Joint Senate-house Conference on Dp Legislation May Produce Unified Bill Toda

The joint Senate-House conference on legislation to admit 200,000 DP’s to the U.S. within two years will meet this evening and it is expected that a unified version of both chambers’ DP bills will be worked out some time tomorrow afternoon.

Meanwhile, in an apparent effort to maintain the restrictive aspects of its legislation, the Senate today named two additional conferees to the joint conference–Senators Forrest C. Donnell, of Missouri, and James Eastland, of Mississippi. This brings the total number of conferees to 12.

The Senate is now represented in the Conference by Senators Chapman Revercomb, Harley Kilgore and Homer Ferguson, in addition to today’s appointees. Revercomb guided the DP bill through the Upper House; Ferguson fought to liberalize it; while Kilgore, who voted for most of Ferguson’s amendments, called the Senate measure “not good, but better than nothing at all.”

The House is represented by Congressmen Frank Fellows, author of the House bill; Emanuel Celler, outspoken champion of the “proportional entry” clause; Ed Gossett arch-enemy of DP legislation, who expressed his praise for the ex-Mufti of Jerusalem on the House floor; Frank L. Chelf, who favored granting immigration priority to German “volks deutsche” over other DP’s; Louis E. Graham, E. Wallace Chadwick, and J. Caleb Boggs.

House members today warned their Senate colleagues that they do not intend to surrender the liberal provisions of 1die House bill. Under the House bill visas would be granted to displaced persons on a proportional basis according to their nationality. Under the Senate version, half of the 200,000 visas would be assigned to refugees from the Baltic countries.