Davey's Deficit

Like Adolf Hitler, Franklin Roosevelt knows the psychological value of the public party purge. Four times has the Administration cleaned up relief muddles-- in Massachusetts, Georgia, North Dakota, Oklahoma--before the political Opposition could start fulminating. Last week, on "evidence concerning corrupt political interference with relief in the State of Ohio," the President again beat scandalmongers to the gun by ordering FERAdministrator Harry Hopkins to remove Democratic Governor Martin Luther Davey from all connection with Federal Relief Administration.

Mr. Hopkins carried out his chief's will by writing Governor Davey the sternest letter that has come out of Washington in years. "It has come to the attention of this Administration by incontrovertible evidence," said he, "that your campaign committee, shortly, after your election, proceeded to solicit money from the men and business firms who sold goods to the Ohio Relief Administration. The frank purpose of this shakedown, because it can be termed fairly by no other name, was to help pay off the deficit of your campaign and the expenses of your inaugural." Specifically, the evidence which had come to Mr. Hopkins' attention was a sheaf of affidavits, which he had sent his own investigators out to get, alleging the corrupt collection of $8,000. Republican Legislators at once howled for Davey's impeachment.

In condemning the "political chicanery" of Ohio's relief regime, President Roosevelt was making few enemies among the Buckeye State's regular Democrats. For Martin Davey, who turned his father's experiments in tree surgery into a profitable, high-powered business, got into office by a pair of political accidents. Bitterly opposed by party regulars, he was nominated only because two other candidates split the majority. He slid into the executive mansion more than 300,000 votes behind the national ticket, in the wake of the 1934 Roosevelt landslide. His campaign was featured by a prolonged altercation with his Republican opponent as to whether rich Mr. Davey had or had not wrecked a bank in his home town of Kent by approving excessive loans to himself.

Against the Hopkins charges, Governor Davey, wise after eight years in Congress, had several defenses. Had he not, protesting Ohio's inability to raise its share of relief expenses, already invited complete Federal relief control? Had he not written Mr. Hopkins a fortnight before of his suspicions of "political influence" in the relief administration? Was not the Ohio Legislature at that very moment investigating relief irregularities?

Neatest Davey comeback was his declaration : "I know absolutely nothing about the financial affairs of the Democratic State Committee. . . . My lack of knowledge in matters of this kind is exactly the same as the President's lack of knowledge of how Mr. Farley raised the money to make up the deficit in the financial affairs of the National Committee."

Most sensational Davey riposte was to swear out a warrant charging Harry Hopkins with criminal libel, which he followed up with a 700-word telegram to the Administrator:

"I realize that you cannot be extradited for this offense but I challenge you to come to Ohio, submit to arrest and try this case in open court. . . . So come to Ohio if you dare and show that you are a man, or turn and run like a coward and confess your contemptible character."

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