National Affairs: Wes Rides Again

Fifteen months ago, a committee of the Kansas legislature wrote a report charging that Charles Wesley Roberts, chairman of the Republican National Committee, had violated the “spirit” of Kansas’ lobbying laws in 1951 (TIME, April 6, 1953). The committee frowned because Roberts, a professional pressagent, took an $11,000 fee in the sale of a hospital to the state, when he was not registered as a lobbyist. Although Roberts held no political job at the time he took the fee, the committee’s report forced him to hurry to Dwight Eisenhower and hand in his resignation as Republican national chairman. Then he dropped from public view. Last week he was back in the news: the Manhattan investment firm of Lehman Bros, announced that it had hired Kansan Roberts as a “consultant.” His job: winning friends and influencing people for Lehman Bros, in the Midwest.