Muckraker's Progress

Big Harold Stassen, whose muckrake started the investigation of speculators inside the Government (TIME, Dec. 22), was given the stage and the spotlight by the Senate Appropriations Committee last week. Amidst considerable hubbub (cameramen literally fell over each other) and sharp political jabbing. Presidential Candidate Stassen let fly. He charged that:

P: Ed Pauley (who had said he 18st $100,000 in paper profits) had made more than $1,000,000 in commodities, and had failed to tell all to the committee.*

P: Brigadier General Wallace Graham, the White House physician, had "not told the truth" when he said he "lost his socks," but had actually turned a profit.

P: Ralph K. Davies, former Deputy Petroleum Administrator for War, was an "insider" (Oilman Davies left the Administration 13 months ago).

P: The Government's handling of food purchases was "extraordinarily inept" and had given insiders a pattern for profitable speculation.

P: President Truman was guilty of "reprehensible conduct" in failing to enforce a policy of Franklin Roosevelt's which forbade speculation by Government employees.

Stassen's strongest accusation was that "about eleven" insiders had reaped profits of more than $4,000,000 since the war. Who were they? Stassen was not prepared to name them.* "I have never named a name or made a charge," he said, "until I was ready to prove it in court." Who were his informants? "Loyal Government employees, who were disgusted at this reprehensible procedure."

Rhode Island's old (80) Democratic Senator Theodore Francis Green cried that the accusations were based on "nothing more than gossip." The hearing was getting hotly political when Stassen asked to be excused: he had to go make a political speech in Missouri. In the corridor, he walked past glowering General Graham, who would have his say on the witness stand this week. They did not speak.

This week the committee would look into the commodity holdings of one of its own members: Oklahoma's Democrat Elmer Thomas. After his wife's name had bobbed up on a list of cotton traders, Senator Thomas said he would send his brokerage records to the committee.

*Pauley snorted out loud at this "disclosure." He said he had given the committee the information that he had made $932,703.10 in commodity trades during the last three years.

*Named as a speculator last week was former Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau Jr. Last summer, when the price of corn was swiftly rising, he was on the short side (i.e., betting that the price would go down). Said Morgenthau: "It is obvious I had no inside information."

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