Sugar Boy

Matthew H. McCloskey Jr. did not rise from boyhood poverty in West Virginia to wealth and power in Pennsylvania by wasting dollars or handshakes on nonentities. He bows low to the right people, bids low on the right jobs. His perspicacity in switching from the Republican to the Democratic trough in 1932 also has contributed materially to his emergence as Pennsylvania's Public Contractor No. 1. To Pennsylvanians born & bred in gutter politics, it therefore seems perfectly natural that blue-eyed Little Matt should draw first mud in this State's muddled Democratic primary campaign.

Samuel Davis Wilson did not rise from Republican Deputy Controller of Philadelphia to Democratic Controller to Republican Mayor to Democratic candidate for U. S. Senatorial nomination by wasting his vituperative talents on invulnerable opponents. To Philadelphians therefore it seemed perfectly natural that shrewd Mr. Wilson last week should choose for a target vulnerable Little Matt.

Governor George Howard Earle III presumably did not rise from Republican riches to eminence as Pennsylvania's foremost practicing liberal by pitching political curve balls. To Pennsylvanians therefore it seemed phenomenally unnatural that Mr. Wilson should have been able to daub Mr. Earle along with Little Matt and to make some of the mud stick on both. Yet the mayor accomplished this feat last week in the furtherance of his effort to do the Governor out of nomination to the Senate.

At Williamsport, Pa., on a platform graced also by the potent Emma Guffey Miller, sister and mentor of U. S. Senator Joseph Guffey, the mayor knowingly inquired: 1) whether Governor Earle had borrowed $30,000 from Little Matt; 2) how many millions of dollars worth of State contracts had been awarded to Contractor McCloskey; and 3) how many McCloskey men the State had appointed to inspect McCloskey jobs. From Harrisburg hapless Debtor Earle replied: "Matthew H. McCloskey has been one of my personal friends. ... As my friend, he made several loans to me during the years 1935 and 1936, prior to the time when it was within any possible contemplation that he would ever be the recipient of any State contract. These loans have been reduced ... to the sum of $6,000. ... I deny Wilson's malicious innuendo that there has been favoritism. . . ."

Most Pennsylvanians were astounded, not only by the charges, but by the hint that their once wealthy Governor had managed to do away with all of his sugar millions. For some time, however, the informed rich have been aware that Mr. Earle is no longer able to pony up such party funds as the $35,000 he gave the Democrats in 1932 and the $140,000 he put up for his own campaign in 1934. But until last week few suspected that their Sugar Boy turned Laborcrat was unable to repay a paltry $6,000, even though the continued existence of such a debt to such a creditor would menace any politician. From the Governor's bosom friend and Philadelphia's Democratic City Chairman John B. Kelly came the only explanation. Said Mr. Kelly: "We all know that George Earle has been in the sugar business all his life. We who are his friends know that he plays the sugar market. What if he was caught in a jam and his brokers called for more margin? ... It is commendable that he ... had to borrow. . . . His Republican predecessors . . . would not have had to borrow. . . ."

More important than the Governor's personal fortune was the certainty that the growing gaps between the principals in the once invincible Guffey-Earle-McCloskey-John L. Lewis combination would be filled with scandalous dirt seldom matched in scandalous Pennsylvania politics. No sooner had Mayor Wilson opened the mudgates than Boss Guffey asked the Senate to find out whether Governor Earle had designated Little Matt as a State Representative in apportioning PWA funds. PWA Administrator Harold Ickes tacitly confirmed that Contractor McCloskey had counseled both the State and the PWA on the mechanics of allotting more than twenty million Federal dollars to Pennsylvania's $65,000.000 public-works program, and it was established that Little Matt so far has bid low on about $13,000,000 worth of those contracts. From the Governor's side of the gutter, Chairman Kelly demanded and obtained a WPA investigation of his charges that Boss Guffey bosses State WPA voters. Replied Senator Guffey, "I have nothing to do with WPA. The way Jack Kelly is squealing he must have a couple of splinters between his toes." Announced Chairman Kelly: "When I open up on the Governor's accusers, George Earle will look like an altar boy."

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