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there was a great deal of animosity between the two of them) -- Patman tried to take away some of the prerogatives of the committee by having duplicate hearings. The sub-committee would meet and have its hearings, and then Patman would insist on having another set of hearings with the full committee sitting. So it was helpful to me. It's not exactly the way a committee should be run, very time-wasting.

In any event, because of this animosity between Patman and Barrett, a situation developed whereby Patman wanted to reduce Barrett's influence and so he called a Democratic caucus meeting of Democratic members of the full Banking and Currency Committee, and he made the following proposal: that the Housing Committee be stripped of its jurisdiction over mass transit and that a new sub-committee on mass transit be created And I thought this was a wonderful idea, because it would open up a whole new sub-committee, and I might get on it, especially because of my interest in mass transit. And so when he made his proposal, I spoke very forcefully for that measure. But it lost, because everybody on the Housing Sub-Committee didn't want to lose any jurisdiction, and therefore they voted against it, and others who were friendly to Barrett voted against it, and so Patman's proposal lost.

Then Barrett immediately, in order to hurt Patman (these are two grown men), introduced a measure before the same Democratic caucus to increase the membership of the Housing Sub-Committee from 15 to 25. And since there are only 43 members on the whole full committee at that time, it would have meant