Cannon Fire

In a letter to Publisher George Gilray Young of the Los Angeles Examiner, William Randolph Hearst once (warningly) described Bishop James Cannon Jr. as having "the best brain in America, no one excepted." Last week Best Brain Cannon filed his third libel suit against Publisher Hearst and his newspapers, bringing the total damages demanded to $7,500,000.

The latest action, against Hearst and the Washington Times, is for $1,500,000. Month ago a suit was filed in Chicago against Hearst, the Chicago Herald & Examiner and 29 other Hearstpapers for $1,000,000. The first suit, for $5,000,000, was brought last October in Washington against Hearst personally for statements in the New York Journal, Washington Herald, Washington Times and Los Angeles Examiner. (According to Editor & Publisher, tradepaper, the U. S. Marshal has never been able to serve Publisher Hearst in either of the Washington suits.) Also last week Bishop Cannon sued Publisher Julius David Stern's Philadelphia Record but stated neither grounds nor damages. Also pending is a $500,000 libel suit against Congressman George Holden Tinkham of Massachusetts, who called the Bishop a "shameless violator of the Federal corrupt practices act."

All of the anti-Hearst suits are based on substantially the same statements, viz: i) that Bishop Cannon was visiting his secretary Mrs. Helen Hawley McCallum (his present wife) in her apartment on the night before his first wife died; 2) that Bishop Cannon retained Attorneys Campbell Bascom Slemp and John Price to defend Bucket-Shopper H. L. Goldhurst, with whom the Bishop had dealt and who was subsequently imprisoned for using the mails to defraud. The Best Brain also ascribes to Publisher Hearst a carefully ordered campaign to involve him in the financial difficulties of his son, Richard M. Cannon. California schoolmaster.

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