IOWA: Corruption in the Corn

By last week a pair of grand juries had succeeded in thoroughly besmirching the pretty picture of tall corn, prize hogs, rollicking State fairs and honest farmers which Iowa presents to the world. The juries’ findings pointed to such corruption in high offices as to put the Democratic Administration of Governor Clyde LaVerne Herring in definite political danger in a State normally topheavy with Republicans.

For years lowans have complacently accepted Sioux City, wide-open river town as something of a black sheep on the edge of their fold. Verne Marshall, crusading editor of the Cedar Rapids Gazette, did not object to Sioux Citizens having their gambling and highballs, but his nostrils quivered at the smell of bargaining between lawbreakers and officials. After a legislative investigation which resulted in the conviction of State Liquor Commission Chairman Harold M. Cooper for disposing illegally of State liquor seals. Editor Marshall early this year prodded Woodbury County (Sioux City) into a grand jury investigation.

The county attorney and public safety commissioner quit under fire. About the time lowans finished their State Fair revels last month (TIME. Sept. 9), the grand jury was concluding its work. It indicted 60 officials, gamblers and divekeepers on charges of conspiracy, bribery, perjury, obstruction of justice. At the top of the heap were State Attorney General Edward Lewis O’Connor; his first assistant; State Treasurer Leo Wegman and a State agent.

Since the grand jury hearings were secret, little was revealed as to the quality of evidence to be offered when the accused are brought to trial this autumn. One Bert Hollinger of Le Mars, ex-bootlegger and smalltime “fixer” now serving five years for extortion, testified that in 1933 he paid cash in return for the bootlegging and slot-machine privileges in Plymouth and Woodbury Counties to Attorney General O’Connor. “O’Connor said it was very strange that I would insist on wanting to make the first payment to him direct, and I told him that I didn’t know him . . . and he said: ‘Well, I know you are just a bootlegger, and if you ever say anything about this you may be sure that I will ride you in the penitentiary so far you will never get out.’ . . . And I handed him the package of $750 in bills.”

Suspended from office for letting corruption burgeon under his nose, Sioux City’s Mayor William Dukes Hayes complained that he was too busy to act as “a cop on the corner,” last week found a district judge who agreed with him, dismissed an action for his removal.

Meantime in Des Moines a Polk County grand jury upped the number of State officials awaiting trial to five by indicting State Liquor Commission Chairman Bernard E. Manley on a charge of having sold a bootlegger 20,000 State liquor seals for $1,000.