Susanna At Albany (Cont'd)

Susanna At Albany (Cont'd)

After five racking days of examination at the firm hands of Governor Roosevelt, a very perturbed and anxious James John ("Jimmy") Walker last week fled to the courts in an attempt to hold his job as Mayor of New York. Governor Roosevelt had not yet actually removed him but the Mayor, his counsel and most observers realized that his defense has not helped his case. On the witness stand the Mayor's wriggling and squirming under the Governor's pointed questions had made an unfavorable impression. Every ruling had gone against him. Refusing to dismiss the charges without hearing more witnesses, the Governor had exploded that he was "fed up" with the niggling tactics of the Mayor's counsel.

Mayor Walker declared that he had "nothing to fear" when the legislative committee began its investigation last year. "I shall meet every one of these [charges] on the facts," he boasted before going to Albany. But the day his testimony ended, he sent one of his attorneys scuttling off to court to prepare a legal life net to jump into.

From the Supreme Court, Lawyer John J. Glynn, nephew of Alfred Emanuel Smith, got an order requiring the Governor to show cause why he should not be restrained from ousting the Mayor. The Mayor's plea was based on his charge that the Governor was about to deprive him of "property" (his job) without "due process of law" (calling witnesses to accuse him and be cross-examined). The Governor's constitutional power of removal was also questioned in this suit, as it was in the one brought fortnight ago by a Bronx Democrat to test the "home-rule" amendment of the State Constitution. Both cases, to be argued this week, were expected to envelop the proceedings in a fog of legal technicalities behind which the Mayor hoped to make his escape.

Many of the Mayor's friends were dismayed at his strategy. They felt that to seek political asylum in the courts was not meeting the issues "on the facts." As for Governor Roosevelt, most spectators had only praise for the direct and fearless way he had handled the Walker examination. He behaved as if he had no thought of its political consequences. He had damned the Mayor out of his own mouth. A Walker removal now would thunder across the land until election day as proof positive that Governor Roosevelt is no "Tammany man."

The second week's hearing at Albany popped into the open one new fact--the name of Betty Compton, musicomedienne, as the "unknown person" to whom Mayor Walker had given $7,000. During a recess Chicago Tribune's John Boettiger asked if it were she.

"Where have you been all these years?" quipped the Mayor. "Who do you suppose she is?"

One Seabury charge concerned the undisputed fact that four doctors who had city compensation cases split their fees 50-50 with Dr. William Walker, the Mayor's brother (TIME, June 13).

Governor Roosevelt: Do you consider it a proper practice for a doctor receiving pay from the city to split fees?

Mayor Walker: I do not.

Governor: Don't you think it would have been part of your duty as Mayor to find out as to the propriety of these four doctors continuing in the employ of the city?

Mayor: I don't know that fee splitting is wrong. I've done it. Most lawyers have.

Governor: Do you consider that a proper ethical medical practice?

Mayor (stammering): Well, unless I-- if I--unless there is something wrong with it--

Governor: Do you think it is in the interest of good government?

Mayor: I don't think it's ethical for anybody to do anything illegal.

Governor: Then you think it's wrong?

Mayor: If it's wrong, I think it's unethical. I don't think anything that's wrong is good for good government.

Governor: Do you think it is wrong?

Mayor: If there's anything improper about it, I could consider it improper.

Governor: Isn't it a bad practice?

Mayor: If it happens, it's bad. What's wrong is bad.

After Mayor Walker quit the stand, it took John J. Curtin, his white-haired chief counsel, a day and a half to sum up the defense and move unsuccessfully for a dismissal of the charges. Lawyer Curtin talked till his voice cracked. He was voluble but ungrammatically inarticulate. He harangued the Governor as if he were a low-grade juror. Samples of the Curtin argument:

"Well, I think it would be safe to say that a very large percentage of all business transactions are made under the heading of mental reservations, if that is a mental reservation, which, of course, it is not.

"Now, I leave it to you if that isn't that class of logic, Governor, which I am sure you studied in your college days, and afterward, perhaps, and known as the post art arguments--one of the most fallacious syllogisms known to logicians and the courts. Naturally, when they once see it, they will disregard it. ...

"Now, if I need precedent, as I scarcely do, but for the fullness of measure, may I refer you now to a decision of your illustrious predecessor and namesake and relative, whom everybody was proud of--Theodore Roosevelt--that when he had to pass upon a stock holding of the so-called ice trust that had at that time a contract with the city of New York, and there was a hue and cry raised at the time --they wanted to hang the Mayor of New York at the nearest lamp post, some people did--and when the matter was brought before Theodore Roosevelt he said this: 'The power of removal from office of elective officers should be treated much as we treat the power of impeachment, it is an extraordinary and not an ordinary matter. . . . ' And he dismissed the charge. . . .

"I say to your excellency that Mayor Walker has answered for his affairs full and completely and I say to you that Sherwood's [the Mayor's runaway financial agent] absence is ten million times more valuable to the charge makers than Sherwood's presence could possibly be. But don't let anybody mistake my position. That the tenure of office of the Mayor of the greatest city in the world should depend upon his detective ability is to me more or less unthinkable, particularly when the committee with $750,000 behind it and the arm of the State of New York and with the power that the law would give to him was unable to do what they say we all should have done. . . ."

When Counsel Curtin moved to adjourn, the stenographer taking his speech down phonetically recorded it "adjoin."

Unable to satisfy Governor Roosevelt without corroborative testimony, Mayor Walker had 22 witnesses subpoenaed for his defense. Of these eight were important New York State Republicans. Counsel Curtin was going to try to prove by them that the Tammany investigation was a G. O. P. plot inspired from Washington to abort the Roosevelt and Smith presidential candidacies. How such a plot, even if proved, would clear Mayor Walker of the charges and evidence against him Mr. Curtin did not attempt to explain. The inference was that if Governor Roosevelt removed the Mayor he would somehow be in political cahoots with President Hoover.

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