The Montgomery Advertiser
- Norris Launches Assault on Vare in Pennsylvania Fight
- Vigorous Efforts Needed to Relieve Farmers, It Is Claimed
- Bandits Escape Through Cordon
The Montgomery Advertiser's front page for Sunday, October 17, 1926, led with three wire stories. In Pennsylvania, Senator George Norris, a Nebraska Republican, urged voters to reject his own party's Senate nominee, William S. Vare. Norris argued that Vare's heavy primary spending amounted to putting a Senate seat up for auction, and he predicted that Vare would never be seated. In the South, Dr. Tait Butler, who led the cotton relief committee, called on bankers, merchants and growers to back a pool that would hold four million bales off a glutted market and to cut 1927 acreage by a fourth. A committee member, Oscar Johnson, left for Washington to seek government financing. In New Jersey, the eight bandits who had killed a postal worker and taken $151,700 at Elizabeth slipped past a 500-man cordon in the Watchung hills. Witnesses reported seeing their sedan on roads near Plainfield, Scotch Plains and Springfield.
Translation
NORRIS LAUNCHES ASSAULT ON VARE IN PENNSY FIGHT
[...] Senator Norris, republican, Nebraska, declared here tonight Vare's election would put the stamp of approval on political corruption and the placing of a senate seat upon the auction block.
Vare disqualified himself by the extensive expenditure of money in the primary campaign, Norris said, and the voters should elect William B. Wilson, his democratic opponent, to rebuke the "corrupt machine." The only argument against Mr. Wilson, he said, was based on "narrow, blind and bigoted partisanship."
"The issue involved is more important than any party question that has ever arisen as it strikes at the very cornerstone of free government," the Nebraska senator contended. "No free government can exist as long as its citizens are coerced and prevented from exerting at the ballot box their free and untrammeled will.
"When seats in the U.S. Senate are sold for cash, then it is only a question of time, a comparatively short time, until our government will be ruled either by the man in the saddle or by the mob.
"But the cry now in Pennsylvania by the machine politicians is 'vote the ticket straight, yellow dog and all.' Corruption is not denied.
"If we follow blindly and obey these republican leaders in this corrupt method, our party continually will grow worse and worse until in the eyes of the nation, it will be a stumbling block of corruption, a mockery of chicanery, a stench in the nostrils of patriots everywhere."
Declaring that partisanship should disappear where patriotism was concerned, the Nebraska senator predicted that if Vare should be elected he never would be seated. If he should be seated, he said the senate should apologize to former Senator Newberry of Michigan, whose seat was questioned because he spent $190,000 in a campaign.
(Continued on Page Two) [...]
VIGOROUS EFFORTS NEEDED TO RELIEVE FARMERS IS CLAIM
[...] success in the plan to retire four million cotton bales of the present crop from the market and reduce the acreage for 1927 by one fourth, Dr. Tait Butler, chairman of the executive committee in charge of the cotton market relief program declared tonight.
"There must be the active support of every interest in the land," Dr. Butler said in a statement addressed to "every good citizen of the south."
"Bankers must give of their time, ability and financial resources; merchants must cooperate, to give their creditor cotton owners every opportunity to place cotton in the four million bale pool, and must lend every assistance in securing a reduction of acreage for 1927," the leader of the stabilization movement launched by a southwide conference declared.
Dr. Butler called on growers and owners of cotton to offer to the pool every bale of cotton which they can command on the best terms which the committee can work out.
"Your committee asks that every owner of cotton will refrain, as far as possible, from placing any spot cotton on the present glutted, depressed market," said the statement of the chairman of the group which has worked out a systematic census of the southern cotton industry. "The pool will be formed just as quickly as is humanly possible and owners of cotton will find it to their interest to hold any cotton until this pool is opened."
Oscar Johnson, member of the executive committee, in leaving tonight for Washington where he and his associates, B. W. Kilgore, Raleigh, N.C., will confer with President Coolidge's committee for relief, and with other governmental fiscal authorities, gave an indication of the financial plans of the relief program.
"It is our purpose," said the banker and planter, "to ask such governmental agencies as may be willing to assist in financing the crop movement, to do so upon as liberal a basis as is consistent with a sound policy. What this figure will be, we cannot determine in advance.
"We expect to ask for enough money to enable us to finance the orderly marketing. We expect to ask this upon as liberal terms, and at as [...]
BANDITS ESCAPE THROUGH CORDON
Eight Desperadoes Slip Through Lines of Five Hundred Troops in Jersey Hills
SOMERVILLE, N.J., Oct. 16.—(AP)—The eight mail bandits who killed a postal employee and obtained $151,700 in cash at Elizabeth have escaped the cordon of 500 state troopers, police and volunteers thrown around a 180 mile area of the Watchung mountains.
