"Rats In the Pantry"

In the gay days of Author Owen Johnson's imperishable Dink Stover, ruthless upperclassmen used to "sell" to bug-eyed freshmen their radiators, wash-stands, fire-escapes and other dormitory fixtures.

In the gay days of Dr. James Monroe Smith as head of Louisiana State University, a Federal Grand Jury in New Orleans charged last week, a ruthless group of five politicos sold L. S. U. the Bienville Hotel for $575,000, lock, stock & barrel, then sold the hotel fixtures again to the University for another $75,000.

Not only that, said the Grand Jury, but the politicos had the University pay them $14,196 for the full 1936 taxes on the hotel, despite the fact that the University bought the hotel in December, only owed 27 days' taxes, not 365. The New Deal's rufous Galahad, Attorney General Frank Murphy, swore to smite Louisiana sin hip-&-thigh regardless of the prominence of anyone found involved. "This thing has just begun," said his agents in New Orleans.

"Now is the time to chase a lot of rats out of the State pantry," shouted the Rev. Carl F. Lueg, Methodist pastor of Hammond, La. "Business is picking up, eh, boys?" to newshawks said huge, rich ex-Governor Richard W. ("Dick") Leche, who turned the ruins of the old Huey Long machine over to Brother Earl Long in the nick of time.

Louisianans, sick at heart but fighting mad, opened Grand Jury investigations all over the place. Down went the powerful like tenpins. For years the wise have whispered. "They'll never get Weiss!" Last week panting newsboys shouted before New Orleans' great Roosevelt Hotel, "They've got Weiss! They've got Weiss!" Every citizen knew what they meant.

For Seymour Weiss, the bald, polite $15-a-week shoe salesman of 1924, the $25-a-week Roosevelt Hotel barbershop manager of 1925, has been immensely' wealthy and powerful since he polished up Huey Long's manners in 1927, taught him to play golf and enjoy himself in night clubs. Weiss became pressagent for the Roosevelt Hotel the same year, gave bounding Huey and his bodyguards a free suite of rooms for the publicity, has harvested ever since from that gag.

Last week he was named by the Federal Grand Jury as one of the wily five Dink Stovers. As co-owner of both the Roosevelt and Bienville hotels, president of the Board of Docks (main employment centre of New Orleans), commissioner of police and fire, president of the Port of New Orleans, and most important, as one of the triumvirate (with Leche and dark, toughly shrewd Mayor Robert Maestri of New Orleans) which took control of the racy Long machine when the Kingfish died, Weiss was apparently beyond reach. He had won a victory over the Government in 1936 when the New Deal dropped charges of income tax evasion against him, on grounds that there had been "a change of atmosphere" in Louisiana. When such cynical atmosphere sniffers as Columnist Westbrook Pegler noted Weiss tooting a tin trumpet in Philadelphia in June 1936, vowing undying loyalty to Franklin Roosevelt and, incidentally, plumping down 20 solid delegates' votes, they termed this incident "The Second Louisiana Purchase." (In January 1939, Weiss quietly paid the Internal Revenue Bureau $38,746.10 in back taxes and penalties for the years 1929-33.)

Seymour Weiss was chary of comment last week but hurriedly resigned all of his posts. Yet big as was this Humpty-Dumpty off the wall, it was only one incident in a surging flood of resignations, indictments, dismissals.

By week's end, Dr. J. M. ("Jingle Money") Smith had been indicted 36 times and was under $204,500 bail in the New Orleans jail. Louisiana was not content just to "throw the book" at dour Doctor Smith. Out went State officials, day after day, high and low. Indicted were 14 men ranging from a Standard Oil of Louisiana official to the president of the Louisiana Medical Society to the business manager of Louisiana State University. Baton Rouge kicked out its police chief just to keep in the swing.

All over the State, plunging into account books like alligators plopping in a bayou, were investigators, Federal. State and parish. They were probing WPA irregularities, PWA irregularities, use of the mails to defraud, income-tax evasion and fraud, defalcations and irregularities in L. S. U. construction, evasions of the Connally "hot oil" law, what happens to the famed 5% deductions from all State employes' paychecks, and everything else they could think of.

Perspiring Governor Earl Long, with the January primary election on his mind, was certain they could think of plenty. And this week began on a weird note: it appeared certain that valuable oil deposits had been struck on the newly seeded campus of L. S. U.

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