Mercy! Mercy!

The Governor of Washington, the Governor of California and the Governor of Pennsylvania had something in common last week. Each was begged by a celebrated individual from far outside his State's boundaries to extend executive clemency to a prisoner of his State. The prisoners were a boy, an aging man and a political zealot. In one case, California's, the plea was publicly resented as an impudent intrusion. In the other two cases public opinion was chiefly favorable to the prisoner and his advocate from afar.

Boy. One night last August a peaked 12-year-old named Herbert Niccolls broke into a grocery store at Asotin, in southeastern Washington. Sheriff John L. Wormell, 72, went into the store after him. From his hiding place behind a pickle barrel, Herbert Niccolls shot & killed the aged officer. At his trial it was brought out the boy's father was in a hospital for the criminally insane. Already Herbert was something of a criminal prodigy: at nine he had stolen an automobile, and tried his hand at a mail robbery. For the latter offense he was jailed 15 months, later released in the custody of his grandmother. A rural jury thought Herbert was a fairly hopeless case, felt that he should be locked up in Walla Walla penitentiary for the rest of his life.

While Herbert, the youngest prisoner ever to enter the institution, was amusing himself with his harmonica, being kept away from the older felons, a first citizen of Omaha, Neb. became interested in his case. He was Father Edward J. Flanagan. Father Flanagan was born in Roscommon, Ireland, 45 years ago. He entered one of Omaha's poor parishes in 1913. The hardships of his own people had accustomed but not blinded him to human misery. In the winter of 1914 he began trying to feed and house a few down-&-outers, many of them drunkards and criminals. What made them that way? wondered Father Flanagan. Deciding that the best place to combat human woe is near the beginning of human life, he borrowed $90, found five urchins, started a home for homeless, wayward, neglected boys. Since 1917, Father Flanagan's Boys' Home has become a source of pride to Omaha, a model institution for the nation. Through Father Flanagan's hands have passed 2,984 boys from 36 States. On the Flanagan board of directors are President James Edward Davidson of Nebraska Power Co., Protestant and Shriner, and Henry Monsky, a leading Omaha lawyer, Jew and Shriner. Proud is Father Flanagan that the footsteps of none of his boys, many of them handed over to him by the courts, have ever led to jail or prison.

Not above helping his Home along with a bit of publicity, Father Flanagan broadcasts his boys' band, gets celebrities to visit the institution, among them: Tom Mix,* Admiral Byrd, Paul Whiteman, Babe Ruth, Jack Dempsey, Will Rogers. With a fanfare from the local Press, Father Flanagan got up from his sick bed fortnight ago and set out for Seattle to plead with Governor Roland Hartley for Herbert Niccolls' custody. Said Father Flanagan: "I am willing to back my reputation of years of work that I can aid this boy to become a useful citizen. . . . No boy of twelve can be a murderer at heart. . . . I now have the pleasure of watching a 10-year-old lad at our Home, also once charged and convicted of murder, developing into a fine specimen of American boyhood."

With his friend Will Rogers, Father Flanagan called on the Governor, who had previously declared that "the chief executive would be derelict in his duty if he undertook to transfer his responsibilities to an agency in another State." But the additional pressure of Washington's united Press, Pulpit and American Legion made Father Flanagan hopeful of success.

Bomber. Accustomed to excoriation by his own city's newspapers, Mayor James John ("Jimmy") Walker of New York was disagreeably surprised to find himself peppered with hot linotype metal from the Press of California and particularly of San Francisco, where he arrived last week to agitate "as a private citizen" for a pardon for Thomas Mooney. As he got off the Oakland ferry, Mayor Angelo Rossi and Mayor Walker's old friend Governor James ("Sunny Jim") Rolph Jr. seemed glad enough to see him. A band perched in a truck played "The Sidewalks of New York" and the Governor's jaunty theme song "Happy Days Are Here Again."Noisy crowds shouted cheerful impertinences. Mrs. Mary Mooney, 80, mother of Prisoner Mooney who was convicted along with Warren K. Billings of bombing San Francisco's 1916 Preparedness Day Parade, clasped the dapper Mayor in her arms. He visited her son at San Quentin, inspected the scene of the bombing, developed a nasty cold.

From all this much-traveled Mayor Walker might have gathered that his errand of mercy was looked upon with favor in California. Such, however, was far from the case. "Impropriety . . ." grumbled the Fresno Bee. "Easier than attempting to clean up the Augean stench of Gotham!" sneered the Stockton Record. "PUBLICITY SPECTACLE . . . PROPAGANDA HIPPODROME . . . BALLYHOO!" screamed the San Francisco Chronicle.

Settled with his party in a suite at the fashionable St. Francis Hotel, with two Rolls-Royces at his beck and adjoining rooms for the newspaper boys, Mayor Walker pondered the uncomfortable predicament in which he had placed his friend Sunny Jim. If the Governor should pardon Thomas Mooney after 15 years in jail, people could say that it took the interference of a gaudy outsider to bring justice into the golden State. If he decided not to pardon him, the same people could say that the Governor had been frightened out of seeing justice done because of the bitter feeling his New York crony had stirred up. Bolstered with counsel, including John McNab, "The Man Who Nominated Hoover in 1928," California's chief executive awaited with little satisfaction the hour of the hearing.

Patriot. Fortnight ago in Philadelphia, one Orlandi Spartaco, 26, jumped on the running board of a car carrying Dino Grandi, Fascist Italy's visiting Foreign Minister. Jabbering, "Down with Grandi! Down with Fascism!" Anti-Fascist Spartaco was dragged off to jail, sentenced to two riot." To years Governor imprisonment Gifford for Pinchot "inciting to last week sleek, smiling, politic Minister Grandi wired : "I have not the slightest intention of interfering with the administration of justice in this country, but I feel that I could make a personal appeal to you to take into consideration the possibility of an act of clemency. Please consider this appeal not as coming from me in the capacity of Minister of Foreign Affairs but as a friend and a guest of the American nation."

Governor Pinchot pointed out that any act of executive clemency must follow a recommendation by the State Board of Pardons.

* A plane rushed from San Francisco to Los Angeles last week with serum for Actor Mix, 51, who lay dangerously ill of peritonitis following an appendectomy.

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