the summer of 1939 and against the Selective Service Act in 1940. He voted against the Townsend Old Age Pension Bill and voted for the Hatch Act of 1939 to restrict participation of government employees in political activities. Routzohn gained the most notoriety of his congressional service in the last year of his term. Since 1935, the AFL had charged that the National Labor Relations Board was pro-CIO and the CIO had protested decisions favorable to the AFL. The criticisms of the Board by business and labor came to a head during a series of hearings, ostensibly to shape amendments to the Wagner Act, conducted by Representative Howard W. Smith from December 1939 to December 1940. Smith, a leader of the conservative bloc of the Democratic party, charged the NLRB with a pro-union bias. He also claimed the agency was dominated by left-wingers and had been infiltrated by Communists. Harry N. Routzohn's selection to the committee was seen as holding the balance of the five-man committee and as an unknown quantity, since as a congressional freshman he had no voting record on labor legislation. On the one hand his sympathies clearly lay with labor because of his long service as AFL counsel, and so was thought unlikely to support amendments that would weaken the protection of unionization of the Wagner Act. On the other hand, he had shown little sympathy with the Roosevelt administration's method of dealing with labor problems and, as a former AFL attorney, he was likely to probe charges of CIO favoritism on the part of the board. The hearings generated headlines every time they were convened. Future NLRB Judge Fannie M. Boyls, a 1929 graduate of the University of Texas School of Law, was one of several female Review Section attorneys called to testify before the Smith Committee by its general counsel, Edmund M. Toland. Toland's intense dislike of the NLRB was displayed in his examination: Toland shouted at them. Representative Routzohn asked them personally insulting questions. Congressman Clare Eugene Hoffman of Michigan ridiculed them on the floor of the House—not the last time such attitudes would be exhibited in Congress: Those girls who are acting as reviewing attorneys for the Board are fine young ladies. ... but the chances are 99 out of 100 that none of them ever changed a diaper, hung a washing, or baked a loaf of bread. None of them has