Shearer's Party

Long and acid were the "whereases" and "therefores" in a resolution by sarcastic Senator Caraway of Arkansas which the Senate adopted unanimously last week. It mentioned "filch" and "unclean dollars" and "greedy pockets." It was aimed at Washington's Lobbyists--especially the modern type of lobbyist who gets fat fees by boasting how heavily he can influence the land's legislators.* The Judiciary Committee was instructed to investigate any and all lobbyists, the sources of their revenues, the purposes of their spendings. Hollow-eyed Senator Morris, the committee chairman, the Senate's most non-partisan member, weighed the names of famed inquisitors, finally chose Senators Caraway (chairman. Borah, Walsh (Montana) Elaine. Robinson (Arkansas).

Senator Caraway explained the purpose of his resolution: "To expose the fortunetellers and astrologers* who maintain associations here at the expense of gullible men and women back in the States." He also hoped to disclose "who it is that finances the Southern Tariff Association, the Muscle Shoals lobby, the Estates Tax lobby, the present Tariff lobby, Mr. Joseph R. Grundy."

Meantime the Senate continued its examination of the roaring, boasting, accusing cause of the present lobby excitements --William Baldwin Shearer, "AMERICAN, CHRISTIAN, PROTESTANT, NATIONALIST," the high-powered propagandist who is suing the Bethlehem, American Brown Boveri and Newport News shipbuilding companies for $257,655 back pay for alleged services in breaking up the naval arms conference at Geneva in 1927 and boosting the Jones-White Act (ship subsidies) last year (TIME, Sept. 2 et seq.}. Company officials had testified they did hire Shearer, in admitted folly. Now the Senators had to hear Shearer. Between his gusts of anger and invective they learned he had been a prizefight, cabaret and theatre promoter; an actor playing the heavy in Ten Nights in a Barroom; a Florida realtor; a suspect at Scotland Yard; a bail-jumper in a Connecticut liquor case; a painter, inventor, "naval expert."

"THIS IS MY PARTY!" he roared when Senators Shortridge, Robinson (of Arkansas) and Allen tried to run the hearing in an orderly way. In spite of them he played a loud, smart game of personage-baiting, dragging one famed figure after another into his melodramatic past.

Charles Michael Schwab, chairman of Bethlehem Steel Corp.. was Shearer's prize exhibit. Quizzed about Shearer on the stand last month, Mr. Schwab had said: "So far as I know I never saw him. ... I never heard of it [Shearer's employment by Bethlehem]." Now Shearer said: "I have met Mr. Schwab on a number of occasions. 'The Star of Bethlehem' himself was the first to suggest that his company might employ me." He said he had conversed with Mr. Schwab in November 1926, at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel, Manhattan.

At this serious discrepancy, suggestive of perjury, Steelman Schwab hastily wired to Senator Shortridge: ". . . If such conversations ever occurred they were so casual as to leave no impression on my mind."

Frank Billings Kellogg, Coolidge Secretary of State, was dragged in. Said Shearer: "'Nervous Nellie' Kellogg called the Bethlehem crowd on the mat and told them that the $15,000,000 war profiteering case against their company would be pressed unless I was fired."

"All rot," snorted Mr. Kellogg in St. Paul.

Senator Allen, publicity chief of the Hoover campaign, "told me I ought to go out and make Hoover campaign speeches," revealed Shearer. Retorted the Senator: "I wanted to get rid of you around publicity headquarters."

Senator Moses, another important Hooverizer, "urged me to make a big navy speech in Boston during the Hoover campaign to fool the simple Irish," said Shearer. This was undenied.

Sir William Wiseman "head of the British Secret Service in the U. S., the chief British spy in America, now associated with Otto Hermann Kahn, of Kuhn, Loeb & Co. [New York bankers] was the author of an amazing secret document sent to David Lloyd George after the War. The document was saturated with hostility toward the U. S. and proposed a 'United States of Europe,' " asserted Shearer.

"The document is a clumsy, absurd forgery," wired Sir William from New York.

The "document," unsigned, was said in London to be "a lark, a joke, a squib" perpetrated in 1919 by Samuel Kerkham Ratcliffe, British publicist, and "planted" on Shearer.

Adolf S. Ochs, publisher of the New York Times and Col. Robert Rutherford McCorrnick of the Chicago Tribune "told their papers to shoot all my stuff," stated Shearer. The publishers denied any such orders.

William Randolph Hearst "paid me $2,000 a month to write articles against the League of Nations and the World Court this summer. He dismissed me when this Senate inquiry was called." Publisher Hearst admitted hiring Shearer "among others."

Ivy Ledbetter Lee "is Mr. Rockefeller's publicity agent and Mr. Schwab's publicity agent and, I believe, the British Government's publicity agent," said Shearer. "They paid him $150,000 to keep the navy and merchant marine situation before the public, but they got very little or nothing out of it. I was the only man that ever gave them service."

Dr. Samuel Parkes Cadman, radio preacher, was dragged in: "The people that hire Dr. Cadman to spread his [pacifist] stuff over the country don't tell him what to say." From Manhattan. Dr. Cadman issued a verbose reply.

Between blasts at famed people, Shearer paused to state that he did not "break up the Geneva Conference," that he was not a lobbyist, only a propagandist.

Before Shearer had finished his testimony, the hearing paused abruptly, "in deference to the visit of Prime Minister MacDonald." At subsequent hearings, thanks to Shearer, the Senators must receive a long parade of protesting bigwigs, probably beginning with Sir William Wiseman.

* Oldtime Senators recalled the great furor of 1913 when, at the ringing protest of Woodrow Wilson, the Sugar Lobby was investigated with Lobbyist Martin Michael Mulhall of the National Manufacturer's Association as star witness. Potent and insidious methods of electing the '"proper" men were then revealed. Of that inquisition, Montana's grim Walsh was a member.

* Figurative.