ARMY & NAVY: Lobby Hobby

ARMY & NAVY

Authors! Actors! Athenians! Aviators! Navy workers still unpaid seek justice. Hiram Mann.

Keep America American! Pay Navy Workers! Mann.

Pandemic Predictors, Philosophers, Psychologists, Physiologists. Justice for Navyites! Mann.

For nearly two decades have such curious little advertisements been printed in the Public Notices columns of the New York Times, Herald Tribune and Brooklyn Eagle. Year in, year out, through War, Boom and Depression they have appeared at least once a week, sometimes every day. Last week many a New Yorker found out for the first time what they were about.

Twenty-seven years ago a young Manhattan lawyer named George Hiram Mann, who had been a U. S. Senate page, an Annapolis midshipman, a Coast Guardsman, thought he saw a chance to make some easy money. From 1878 to 1882 U. S. Navy yard workers had been upped each summer from an eight-hour to a ten-hour day, promised overtime pay, which they did not receive. After a quarter-century of fruitless litigation 1,377 workers got the U. S. Court of Claims to notify Congress that their claims amounting to $322,000 were valid. Thereupon Hiram Mann prepared to lobby for the claimants before Congress.

Not for long did the young lawyer press his case for simple profit. After banging his head for a few years against a stone wall of Congressional indifference, Hiram Mann got mad. He began going out on Manhattan street corners to harangue passersby about the Government’s injustice. He published pamphlets, pestered editors and public officials with letters, telegrams, petitions. Finally he began to advertise. At first he took imposing space, but as his funds ran low he was reduced to two or three lines in Public Notices.

He liked alliteration, changed his appeal with the times and seasons, never gave up. The advertisements kept Hiram Mann poor but happy, made him some thing of a public character in New York.

Technocracy Teachers, Snow Shovelers. Urge Congress Pay $322,000 Navy Wages. Mann.

Eight times he ran for Congress on a platform of Justice-for-Navyites, once received as many as 776 votes. Five times a bill to pay the claims was passed by Senate or House, but never by both. One by one the claimants died off, but Lawyer Mann’s obsession only grew more virulent with the years.

Last week, grey and 63, Hiram Mann summoned newsmen to his Wall Street office to announce that his long fight was over. Swept along on last month’s adjournment tide, a bill appropriating the money to pay his Navyites had slipped through Congress, been signed by President Roosevelt. Figuring that his crusade had cost him about $20,000, Lawyer Mann declared: “It was a hobby. I’d have spent a lot more if I’d had it. It’s cheaper than yachts and booze and women; and no headaches.” Lawyer Mann’s triumph was only a little dimmed by the fact that just one of the 1,377 original claimants turned up to collect his pay. Nor did he feel lost with out his longtime cause. “My real hobby is the Constitution,” cried he. “I’m going to fight for that. I’m going to defend the power trust against the baloney trust.”

In the Public Notices column of the Herald Tribune last fortnight New Yorkers read:

Galactodendron Growers! Philoprogenetics! Butchers! Delicatessen! Read “Pork Prices Explained.” Translates New Deal dreams. Nickel. Hiram Mann, 77 Wall.