Major Mark Kimberling tonight ordered the men in and admitted that the bandits had made a getaway.
"The men came out of the hills," Major Kimberling said, "on a road that we did not happen to have blocked, although state troopers were within three or four blocks of it."
Six persons saw the car leave the hills, according to Kimberling. The eight men in a large sedan, answering the description of the one used in Elizabeth when the streets were raked with fire from a machine gun, were seen at eight o'clock yesterday morning on Johnson avenue, near Plainfield. An hour later they were seen near the crippled children's home, outside of Scotch Plains. A third person saw them on the Quarry road near the Baltusrol golf club, in Springfield. [...]
Context
Why Vare's primary spending became a Senate question
Norris's speech fed into a spending scandal the Senate was already investigating. On May 19, 1926, the day after Pennsylvania's primary, Mississippi Democrat Byron Harrison cited reports that $2 million to $5 million had been poured into the campaign. The Senate responded by creating a special committee under Missouri Democrat James A. Reed to examine the race. That committee filed an interim report on December 22, 1926, two months after this page appeared. It found that Vare and his running mate for governor, Edward E. Beidleman, had together spent about $785,000, of which $71,000 came from Vare himself. The same report showed that the rival ticket of incumbent Senator George Wharton Pepper and John S. Fisher had spent $1.8 million, so Vare was not the only heavy spender. Pennsylvania law put no ceiling on campaign spending. That is why critics such as Norris argued the case as a test of whether the Senate should accept a seat won this way, not as a matter of breaking state law. The Senate's own history confirms that Norris, angered by the primary spending, campaigned in Pennsylvania against Vare, his fellow Republican. The page gives Truman Newberry's spending as $190,000. The Senate history says only that Newberry had spent far less than the sums reported from Pennsylvania.
How the fight over Vare's seat ended
Norris's prediction that Vare would never be seated turned out to be right, although the outcome took three years. Vare easily won the November 2, 1926, general election for the term beginning March 4, 1927. Wilson then petitioned the Senate, charging fraud in Philadelphia, and the Senate took custody of the ballots. When the 70th Congress met on December 5, 1927, Vare's opponents moved at once to block him, and he was not allowed to take the oath while the investigations went on. This was an unusual step, because senators-elect with valid credentials were normally seated while an inquiry proceeded. Investigators found fraudulent registrations and miscounted ballots in Philadelphia. Vare then suffered a cerebral hemorrhage in 1928. On December 6, 1929, the Senate voted to seat neither Vare nor Wilson, which in effect unseated Vare over the corruption charges. The case therefore did more than turn on the primary spending Norris attacked on this page. It also established, through the 1928 Supreme Court ruling the case prompted, that the Senate could compel evidence about the elections of its own members.
The 1926 cotton glut and the federal role in financing relief
Butler's appeal was a response to a crop too large for the market. Writing on October 25, 1926, Time reported a projected harvest of 16,627,000 bales and a price that had fallen below 14 cents a pound. The four-million-bale figure in this article matches the withdrawal that Time attributed to a Tennessee cotton conference. Time also reported a 25 percent acreage cut, which it said would apply for two years, while the Advertiser speaks only of 1927. Washington's part was mainly to supply credit. President Coolidge appointed a commission whose tasks included encouraging Southern bankers to back relief and increasing the involvement of federal farm credit agencies. Time also reported that a body it called the Farm-Labor Board would give $30 million in credit to cooperative marketing associations. Agriculture Secretary William Jardine called stored cotton probably the soundest basis for credit he knew. The federal farm credit agencies of the day included the intermediate credit banks that the Agricultural Credit Act of 1923 had placed in each district to fund loans for production costs. Congress proposed broader price support through the McNary-Haugen bills, which would have dealt with farm surpluses. Those bills passed both houses in 1927 and again in 1928, but Coolidge vetoed them both times. The government's answer to the 1926 glut therefore stayed limited to loans for holding cotton, not price support.
Who the Elizabeth mail bandits were and what became of them
Later accounts identify the leader of the gang as James "Killer" Cunniffe, a New York armed robber. According to these accounts, on October 14, 1926, Cunniffe and seven accomplices armed with submachine guns hijacked a mail truck in Elizabeth and escaped with about $161,000 in cash and securities. The Advertiser's AP dispatch, filed two days after the robbery, gave $151,700 in cash. The holdup alarmed Washington, and in October 1926 President Coolidge ordered Marines to escort mail shipments and guard postal facilities. Neither the Watchung cordon described here nor any later arrest caught Cunniffe. A few weeks after the robbery, his fellow gang member William "Ice Wagon" Crowley shot him dead in Highland Park, Michigan. A wounded Highland Park police officer, Ephraim Rancour, then shot and killed Crowley. The story did not end with those two deaths. In 1930 True Detective Mysteries reported that Frank Kiekert, a suspect in the Elizabeth robbery, had confessed to a Long Island bank holdup and named Cunniffe among his accomplices. Kiekert later recanted.
