August Idyl

One day last week a baldish, pudgy man lolled comfortably before Senator Hugo Black's Lobby Investigating Committee. Cheerfully Robert E. Smith told his story:

Last July he went to Washington as representative of several Western utilities who were trying to balk the Public Utility Act. He spied a comfortable little house on 38th Street in Georgetown, promptly rented it. Disliking solitude, he "thought it would be nice for some of the boys to live with me during the hot spell." Six Representatives moved in with Lobbyist Smith: Kentucky's Cary, Idaho's Clark, Ohio's Fiesinger, Nevada's Scrugham, New Jersey's Sutphin, Indiana's Pettengill. Lobbyist Smith never told "the boys" of his work, because "several of them knew." On the piazza of their home, they rocked back & forth, clucked to each other about Reclamation, the Townsend Plan, other legislation of the day. The Public Utilities Act, strangely enough, they never discussed.

Disclosure by the Senate of their August idyl quickly brought "the boys" into the spotlight. That night the six Congressmen notified Senator Black: "We divided and paid the expenses in the same manner any group of men maintaining 'bachelor quarters' would do. Any inference that we were guests of Mr. Smith or anyone else is entirely contrary to the facts. . . . Mr. Smith represented to the group that he was interested in conservation and irrigation in the West."

Continuing his testimony before the Senate Committee, Lobbyist Smith revealed that during August 1935, three Senators and 50 Representatives had attended his Georgetown parties. Thereupon his onetime guests began to stampede before the Senate committee to explain and extenuate their presence at the 38th Street house. Montana's Senator James E. Murray admitted he was "laboring under the delusion that Smith was a Congressman." Washington's Representative Martin Smith woefully complained: "I certainly hope we'll do something to curb the activities of these lobbyists. There ought to be some way of identifying them." Utah's Representative Abe Murdock, still another of "the boys," shook his head: "I guess we were just taken in."

However much these revelations added to Robert Smith's stature as a potent lobbyist, they boomeranged on Senator Black.

To employ counsel to defend suits filed against his committee's activities by William Randolph Hearst and others (TIME, March 23), he wanted $10,000. Even more than the money, he wanted the moral support of the House and the White House. Therefore he put his request for an appropriation in the form of a joint resolution which would have to go through Congress and be signed by the President. But would the House, some of whose members had been badly smeared by the Senate's lobbying disclosures, pass such a joint resolution? To pave the way for favorable action, Senator Black slipped South Carolina's Representative John Jackson McSwain a copy of one telegram from Publisher Hearst which Senate investigators had taken from the Western Union files.

The eyes of the genial, grey-thatched chairman of the House Military Affairs Committee fairly bugged as he read the message, sent last April to Hearst's chief editorial writer and unofficial Washington lobbyist, James Thomas Williams Jr.:

"Confidential. Why not make several editorials calling for impeachment of Mr. McSwain. He is the enemy within the gates of Congress, the Nation's citadel. He is a Communist in spirit and a traitor in effect. He would leave the United States naked to foreign and domestic enemies. Please make these for the morning papers. . . . William Randolph Hearst."

Boiling mad at this slur upon his patriotism, Representative McSwain uprose on the House floor to a question of personal privilege, read out the Hearst telegram, launched into a smoking tirade against that publisher and his editorial employe. Excerpts:

"Mr. Speaker, for several years many editorials appeared in the Hearst paper known as the Washington Times under the signature of James T. Williams Jr., attacking me personally and questioning my loyalty to the cause of national defense. ... I have been terribly annoyed, sometimes not being able to sleep because of these unjust attacks, and oftentimes going to the front piazza and seizing the afternoon paper and never letting it reach the eyes of my wife and daughters because the hurt to them was what hurt me, in having my integrity, my honesty, my patriotism and my loyalty to this nation questioned by this little penpusher, Williams . . . this hired minion of Hearst, this mercenary mudslinger who takes his orders, not from his own conscience and his own brains, but from this hellish fiend of San Simeon. . . . This man Williams is a sycophant of the most pronounced sort ... a malicious, mercenary mugwump enjoying the cowardly privilege of shooting at his personal enemies from behind the breastworks of Hearst millions, and sniping at honest public officials through the columns of these yellow sheets belonging to the most selfish, unscrupulous, arrogant and conscienceless newspaper proprietor that ever soiled the newsracks of America. . . ."

Thoroughly delighted with such language, the House stamped its feet, yowled its approval, gave Senator Black reason to believe that it would approve his joint resolution for $10,000 to stand up to Publisher Hearst in the courts.

Meanwhile, undisturbed by this brawling, the House Judiciary Committee approved a bill which would compel lobbyists to register their employment and salary at the Capitol every three months. A similar bill, sponsored by Senator Black, has already passed the Senate.

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