THE CABINET: Up Bobs Barlow

Secretary of State Henry Lewis Stimson last week frowned over this cablegram from Havana:

STIMSON

WASHINGTON

ARRESTED THIS AFTERNOON ON FALSE CHARGES HELD IN PRINCIPE FORTRESS WITHOUT OPPORTUNITY TO FURNISH BAIL

BARLOW

Secretary Stimson did not have to call an assistant to tell him who Barlow was. Only too ‘familiar was he with the long-standing controversies between Joseph E. Barlow, 67, U. S. citizen, 30 years a resident of Havana, and the Cuban Government. Only too well did he know that Mr. Barlow has been pressing a nine-million-dollar claim which has caused more alarums and excursions at the State Department than have the affairs of any other U. S. investor abroad. Mr. Barlow laid claim to 32 city blocks in the heart of Havana taken from him by the Cuban Government. His claim was based on a 400-year-old Spanish grant bounding the property ”as far as a dog’s bark could be heard.” Cuban courts and the U. S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee have upheld his demand for compensation. The Cuban Government has refused to pay.

Secretary Stimson also recalled that Mr. Barlow once threatened to “bust on the nose” his predecessor, Frank Billings Kellogg, because that old gentleman did not seem interested enough in his case.

With only a small delay Statesman Stimson despatched instructions to the U. S. Embassy at Havana to inquire into Mr. Barlow’s arrest, to discover if “his surroundings were bearable.” Before this order could reach Havana, Mr. Barlow was out of jail.

He was released on $500 bail, furnished by his official accusers. The charge against him was grand larcency. Senora Vincenta Garcia had bought some lots from him, had failed to pay for them. When he sought to recover them, she charged she was being cheated. The Judicial Police advised him that “Cuba would feel happier if he would return to the U. S. and stay there, thus avoiding trouble and unpleasantness.”

Mr. Barlow took the advice, left for Washington prepared to agitate his claims with redoubled vigor.

Said Senator Borah: “Outrage!”

Said Senator King: “OUTRAGE!!”

Secretary Stimson did not say “outrage” but he set to work afresh on the whole Barlow case, with the hope of closing it out and forever eradicating a small patch of international prickly heat. The Post Office Department last week made sounds like a 3¢ postage stamp. From Capitol Hill, echo answered: “Pooh-pooh!”

Mounting postal deficits have caused President Hoover much anxiety. This year’s loss is estimated at $100,000,000. The President instructed Postmaster General Walter Folger Brown to discover the causes of, to devise remedies for, these deficits (TIME, July 22). An audit of the scrambled costs of maintaining the different classes of postal service is now in progress. Last week Postmaster General Brown prepared to call into an October conference the big users of first-class mail, particularly direct-mail advertisers. Quickly spread the firm belief that the Department would recommend as a deficit-extinguisher an increase in first-class postage from 2¢ to 2½ or 3¢. Argument for the increase: Citizens pay the deficit anyway, either in higher postage rates or U. S. taxes.

At the Capitol, Senator George Higgins Moses of New Hampshire, onetime chairman, now most potent member of the Post Office & Post Roads Committee of the Senate, doubted if Congress would approve any postal rate increase now. Said he, who used to be a publisher himself (Concord Evening Monitor): “I do not see how we can increase the first-class rates, since we made the mistake of reducing them after the War.” The Senator objected to the fact that religious, fraternal and scientific periodicals-some 6,000 of them-pay the post office for distribution only one-third the rate required of commercial publications. Naming names, he declared: “There is no reason why the Christian Science Monitor or the Elks Magazine or the National Geographic magazine, all of which are big moneymakers, should have better rates than other commercial publications.”

Like everyone else. Senator Moses recognized that the congressional franking privilege and the “penalty” mail of the U. S. departments inflates the deficit. His remedy: “Congress and the departments ought to have special stamps which they would pay for the same as others. The stamps used by members of Congress would be charged up to the expenses of the legislative branch and the executive stamps would be paid for out of appropriations for the respective executive departments.”

Last week’s example of the use of a congressional frank and its effect on the postal deficit: in June Senator William Edgar Borah made a speech in behalf of the debenture plan of farm relief, against the Hoover plan (now-adopted). It sounded politically good to the Democrats whose National Committee secured Senator Borah’s permission to use it and the Borah frank for distribution. The Democrats’ only expense was for reprinting the speech. The Democratic National Committee sent out 1,000,000 copies to husbandmen throughout the land. Declared Senator Borah: ‘That’s good! … I hope it reached every farm house in the U. S.” The Borah frank saved the Democrats a 2¢ stamp on each envelop— $20,000.