Evening Star
- SOVIET NOW READY TO PAY U. S. AND DROP ITS COUNTER CLAIMS
- DAUGHERTY CASE JURY IS STILL OUT; STUDIES RECORDS
- IRISH DISAFFECTION FACING DEMOCRATS IN MASSACHUSETTS
The Evening Star's front page of October 9, 1926, carried three political reports. From London, John Gunther described meeting the new Soviet envoy Leonid Krassin at Chesham House, beneath a bronze bust of Lenin, where Krassin said Moscow would acknowledge its debt to the United States and drop its counter claims once negotiations with Washington began. An Associated Press report followed the jury in the conspiracy trial of former Attorney General Daugherty and former alien property custodian Miller, which had been sent to a hotel overnight and asked for documentary evidence, and it laid out the charge of sharing a $441,000 fee over a $7,000,000 alien claim. Gould Lincoln reported from Lawrence, Massachusetts, that a 400-member Irish-American Republican Club of former Democratic office-holders was clouding the outlook in a long-time Democratic stronghold.
Translation
SOVIET NOW READY TO PAY U. S. AND DROP ITS COUNTER CLAIMS
BY JOHN GUNTHER.
LONDON, October 9. — Soviet Russia will acknowledge its debt to America and drop its counter claims if negotiations between Washington and Moscow begin, Leonid Krassin, the new Soviet envoy to England, told the correspondent in an interview. Krassin received the writer in Chesham House, formerly the residence of the Czar's ambassadors and still probably the most luxurious embassy in London. Heavy deep red carpets on the floors and clinging red carpets over the windows darkened the big room where Krassin, a little parchment-faced man, with a sharp tufted beard, sat at a table bearing an imposing bronze bust of Lenin. His announcement that Russia will recognize its debt is an important official expression of a sudden change in Moscow's point of view. "What is more," said Krassin, "I am personally sure that if negotia-
DAUGHERTY CASE JURY IS STILL OUT; STUDIES RECORDS
By the Associated Press.
…those who had watched the jurors before the shades were drawn was Defendant Miller. The trial, which has lasted five weeks, reached its final phase last night, when Judge Mack charged the jury. The 12 men retired to deliberate, but as midnight approached without a decision, they were sent under guard to a hotel for the night. Before leaving the court the jurors called for documentary evidence to be delivered to them this morning. Attorneys said it would take several hours to read the documents.
Bribery Charge Outlawed.
Daugherty, formerly Attorney General, and Miller, formerly alien property custodian, are accused of sharing in a $441,000 fee to approve a $7,000,000 alien claim against the Government in 1921. A bribery charge is outlawed by the statute of limitations, and they were indicted in May with John T. King, who died a week after, for conspiracy to defraud the Government of their best services. The maximum penalty for this offense is two years' imprisonment or a $10,000 fine, or both. Federal Attorney Buckner intro-
IRISH DISAFFECTION FACING DEMOCRATS IN MASSACHUSETTS
BY GOULD LINCOLN,
…liam M. Butler, or former Senator David I. Walsh, or the fortunes of Gov. Alvan T. Fuller, the Republican nominee, to succeed himself, or those of Col. William A. Gaston, the Democratic choice for governor.
Other Issues Loom Up.
But there are other issues in Lawrence besides that of prohibition which threaten to set awry the results of election. For many years Lawrence has been a Democratic stronghold — indeed, it has been more strongly Democratic than Boston or any other Massachusetts city, for its size. The organization of an "Irish-American Republican Club," in which many former Democratic office-holders are leading spirits, is one of the elements of uncertainty. This club boasts a membership of 400, almost all of whom, in the past, have been in office as Democrats. Its birth, its leaders say, is due to the growing impression among Irish-American Catholics that nationally the Irish-American Catholic voter has nothing to hope for from the Democratic party, which is controlled in Congress by the South, where the aspirations of Catholics for high office are denounced, and where the Ku Klux Klan is largely Demo-
Context
Why a former Attorney General faced a jury
The article identifies Daugherty only as "formerly Attorney General," but his career shows how directly the case reached into the Harding administration's Justice Department. Harry M. Daugherty, a long-time Ohio Republican operator, had managed Warren G. Harding's campaign at the 1920 Republican National Convention and then became Harding's Attorney General. The 1921 approval of the alien claim described in the article therefore fell in the first year of the Harding administration, while Daugherty headed the Justice Department. His tenure ended under a cloud: he was twice the subject of federal corruption investigations, and President Coolidge forced him to resign in 1924. As the paper notes, a bribery charge was by 1926 barred by the statute of limitations, so the government pursued him and Miller for conspiracy to defraud it of their best services, an offense carrying at most two years in prison, a $10,000 fine, or both.
