Tallyho!

In its investigation into World War II profiteering, the Senate's Mead Committee began beating the bushes and flushed game all over the field. Prize exhibits from the first week's walk through the underbrush was a pair of brothers named Murray W. and Dr. Henry M. Garrson, who had gone into war contract work with less than a shoestring, come out with a fortune. Flushed with them, if not actually part of the herd, was a U.S. Congressman.

Murray Garrson was the kind of character an investigating committee likes to find. According to the F.B.I, he was once tied up in New York's brewery trade with gangsters Dutch Schultz and Owney Madden. He had twice gone through bankruptcy, had been arrested on charges ranging from disorderly conduct to grand larceny, but never served a sentence. Brother Henry Garrson had an impressive array of engineering degrees and a spotless record as an engineering consultant. But he had been indicted, tried and acquitted on a charge of pocketing a $5,000 bribe while working as an Internal Revenue agent.

When war came the Garrson boys were ready with a good scheme for quick-&-easy profits. With no assets except a borrowed letterhead they established the Erie Basin Metal Products Co. Then they grabbed a $3,000,000 contract from the Chemical Warfare Service to produce mortar shells, and went to town.

By war's end they were bossing a sprawling network of 16 tangled corporations with interchangeable resources and interlocking directorates. In four years they handled $78 million in Army contracts, paid themselves a half million in salaries and won three "E" awards, although Army officers protested that their production records were inefficient.

Not until the Government began renegotiation of war contracts did the Garrsons find themselves in trouble. Then Federal auditors uncovered overcharges of as much as $600,000 on a single million-dollar cash claim against the Government. Other investigators found evidence of powerful political pressures that had helped out the Garrson combine.

"Something Sinister." That was the tallyho. Squarely in the middle of the field as the Mead pack took out after the Garrsons was the baldpated, leaden-hued figure of Andrew Jackson May, veteran (15 years) Congressman from Kentucky and long-time chairman of the House Military Affairs Committee. Witness after witness took the stand to testify that he had worked hard to help the Garrsons. He had introduced Henry Garrson to Ordnance Chief Major General Levin H. Campbell Jr.* He had arranged to unfreeze Garrson funds which were blocked by the Government pending renegotiation. He had prodded the WMC into raising their man power allotments. He had pressured the Army for at least one of the "E" awards, had turned up as a guest at a $16,000 dinner of celebration.

General Campbell quoted from a telephone conversation with Andy May: "Those fellows are good friends of mine and have been very kindly to me in the past about some things and I want to help them if I could." (When General Campbell said he had, as usual, made a recorded transcript of the talk, other worried Congressmen lost sight of the investigation completely, began a furious hue-& -cry about "wire-tapping.")

At week's end one witness produced canceled Erie Basin checks for $18,000 made out to the Cumberland Lumber Co. One of them was endorsed by "A. J. May, President." No lumber had ever been delivered, no records for the company were available. But its home office was in Prestonburg, Ky., Andy May's home town.

Finally stung into action, Minor Statesman May protested that everything he had done had been "for the benefit of my constituents and the war effort and of course I did not profit in any way or respect." A little more to the point was a sharp reminder to Committee Chairman Mead that Andy May had testified before a closed committee last month.

When Senator Mead countered by releasing the testimony (which he called "wholly inadequate") angry Andy May took to the House floor to restate his case. He insisted there was nothing shady about Cumberland Lumber, denied that he had endorsed its checks as president, despite photographic evidence to the contrary. He was just trying to help some "small business concerns" get along.

*Now retired and vice-president of International Harvester Co.

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