Word: mavericks
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...After this tiring session, longest of the present Congress only because of the numerous roll calls, weary Maury Maverick of Texas began agitating for a mechanical vote-recording device in the House...
Fontaine Maury Maverick dropped his first name (so he says) as a small boy, riding in a wagon up a steep hill, when the driver told him that unless he thus lightened the load they would never make the grade. Critics of New Deal Congressman Maverick assert he has dropped more than a name, accuse him of throwing over family traditions, party principles, national ideals. A literate legislator, Maury Maverick replies to this wholesale charge in a rambling, engaging, man-to-man discourse on the state of the nation and himself...
...Maury Maverick's "purpose is to tell an ordinary story of an ordinary man with ordinary ideas." but he has a right to consider himself more American than most. His ancestors were early first citizens of Manhattan (whose etymology he gives as Man-a-hat-ta-nink, a place of general in-toxication), Virginia, South Carolina, Texas. His grandfather's unbranded cattle gave rise to the term '"maverick"-an unbranded yearling; hence independent, a rover. With this background it would not have been surprising if Maury Maverick had turned out a clan-conscious, reactionary Southerner. Clan-conscious...
...down-&- drag-'em-out school. Since those days he has had a change of heart, believes now in plain speaking, but "the politician of today cannot afford to be a bore, and by the same token he cannot afford to affect the incomprehensible jargon of the professor." Maverick thinks Tugwell's fearful and wonderful vocabulary, plus his inability to jolly newshawks, had much to do with his unpopularity...
...Maverick studied his constituents with more thoroughness than most politicians, even made a trip through Texas disguised as a hobo (see cut). Even before Hoover's Reconstruction Finance Corp. was functioning. Maverick had started a relief experiment, the Diga colony, on a cooperative, barter basis. He was elected to Congress in 1934. has since made a name for himself as a progressive New Dealer. His greatest admiration is not Roosevelt but Senator Norris...