Hare & Hounds

When a point in John Pierpont Morgan's first day testimony before the Senate subcommittee provoked a long and involved colloquy, Banker Morgan made the deprecating remark: "I'm sorry I started such a hare." The hare of that particular argument was tiny, tame, soon forgotten. But the big, wild hare that was started by Banker Morgan seating his bulky frame in the witness chair, bounded across the front pages of the nation's Press for the rest of the week, leaving a redolent, black trail of streamer headlines.

The Press gave chase in a hysterical pack. More than a chase, it was a field day. Here at last was J. P. Morgan where the Press could get at him. Hearings were delayed while cameramen swarmed around him undeterred. Feature writers eyed his every move, ambushed him during every recess. All were astonished by his amiable submission, in which he admittedly had been coached by his counsel. John William Davis, and by Partner Thomas W. Lamont. onetime newsman.

Running hot in the foreground, as would be expected, were the Hearst newshounds. To the Hearst Press the House of Morgan is the "Plunderbund," the quintessence of all that Hearst has taught "People Who Think" to regard as wicked. Not only regular newshawks but Hearst financial editors and feature writers like Damon Runyon and Ed Hill (see p. 40) were sent to Washington. The New York Journal shrieked: REVEAL MORGAN RULES INDUSTRY. In a page-wide strip of Morgan pictures in the Journal the banker's mustache was obviously painted out to give him a long, flaccid upper lip and Capone-like mien. Editorially Hearst was slow in getting under way. being still excited over the "foreign entanglements'' which the U. S. had incurred by its Disarmament policy. (On the day when its front page "bared" the "Morgan deals." the New York Evening Journal's editorial page carried a Brisbanal sermon on Brain v. Brawn.) But presently Publisher Hearst crashed out with a signed editorial for the front pages of his morning papers. Theme (from Democrat Raskob's reply to Morgan's invitation to buy stock on the "inside") : "I hope I will be able to reciprocate."

The Hearst Press behaved purely according to formula in helping to perpetuate the popular but erroneous idea, carefully revived by Prosecutor Pecora. that the present John P. Morgan is the main driving force of the House of Morgan. Also according to formula behaved the Scripps-Howard chain of 25 newspapers. Their formula being "liberalism." none must excel them in excoriation of unphilanthropic wealth. Their lead hound, the New York World Telegram, soon turned the predictable "revelations" of the investigation into a "shocking" scandal.

A cartoon by potent Rollin Kirby. entitled "Not on the Same Side of the Street," pictured plug-hatted Banker Morgan and his partners walking unconcerned up one sidewalk while on the other a long line of common citizens waited humbly to pay their income taxes.sb A feature by Reporter Earl Sparling blatantly exaggerated the House of Morgan's "control" of everything John Doe eats, drinks and uses. Ruth Finney was permitted to shrill: "They [Morgan & Co.] can regiment something like $53,000,00,.000 to do their bidding." Another story bitterly inventoried the Morgan expenditures on yachts, model farms, grouse shoots, British charities for the non-tax-payment years.

Ace Reporter Ray Tucker, wild & wooly go-getter after official malfeasance or social injustice, was never in better form. 'The days of Teapot Dome never compared with these," he reported. And "the question [of the man on the street] heard everywhere around the Capitol is, 'What chance have we got?' " Pitched to a sustained keynote of Wall Street wickedness. Tucker's stories were masterfully written and made exciting reading. Also in the World Telegram, Pinko Heywood Broun surpassed himself with cynical skits about the House of Morgan and its Friends in high places. Apropos the 1929 letter of Morgan Partner William Ewing by which William H. Woodin, now Secretary of the Treasury, was let in on the ground floor of Alleghany Corp. stock because ''We were thinking of you," Colyumist Broun chortled: "I think that Mr. Woodin ought to go back to his job of composing ballads. ... If the waltz king of the American Car & Foundry Co. wants something in a nice hot fox trot, how about 'My Little Morganatic Miss?'"

The great New York morning papers, Times and Herald Tribune, were meticulous in printing all the testimony, all the news--but no feature stories admiring the fighting spirit of Prosecutor Pecora. Edi- torially they were practically mute. The arch-Republican Herald Tribune spoke up once to the effect that the capital gains -L- losses tax is a bad law. (No Manhattan paper made clear the point that the House of Morgan was opposed to that tax clause when it was written.) The Times printed a similar editorial and another entitled "Why It Hurts." Sorrowfully but reverently it found that the House of Morgan had lost "something intangible, imponderable, that has to do with the very highest repute" by publication of its "preferred list'' of stock customers.

Many a newsreader looked for what the most respected commentator of all, Pundit Walter Lippmann, would have to say in the Herald Tribune. To him the Senate investigation pointed a large question, and a need for reform whichever way the question might be answered. The question: "Whether . . . there is a Money Trust directed by J. P. Morgan & Co.-- or whether the business [of capital investment] is ... highly competitive and dangerously chaotic."

In the hinterland editors seemed less excited than in Manhattan. In St. Louis. Pulitzer's Post-Dispatch, conceding that the Morgan tax deductions were "of a totally different sort" from those of Banker Mitchell, found "grave injustice" in the tax laws. To the Denver Post Morgan and Insull were of a stripe. William Allen White compared Morgan tactics to "a thimblerigging game." Of letting friends in on the ground floor of stock prices, said the Baltimore Sun, "Taking the practice as a whole, it is bad." The reticent Kansas City Star found nothing in the story to warrant deviation from its style of one-column headlines. Editorially: "Mr. Morgan is wrong when he contends that private banking should not be subjected to ... scrutiny."

If the story could be played up. it could also be played down. But none played it so far down as the high-Tory New York Evening Post. Typical was a five-sentence editorial headed "A Dull Day":

"It was a dull day at the Morgan hearing yesterday. All that was brought out was that the firm had been for years the trusted financial agent for the great governments of the world, that since 1919 it had been concerned in the issuance of $6,000,000.000 worth of securities, that it had sought to foster the fortunes of the two famous academies at Andover and Exeter, that it had tried to help a much beloved ex-President of the United States to make a little money for his old age and that any corrupt political 'hookup' or intent could not be shown as to its 'preferred customers list.' No tar could be spattered upon the name of Morgan yesterday. So the committee adjourned early. It was, as we say, a dull day."

sbRich Publisher Roy Howard, who certainly pays no more income tax than experts assure him the law requires, was in the Far East while his paper thus distorted the normal working of the capital profit & loss section of the income tax law.

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