Rumely

Dr. Edward Aloysius Rumely went to jail last week for something he didn't do seven years ago. But who is Edward Aloysius Rumely? And what didn't he do?

He is a man who was born at La Porte, Ind., in 1882. He is a graduate of the Universities of Notre Dame (Ind.), Heidelberg and Freiburg. He got his M.D. from the last in 1906. It is said that while he studied in Germany he lived on nuts, herbs and other uncooked foods, wore sandals, scanty clothes, and committed other eccentricities. But he came back with every appearance of normality and founded the Interlaken School at La Porte, the school where boys do all their own work, from carpentry up. Later he went into the manufacture of tractors and other farm machinery, without much success. In 1915 he bought The New York Evening Mail, and that was where his troubles began.

The price of the Mail was about $750,000. But it did not prove a profitable venture and in the course of a few years swallowed up $500,000 or $600,000 more. Where did all this money come from? In 1917 the U. S. entered the War. A law was passed, called the Trading with the Enemy Act. It required those who held property owned by Germans to notify the Govern-ment of the fact. Dr. Rumely did not do so.

In 1918 he was arrested. The Government claimed to have evidence that the Mail had been purchased with money from the German Government. Rumely declared that the money had been advanced by Herman Sielcken, "coffee king," an American citizen resident in Germany. Dr. Rumely was indicted for perjury in regard to the true ownership of the Mail, for failure to file a report of the German ownership with the Alien Property Custodian, for failure to report to the Alien Property Custodian that he was indebted to the German Government, for obstructing the U. S. Government in obtaining possession of the Mail.

In the trial it was brought out that the Mail had been anti-British, that Dr. Rumely had been in close association with pro-Germans. Employees of the Mail testified that Dr. Rumely had been pro-Ally and had not influenced their point of view in presenting the news. Finally, three months ago, he and his two attorneys were convicted on one count--conspiracy to defraud the U. S. Government by concealing the German ownership of the Mail. The jury recommended mercy but--they were given sentences of a year and a day. An appeal to the Supreme Court failed.

Last week their final hope of escaping prison was felled by the decision of President Coolidge not to pardon them. The trial judge and the District Attorney both opposed a pardon.

A day or two later the President commuted one day from each of the sentences. The object of the commutation was not the 24 hours involved, but to bring the sentences just within the limit which permits them to be served in a local prison instead of in a federal penitentiary, Atlanta or Leavenworth.

But Edward Aloysius Rumely--who had been a friend of Roosevelt, and of Henry Ford--M.D., educator, farm machinery manufacturer, went to jail for what he failed to do.