Corruption

Canton, seat of Stark County, Ohio, had quieted down for the night. The late President McKinley and his wife slept the long sleep in their granite mausoleum on Monument Hill, with the distant flare of an all-night blast furnace occasionally spreading a ruddy glow over the bronze statue of McKinley, standing tall and pensive above the coffins. Every night the bronze McKinley stands there brooding over Canton, which is as ill-favored as growing industrial towns seem fated to be. At night, however, outward ugliness vanishes and the pensive statue seems to express sorrow over the internal, unseen uglinesses of human society . . . the ugly crazy twist in the mind of McKinley's assassin, Leon Czolgosz . . . the ugly, crazy twists in the minds of gunmen from many a Midland city, for whom Canton has long been a safe rat-nest between shootings . . . the stunted, poisoned twists in the minds of Canton politicians who sell these gunmen protection. . . .

Canton had quieted down for the night, but its 100,000 souls were, by no means, all asleep. Some worked on night shifts in the factories along foul Nimisillen Creek, making hardware, engines, safes, varnish, cutlery, paving bricks, structural steel. Some of them drained another, and then another and another glass in Canton's plentiful blind-pigs. People in bawdy-houses are seldom all asleep by 12:30, and last January 108 such houses flourished in Canton's three tougher sections, "The Badlands," "The Hole," and "Whiskey Centre." Gunmen and lords of the underworld are not asleep just after midnight. Instead that hour is the dawn of their working day. Many of these sat muttering guardedly in Canton.

But Canton was quiet. The town's respectable dance place, the "Molly Stark," was ready to close, and out in a genteel residential section, Publisher Donald R. Mellett of the Canton Daily News stopped his automobile in front of his house, to unload Mrs. Mellett and their friends, the Walter Vails, who were going to have a bite of midnight supper before getting along to bed. Mrs. Mellett led the Vails inside and made for the icebox. Publisher Mellett drove his car around to the garage.

A bullet, one of many that suddenly spat out from behind the Mellett house, crashed through the kitchen window, narrowly missing Mrs. Mellett's shingled head. Publisher Mellett's children, three girls and a boy, awoke and lay trembling in their beds upstairs. What had happened?

Their mother and the Vails found out as soon as they reached the garage. . . . Evidently an assassin, lurking behind the shelter of a rose bush, loosed deadly fire just as Mellett was shutting the doors. One of the slugs had gone in behind his ear, causing instant death.

But Publisher Donald R. Mellett, crumpled and bleeding in his backyard, was not uselessly dead. Shooting him, the Canton underworld had shot away a flimsy facade that has been propped for years between Canton's law-abiding citizenry and a system of back-alley politics and vice-protection fought by Mr. Mellett in his paper.

Manufacturer H. H. ("Roller Bearings") Timken, Owner James M. Cox of the Canton Daily News (who lives in Dayton), the Scripps-Howard newspaper syndicate, and others, subscribed thousands at once to apprehend the murderers. The U. S. district attorney set about collecting relevant material from statements made to him last March when Mellett testified in a Canton narcotics case--statements by Mellett that he had been threatened specifically by the Canton police and "vice lords" for "inter-fering." The public learned more about one "Harry-the-Greek" Bouklias and one Harry Turner, convicted perjurers and underworld go-betweens, whose release from the penitentiary Mellett had fought after having rid Canton of their presence. Sleuths nosed along a well-beaten narcotics trade-route between Canton and Pittsburgh that had been prime target of Mellett's vice-crusade.

"Arrests were made."

