In Dailey's Meat Store

After he had driven his wife to a Hollywood club meeting one day last week, Cornelius Van Ness Leavitt. 57-year-old retired plumber of Santa Monica, found time heavy on his hands. He would, he decided, go and see his old friend Cliff Dailey who ran a grocery and meat store. Cliff was out at lunch when big, jovial Mr. Leavitt marched in. Later Store keeper Dailey returned and stopped to wait on a woman. Visitor Leavitt sauntered to the rear of the store. There at a sink behind a partition he found a man who looked like a truck driver swigging whiskey from a bottle.

"Have a drink?" suggested the stranger.

"No, thanks, not now," replied Mr. Leavitt as he mounted the store scales, jiggled its arm to a balance. He weighed 175 lb. . . .

Suddenly from the front of the store came a hoarse, low cry: "Look out! Here comes Tommy Carr [Santa Monica's liquor raider]! Look out!"

Before he knew what had happened, Mr. Leavitt found himself holding a gunny sack and into his ear a voice -- he thought it was Cliff Dailey's -- was urgently whispering: "Quick! Get rid of this! Out the back way!"

Mr. Leavitt popped out the rear door of the store to reach his car, parked in the alley. Up stepped two U. S. Prohibition agents. They opened his sack, found it contained 19 bottles of whiskey, arrested him.

"My God, boys!" exclaimed the astonished Mr. Leavitt. "You don't know what you've done. This liquor don't belong to me."

Charged with violating the California law against liquor possession Mr. Leavitt was taken to Santa Monica police headquarters. So was Grocer Dailey. They were not booked until 3 a.m. "Name?" asked the desk sergeant. '"Mr. Jones,'' mumbled Mr. Leavitt. Up spoke a detective to Policeman Carr and the U. S. Agents: ''You guys certainly are crazy. You might just as well throw your badges away now. Don't you know you've arrested President Hoover's brother-in-law and his name's Leavitt?" Mr. Leavitt nodded confirmation of this fact, posted $250 bail.

Soon in Washington newsboys were hawking their papers with the loud cry of: "President Hoover's brother-in-law arrested for bootlegging!"

From along the iron fence on Pennsylvania Avenue the shrill voices penetrated to the White House. At first President Hoover refused to believe that the husband of Mary, his only sister, was in such unseemly trouble. Confirmation reduced the President to embarrassed silence. He dreaded the jokes, the wisecracks, the Wet smirks that were sure to follow. Of course he was not the keeper of his plumber brother-in-law but he could not disavow him publicly. Now he could somewhat understand how Dry Senator Fess felt when his son Lowell was caught brawling in New York speakeasies (TIME, June 15), how Dry Senator Heflin suffered when his son Tom Tom Jr. misbehaved with liquor (TIME, July 1, Sept. 16, 1929, Oct. 27, 1930), how Vice President Curtis' son Harry had embarrassed his father by setting up as a go-between for public building contracts (TIME, June 2. 1930). .

In Santa Monica, Brother-in-Law Leavitt began to explain: "I grabbed the bag and now I'm holding it. I didn't know what was in the sack but I tried to be a good fellow. ... I guess anyone would try to help another out in a case like that. . . . One of the officers whispered that I should give the name of Jones. I objected but he insisted. ... I don't agree with Hoover on the Dry question-- but I wasn't drinking." (A year ago Brother-in-Law Leavitt was arrested for intoxication, paid a $25 fine.)

Grocer Dailey, though he angrily denied that it was he who had handed the gunny sack to his visitor, declared that Mr. Leavitt was "a victim of circumstances." The President's sister, back from her club meeting in Hollywood, said the same thing about her husband. Brother-in-Law Leavitt also won sympathetic support from a famed father-in-law. Santa Monica's Chief of Police Clarence Webb, whose daughter Fay is the wife of Crooner Rudy Vallee, declared: "I don't believe Leavitt's a bootlegger. I believe his story. But the arrest was legitimate and I'll stand squarely behind it."

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