CORRUPTION: Blossoms in Court

On the political grave of the Ohio gang, the little flowers of indictment still grow every spring, scenting the air with the perfume of scandal and the breath of alleged corruption (TIME, May 17). Already the unsuspecting blossoms of Messrs. Doheny and Fall, Daugherty and Miller have poked their heads above the ground into the dew of publicity. Wary investigators plucked them, hurried them into stuffy courtrooms.

Last week, big blossom Harry Micajah Daugherty (“the original Harding man”), onetime (1921-24) Attorney General, and lesser blossom Thomas W. Miller, former Alien Property Custodian, were to go on trial in the Federal Court in Manhattan for conspiracy to defraud the Government of their “unprejudiced services” by accepting a bribe of $391,000 in the American Metal Co. case. The charges which they will have to explain are:

1) That the Alien Property Custodian (Mr. Miller) seized certain stock of the American Metal Co. during the War as German property, sold it for $7,000,000.

2) That in 1921 a Swiss corporation, really a blind for the original German owners, recovered the money from the U. S. Government with the connivance of Messrs. Daugherty, Miller, and other politicos.*

3) That the German owners presented Messrs. Daugherty and Miller with $391,000 in Liberty bonds as a little token of appreciation.

4) That $40,000 of the supposed bribe in Liberty bonds was traced to Mr. Daugherty’s account in his brother’s bank at Washington Court House, Ohio. Now into the drama of the courtroom, where Truth is supposed to be unveiled, where Justice dangles her scales, have entered a bevy of lawyers. Among them:

Max D. Steuer, defense attorney for Mr. Daugherty, is the most dramatic courtroom lawyer in Manhattan. Like a skilled actor in a play, he allows each trial to shape his emotions; then he turns about, leads the jurors to his viewpoint as deftly as a Hampden or a Barrymore leads his audience. Mr. Steuer† once advised young lawyers:

“Don’t bring your papers into court in an expensive brief case; bring them in an ordinary paper wrapping. . . . Try to get a seat at a table near the jury and let the jury see what you are doing. . . . Lean on the table and look the jury in the eye. . . . Use the same language that the juryman would use in telling your story to his wife and children.”

Emory Buckner, able U. S. District Attorney, pungent speaker, will prosecute the case. In recent years it has been Mr. Buckner’s policy to appoint rising young lawyers, fresh from Columbia, Harvard and Yale law schools, as his assistants** Among them is Kenneth F. Simpson, well-dressed, typically successful Manhattanite. At college he was chairman of the Yale Daily News just before the War, in the days when that officer used to call the Student Council into his little sanctum, tell them what ought to be done around the campus. Underclassmen stood in obedient awe of his nervous, snapping speech; seniors knew him better. Young Mr. Simpson then went to Harvard Law; practiced in Manhattan, was appointed Assistant U. S. District Attorney. Now he is in the courtroom with his first big case, where the mighty can note his powers for future use. Mr. Simpson has brought from Germany one Richard Merton, metals potentate, the real owner of the American Metal Co. stock. Mr. Merton will be the star witness for the Government.

Meanwhile, the oil scandals of the Harding Administration go trotting along from court to court.

Criminal proceedings against Albert B. Fall, onetime (1921-23) Secretary of the Interior, Edward L. Doheny, Edward L. Doheny Jr., and Harry Sinclair, on charges of bribery and conspiracy, are still pending in the District of Columbia courts with scant hope of immediate completion.

The civil litigations show promise of more immediate settlement. In October, the Government suit to annul the Doheny leases of the naval oil reserves in California will go before the Supreme Court. Already the Government has won decisions in the federal district court in California and in the Circuit Court of Appeals. A similar suit concerning the Teapot Dome leases to the Sinclair interests in Wyoming will probably reach the Supreme Court this winter, and decisions in both cases may be given at the same time. The Government met defeat in this case in the district court; in the Circuit Court of Appeals the decision is still pending.

* John T. King, onetime (1920) Republican National Committeeman from Connecticut, who died recently (TIME, May 24) ; and Jesse Smith, who committed suicide three years ago, a good friend of Harry Daugherty.

† In the notorious divorce case of W. E. D. Stokes v. Mrs. Helen Elwood Stokes in 1923, Samuel Untermyer, champion for Mrs. Stokes, called Max Steuer, champion of Mr. Stokes, “Buzfuz.” Of course, every one who knows his Dickens immediately recalls that Sergeant Buzfuz is that ingenious lawyer who sends Mr. Pickwick to prison for breach of promise—because a lady fainted in his arms. Said able novelist Charles Dickens: “Sergeant Buzfuz began by saying that never in the whole course of his profession . . . had he approached a case with such deep emotion or with such a heavy sense of responsibility imposed upon him.”

**Six Assistant District Attorneys will aid him in the Daugherty trial.