The good people of a town the size of Canton are usually conscious of corruption on only two planes--the dismayingly magnified obscenities of their own local government, and the almost mystical dereliction of national officeholders, such as various members of the late President Harding's cabinet. But statues like the bronze McKinley of Stark County most likely perceive, from their detached points of vantage, that corruption of one kind or another is visible wherever mankind sets up what it calls government, at least in the U. S. Public prints for last week alone, resounded or echoed with the following cases in various states:

Illinois. The Campaign Funds Investigating Committee of the U. S. Senate has opened headquarters in Chicago to sift charges that three millions were flung back and forth by the supporters of Frank L. Smith and Senator William B. McKinley in last month's primary. The star witness will be a pompous little man whose brain seems to live on huge financial figures, while his stolid personality presides over the gas works, electric dynamos, elevated railways and civic opera, that all contribute to make Chicago its bigger and better self. He is Samuel Insull, and it is charged that he either knuckled to or abetted the winning Smith campaign to the tune of $500,000. The Committee issued a subpoena for Mr. Insull and just then it became known that he had planned to go abroad. The press hinted at evasion, whereupon Mr. Insull, charged with having furnished the largest individual wad of political slush-money ever known, replied (in a quaint accent that is all his own) : "I have made only two statements for newspaper publication.

"One was: 'I have nothing to say.' "The other was: 'I'll be right here when they come to serve it (the subpoena). Of course I wouldn't try to evade it. I never evade.' "

Meantime, Illinois had common political crockery to contemplate. At all times, of course, they have their governor, Len Small. Last fortnight they also had a special grand jury sitting to expose wholesale ballot-stealing, box-stuffing, gun play, voting the names of dead men, kidnaping, false returns and intimidation by hirelings of the Republican machine in grimy precincts of tough Chicago. This jury found fraud enough to indict 44 judges, clerks and election officials.

Louisiana has been bubbling lately with gas, natural and political. Permits have been issued to big manufacturers of carbon black to erect plants in the state's rich gasfields. At such plants, millions of cubic feet of natural Louisiana gas have been burned to make shoepolish and other products. Louisianians believe this process is wasteful and, anyway, they want Louisiana gas for Louisiana, and not for "great corporate interests." Responsible for the issuance of the permits, presumably, is onetime governor Jared Y. Sanders, shrewdest of all Louisiana politicians, attorney for the shoepolish magnates. Jared Y. Sanders is now asking to be permitted to exercise his talents in the U. S. Senate and his opponents are bitterly saying: "Ho, contemptible one! You have exploited our natural resources, palsied the arm of the Conservation Commission. To obtain your princely attorney fees, you have twiddled weak Governor Fuqua between your avaricious thumbs. For shame!" Last week, Mr. Sanders savagely denied that he was responsible for a new "invasion" of the Shreveport gas field by shoepolish interests. Governor Fuqua returned, unopened, a letter of protest from the chairman of the Public Service Commission.

Pennsylvania. To the major irregularities of civic conduct in Pennsylvania--the primary slush funds and Governor Pinchot's petticoat "supergovernment" with the W. C. T. U. (TIME, July 5, CRIME)--may be added a minor sideshow at the Philadelphia Sesquicentennial. The Sesquicentennial itself will probably come out on the wrong side of the ledger, but Philadelphians are consoled by the knowledge that local politicians will profit handsomely in real estate adjacent to the exhibition site, which it was their august privilege to select.

Massachusetts. Dubious relations between city, county, state and national officials, and the bootlegging profession are universal. At Lawrence, Mass., the typical defendants on trial last week were the mayor himself and his brother, a Chelsea police inspector. These brothers, by name Quigley, Mayor Lawrence F. and Inspector Thomas, were indicted last August with 42 others as belonging to an alleged "ring." An ex-convict testified that he was paid $300 for helping to unload liquors at the Quigley mansion.

New York. The delicate art of corrupting public officers has been taken up in New York by purveyors of milk and poultry. It is an axiom of the chicken business that to sell polluted fowls you must first pollute the city inspectors. This seems to have been accomplished by a poultry graft ring during the administration of the widely known onetime Mayor Hylan, at which time there also chanced to be an epidemic of chicken cholera. Last week Mayor Walker and his friends discussed whether or not they could afford to investigate the thing. It was right in their own party and would rejoice the Republicans. The milk graft, too, was scarcely fit to be printed, involving, as it did, almost the entire milk supply of the city and the most responsible of overseers.

