Henderson Daily Dispatch

The most stunning and unexpected legislative development of the year was the break in the conference committee deadlocked over manpower legislation and the movement that the conference had adopted a compromise bill. Only three hours before it, however, Representative R. Ewing Thomason (D) of Texas, one of the House conferees, announced on the House floor that an agreement was improbable. Both House and Senate conferees had been saying they were a hung jury, and the deadlock in conference was such that there was practically no prospect that a bill would be worked out. The sudden shift caused speculation as to what had happened. It is generally assumed that word was passed down the line from some high administration source that the compromise bill, proposed by Senator Edwin C. Johnson (D) of Colorado, would be acceptable to the Army, which has clamored most loudly for manpower legislation.