"Mrs. Feasance"

Last autumn and winter, women-in-politics were concerned over the case of Mrs. Florence E. S. Knapp, whom New York elected its first woman Secretary of State for the term of 1924-1926 and who was later charged with "misfeasance, malfeasance and nonfeasance" in office by a onetime subordinate (TIME, Feb. 6). Governor Smith ordered an investigation. The investigator strongly recommended prosecution. Women-in-politics feared that the Knapp case might interest the public more because the defendant was a woman than because of what she was alleged to have done.

Mrs. Knapp, a grey-haired matron of considerable bearing, resigned her post as Dean of the College of Home Economics at Syracuse University "until such time as my good name is cleared before the world." The Albany district attorney decided that the Governor's investigator's findings should be waived, dropped, forgotten. The findings, which he called "fantastic," charged that Mrs. Knapp, in administering a $1,200,000 census fund, had given sinecures to her relatives, forged endorsements on checks, falsified her expense accounts, obtained false certifications from a notary public, mishandled some $200,000.

Governor Smith was not convinced that the charges were "fantastic." He summoned a Grand Jury. Last week, swiftly, the Grand Jury indicted Mrs. Knapp on six criminal counts including grand larceny. Women-in-politics, and other citizens, drew no edification from these developments, beyond this: where many a Mr. Feasance might have acquired fat graft with one or two cunning strokes, this alleged Mrs. Feasance was accused of enjoying only $782.57 personally, obtained in trifling amounts from time to time by a series of clumsy, obvious, petty pilferings.