Sunday, 3 October 1926 · Montgomery (United States) · English

The Montgomery Advertiser

BANKERS URGED TO ENCOURAGE COTTON HOLDING PROGRAM
SEVEN PERSONS DIE WHEN BIG AIRLINER IS SWEPT BY FLAMES
DOHENY INTERESTS MUST FACE CHARGE

On October 3, 1926, the Montgomery Advertiser carried three Associated Press dispatches. From New Orleans came cotton exchange president Frank B. Hayne's call for Southern bankers to stop farmers from panic-selling cotton at under $65 a bale. He blamed the early federal crop estimate for the slump, and the story added that Tennessee Valley bankers would meet at Florence, Alabama, with the Alabama Farm Bureau's help, to plan holding Alabama cotton off the market. From Kent came an eyewitness account of a French Air Union airliner that caught fire near Penshurst on its way from Paris, killing all seven people aboard. From Washington came word that an appeals court had refused to throw out the conspiracy indictments of Doheny, Sinclair and Fall in the naval oil lease case, clearing the way for trial.

Translation

BANKERS URGED TO ENCOURAGE COTTON HOLDING PROGRAM

[?] NEW ORLEANS, LA., Oct. 2. - (AP) - A plea for bankers and business men of the south "to use every effort in their power to put an end to the unnecessary panic, among producers of cotton and belief that if the staple were held off market," and right and reason prevail, "it would sell several cents a pound higher, was expressed in a statement issued here tonight by Frank B. Hayne, president of the New Orleans Cotton Exchange. The south sold nearly sixteen million bales of the staple last year at more than a hundred dollars a bale and there is no justification for it to force its cotton on the market and sell it under $65 a bale, Mr. Hayne said, pointing out that mill consumption as indicated by mill takings are 12 per cent more than at the same time last year. "From a world's standpoint, American middling cotton below fifteen cents cannot prove otherwise than unusually attractive to mills abroad as well as at home," he said. Mr. Hayne said that if the government had followed the system in vogue until a few years ago and delayed issuance of a cotton crop estimate until December 14, the south would have been at least a half billion dollars bettar off. Bankers of the Tennessee Valley will be in session at Florence, Ala., on Monday to consider plans for withdrawing a considerable percentage of Alabama cotton from the market for some time, it was stated here Saturday. The cotton association of the Alabama Farm bureau, upon request made to it, is preparing definite suggestions as to the best ways of handling this, which will be presented before the meeting Monday. An official of the association stated that they are heartily in accord with the movement and are cooperating by furnishing suggestions resulting from their experience and methods. [?]

SEVEN PERSONS DIE WHEN BIG AIRLINER IS SWEPT BY FLAMES

[?] PENSHURST, KENT, ENGLAND. Oct. 2. - (AP) - Seven persons, five of them passengers, met death this afternoon when a French air union plane, en route from Paris to Groydos, burst into flames only a few miles from its destination and crashed near here. Every person aboard the great four engine air liner was burned beyond recognition in the seething furnace. The nationality of the five passengers was not definitely determined tonight but it was believed that they were all English. The pilot and mechanic were French. Physicians state that the charred bodies of three men and two women were taken from the cabin, but the French air union in Paris issued a statement saying that it was believed that there were two men and three women aboard. The names of the passengers as given out by the line with the characterization "probably correct" were as follows: Gertrude Hall, Margaret Stainton Flora Parker, L. Hamilton and Joseph Noble. The addresses, however, were not available. At least one of the women passengers was alive when the plane struck the ground. She died while the overseer of a nearby farm struggled unsuccessfully to rescue her. The woman's terrified face could be seen through the roaring flames. She was clutching here purse desperately. Before the overseer could get to her, she was obscured by the flames and smoke. Edward Sands, the overseer, told a correspondent for the Associated Press that he saw the plane burst into flames near the tail when about 400 feet in the air. It dived to earth. The crash was followed by two explosions and flames thirty feet high shot into the air, enveloping the wreckage and making it impossible to rescue the passengers who were piled in a heap within the burning cabin. The pilot was thrown several feet in front of the cockpit, but also was burned to death. The weather was perfect and the cause of the accident had not been determined tonight. [?]

