"Saturnalia"

Unlike Britain, France, Italy, Germany and many another foreign nation, the U. S. has no direct merchant marine subsidy, aids its shipping men instead with mail contracts and construction loans. Last week, hot on the heels of charges of graft and corruption in the Commerce Department (see p. 9), the Senate committee investigating ocean mail contracts shocked Washington with sizzling charges that U. S. shipping men have fattened fabulously on the public purse.

Coming out vigorously for Government ownership, the committee, headed by Alabama's Hugo La Fayette Black, declared that private operation with Federal aid "has resulted in a Saturnalia of waste, inefficiency, unearned exorbitant salaries and bonuses and other forms of so-called 'compensation,' corrupting expense accounts, exploitation of the public by the sale and manipulation of stocks, the 'values' of which are largely based on the hope of profit from robbing the taxpayer."

The Jones-White Merchant Marine Act of 1928, said the report, "has produced unconscionable exploiters intent upon wringing every possible penny from the public purse." Taking potshots at what it termed "corporate hocus-pocus," the report bristled with sardonic subheadings. Samples: Holding Companies are Devices for Fraud; The Corporate Web of I. M. M.; The Munson Maze; The Grace Enigma; The Deceptive A. G. W. I. Corporate Network; Millions Due the Government in Default, but Contractors and Lobbyists Continue to Profit.

Items:

P: Onetime Postmaster General Walter Folger Brown owned 4,000 shares of International Mercantile Marine Corp. stock when he awarded mail contracts to I. M. M.'s United States Lines.

P: Chairman Joseph Peter Grace of W. R. Grace & Co. (Grace Lines) got $971,660 in 1928 in salary, commissions, dividends.

P: Robert Stanley Dollar (Dollar Steamship Lines) received $698,750 in commissions on purchases of Government-owned ships at low prices.

P: Roosevelt Steamship Co., capitalized at $22,000 in 1920, profited $371,987 in two years (1931-33).

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