 Mr. Shriver on 9-0. Mr. President, we're talking to Henry Wilson and Wilson McCarthy. The thought came up that if we could get the leading southern people, like Mills and Harris and Landrum and Sykes, Mahon, Vincent, and so on, to hold a southern vote in line if we accepted this new language, which is acceptable to the northerners, to Kerry and Delaney and the rest of them, that a career... Bill or in the report? In the bill, that it would be a tremendous accrue for you personally. I don't think you can do that though. I just talked to a bunch of them and I think that you're just going to have a war if you try to rewrite the bill we sent up there. They're going to say that Spelman rewrote it. Now that's simple. They say we had a bill for all the country, all the people, trade them all well, but Spelman rewrote it. He sent down the word from the Pope and that's it. I've just been to Hill and just had lunch with 23 of them and they just tore right in. That's the first thing they want to talk about. I told them now, here's what we're going to try to do. Under N.Y.A., we had every kid, regardless of what church he belonged to, regardless what race he belonged to, regardless what section town he's in, we treat them all alike. We're going to pass this bill as we've sent it up there, but we're going to put a provision in the report and the administrator is going to treat all kids alike. And there's nothing for you all to get hot and bothered about now because Bill Maury is in on this program and he's not going to turn it over to the Pope. But you have no idea how that feeling and Halick's got it going. He's outsmarted you. He just got him going just 100 percent. He tried the Niagara thing and that didn't get off the ground and now he's got the religious thing and he's got it working for him 100 percent. And you've got no more chance to hold that Bible belt with changing a comma that involved the church thing than you have of just flying to the moon in my judgment as of now. Well, I talked to Landrum about it this morning and he says, well, you can get a bill through the rules committee but you get killed on the floor. Well, now that's a question that came up and it seemed to me that this was a possibility. Namely, let's say it goes on to the floor. You go through the rules, you go through this committee, which would accept it easily. You get on the floor and there's an eruption against this particular part. And if you have to take an amendment there, so then you take the amendment and nothing is lost. If on the other hand, they lose on the amendment and it is beaten off. The Republicans vote where the Catholics to kill the bill and they'll vote to kill the bill. Well, that's the question of course. If those fellows could be held in line not to kill the bill, then two things would happen. This was Wilson's theory and I thought it was pretty good. Number one, you would get, not only the credit for putting through a fantastic education bill, which Robert Corbyn, for example, describes as the best thing on age education that's happened for years. I can't put it through though. I've already sent a bill up, you see. And I go to Mendon, my own bill, I get in deep trouble. The bill has been amended. I know, that's right, that's right. But not by my leadership. Not by my leadership. And I don't know, I'm not close enough to it, Sarge, to know exactly what to do, but I know this feeling is deep and it's, I would say it's just as, you'd almost have a fist fight if you put Bob Pogue and Wright Patman in the room with Jim Delaney and Tipple and Mayo. Well, of course, what they're saying, according to Wilson, is that Bob Pogue, for example, he gets everything he wants, but the Northern guys, who have to run against opposition, don't get anything that, when the Cotton Week thing comes up, they'll vote to help out in the way that the South needs it. Like on the item vote today, as Wilson says, the who's voting with it is the Northern and who's voting against it is the Southerners. And that, for once, if they would stand on this one, it would show that the South is staying with you and that the South is going to help the North and you've got a united Democratic Party, united in a way that's never been united before. In fact, without losing a thing in the South or damn little, you gain fantastic support in the North. You've got all these guys in the North behind you as the guy who, like when you brought the first Civil Rights bill through the Senate and the history since the Civil War, you bring through the first aid education bill. I can't do it if it involves changing the bill you sent out because they just won't take it and no human being can do it. God couldn't get them to do it. I see. Well, and I think what you better try to work out is to get to say, please give me the discretion, give me the power, put it in the report, and whether the report doesn't attract much