Indiana. The Hoosier taste in corruption seems to have been comparatively dormant lately. Only one unsavory matter was before the Indiana public last week, namely, the apparent possibility that Governor Ed Jackson was planning to liberate his old political friend, D. C. Stephenson, onetime Ku Klux Grand Dragon, now residing in the state penitentiary, supposedly for life, for kidnaping, criminally assaulting and murdering a girl.

Michigan. The scale on which things are done in Detroit is becoming legendary. First there was Ford's output; then an 81-story skyscraper; and now the revelations of vice conducted there in the grandest possible manner. Rockefeller Foundation investigators gave Detroit its latest sobriquet, "vilest city in the country," and last week Mayor John W. Smith set about finding out if such distinction was deserved. The Rockefeller men had reported 711 disorderly houses within a mile of Mayor Smith's office and no one was astonished when Mayor Smith's police commissioner, Frank H. Croul, resigned rather than let it be thought that his department had been excessively lax, indulgent or possibly bribed with enormous sums. Mayor Smith called a meeting of civic leaders and city officials. Among those who attended, with her friend Mrs. William Butler of the local W. C. T. U., was Mrs. Henry Ford. To Mayor Smith's dismay, Mrs. Butler arose, denounced his administration roundly and stalked from the room. Nor did Mrs. Ford come forward to be Mayor John Smith's Pocahontas, to protect his political life. Mrs. Ford marched after Mrs. Butler.

North Carolina. This enlightened state was apprised last week of methods obtaining in its Stanly County prison camps. In an Albemarle courtroom scarred Negroes stripped to give evidence that one Nevin C. Cranford had encouraged their labors in his convict chain gang with a loaded, wire-lashed wagon whip. They swore Cranford's spirited whipping, kicking, clubbing and stone-pelting had caused the death of five black convicts, not merely the two for whose decease he had been indicted.

Texas. Even hard-bitten plainsmen marvel at the spectacle the voters of Texas have permitted to be staged in their gubernatorial office--the spectacle of a woman governor's husband occupying her official desk and quite openly running the state's business in her stead. And no day passes without some echo of certain highway-building deals perpetrated by Jim Fergusen behind the petticoats of Governor Miriam A. ("Ma") Ferguson, his obedient wife.

California had several interesting little situations going on at once. Governor Richardson was fighting to have one E. A. ("Big Hutch") Hutchings, Los Angeles bunko man, sent back to San Quentin to finish a prison term from which he was strangely paroled at a secret meeting of the prison directors last year. Up in the Imperial Valley they were investigating the fate of large public sums belonging to the county irrigation bureau. Property owners in Los Angeles sued the city and various contractors for alleged cost-boosting on harborside improvements.

Arkansas. A Los Angeles judge had the pleasure of sentencing James S. ("Fiddlin' Jim") Davidson, U. S. postmaster of Fallsville, Ark., for traveling about the country passing $80,000 worth of spurious money orders. Arkansans, however, paid little heed to the event. "Fiddlin' Jim's" peculations are almost beneath notice in the state that repeatedly re-elects legless Commissioner of State Lands, Highways and Improvements Herbert R. Wilson, a master of high and hidden finance.

*Like many another personage, Mrs. Ford seldom permits herself to be photographed. The above, snapped in 1923, is perhaps the clearest idea of her countenance available to the reading public. Commercial picture-dealers declare that they have never obtained pictures of the heirs to the Ford fortune, Edsel's son and daughter, barring one reproduction of a group painted in oils. Doubtless Edsel Ford, and many another father whose eminence draws upon his family the curious eyes of the world, has often said to news photographers something similar to John D. Rockefeller Jr.'s reported remark of last week to camera-clickers in a Western state: "Go ahead, shoot me. I'm hardboiled. But you must leave my children strictly alone."