Empire Dust (Cont'd)

Three days' vituperative debate last week preceded a vote in the Tennessee House of Representatives on Impeachment Article No. 1 against Governor Henry Hollis Horton. The charge was that he had conspired with Col. Luke Lea, newspaper publisher, and Rogers Clark Caldwell, financier, to manipulate State funds for their private profit in building up an economic empire in the South (TIME, June 8). In four defunct banks, subsidiaries of the bankrupt Caldwell & Co., Tennessee had some $6,400,000 in public funds tied up. Governor Horton was depicted as bowing to the dictation of Messrs. Lea & Caldwell in return for their political support.

Leader of the impeachment drive was U. S. Congressman Edward Hull Crump, Democratic boss of Memphis. Cried one of his Memphis henchmen in the Tennessee House: "Don't let anybody tell you Governor Horton's not listening to Lea and Caldwell. They pour water into his ear and tell him it's raining." Defenders of Governor Horton argued that the attempt at impeachment was "nothing more or less than a political conspiracy to overthrow the State government and seize its reins by a few ambitious men." They insisted no specific wrong-doing was charged against him, no positive evidence adduced to sustain the general charge. When the House finally voted (58-10-41) to dismiss Impeachment Article No. 1, the capitol at Nashville thundered with cheers and applause.

Still pending against Governor Horton, however, were seven other articles of impeachment, brought in earlier last week. Frankly trivial, these accused him, among other things, of spending $2,800 in State funds for a grand piano for the Executive Mansion three days after publicly stating that he would not do so; of pardoning a Memphis gambler while he was still a fugitive from justice; of dismissing two State highway commissioners because they would not "abdicate and surrender their official consciences"; of failing to account for public funds until after his reelection. The Governor's friends and allies were confident, however, that the defeat of the conspiracy charge, a political catchall, doomed the other seven articles to an early dismissal also.

Happy was Governor Horton. Happier still was Col. Lea who viewed the House's action as a turning point in his own political tide. His attorneys assured him he would be quickly cleared of the indictments against him at Knoxville and Asheville, growing out of the Caldwell & Co. crash. He expected shortly to get back his Memphis Appeal and his Knoxville Journal which have been in receivership. Then he would start battling again against the Crump faction of Tennessee Democracy, attempt to regain his lost political ascendancy in the State. Gradually in the public mind a distinction was being made between Col. Lea and Mr. Caldwell. The latter was the promoter who had undertaken to finance the expansion of the Lea papers as only one of his many empire-building schemes. Col. Lea remained the publisher-politician who had little or nothing to do with the other Caldwell structures which toppled into economic ruin last November.

Mr. Caldwell was in a much worse fix legally than Col. Lea. In the first place he was flat broke. In the second public sentiment was more bitterly arrayed against him. Last week at Nashville he went on trial for fraudulent breach of trust. The charge was that he had substituted inferior securities in his Bank of Tennessee as collateral for county deposits without getting, as agreed, the county's permission for the substitution. Overruled was his plea for a postponement of his trial on the ground that the Horton impeachment case inflamed public opinion against him. Fortnight ago Governor Sampson of Kentucky asked Governor Horton to turn over Mr. Caldwell to stand trial in that State on another banking charge.

The Missouri Senate last week for the first time in the State's history was trying an executive officer on impeachment charges. He was State Treasurer Larry Brunk. The Missouri House had impeached him after the State Supreme Court had denied Governor Henry Stewart Caulfield the power to remove him from office. Larry Brunk was accused of collecting interest on State funds deposited in the now defunct Bank of Aurora in his home town. These collections, according to the charge, went into a "Brunk Rent Account" from which the State Treasurer's private indebtedness to the bank was gradually liquidated. Another charge was that Brunk got a $10,000 gift from a Chicago bond house for authorizing one of its issues on a St. Louis apartment house as collateral for State deposits. The Brunk defense claimed he knew nothing of the Bank of Aurora arrangement, that the $10,000 was a personal loan.

Dismissed (81-to-2) last week by the Florida House of Representatives were 14 impeachment charges against State Controller Ernest Amos.

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