Hellzapoppin

Election Day in the U. S. is followed by wash day. Dirty linen aired in campaigns, or kept out of sight until afterward, goes into the tub and comes out through the wringer. Last week saw political laundries worked overtime. Most notable part of the week's wash was another big indictment by New York City's crusading paladin, District Attorney Tom Dewey (see p. 13). Elsewhere:

P: Donat J. Levesque, Democratic mayor ot sedate Lewiston. Me., was indicted on a charge of accepting a $200 bribe in connection with the appointment of a city health officer.

P: New Jersey's supreme court upheld indictments of Meyer C. Ellenstein, Democratic mayor of Newark, N. J., and 29 other persons charged with fraudulent municipal land deals.

P: Mayor Samuel Davis Wilson of Philadelphia, an off-&-on Republican, issued invitations to Republican Governor-elect James of Pennsylvania and other interested parties to come and discuss the third city's financial plight. Mayor Wilson revealed that his deficit now tunes up to some $40,000,000. Happier news for Mayor Wilson last week was the quashing, by Common Pleas Judge Harry S. McDevitt, of 21 indictments charging him with misbehavior in office.

P: Following vote-fraud charges by Governor-reject Tom Dewey during the campaign, Governor-re-elect Lehman of New York ordered a special grand-jury investigation of balloting in Albany County--the one upstate county carried by Mr. Lehman.

Mr. Dewey charged that the county's registration of 82,000 was larger than its adult population. The total votes for Governor last fortnight amounted to 94% of this registration and Mr. Lehman's plurality was more than 20,000. Albany County politics are administered by the Democratic brother bosses, Daniel P. and Edward J. O'Connell.

P: A juicy bit of post-election hellzapoppin was promised by Representative Joseph W. Martin of Massachusetts, prospective Republican floor leader of the House in the 76th Congress. He said last week that an investigation had been launched into the qualifications of Dr. Rudolph G. ("Dr. Ten") Tenerowicz, Democratic Congressman-elect and mayor of Hamtramck, Mich.

Before election Republicans did not assail the Doctor's qualifications very loudly.

Their own candidate for Congress was Charles Roxborough, Negro, brother of Heavyweight Champion Joe Louis' comanager, John Roxborough. Governor Frank Murphy thought well enough of Dr. Ten to be photographed during the campaign handshaking him (see cut).

Hamtramck (pronounced Ham-tram-mick) is Detroit's tenderloin for foreign immigrants. It got its municipal charter in 1922 and is today Michigan's seventh city.

Thither from Chicago went Dr. Tenerowicz in 1923, because he heard it was a "promising city" where thousands of Poles "needed guidance." Dr. Ten was a one-time breaker-boy from the coal mines of Punxsutawney, Pa. (pronounced Punk-soo-tawney). He had studied medicine at Loyola University, served in the Army Medical Corps. Eloquent and energetic, combining politics with doctoring like Michigan's late Royal S. Copeland, who became Senator from New York, Dr. Ten was only five years in becoming Hamtramck's mayor.

Some said he elevated one of the toughest towns in North America "to a state of almost pristine virtue" by chasing out its crooks, grafters, gamblers, racketeers. But during his second term, in 1932, he and his police chief were convicted of conspiring to permit the operation of bawdy houses. Democratic Governor William Comstock pardoned him after he had served eight months and eleven days of a 3 1/2-to-5-year sentence, saying he was "more sinned against than sinning." He barely missed re-election while under sentence, and again while in jail in 1934. He came back strong in 1936. At that time he said: "When I first became mayor, I was long on ideals and short on practical politics.

I was a doctor. Today I have had some experience in practical politics." Republican tactics when Dr. Ten arrives to take his seat at the Capitol may be to demand that he "stand aside" while other new House members take their oaths, then force his Democratic colleagues to defend him. If he is unseated he will not be vastly surprised. Of being tough Hamtramck's mayor he long ago said: "There's a hoodoo connected with this job."*

*Hamtramck's first mayor, Peter C. Jezewski, was sentenced to Leavenworth for conspiring to violate the Prohibition law.

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