So our troubled, embattled, urban society, looking to Washington for wisdom and help, finds that the processes of change are thwarted by the control of old men whose values are those of a small-town lawyer or a feed-store opera- tor. If they react at all to the challenge of our age, it is with incomprehension and irritation. Congress seems drugged and inert most of the time. Even when the problems it ignores build up to crises and erupt in strikes, riots, and demonstra- tions, it is not moved. Its idea of meeting a problem is to hold hearings or, in extreme cases, to appoint a commission.
