Pattern or Poppycock?

As Harold Stassen bayed excitedly on Speculator Ed Pauley's trail last week, he ran smack into Maryland's lank-cheeked Senator Millard Tydings. Drawing himself up to his full height before the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee, Senator Tydings demanded: "Have you any evidence of any person in Government who has given any inside information to any speculator in any market?" Stassen's answer was a weak "No." He said he was "relying on the pattern of operations rather than any specific evidence."

Angry Twitch. Harold Stassen had come to the hearing primed with fresh charges. While Pauley glowered at him across the witness table, Stassen declared that Pauley had not liquidated his holdings after he became an Army assistant last September. Instead, Pauley had bought large amounts of lard and cottonseed oil, taken a $56,360 profit after the Government announced large purchases for shipment abroad. Previous deals in wheat, oats and hides followed the same "pattern."

Snorted Pauley: "I've never heard such poppycock in my life." As Stassen poured it on, Pauley fidgeted, mopped his face with his handkerchief. The muscles of his jaw twitched angrily. Twice he leaped to his feet, pointed a long, bony finger at Stassen and demanded a "right to" defend himself against the "false charges of that man right there."

When Ed Pauley finally had his say, he roared out his denials. His only information on the grain market, he said, was what anyone could get by reading the papers. His transactions since the day he became Army assistant had been only those incident to the "orderly liquidation" of his holdings. Cried Pauley: "I have been seriously and perhaps irreparably harmed by Mr. Stassen's falsehoods and unfounded charges. . . . He has combined ignorance and falsehood to indict me solely in pursuit of his own selfish ambitions."

Last Word. Senator Ferguson asked Stassen if he wanted to reply. Stassen did. Leaping to his feet, he cried: "In his protestations of innocence, Pauley has confessed his guilt."

But Harold Stassen had failed to support most of his charges. Many a citizen thought the final word should come from the committee. In doing any speculating at all, Ed Pauley had technically (but, he claimed, unwittingly) violated the executive order forbidding Government employees to speculate; he had morally violated the tenet that public servants must be above suspicion. But was he guilty of using his public position for his private profit? The committee owed Ed Pauley, and the public, an answer.

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