attention, the bill's the same as sent up there and if you can't trust me and Johnson, you can't trust anybody and I think you better just tell your folks that and if they can't do it, they'll kill themselves as a bill. We were far this bill and we all thought it was treating everybody alright. Now the Catholics raised this question. Walter scared to death that they raised the question, they're going to get the thing made an issue. I think it's a terrible thing for them to make it the issue. I think the truth of the matter is that they're not so much worried about that as they are, let me say irritated as well, about these other things that bear on the same issue, namely that as Kerry put it to me over there in Phil Andrews' office, they're closing up my Navy yard, now they're going to close up my schools. What the hell have I got to run with and I've got a Republican again? I've saved his Navy yard, but I am prepared to close them. They were on the list to close, both Brooklyn and Boston. And if he and O'Neill want them closed, I can act forthwith right quick. He doesn't have to get a religious argument started to do that. I asked Mike and Mary to make a study of everyone and take 12 months to do it and that study hadn't come in. But they owned a black male male net and I told John McCormick I didn't blackmail on that yesterday. And I'm the one that kept the Navy yard in closing, nobody else but Little Linda. They ought to be closed, they're WPA Navy yards. They're operated for the basis of giving jobs to people that we do not need to work done. And it's just a poverty program, that's what it is. But I kept them open in Boston, in Brooklyn, in Philadelphia. And I did it because Ken O'Donnell came in here and said we can't afford to close them. But I'm not closing Kerry's Navy yard and if that's what he's doing on this, well, we can close it if that helps his pain in him. But we don't want to, we're trying to do our damnedest. And I'm not just, I'm not wedded, I don't have to have a poverty program. If they want to kill it, they can kill it. I think the wise thing for them to do though, would not just the church lower its boom here on a bill, it's up there. Because I think it'll be unfortunate for them. And I don't, it may be unfortunate for the Democrats too. But I just, I think if they can't trust one of their own to administer this bill and they got language and a report that says that all kids will be treated alike. I don't know what kind of language it is, but they told me Larry O'Ron said they had five different types of it and that they could put it in the report and then you got discretion, you got power and this doesn't involve parochial schools. Just leave the power with you. And you operated like that. I think that what they claim anyway, what O'Brien claims, and Wilson tells me the truth of the matter, is that they're not raising a religious issue and that's sort of a superficial thing, that it's these other considerations that are... Well, what can I do about the others? I've kept them from being closed. Now how much further can I go? Can I build a new one there? Is that the point they're raising? No, of course not. What is the point then? Well, I don't know the whole thing. I just, the way Wilson put it to me, Mr. President, was that if South would go along with the North... South ain't going to go along with anything except that bill. And Wilson knows that. If he's got, since then, four-pets out of a boot, he knows it. If he hadn't, he ought to try it. What he says is that you go and turn the South, because I can't turn the North. That's the net of what he says. What we've got to do is find agreement that both of us can get on. Yeah. And that's in the report. Okay, and you can't... Well, we've tried that. I tried that last night. Yes. But what I tried that this morning, I called Landrum this morning. Landrum said, you get a bill through the Rules Committee, but you get a bill killed. That's what he told me on the phone. Well, Henry Wilson said to me that he thought maybe, well, his opinion was that Landrum might be reflecting what used to be the situation, but which is not the situation in fact. Well, I would thank it to, if I were you, and I had to guess on the House's sentiment instead of listening to Wilson and Henry Wilson or Wilson McAllen or Wilson, whatever his name is. McCarthy. Wilson McCarthy. I'd listen to Phil Landrum. He's the land's going to have to get you the Southern votes. Yeah. And neither one of those boys is going to be able to P1 drop. Wilson can't get North Carolina vote where he comes from. And Wilson McCarthy can't deliver a one, and the poor they go to evaluating for you. You picked out Landrum, which was a smart move. Now, you get down with Landrum and do what Landrum says you got to do and find some way that you can do what these other fellows want you to do administratively. Yeah. Okay, fine. Thank you.