DOHENY INTERESTS MUST FACE CHARGE

[?] WASHINGTON, Oct. 2. - (AP) - Brushing aside the contention of E. L. Doheny, Harry F. Sinclair and Albert B. Fall, the court of appeals of the District of Columbia today declined to upset the conspiracy indictments returned against them here in connection with the naval oil leases. The action cleared the way for a trial of the case, unless the defendants can obtain a review of the action by the supreme court of the United States. Civil suits growing out of the lease of the oil lands are already in the higher court. In rendering its oral opinion, the court of appeals declined to heed the plea of defense attorneys that a law enacted at the last session of congress, depriving the court of appeals of the power to allow special appeals in criminal cases as unconstitutional. This act was sponsored by Senator Walsh, democrat of Montana, prosecutor of the senate's inquiry into the oil cases. The Montana senator had complained that the cases were being unduly delayed by legal maneuvering. The conspiracy indictments were upheld several months ago by Justice Stafford, of the supreme court of the District of Columbia. The court of appeals allowed special appeal and in rendering its opinion today dismissing this appeal, it announced that it was acting in accordance with the Walsh act. [?]

Context

Why Southern cotton was in a panic in autumn 1926

Hayne's plea came as a very large crop was coming in. In its issue of October 25, 1926, Time reported that the crop was expected to reach 16,627,000 bales of 500 pounds each, and that the price had fallen below 14 cents a pound, leaving growers in a state of nervous anxiety. That anxiety among growers is the panic Hayne wanted bankers and business men to end, and by late October the price stood below the 15-cent level he had called unusually attractive to mills at home and abroad. His other figures come from his own statement: that the South sold nearly 16 million bales for over $100 a bale the year before, and that it would have been half a billion dollars better off had the government held back its crop estimate until December 14, as it had done until a few years earlier. They are best read as the case a cotton-exchange president was making for holding cotton back, not as settled numbers.

How bankers, farm groups and Washington responded to the slump

The Florence meeting of Tennessee Valley bankers, with suggestions from the Alabama Farm Bureau's cotton association, was part of a holding movement that spread across the South that autumn. Time reported in late October that the South Carolina State Bankers Association moved to take 3,000,000 bales off the market and store them in warehouses, that the Tennessee Cotton Conference would force 4,000,000 bales into warehouses and cut acreage by 25 percent for two years, and that North Carolina bankers and merchants would finance storage if growers promised to plant less the next year. Washington also stepped in that autumn. President Coolidge appointed a commission whose tasks included encouraging Southern bankers to back relief steps and restricting the 1927 cotton acreage. Agriculture Secretary Jardine wrote to Edward A. O'Neil, president of the Alabama Farm Bureau Federation, that there were facilities to store the crop for months or even years and ample credit to carry it, and that he hoped the present stampede could be checked while most of the crop was still in farmers' hands. The Alabama plan in the article thus belonged to a holding strategy that bankers in other states and officials in Washington also urged that autumn.

What later accounts and the inquest showed about the Kent airliner fire

The AP report was written on the day of the crash, and a later account of the accident drawn from 1926 newspaper reports corrects or adds to several of its details. According to that account, the Blériot 155 F-AICQ had left Le Bourget for Croydon, and at 3:27 pm eyewitnesses saw its port upper engine on fire, rather than the area near the tail where the farm overseer placed the first flames. The fire spread to the wing, and the aircraft changed direction, evidently heading for Penshurst Airfield, before it rolled over and dived to the ground; it came down in the grounds of a house at Leigh. The account lists two male and three female passengers, as Air Union had said, rather than the three men and two women the physicians reported, and it says rescuers pulled one woman from the wreckage but found her dead. At the inquest at Hildenborough on October 5, Major Cooper of the Air Ministry stated that an airliner had never before caught fire in the air, and the jury returned a verdict of accidental death for all seven victims. The accident is recorded as the first in-flight fire on an airliner, a kind of disaster with no precedent behind the AP's closing line that the cause was still unknown in perfect weather.

