,” he liked to say. “You either are or you aren’t.”
Rayburn could be jovial among friends but he was naturally reserved and had a terrible temper. When he felt someone in Congress had lied to him or tried to fool him, the color came up in his face, his shoulders and neck pulsed and bulged, and he swore a blue streak at the man who had treated Speaker Rayburn with such contempt.
He chased power and he liked fame, but he still felt money wasn’t important. Even on government trips, he often paid for his expenses out of his own pocket. When he died, his estate was worth just $15,000.
Rayburn played a role in great world events; it was his job to get Congress to approve a mystery $15 billion dollars to finish the Top Secret atomic bomb. He thus knew more about the Manhattan Project than did Vice President Truman. But though congressional junkets to lively vacation sports around the world were commonplace, in his 48 years in Congress Sam Rayburn took just one overseas trip: to inspect the Panama Canal.
He was proudest of helping bring electricity and improved roads to his farm neighbors in Fannin County and perhaps of quietly helping pass voting rights bills that many of his constituents abhorred.
House Speaker Rayburn liked to welcome freshmen congressmen — and to counsel freshmen congressmen that they were to be seen not heard — and not even seen all that much. There are a lot of good men around here, Rayburn told the freshman. Listen to what they have to say. Follow their lead. Around here, the unwritten rules matter more than the written ones. Respect the political needs and the integrity of members with whom you disagree. Get re-elected a few times before you start making noise.
And DON’T TALK TOO MUCH. He’d remind them “You never get in trouble for something you didn’t say.” And he’d warn them, “I’ve sat in the Speaker’s chair and watched many a congressman talk himself right out of the Congress.”
He’d tell freshmen it was normal to be a little scared on first arriving but if you’re the right man for the job, you’ll do fine, and if you’re NOT the right man for the job, being scared won’t keep you from being found out.
In 1959, Daniel Inouye, who’d lost an arm in the Second World War, was elected to the U.S. Congress from Hawaii — becoming the first Japanese-American Congressman ever. Inouye, with great dignity, approached House Speaker Sam Rayburn and said, “I don’t know if you know me, Sir, but I’m Daniel Inouye.”
Rayburn draped an arm around him, and said brightly: “Of course, I know you! How many one-armed Japs you think we got around here?”
Rayburn was very expressive with his gavel. A repeated tap-tap-tap meant he was tired of hearing what was being said. A hard echoing gavel slam meant: “No more!” A heavy thump of the gavel meant Rayburn was truly angry. He could also be quite eloquent with a deep glare.
Rayburn was touchy about being bald. He hated to have his bald head photographed, and when someone released a lot of pigeons at the Democratic National Convention of 1948 “to symbolize peace” Rayburn was less than peaceful when one of the pigeons landed on his head, and photographers started snapping pictures.
When you work 18 hours a day, it’s hard to make a good marriage, and Rayburn was too cautious to leap into a bad one. He lived in a rather dingy apartment. Shy and consumed by his career, Rayburn did marry once — to a lovely young lady named Metze Jones — but the marriage was over in three months. It was whispered that Metze Jones had disapproved of the endless hours Sam worked at politics, and thought his enjoyment of liquor sinful. Sam never fooled around with marriage again.
Consequently, Sam Rayburn had no children, and wished especially that he’d had “a tow-headed boy to take fishing.” Lyndon Johnson, always so quick to sense what others wanted and needed, presented himself as a surrogate son, entertaining Rayburn, sensing the man’s loneliness and using Rayburn’s support to rise quickly in Washington.
Sam Rayburn died in 1961. Some of his best-known sayings are still worth remembering.
“When two men agree about everything, one of them is doing all the thinking.”
“Any jackass can kick a barn down; it takes a carpenter to build one.”
“There’s a time to fish and a time to mend your nets.”
And “Legislation should never be designed to punish anyone.”