One-Man Law Wave

The man who played Hercules to Detroit's Augean stables was nearly ready to lay down his muckrake this week. In three years he had cleaned up more filth than any other municipal investigator in U.S. history, had mopped up $1,000,000 worth of graft, had swept out gambling and vice rackets which took in $20,000,000 a year, had pitchforked nearly a dozen city officials and scores of corrupt policemen. Now the middeny stables were sweet-smelling again. The name of this Hercules: Homer Ferguson.

Friendly, mild-mannered, solid Homer Ferguson was just another circuit judge until 1939. Then a woman "numbers" operator, jilted by her policeman lover, left a suicide note which uncorked a bad smell in Detroit's police department. Judge Ferguson was assigned to sit as a one-man grand jury to investigate the smell.

Honest Judge Ferguson found Detroit's graft-ridden officialdom as helpful as a pair of handcuffs. County Prosecutor Duncan C. McCrea insisted that the smell in the police department was only an embittered woman's imagination--until he was convicted of obstructing justice. Pompous, handshaking Mayor Richard W. Reading professed that all was civic virtue--until he was found guilty of graft. And one of the first men Judge Ferguson indicted in the handbook racket was a policeman assigned to "protect" him.

Bugs From A Log. Every time Judge Ferguson got a new witness to talk, it was like turning up a rotten log: the bugs swarmed out and he had to work fast before they got away. He took witnesses to his office building through the garage, whisked them upstairs unseen. He kept them secluded in hideouts, surrounded by dictographs and investigators.

Because he found that witnesses talked more freely at night, he worked long past dark, paused only for the law which forbade him to sit on Sundays. Sometimes he started again at 12:05 a.m. Monday. He examined 6,000 witnesses, heard 20,000,000 words of testimony, indicted 500 men & women. Of those brought to trial, 94% have been convicted. Says modest Judge Ferguson: "My old Dad used to say, 'Even a blind hog will find an occasional acorn if he just keeps his nose down.' "

Starting at Home. The Judge has added to his store of knowledge about human nature in these three years. He watched witnesses squirm before him, torn by loyalty to crooked friends, by the desire to save their own hides. He noticed a queer phenomenon: some turned wringing wet with sweat, others parched so that their skin peeled. He believes that all were relieved when they finally told the truth. Under the glass top of his desk he kept a Walter Scott couplet for all to read and ponder: Oh, what a tangled web we weave, When first we practice to deceive.

He also learned a lot about democracy. A less steadfast man might have been sickened by the mess, might have lost his faith in popular government. Not so Judge Ferguson. He found it no fatal fault that democracy gives its opportunities to the weak and vicious as well as to the virtuous.

Says he: "People say it's no use trying to clean up a city because graft is bound to spring up again. Sure it is. That's why you have to keep after it all the time. You might as well say that it's no use to clean your house because it will get dirty again. This is a democracy and we have got to make it work, and the place to start is right at home."

What Next? Blue-eyed, silver-haired Homer Ferguson came up the hard way. He mined coal and taught country school to pay his way through school, earned $862 his first year as a practicing lawyer. Three years after college he began to wonder what was wrong with his eyes, found he should have been wearing strong glasses all along: he had one-tenth normal vision.

As a circuit judge, Ferguson won respect from legal eagles; as an investigator, the respect of all Michigan. Although he refused to take time out for campaigning, he was re-elected by a landslide last year.

Michigan Republicans hope to persuade him to run against Democratic Senator Prentiss M. Brown next fall. But many a thoughtful, independent Michigander, knowing well that Prentiss Brown is a far better-than-average Senator, hoped that Public Servant Homer Ferguson would hold his terrific fire power for some opponent who really deserves a beating.

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