PROHIBITION: Silver Flasks

Smith Wildman Brookhart, U. S. Senator from Iowa, last week fulfilled a promise to himself and colleagues. He arose in the Senate and told all he had to tell about the “booze-party” at the Willard Hotel in Washington which he and other Senators attended three years ago (TIME, Oct. 7).

Excerpts:

“After I was elected in 1926 I received an invitation signed Walter J. Fahy. . . . I threw it in the waste basket. . . . Then I came on down to Washington and I met [Senator Moses] who said: ‘You have not answered Fahy’s letter. . . . He’s an old friend of Norris and La Follette and he is giving a friendly dinner.’ I said ‘All right, if that’s all there is to it I’ll go’ and I went.

“When I got down there, the first fellow that greeted me was Otto Kahn [Kuhn, Loeb & Co.]. … I didn’t recognize him as a particular friend of Norris and La Follette. . . . I looked around at that bunch and it seemed to me there was something doing and in a little while—this occurred in the reception room—I remember the distinguished so-called Senator-elect Vare was there—after a while someone lifted up a curtain on a table or a bookcase or something.

“And underneath the curtain was a rack of beautiful silver hip flasks and the word went round they were filled with Scotch or something and ‘help yourself.’ A considerable number of the gentlemen there did help themselves. . . . Senator Smoot was present . . . and was as much disgusted with that booze party as I was. I do not want to put any intimation that he took one of those flasks or used liquor because he did not. . . . Senator Gooding [of Idaho, since deceased] did not take one of those hip flasks and neither did I. As to whether the other boys did, they can answer for themselves. A good many of them, those Wall Streeters, were very active in getting the flasks. I noticed that. . . .

“Then we went in to dinner and I was seated with Otto Kahn and with E. E. Loomis of the Morgan Co.— Mr. Kahn brought up the subject of . . . railroad valuation. He said to me, ‘Your plan will not work’. . . . And that ended the conversation with Mr. Kahn.

“Well, the dinner was over, but during the course of that dinner Mr. Loomis took his hip flask—a beautiful silver hip flask— out of his pocket and poured out some of that alcoholic stuff. I have had enough experience in the chemical laboratory to know that it had a heavy content of alcohol. He poured that in the glass and then he poured in some water—it was too strong to take raw—and he drank that and a lot of similar operations went on around the table.

“Then the dinner was over and Senator Gooding and I broke away. We started out. The Senator from New Jersey [Edge] called me back and said: ‘Do you know who you were between? You had Kuhn, Loeb & Co. on your right and Morgan & Co. on your left. Don’t you think you got contaminated just a little?’

“I said, ‘I think not. I’ve been vaccinated against all that stuff;’ and I guess they concluded the vaccination took because I was not invited to the next Fahy dinner.

“In the course of his speech Senator Brookhart told of a personal survey of the liquor situation along the Canadian border and added:

“I will name the man I think is to blame. His name is Andrew W. Mellon. . . . I want to call the President’s attention to the fact he has a responsibility over the head of Mr. Mellon and it is therefore up to him to remove Mr. Mellon and . . . to get a Smedley Butlerf or somebody like him who means to enforce the law.”

Senator Brookhart then read to the Senate a letter he received from one Roger W. Mintone of Boston: “If the enclosed [a press clipping] represents your idea of the ethics of a guest invited to a private dinner—to broadcast tales about his host —the suspicion that you are a charter member of the Great American Polecat Club seems amply confirmed. . . . Pretty sickening disclosure of the standard of honor of a Senator of the U. S.”

Senator Brookhart defended himself: “No man can invite me to a dinner where crime is in evidence and say to me that because of his confidence as a host I shall conceal the crime. . . . That is the thing that makes trouble in this country . . . these infernal secret societies in high society. … I want to say to members of the Senate, GET OUT OF THOSE BOOZE PARTIES. You do not need those hip flasks to enable you to do your duty here. . . .”

The next day Senator Brookhart hurried dutifully to the District Court House, appeared before the Grand Jury for 15 minutes to repeat his story. He paused on the way in to be photographed with U. S. District Attorney Leo A. Rover, thus helping to violate a court order against photographs in the building.

At once arose a judicial question: What was the value of the “smell” testimony of a Senator who knows nothing about liquor from the standpoint of personal imbibation? Does experience as a chemist qualify him as an expert on alcoholic odors? It was pointed out on the Senate floor that gold paint smells like bananas but it is not bananas at all.

Also invited before the Grand Jury was Railman Loomis who appeared in Washington in no sweet mood. Said he: “You don’t expect ME to discuss anything that happens at a private dinner, do you? You’ll have to rely on the laboratory experience and smelling propensities of Senator Brookhart.”

The three year statute of limitations will bar the Grand Jury from action within a few weeks.