National Affairs: Mutual Friends

Senator Hugo La Fayette Black’s Lobby Investigating Committee last week launched a direct attack on the organizations whose business it is to attack the New Deal. Witnesses-of-the-week were Fred George Clark, Ohio oilman who leads The Crusaders, and Secretary Earley Vernon Wilcox of the Farmers’ Independence Council of America. From Crusader Clark the Senators got the story of his organization, founded to fight Prohibition, continued after Repeal to agitate for Constitutionalism, Sound Money, Balanced Budget, and the defeat of “the forces destroying liberty and individual freedom.” From Dr. Wilcox the Senators learned how the Farmers’ Independence Council, equally opposed to Government bounties and crop curtailment, was founded in Washington a year ago at a meeting called by Stanley F. Morse, then employed as “consulting agricultural engineer” by the anti-New Deal American Liberty League.

But the genesis of these organizations was not the Senators’ chief concern. What seemed to interest them most was the interlocking connection between the organizations due to the homogeneity of their big backers. With the aid of questionnaires sent to Big Businessmen, the Committee was able to show that the Crusaders, the Liberty League and kindred bodies had many a mutual friend who was ready to play his antipathy to the Roosevelt Administration all the way across the board. Ironically, the list of men who endow the New Deal’s Opposition was found to include many a bigwig who belonged to the group that Herbert Hoover still thinks ruined his Administration.

The Committee’s roster of those giving $5,000 to $10,000 each to the Crusaders and $10,000 to $15,000 each to the Liberty League included Broker Edward F. Hutton, President George Monroe Moffett of Corn Products Refining, President John

Howard Pew of Sun Oil, Steelman Ernest Tener Weir, General Motors’ Alfred Pritchard Sloan Jr. The du Fonts exceeded all others in the size and distribution of their gifts. The Liberty League got $10,000 from Brother Lammot, $86,750 from Brother Irenee; the Crusaders got $1,000 from Lammot, $10,000 from Irenee; the Southern Committee to Uphold the Constitution got $3,000 from Lammot, $50 from Irenee. Irenee gave $1,400 to the Minute Men and Women of Today. Lammot gave $5,000 to the Farmers’ Independence Council.

Crusader Clark had a list, too. It was a lineup of prospective contributors who had been urged to listen to a Crusaders’ broadcast.

“Who was John W. Davis?” asked Senator Gibson of Vermont examining the list.

“Fie is a Democrat. He ran for President one year.”

“This Sewell Avery of Chicago, whom you list—isn’t he chairman of Montgomery Ward and isn’t he secretary of the Liberty League?”

“We can’t be responsible for everything they do.”

“Somebody got you up a good list.” insisted Senator Gibson.

“It didn’t get us much money,” said Mr. Clark sorrowfully.

From the testimony of Dr. Wilcox, entomologist and a member of the staff of The Country Gentleman, the Committee was out not merely to trace the duplication of backers but to prove that the Farmers’ Independence Council was an out-&-out Liberty League adjunct. Dr. Wilcox admitted that Founder Morse had been employed by the Liberty League, that when the Farmers’ Council was first formed he used to call at the Liberty League’s Washington office for mail.

“Do you know,” asked Senator Black, “how Mr. Lammot du Pont came to contribute to the Farmers’ Independence Council?”

“I didn’t know he had contributed.”

“Is Mr. Lammot du Pont a farmer?”

“Not that I know of. . . . They put out dynamite for use in rocky soils.”

“Do you consider the Liberty League a friend of the farmer?”

“I don’t know anything about it.”

“Do you know whether Mr. Jouett Shouse devotes much of his time to farming?”

“About as much time as I do.”

Balked by finding the Farmers’ Council’s secretary so little informed on Farmers’ Council affairs, the Committee dispatched a subpoena to bring Founder Morse from Chicago.

Meantime the Liberty League’s President Jouett Shouse lustily disowned the Council: “Whatever may be the attempt of the Black Committee to connect the American Liberty League with the Farmers’ Independence Council, I assert definitely that there never has been any connection between the two organizations, and that the League had no hand in the organization of the Council, no part in the financing of the Council. ,