Crime Chairman

A company of noted men assembled by invitation at No. 71 Broadway, Manhattan, In the offices of Elbert H. Gary, Chairman of the U. S. Steel Corporation. Among their distinguished numbers were Richard Washburn Child, onetime (1921-24) Ambassador to Italy; George W. Wickersham, onetime (1909-13) U. S. Attorney General; W. H. Pouch, President of the National Association of Credit Men; William E. Knox, President of the American Bankers' Association; C. K. Woodbridge, President of the Associated Advertising Clubs of the World; Governor Silzer of New Jersey; Judge Ewing Cockrell of Missouri, one of the organizers of the Missouri Crime Survey and son of the late Senator Francis M. Cockrell; Attorney George Gordon Battle, and, of course, Judge Gary himself.

The distinguished company was there to organize a national movement for the reduction of crime (TIME, Aug. 10). Mr. Wickersham brought in a report of a committee on organization. It provided for a National Crime Commission, an informal body of prominent citizens, to be headed by a chairman, who should select a small committee, a finance committee and proceed by indirect means to a war on crime.

The report was approved. Besides providing in general for an organization, it also provided specifically who should be Chairman of the Commission and fill its vacant posts with flesh and blood, famed, able, interested. Who was chosen for this responsible post? The Press had anticipated that it would be Judge Gary--but it was not he. Who else of the notables? A merchant prince? A captain of industry? A potent segnor of the law? None of these. Judge Gary and his associates centered their selection upon a young man, only 29; a member of the New York Assembly (lower house of the legislature).

How dared they? How could they hope to succeed in founding a national movement by picking a local politician for its head? Being able men, they doubtless had their reasons.

One may conjecture what their reasons were: Here is this young Assemblyman, F. Trubee Davison. He is not of the ordinary run of local politician. No indeed. He is in politics more after the old British fashion--by which a distinguished family sends one of its sons into public life. What is more, he is able. He ought to be. Look at his father.

That father was a young man who began earning his living at 16 as a school teacher. He never got a college education. He got a job as office boy in a small bank owned by his uncle. He went to Manhattan looking for a job, but did not find it, went on to Bridgeport, Conn., where he got a job as bank runner. He was promoted to bookkeeper, then teller. He heard of a new bank opening in Manhattan (the Astor Place Bank) and by sheer persistence worried its cashier into giving him a job. He was paying teller of that bank when he had his first experience with crime. A man came in with a check for $1,000 made out to God Almighty. He pointed a revolver at Davison's head and demanded the money. Davison read the amount aloud, and began to count out the money in a loud voice. Before he had finished, the bank detective had arrested the man.

The newspapers made much of the incident, and that day the directors of the Liberty Bank, happening to hold a meeting, decided they would like to employ him. So he became an assistant cashier. A year later, he was made cashier, three years later Vice President, and in another year more President--at age 32. The way he increased the bank's business was so marked that it soon had to move to larger quarters. Its lease had two years to run, and so Davison organized the Bankers' Trust Co. to fill the vacant quarters. Today it is the largest trust company in America.

Then George F. Baker got his eye on Davison and induced him to become, at 35, his right-hand man, Vice President of the First National Bank. Then came the panic of 1917. Davison was one of the bankers whom J. P. Morgan rushed around to in the dark days. Next year he was made adviser to the National Monetary Commission. Then one day in the fall of 1908, J. P. Morgan called him into his library and announced that he was to become a partner in J. P. Morgan & Co. During the War, President Wilson called upon him to become Chairman of the Red Cross War Council, where he displayed his financial abilities by raising more than $100,000,000 in one campaign. The world of finance generally agrees that at the time of his death in June, 1922, H. P. Davison was the ablest partner in the Morgan firm.

Of the son, John Farrar, his college classmate, editor of the Bookman, has written as follows:

"A member of the class of 1918 at Yale, to which college he came after being graduated from Groton, he devoted himself after the opening of the European War to the formation of the Yale Naval Aviation Unit, which performed heroic service later both in matters of organization and of actual combat, and of which Ralph D. Paine had just completed a history before his death. Into this he poured enthusiasm, time and money. He built it up to a point of great usefulness and efficiency. Then, when he was taking his own flying tests at Huntington, L. I., in 1917, his machine crashed and he was terribly injured. His recovery was uncertain and slow; but he rallied, and, with heroic persistence, went on with his advisory work and interest through the War. He was awarded the Navy Cross.

"After the War he took a Law Degree at Columbia and is now associated with White and Case [Manhattan lawyers] in the practice of his profession. His father's death found him in a position to devote his entire life to politics, and he has given earnest attention to the study of taxes and reforms. His career as an Assemblyman has been marked by faith and bravery, and his causes, not always won, have been fought regardless of public approval for what he believed to be the truth.

"It is difficult to write intelligently of a friend, more difficult to write of a friend who is as straightforward as is Davison, for his character, like that of most strong men, is clear and without picturesqueness, except such picturesqueness as always results when a man is ready to fight a clean fight well. Like his father, he has a keen sense of humor and a love of human beings. His understanding of their foibles and difficulties is extraordinary, and his assumption of many duties has been his only danger. He likes to aid whenever he can, and night and day devotes himself to the study and disentanglement of the important problems that confront him.

"If there is any young man now working for the good of the American people with like abilities and inspiration, he is not apparent."

Chairman F. Trubee Davison of the Crime Commission prompty set his organization in motion, secured the cooperation of prominent men throughout the country.

Mr. Davison, settling down to work, declared:

"We shall first get an expert crime statistician and provide him with an adequate staff. ... It seems to me personally that murder should be our first consideration. We should find out all we can about murders in this country--not only how many there were, but wherein justice and the punitive agencies fell down, if they did."