Old Man's Leisure

After a two-week hiatus due to a quarrel over Woodrow Wilson's veracity (TIME, Jan. 27), the Senate's Munitions Investigation Committee last week resumed its functions on its last allowance of $7,369. Back in the witness chairs were J. P. Morgan & partners (TIME, Jan. 20). On the first day Washington's Senator Bone gravely asked Banker Morgan whether he thought the next war would destroy civilization.

"It might irreparably damage the economic structure," Mr. Morgan admitted judiciously. "It might do away with the leisure class, and if you destroy the leisure class, you destroy civilization. Civilizations have died before. They have come back. How great the damage would be, I've never been able to decide."

That nubbin appealed to newshawks.

When the hearing adjourned they crowded around while friends were wrapping the head of the House of Morgan in his woolen muffler. Why would the destruction of the leisure class mean the end of civilization? Who were the leisure class?

"Well," said Mr. Morgan, who has grown downright garrulous with the Press since he became a Senate witness, "I think that if the housemother has to do all the cooking and all the washing and bring up a family of five children besides, she won't have time to educate the children. ... By the leisure class I mean the families who employ one servant, 25,000,000 or 30,000,000 families."

Sharp-witted Partner Thomas W. Lament, who feared this pronouncement might not make good publicity, intervened in a fruitless attempt to persuade the correspondents to ignore it. Good were Mr. Lament's premonitions. Partner Morgan's opinions on the leisure class were kidded on the front pages of newspapers from coast to coast. Some editors pointed out that in 1930 there were less than 30,000,000 families in the U. S., all of which by no means had one servant. Others dug up the fact that there were less than 2,000,000 cooks and servants listed by the 1930 census. The Associated Press quoted Mrs. Wilbur Fribley of Chicago, president of the Housewives League of America: "Does the woman active in business or social service as a lawyer, doctor or artist, who employs a housekeeper, necessarily belong in the leisure class? Men who take that attitude (and most men do) date themselves as thinking of modern housekeeping in terms of the hoopskirt age. That's what Mr. Morgan is doing."

Actually Mr. Morgan was doing no more than demonstrating how a male oldster can enjoy his leisure, for the Committee did not require his personal reappearance. He attended that session only because, as he said: "These things are important to me. I don't know so much about the details as the others, but I am responsible. Besides, I didn't want to miss the party."

Next day he again voluntarily returned to the Senate hearing at which Partners Thomas Lamont and Russell Leffingwell gave tedious testimony about financing after the U. S. entered the War. Finally Mr. Morgan expressed his disappointment. "I guess we are in for another dull day." Before catching a midday train back to ' Manhattan he shook hands with Senator Nye and his fellow investigators.

"I have had a fine time," he declared, like a guest taking his leave at an enjoyable social affair. "I would not have missed this investigation for the world."

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