Sales Technique

When a wealthy man contributes heavily to his party's presidential campaign fund and thereafter, upon his candidate's election to the White House, is rewarded with an Ambassadorship, nobody seriously accuses him of having bribed the President of the U. S. to obtain a good fat job. But because he shuffled this standardized political procedure into an illegitimate pattern an ex-Congressman of Indiana last week stood convicted in Federal court of bribery and job-selling. His conviction loomed as a general warning to all other Congressmen to play the patronage game according to the rules.

Republican Harry Ephraim Rowbottom of Evansville, onetime tailor and accountant, Mason, Moose, Eagle and Shriner, was elected to the House of Representatives from the First Indiana District in 1924. Last November a Democrat beat him for reelection. The Rowbottom campaign fund was in the red. As a "lame duck," he continued to get small postal jobs for friends, took their money as contributions to his deficit. For this he was caught, indicted. On trial at Evansville last week he admitted that one Walter Ayer had given him $750 and that he had recom- mended Ayer's son Gresham for a rural carriership, that he had received $800 from another source and procured the postmanship at Dale for S. Grant Johnson. But he insisted these receipts were not bribes. The Government prosecutor produced pin-pricked $100 bills used to trap Rowbottom. When after two hours' deliberation the jury found him guilty on four counts, Elizabeth Margaret Rohsenberger Rowbottom, his wife, fainted dead away.

Vainly did his attorneys plead for clemency, argue that their client was physically weak, that he lacked the mental calibre for the office of Congressman. U. S. Judge Charles E. Woodward, deaf to entreaties, fined Bribee Rowbottom $2,000, sentenced him to a year and a day in the Federal penitentiary.* Said Judge Woodward to Rowbottom before the bar: "You have betrayed your constituents and cheapened public office. The Court cannot condone the flagrant and cynical barter and sale of public offices. The sentence must be of such nature as to deter other Congressmen from such practices."

Tammany v. Rotters. Last week New Yorkers were edified to learn precisely how Tammany leaders collect on the patronage they dole out. Miss Annie Mathews, onetime (1922-29) Register of New York County and now leader in the same Democratic district with big fat-faced Martin J. Healy, whose indictment last year for accepting a $10,000 bribe in return for a judgeship began the Scandals of New York, addressed a League of Women Voters meeting, startled the community by declaring innocently:

"District leaders are expected to put in a great deal of time and energy, raising money and managing campaigns. Yet no political party ever pays its district leaders a salary. Is it reasonable to expect them to do all this work for nothing, just for love of country?

"A vacancy arises for a judge's position. The district leader gets a chance to recommend a man for the position at $25,000 per year for 14 years. If he is a Democrat here or a Republican in Philadelphia he is sure of reelection, so he practically has the position until he retires for age. If somebody offered you a thing like that, would you just say 'Thank you' and not offer that person a present? Would you really be such a rotter?"

Newshawks soon swooped upon Miss Mathews for confirmation, elaboration. A "bribe" was paid before appointment, she explained. A "present'' is made after and she knew nothing about bribes. She said: "Women aren't really on the inside of politics anyway. I guess I'll have to get out of Tammany Hall after this."

Immediately arose an excited chorus of Tammany's other women leaders: "We don't do anything like that in my district. . . . Why, I never heard of such a thing! ... I can't understand why Annie said anything like that. . . . That sort of thing is entirely foreign to me. . . . No, I don't agree with her at all. ... It was a great shock to me. . .. Only one judge comes from my district and he didn't give me a present and he isn't a rotter."

*A sentence of more than a year rnakes a convict eligible for parole after one-third of its execution.

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