Micajah

Senators levelled their fingers at Edwin Denby and cried "Oil!" The result was that Mr. Denby resigned (TIME, Feb. 25) on the ground that he was an embarassment to the President. At once Senatorial fingers began to turn towards Harry Micajah Daugherty, Attorney General.

Senator Burton K. Wheeler of Montana, Democratic radical called for an investigation of alleged failure by Mr. Daugherty to institute prosecutions under the Sherman Anti-Trust Act on evidence brought out in the Veterans Bureau investigation and on evidence disclosed in the oil investigation. The resolution was referred to committee.

In presenting his resolution Senator Wheeler undertook to flay Mr. Daugherty, connecting him with oil disclosures and selling of offices: "... So

I say that if the Attorney General has not actually got the money that has been collected in these various cases from one end of the country to the other, he is a bigger fool than the people of the United States give him credit for being !"

Mr. Daugherty confirmed rumors that he had held Sinclair's Oil stock. He declared that he had acquired it before entering the Cabinet, that during the year in which the oil leases were made, he had bought just 18 shares to round out his holdings, and that he sold the stock last year at a net loss of about $28 a share.

Senator Borah came out with an open demand for Mr. Daugherty's resignation. Several Republican Senators urged the President and Mr. Daugherty to consider the latter's resignation in order. Mr. Daugherty replied: "My elimination, voluntarily or otherwise, will be a confession of the truth of all these baseless charges of our adversaries, and will justify them in claiming that we have thereby admitted their truth, and such admission will accomplish the ultimate end and purpose most gratifying to such adversaries. I will never be a party to such a program."

Mark Sullivan, able Washington correspondent, wrote of the Attorney General:

"As Daugherty himself once expressed it, he knew from the beginning that because of the circumstances attending the appointment Harding gave him, he was destined to be the 'goat' of the Harding Administration. Knowing that, to think that he would commit a crime would argue such a combination of cupidity together with lack of ordinary intelligence as is utterly impossible to believe about as intelligent a man as Daugherty is."