A. G. & E., Round IV

If there is anything wrong, how you gonna prove it? You gotta nerve calling me a thief! How you gonna prove you're honest yourself? ... All I'm doing is serving those poor people.

In 1935 Howard Colwell Hopson could still grin from ear to ear as he boldly taunted a lumbering SEC. Last week the smile and boldness were gone. Ingenious, porcine Howard Hopson, charged with milking his now bankrupt $1,000,000,000 Associated Gas & Electric system of $20,000,000 in the biggest utility peculation of all time, went on trial for mail fraud and conspiracy.

Since his indictment last spring, Mr. Hopson had not been well. He expected to blow up and burst, was prone to a sensation of "wandering around about through cellars and basements," had to be bathed by force. Doctors found him to be suffering from involutional melancholia and depressive psychosis. But to Hugh A. Fulton, Special Assistant to the Attorney General, this was just another Hopson dodge to escape justice. After months of confab, Government medicos declared him legally fit to defend himself.

Day after the election, Hopson draped his paunch over a courtroom chair, listened to the opening statement of Prosecuting Attorney Fulton, who told the court how Hoppy had wandered through the mazes of Associated, taking a cut of employes' salaries, padding bills against the system, pocketing profits from selling the services of one subsidiary to another, inducing investors to buy non-voting stocks and bonds while he held control with $100,000 of voting stock.

Next spoke Defense Attorney Fred A. Ironside Jr. Howard Hopson, said Mr. Ironside, had always been a "stubborn and contentious" fighter. Unable to get used to the social idea of the Government's utility legislation and obsessed by the desire to do a good job, he fought for what he thought to be right, took all criticisms to heart. Throughout his attorney's remarks, Howard Hopson moaned and groaned.

As the trial progressed, the moans from Hopson's quivering frame changed to snores. A black-garbed woman slinked up to him, attempted to give him a pamphlet entitled The Workers' Holy Hour, was escorted out. From a brown paper bag Juror John A. Radway each morning drew a cheese sandwich (prescribed by his doctor), munched solemnly while listening to testimony. Despite all such obstacles, Federal Judge Alfred C. Coxe hoped to terminate the case in two months. Others wondered whether Hoppy would last that long.

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