PROHIBITION: Washington’s War

Responsive to White House proddings. District of Columbia officials last week strove manfully to make the capital the model dry city of the land. A month had passed since Senator Robert Beecher Howell of Nebraska had gladdened President Hoover by “raising the question” of the President’s direct responsibility for law enforcement in the District of Columbia, where he is the chief municipal official (TIME, Sept. 30). Last week’s developments in Washington’s dry war included:

Contempt. Three Washington Times newsmen — Gorman M. Hendricks, Linton Burkette, Jack Nevin Jr. — visited 49 capital speakeasies and bought drinks. They then contributed their experiences, with addresses and names deleted, to an exposé of Washington liquor conditions. Quickly summoned before the Grand Jury, they were asked to supply names, addresses, dates — the specification for legal complaints. These they declined to give, on the ground that their admission to the speakeasies was on a confidential basis, that they were not dry agents, that to answer the Grand Jury’s questions would violate their professional ethics.

The Grand Jury promptly certified their behavior to Justice Peyton Gordon of the District of Columbia Supreme Court. Justice Gordon owes his recent elevation to the bench in no small part to the good newspaper treatment he received when, as U. S. District Attorney, he prosecuted some minor ramifications of the oil scandals (TIME, March 12, 1928). No man to let past favors interfere with the course of justice, Judge Gordon found the three newsgatherers in contempt, sentenced them to 45 days in jail, denied them bond. The Times prepared to pay them double salaries during their imprisonment. Its lawyers the next day secured their release on a writ of habeas corpus from Justice Frederick Lincoln Siddons.

“Green Hat.” Casually up the marble steps which lead to the Senate Office Building walked George Lyons Cassidy one day last week. Under his coat something was hidden. Police stopped him, found a pint of whiskey on him, other bottles in his car.

Quickly followed the identification of Cassidy as the “Man in the Green Hat”— ‘legger who long has specialized in trade around the Capitol. Three years ago he was going his rounds in the House Office Building when his liquor-laden brief case fell to the stone floor. Amid fumes of alcohol, he fled to the street. His only identification then was his bright green hat. When arrested last week he wore a hat of sober grey.

Informed of Cassidy’s arrest, Senator Blease of South Carolina asked mournfully: “Why do they pick on the Senate?” Always ready to believe the best, Senator Wesley Livsey Jones of Washington, author of the Five & Ten Law, remarked: “There was nothing to show that he was delivering liquor to a Senator!”

“Tell All.” Eager to respond to a Grand Jury summons last week was Senator Smith Wildman Brookhart of Iowa. Almost gleefully he announced that he would ”tell all,” that it would be “treason” to withhold information. What he would tell the Grand Jury was his version of a dinner given in 1926 at the New Willard Hotel by Walter J. Fahey, Manhattan broker, to some 20 Senators, new and old. At that dinner, according to Tattler Brookhart, guests were served individual flasks of liquor, and one of the guests was pious Senator Reed Smoot of Utah (TIME, Oct. 7).