CORRUPTION

A father entrusts his business to the direction of a son whom he has trained to follow in his footsteps. A rich, notorious, client places a--to say the least--large order. Father and Son live in the same neighborhood, on friendly terms. Is it likely that Father, however inactive in the business, will remain totally ignorant of the Son's large order during several weeks when Son is executing it?

In the trial of Father William J. Burns, the great detective, and Son W. Sherman Burns, ignorance of the son's actions was the father's plea. Their detectives had been hired by Oilman Harry Ford Sinclair to shadow the jury chosen to try Sinclair for criminal conspiracy with Albert Bacon Fall, Harding Cabinet man. Father Burns said he knew nothing about it. When the Washington Herald (Hearst) discovered, and the Department of Justice announced, the shady work afoot (TIME, Nov. 14), it was news to Father Burns--said Father Burns.

At the beginning of the jury-tampering hearings, Father Burns had bellowed about "our" operations. "We were clearly within our rights . . ." he had said. And again, "I assure you the Burns agency is not seeking to help any guilty man out of trouble. My policy always has been to put the cards on the table . . . etc. etc." Now, with a jail sentence looming, Father Burns implied that such talk had been but the bellicose outburst of a parent trying to protect his son.

Last week--eleven weeks and 1,600,000 words of court record after the Burnses' services to Oilman Sinclair went on trial--Son Burns stood up in the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia to receive his sentence. Justice Siddons asked if he had anything further to say.

"Yes, your Honor," said Son Burns, "I would ask mercy for my father . . . I must say I feel that a great injustice has been done my father."

Justice Siddons eyed the young man, then gazed out a window. . . . Filial loyalty? . . . Miscarried justice? . . . Justice Siddons fined the young man $1,000 and called the father.

Father Burns was pale and nervous now, fidgeting with his grey moustache. Without waiting to be asked, he burst out:

"Before my God I am innocent as a child unborn. I knew nothing about this thing until it was all over . . . !" The judge looked sharply at the great detective, who slumped back into his chair humiliated. The judge gazed out the window again, then made a long speech in a low voice. ". . . That he [Father Burns] knew of this surveillance I cannot doubt, and that he knew it from the time it began." The judge concluded: ". . . You are guilty of contempt of court. . . . Men of high character sometimes make mistakes. Your sentence is fifteen days in the Washington jail or asylum."

So William J. Burns, the great detective, was served as it had been his profession to serve others. As for Henry Mason Day, Oilman Sinclair's handsome henchman who hired the Burnses and conveyed to them the Sinclair orders, he received a four-month sentence. To Oilman Sinclair's personal court record was added a sentence of six months for being the big rat in the trap who had ordered the others to help him out.

All four cases were, of course, appealed. Harry Ford Sinclair, looking like a tired Mussolini, had plenty of money left to go on arguing that any man with money enough is as fully entitled to shadow juries as is the U. S. Government. To support this contention, Sinclair's lawyers might even cite certain earlier activities of William J. Burns, when he was Chief of the U. S. Bureau of Investigation under the defamed Daugherty regime. Another argument which, though it failed to impress Justice Siddons, the Sinclair lawyers may try out on the U. S. Supreme Court, is this: that Sinclair hired the Burnses to shadow the jurors to protect the latter from being tampered by Sinclair's "enemies"--i. e. the U. S. Government.

With the Sinclair, Day and Burns sentences recorded, the Federal prosecution prepared to act against each & every one of the 14 Burns detectives employed in the jury-shadowing; prepared also for a retrial of the Fall-Sinclair criminal conspiracy case itself, to begin April 2.

Meantime the Senate Committee on Public Lands pressed its investigation of the short-lived Continental Trading Co. through which Sinclair & friends, undeterred and perhaps aided by Col. Stewart of the Standard Oil Co. of Indiana, made eight millions on paper one day in 1921, of which three millions were realized, turned into Liberty Bonds and mysteriously distributed. Last week the list of known distributions stood as follows:

$800,000 to President James E. O'Neil of the Prairie Oil Co. (closely affiliated with Standard Oil of Indiana). Mr. O'Neil skipped the country when the Oil Scandals broke. Later he returned from Europe to Canada and handed over the $800,000 to the Prairie Oil Co. to which he had "always felt" the money belonged.

$763,000 to Harry M. Blackmer, board chairman of the Midwest Refining Co. (subsidiary of Standard of Indiana). Mr. Blackmer skipped the country, too, and has repeatedly refused to return and testify. His share of the Continental profits were located last week in a Manhattan safety deposit box. His son, Myron K. Blackmer, testified that Harry M. Blackmer will not soon return to the U. S. from Paris. "He told me he liked it there," said Son Blackmer.

$233,000 to Albert Bacon Fall, Harding Cabinet man who gave the Teapot Dome lease to Sinclair, as "payment" by Sinclair for a one-third interest in the Fall's New Mexico ranch, which was to have been turned into a country club but still remains a ranch.

$34,000 to the Republican National Committee, from Sinclair, as a contribution towards the deficit incurred in the Harding campaign.

$61,000 to H. M. Osier, a Canadian lawyer who went through the motions necessary to form the Continental Trading Co.

This total, $1,891,000, left some $1,109,000 of the Continental Trading Co.'s profits yet to be traced. The committee called more witnesses, including Will H. Hays who was G. O. P. Chairman at the time the Continental profits were being passed around.