National Affairs: Early’s Temper

James Sloan, 42, male, 225 W. 110 Street, apartment 42. Date—October 28, 1940, 11:15 p.m. Place of Occurrence—33rd Street and Seventh Avenue, Pennsylvania Railroad Station. Nature of illness—Contusion of lower abdomen. Home.

Was attended by Dr. Mascitelli, of St.Vincent’s Hospital, for injuries received while on duty. Was kicked by one Stephen Early, secretary of President, U. S.

So ran the police report last week on Steve Early’s greatest mistake. Of all the reports, it alone was terse.

For seven years Washington correspondents have noted and written much of Secretary Early’s blunders. An imposing, hot-tempered, red-faced Virginian (distant kinsman of Confederate General Jubal A. Early), a onetime newspaperman himself, and President Roosevelt’s press secretary since 1933, he has also been the White House spokesman. Once he delivered what sounded like a Presidential rebuke to Henry Wallace for urging the Third Term. Once he relayed the President’s views on the Monroe Doctrine in terms so confusing that neither State Department papers, editorials or his own cryptic statements later could clear them up. But none of these compared with his act last week.

President Roosevelt had topped a day of New York barnstorming with his Madison Square Garden speech. Down to Pennsylvania Station hurried the Presidential party. President Roosevelt was taken to the train level by a freight elevator. Some 40 newsmen and photographers, held up at the station door, were rescued and passed through police lines by Secret Service operators. Steve Early got through one police line by showing his credentials with their engraved golden Presidential eagle. Before he could get to the train itself he was stopped by a police sergeant, flanked by one Irish and one Negro cop. They were under orders, once the President got aboard, to let no one approach the train.

Vainly Steve Early argued, hauled out his Secret Service commission. Vainly he tried to push past the bluecoats, was pushed back in plain sight of 35 waiting newsmen, between Secretary of Treasury Henry Mogenthau and Secretary Marguerite LeHand, who were also kept back by the cops. Steve Early jerked up his knee into the Negro policeman’s groin. Then, while an ambulance was called for the policeman, Mr. Early went back upstairs, called Secret Service men, who took the party to the train.

The Negro policeman whom Steve Early kneed was the father of five children. He had been cited for bravery. He had returned to duty three months before, after an operation for hernia. And when the incident occurred, no one knew which way the Negro vote would go. Manhattan newspapers published guarded interviews* with Patrolman Sloan, invalided to bed, in which he said that he had been kicked, that he felt terrible, and that he had been ordered not to talk. In Washington Steve Early denied that he had kicked a cop, admitted he had “given him the knee.” Harlem’s New York Age headlined: “Secretary of Pres. Roosevelt Kicks N. Y. Negro Policeman. “New York’s Police Commissioner Valentine ordered an investigation. So did District Attorney Tom Dewey, out campaigning for Willkie. Protests and denunciations began to blister in the press. Somebody remembered that Steve Early had written a Saturday Evening Post article last year on the unfair attacks on President Roosevelt. Its title: “Below the Belt.”

Secretary Early’s explanation: “… A policeman appears to have been hurt. . . . I did not attack or kick any officer. But since one officer believes I was responsible for hurting him, I wish to apologize. . . . I cannot understand why Republican politicians are attempting to find political significance in this incident. . . .”

Secretary Early was not on the campaign train when President Roosevelt started out again. Dejected, inconsolable, Steve Early gloomed in Washington, fearful that he might have cost his boss the election. Besides committing a first-rate political blunder, he had misbehaved in a way no decent citizen should. But for once newsmen were sorry for him, blaming it all on his hot temper.

Meanwhile Fisticuffer Joe Louis, campaigning for Willkie, paid a call of condolence on Patrolman Sloan. Shocked was Louis to hear Sloan announce that he would vote for Roosevelt anyhow.

*The pro-New Deal New York, Post first said that the officer had been kicked “by a well-dressed man,” later editorialized that if Steve Early was guilty, Steve Early must face the charge of assault.