The naval oil leases and what became of Doheny, Sinclair and Fall

The indictments upheld in this article came out of the Teapot Dome scandal. In 1922 Interior Secretary Albert B. Fall leased oil production rights at the naval reserve at Teapot Dome in Wyoming to Harry F. Sinclair's Mammoth Oil and the Elk Hills reserve in California to Edward L. Doheny's Pan American Petroleum and Transport Company, and he received gifts from both men. The leases were investigated in Congress, where Senator Thomas J. Walsh, the Montana Democrat whom the article names as sponsor of the law curbing special appeals in criminal cases, led a lengthy inquiry. It was Walsh who uncovered Doheny's $100,000 interest-free loan to Fall, the discovery that broke the scandal open. In 1927 the Supreme Court invalidated the Elk Hills lease in February and the Teapot Dome lease in October, and both reserves were returned to the Navy. In 1929 Fall was found guilty of accepting bribes from Doheny and became the first cabinet member to go to prison, but in 1930 Doheny was acquitted of paying those bribes, and Sinclair served six months in jail for jury tampering. The trial this ruling cleared the way for was thus one stage in a long legal fight in which no one was convicted of paying the bribes.

Original

BANKERS URGED TO ENCOURAGE COTTON HOLDING PROGRAM

[?] NEW ORLEANS, LA., Oct. 2. - (AP) - A plea for bankers and business men of the south " to use every effort in their power to put an end to the unnecessary panic, among producers of cotton and belief that if the staple were held off market, " and right and reason prevail, " it would sell several cents a pound higher, was expressed in a statement issued here tonight by Frank B. Hayne, president of the New Orleans Cotton Exchange. The south sold nearly sixteen million bales of the staple last year at more than a hundred dollars a bale and there is no justification for it to force its cotton on the market and sell it under $ 65 a bale, Mr. Hayne said, pointing out that mill consumption as indicated by mill takings are 12 per cent more than at the same time last year. " From a world's standpoint, American middling cotton below fifteen cents cannot prove otherwise than unusually attractive to mills abroad as well as at home, " he said. Mr. Hayne said that if the government had followed the system in vogue until. a few years ago and delayed issuance of a cotton crop estimate until December 14, the south would have been at least a half billion dollars bettar off. Bankers of the Tennessee Valley will be in session at Florence, Ala., on Monday to consider plans for withdrawing a considerable percentage of Alabama cotton from the market for some time, it was stated here Saturday. The cotton association of the Alabama Farm bureau, upon request made to it, is preparing definite suggestions as to the best ways of handling this, which will be presented before the meeting Monday. An official of the association stated that they are heartily in accord with the movement and are cooperating by furnishing suggestions resulting from their experience and methods. [?]

SEVEN PERSONS DIE WHEN BIG AIRLINER IS SWEPT BY FLAMES

[?] PENSHURST, KENT, ENGLAND. Oct. 2. - (AP) - Seven persons, five of them passengers, met death this afternoon when a French air union plane, en route from Paris to Groydos, burst into flames only a few miles from its destination and crashed near here. Every person aboard the great four engine air liner was burned beyond recognition in the seething furnace. The nationality of the five passengers was not definitely determined tonight but it was believed that they were all English. The pilot and mechanic were French. Physicians state that the charred bodies of three men and two women were taken from the cabin, but the French air union in Paris issued a statement saying that it was believed that there were two men and three women aboard. The names of the passengers as given out by the line with the characterization " probably correct " were as follows: Gertrude Hall, Margaret Stainton Flora Parker, L. Hamilton and Joseph Noble. The addresses, however, were not available. At least one of the women passengers was alive when the plane struck the ground. She died while the overseer of a nearby farm struggled unsuccessfully to rescue her. The woman's terrified face could be seen through the roaring flames. She was clutching here purse desperately. Before the overseer could get to her, she was obscured by the flames and smoke. Edward Sands, the overseer, told a correspondent for the Associated Press that he saw the plane burst into flames near the tail when about 400 feet in the air. It dived to earth. The crash was followed by two explosions and flames thirty feet high shot into the air, enveloping the wreckage and making it impossible to rescue the passengers who were piled in a heap within the burning cabin. The pilot was thrown several feet in front of the cockpit, but also was burned to death. The weather was perfect and the cause of the accident had not been determined tonight. [?]

DOHENY INTERESTS MUST FACE CHARGE

Source: Holding institution