The American Metal Company claim and Miller's 1927 conviction
The "alien claim" at the center of the case concerned property seized during the First World War. Thomas W. Miller served as Alien Property Custodian from 1921 until 1925, and the case against him arose from the effort by Germany's Metallgesellschaft AG to overturn the U.S. government's confiscation of its interest in the American Metal Company. The $441,000 fee and the $7,000,000 claim cited by the paper are the figures in the accusation against Daugherty and Miller. Miller's conviction, on two counts of conspiring to defraud the U.S. government, came in 1927, so the deliberations the article shows under way in October 1926 did not close the case. Miller served 18 months in prison, was paroled in 1929 and was pardoned by President Herbert Hoover in 1933.
How the Butler–Walsh Senate race ended
The Lawrence report treats Irish-American disaffection as a factor in the fortunes of the two Senate candidates, William M. Butler and David I. Walsh. Butler was an appointed incumbent with national weight: Governor Channing Cox named him to the seat left vacant by Henry Cabot Lodge's death in November 1924, while Butler chaired the Republican National Committee, and at his April 1926 campaign launch most speakers tied his race to the re-election prospects of his close ally President Calvin Coolidge. Herbert Hoover and Charles Evans Hughes campaigned for him. Walsh nevertheless defeated Butler in the special election of November 2, 1926, giving Democrats the seat for the first time since 1851. Whatever votes the Irish-American Republican Club drew away from the Democrats in Lawrence, they did not carry Butler to victory statewide; the statewide result by itself does not show how Lawrence's Irish-American voters split.
Walsh, Irish Catholic politics and the Klan
The club's leaders argued that Irish-American Catholics had nothing to hope for from a national Democratic party controlled in Congress by the South, where Catholic aspirations for high office were denounced, and they pointed to the Ku Klux Klan there. The Democrats' own Senate candidate in Massachusetts had a record on the other side of that complaint. David I. Walsh, the son of Irish Catholic immigrants, had been the first Irish Catholic from Massachusetts to serve either as governor or as U.S. senator, and at the 1924 Democratic National Convention he had urged the party to condemn the Ku Klux Klan by name in its platform. The club's grievance was thus directed at the national party's southern base, while the Democrat on the Massachusetts Senate ballot had publicly urged the party to denounce the Klan.
Original
SOVIET NOW READY TO PAY U. S. AND DROP ITS COUNTER CLAIMS
LONDON,, October 9. - Soviet Russia will acknowledge its debt to America and drop its counter claims if negotiations between Washington and Moscow begin, Leonid Krassin, the new Soviet envoy to England, told the correspondent in an interview. Krassin received the writer in Chesham House, formerly the residence of the Czar's ambassadors and still probably the most luxurious embassy in London. Heavy deep red carpets on the floors and clinging red carpets over the windows darkened the big room where Krassin, a little parchment-faced man, with a sharp tufted beard, sat at a table bearing an imposing bronze bust of Lenin. His announcement that Russia will recognize its debt is an important official expression of a sudden change in Moscow's point of view. " What is more, " said Krassin, " I am personally sure that if negotia -
DAUGHERTY CASE JURY IS STILL OUT; STUDIES RECORDS
those who had watched the jurors before the shades were drawn was Defendant Miller. The trial, which has lasted five weeks, reached its final phase last night, when Judge Mack charged the jury. The 12 men retired to deliberate, but as midnight approached without a decision, they were sent under guard to a hotel for the night. Before leaving the court the jurors called for documentary evidence to be delivered to them this morning. Attorneys said it would take several hours to read the documents. Bribery Charge Outlawed. Daugherty, formerly Attorney General, and Miller, formerly alien property custodian, are accused of sharing in a $ 441, 000 fee to approve a $ 7, - 000, 000 alien claim against the Government in 1921. A bribery charge is outlawed by the statute of limitations, and they were indicted in May with John T. King, who died a week after, for conspiracy to defraud the Government of their best services. The maximum penalty for this offense is two years ' imprisonment or a $ 10, 000 fine, or both. Federal Attorney Buckner intro -
IRISH DISAFFECTION FACING DEMOCRATS IN MASSACHUSETTS
liam M. Butler, or former Senator David I. Walsh, or the fortunes of Gov. Alvan T. Fuller, the Republican nominee, to succeed himself, or those of Col. William A. Gaston, the Democratic choice for governor. Other Issues Loom Up. But there are other issues in Lawrence besides that of prohibition which threaten to set awry the results of election. For many years Lawrence has been a Democratic stronghold-indeed, it has been more strongly Democratic than Boston or any other Massachusetts city, for its size. The organization of an " Irish-American Republican Club, " in which many former Democratic office-holders are leading spirits, is one of the elements of uncertainty. This club boasts a membership of 400, almost all of whom, in the past, have been in office as Democrats. Its birth, its leaders say, is due to the growing impression among Irish-American Catholics that nationally the Irish-American Catholic voter has nothing to hope for from the Democratic party, which is controlled in Congress by the South, where the aspirations of Catholics for high office are denounced, and where the Ku Klux Klan is largely Demo -
Source: Holding institution