Fall to Jail

One evening last week a black ambulance drew up beside a big red brick house in El Paso, Tex. Out of the house and down the steps a few minutes later hobbled a feeble old man. He wore pajamas and a green smoking jacket. A white hat rested on his stringy white hair. Friends lifted him gently into the car. He lay down on the stretcher. In beside him got a pretty 17-year-old girl. A motorcycle policeman escorted the ambulance as it drove off in the dusk. Later a somberly dressed woman came out of the house. She was crying. She got into another automobile, went trailing after the ambulance.

Thus did Albert Bacon Fall, broken in health and reputation, at last start for the New Mexico State penitentiary at Santa Fe accompanied by his granddaughter Martha and followed by his grieving wife. The night was spent at what was once his great ranch at Three Rivers. Two days later the erstwhile Secretary of the Interior entered the grim grey institution at the foot of the Sangre de Cristo range to pay the penalty for taking a $100,000 bribe from Oilman Edward Laurence Doheny almost ten years ago.

Earlier in the week in Washington there was much judicial juggling of Fall's one-year sentence. Army physicians upon examination had found him suffering from chronic tuberculosis, chronic pleurisy, arthritis and arteriosclerosis. To keep him in a dry climate and out of humid Washington's jail, a considerate judge changed his sentence to a year & a day. This technicality gave Attorney General Mitchell authority to designate the New Mexico penitentiary for his imprisonment. The change also brought Convict Fall under the Federal parole law which meant he could be released in four months. Still pending against him, however, is a $100,000 fine. To clear that debt without paying it, Bribee Fall must remain an extra 30 days in jail and take the pauper's oath.

Before Fall started for Santa Fe, President Hoover received a petition for his pardon signed by every member of the New Mexico Legislature, Senators Cutting and Bratton and Governor Seligman. In view of the President's denunciation of public betrayers when he dedicated the Harding tomb last month, it was not considered likely that he would be clement.

Fall's last few days as a free man were not happy. Clad in pajamas, his face covered with a white stubble, a bottle of strychnine (heart stimulant) beside him, he spent his time in a big arm chair while the women of his household moaned their despair. He chewed an old cigar stump as he told newsmen: "I'll go through with it but it may get me down. It's a relief to have it all settled. I am an innocent man being persecuted. Oh yes, I have many friends in Santa Fe but I hope I won't find them in the pen there."

News cameramen about the place caused the Falls great annoyance. One evening while Fall's daughter was watering the flowers, she turned the hose on a fig tree and doused a hidden camera. A disgruntled photographer let fly a stone that grazed the sprinkler's side. Police were called in. They found Fall sitting with a shotgun across his knees, ready to shoot down any cameraman who came on the premises.

Last week the North American Newspaper Alliance began publication of Fall's political reminiscences of the time when his good friend Warren Gamaliel Harding promoted him from Senate to the Cabinet. According to Fall, President Harding first wanted to make him Secretary of State "because we had played poker together."

Fall's version of how Herbert Hoover got into the Harding Cabinet: Harding first proposed him to a small Republican group. Fall immediately concurred. Senator Smoot insisted he should be "built up first as a Republican." Later a deadlock for Secretary of the Treasury developed between Charles Gates Dawes, whom Harding favored, and George Reynolds. Pennsylvania's Senators Knox and Penrose brought out Andrew William Mellon as a compromise candidate. Fall went to them, suggested "political reciprocation" whereby he would use his influence with Harding to get Mellon named if they in return would support Hoover.

Fall objected to Harding's appointment of Harry Micajah Daugherty as Attorney General. Said he to the President: "Give him something else for Heaven's sake. I don't believe he knows enough law to be Attorney General." Thus described by Fall was a subsequent Cabinet meeting during the 1922 coal strike which Daugherty sought to break with Federal injunctions:

"Next time Daugherty came into Cabinet meetings he found things pretty hot.

" 'He has laid this Cabinet, Mr. President,' I said, 'open to criticism. I think he should be reprimanded right here.'

"I added that if the Attorney General were going to be permitted to do such high-handed, damn-fool things, my resignation was in.

" 'I feel much along the same line,' said Secretary Hoover.

" 'You don't know any law!' I shouted at Daugherty, 'and you can't learn any. You say you will take "your army" of marshals, and settle this strike. Why, man, they're not "your marshals."'

"Daugherty gripped the sides of his chair. President Harding looked at me sternly. He looked like a school teacher after a bad boy.

" 'Albert,' he said, dropping the formal "Mr. Secretary," 'I want to see you after this meeting.'

"When we were alone, he said: 'I wish you wouldn't ride the Attorney General like that.' I apologized.

"One day, following a Cabinet meeting, President Harding said, looking back at the big vacant room and the empty chairs:

" 'Albert, every man around that table except yourself--and you don't count because you're from a little state with no influence--has his eye on my job. They all hope some day to be President--including that little fellow at the end of the table.'

"The 'little fellow at the end of the table,' seldom speaking but always awake to everything said, was Calvin Coolidge, then Vice President."

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