Cops

Under the stage direction of Wisconsin's senior Senator, the La Follette Civil Liberties Committee closed its investigation of Chicago's Memorial Day massacre last week in a tingling series of hearings. For nearly a month Senator La Follette had been building for this climax. All through the week a big screen and projection machine reminded audiences in the Senate Caucus Room that the finale was to be the suppressed Paramount newsreel of the riot outside the Republic Steel plant which cost the lives of ten men (TIME, June 7 et seq.).

The brisk little Senator, dapper in a different suit each day, was too smart to indulge in any personal histrionics. He simply directed his actors, the witnesses. And like the good showman he is, Bob La Follette provided plenty of comic relief for what was otherwise, grim, gruesome business. The comedy was supplied by the Chicago police force.

Shown a picture of the riot, Police Sergeant Lawrence J. Lyons was asked what ''that man was drawing."

Sergeant Lyons: I don't know. He may be drawing his handkerchief.

Senator Thomas: Out of his holster?

Sergeant Lyons: We have left-handed policemen.

Testified Captain James L. Mooney: "In my judgment the whole thing was inspired by communists. The purpose of communists is to overthrow the Government and attack policemen, and they are getting money from Russia to help them do it."

Senator Thomas: You think these strikers were in the pay of Russia?

Captain Mooney: I wouldn't be surprised. ... A lot of people in my dis-'trict went back to the capital of Russia.

Senator Thomas: Where is that?

Captain Mooney: I don't know--wherever Lenin is.

Rambling on hour after hour, contradicting themselves and each other at every turn, the Chicago police convicted themselves of boobery if not butchery. Contributed by William V. Daly, assistant corporation counsel of the City of Chicago, was this odd defense of a policeman photographed clubbing an unconscious body: "You got to consider the human element,

Senator. They was all excited." Officer George Higgins, when confronted with a picture of himself manhandling a woman, cried: "I didn't strike her. Like a gentleman I shoved her."

With melodramatic swiftness, Senator La Follette shifted from policemen to victims. From a doctor came testimony that total casualties, aside from the dead, were 40 wounded by bullets, some 60 beaten. Seven of the ten dead had been shot in the back. Mrs. Lupe Marshall, a 30-year-old, little, Mexican-born social worker at Chicago's Hull House, told how she had been clubbed, put in a patrol wagon with 16 other wounded, none of whom had had first-aid treatment.

"None of the men . . . were able to sit up," she said. "There was one man who looked gaunt and haggard, who had a man lying on top of him. I got his head on my lap. I noticed his face was getting cold and black. He motioned toward his pocket, and I reached and got a cigaret for him. But it was covered with blood. He said, 'Never mind, you're a good kid, carry on.' He started to say 'Mother' but then he stiffened up. ... I said to the officer at the door, T hope you get a medal for this.' "

To the stand was assisted a boilermaker from another company. He said he had gone to the Republic plant to inquire for his brother, who was inside. A policeman refused him permission to enter. Testified the boilermaker: "Then an officer at my left cursed and said, 'Stand back you so-&-so or I'll fill you full of lead. . . . ' Those

policemen's lips were drawn, and they seemed intoxicated with tension. . . . Then it seemed like the blast of a whistle and all hell seemed to break loose. I went down, struck on the left side of my face." Blinded in one eye, he ran to a ditch. A tear-gas bomb exploded at his right, blinding him in the other eye. Stumbling on, he was picked up by some fleeing demonstrators in a car, then dragged out by police, who threw him in a patrol wagon.

On the last day of the hearings Senator La Follette had the Caucus Room darkened just before luncheon, showed the Paramount newsreel to a crowd of 700, including delegations of Senators and Congressmen. The audience was on the edge of its chairs. First the entire film was shown. On the second showing the first few scenes were run off at normal speed, the rest of the action at half speed with occasional stops to let the worst shots sink in.

But after the personal testimony the newsreel was almost an anticlimax. Still shots used in the hearings had been sharper than the cinema versions.

Senator La Follette made no attempt to use the film as evidence that the police fired without provocation, as neither he nor anyone else has ever seriously contended. Senator La Follette's thesis was that the provocations did not justify the subsequent brutality. The Paramount cameraman, Orlando Lippert, testified that he was changing lenses when the action began, though he claimed he missed only seven seconds of the battle.

As soon as the La Follette Committee had shown the film, Paramount released it for public exhibition, explaining that strike emotions had now cooled enough. Though the picture was promptly banned in Chicago by the police censor, the public release was. if anything, more anti-climactic than the showing by the committee, which had the benefit of a slow-motion reprint. The main clash is over so quickly that the impression is simply one of furious confusion. All taken from the police side, it shows no fighting closeups, none of the strikers in action. Audiences last week did not begin to hiss, boo and shout until they had seen close-ups of the dead, dying and wounded.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.