National Affairs: Inadvertent In justice Rectified

To embarrass the Democratic ticket, in 1920 the Republican party promised that it would bring to trial all Wartime grafters. No sooner had the Ohio Gang settled in Washington than its leader, Attorney General Harry Micajah Daugherty, began handing out indictments right & left. One of his victims was Benedict Crowell, potent Cleveland contractor and mining engineer, onetime (1917-20) Assistant Secretary of War, Wartime director of munitions. In 1922 he was accused of fraud in connection with cantonment construction and military supplies. The court considered his indictment a political move, threw it out. But not until last week was Mr. Crowell completely vindicated.

Nominating Benedict Crowell to be a brigadier general in the Reserve Corps (he is a major), said President Hoover: “This promotion is not so material as the opportunity it affords to indicate the feeling of his many associates and friends in the War Department, and my own feeling, over what we have always considered was an inadvertent but yet a grave injustice.”