Original
NORRIS LAUNCHES ASSAULT ON VARE IN PENNSY FIGHT
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VIGOROUS EFFORTS NEEDED TO RELIEVE FARMERS IS CLAIM
Catherine Heenan, mother of ches " Browning to return ches " to her husband, EdW. Browning, was obtained upreme court here today by cis Dale, attorney for Brownle would not say whether ning intended to bring sepan suit against his wife, but ay: ait a few days and you will something startling-some news this time. " ME INCREASE IS IARGED TO PRESS ment of Law Violations by wspapers Criticized and Defended in Meet SBURG, Oct. 16 - (AP) - The nt of crime news by the newswas both criticized and deby speakers today at the anngress of the American prison tion. Maud Ballington Booth, comin chief of the Volunteers of a, a welfare organization, chared flapper bandits, arch-crimie Leopolds and Loebs, and oththeir type as " creations of the and said " it is a terrible injusthe ordinary prisoner when the f the country holds up as a ome perverted criminal. " Her zation the speaker said, is on e of the man who is trying to ood but maintained much of work is spoiled " by the presn a prison of one of these es of the press to whom f the public sentiment and ingoes. " papers are going to give the crime news as lon gas the peont it. C. J. Swendsen, St. Paul, chairman of the board of conld the congress. " The public is for it, " he said, " The newspae in business for profit, natand they cater to the wants of success in the plan to retire four million cotton bales of the present crop from the market and reduce the acreage for 1927 by one fourth, Dr. Tait Butler, chairman of the executive committee in charge of the cotton market relief program declared tonight. " There must be the active support of every interest in the land, " Dr. Butler said in a statement addressed to " every good citizen of the south. " " Bankers must give of their time, ability and financial resources; merchants must cooperate, to give their creditor cotton owners every opportunity to place cotton in the four million bale pool, and must lend every assistance in securing a reduction of acreage for 1927, " the leader of the stabilization movement launched by a southwide conference declared. Dr. Butler called on growers and owners of cotton to offer to the pool every bale of cotton which they can command on the best terms which the committee can work out. " Your committee asks that every owner of cotton will refrain, as far as possible, from placing any spot cotton on the present glutted, depressed market, " said the statement of the chairman of the group which has worked out a systematic census of the southern cotton industry. " The pool will be formed just as quickly as is humanly possible and owners of cotton will find it to their interest to hold any cotton until this pool is opened. " Oscar Johnson, member of the executive committee, in leaving tonight for Washington where he and his associates, B. W. Kilgore, Raleigh, N. C., will confer with President Coolidge's committee for relief, and with other governmental fiscal authorities, gave an indication of the financial plans of the relief program. " It is our purpose, " said the banker and planter, " to ask such governmental agencies as may be willing to assist in financing the crop movement, to do so upon as liberal a basis as is consistent with a sound policy. What this figure will be, we cannot determine in advance. " We expect to ask for enough money to enable us to finance the orderly marketing. We expect to ask this upon as liberal terms, and at as ma pe pe er K m ur sc m th pe sn sp w in fi le fi th sa w be be w m al ti m pr in pr gi jo L Ll (A in th in m dr O lit in ur
BANDITS ESCAPE THROUGH CORDON
Down sed AP) - ed of for a his e in a Senrer of paign r said, ds ' of ed into ' great t into he aspress he rey was ranny, e laid es and f said it. " enator repubnd the rather prosM GNER urder AP) - rdered Laube reterm nd alill be from hargection heriff pointment is Mrs. William A. Saffold of Montgomery, a charming literary and social favorite who has recently completed a tour of the world and is fitted by her charming personality and brilliant intellect for the duties that will devolve upon the committee in connection with the reception and social entertainment of the nation's guest, Queen Maria of Rumania. " (Continued on Page Two) BANDITS ESCAPE THROUGH CORDON Eight Desperadoes Slip Through Lines of Five Hundred Troops in Jersey Hills SOMERVILLE, N. J., Oct. 16. - (AP) - The eight mail bandits who killed a postal employe and obtained $ 151, - 700 in cash at Elizabeth have escaped the cordon of 500 state troopers, police and volunteers thrown around a 180 mile area of the Watchung mountains. Major Mark Kimberling tonight ordered the men in and admitted that the bandits had made a getaway. " The men came out of the hills " Major Kimberling said, " on a road that we did not happen to have blocked, although state troopers were within three of four blocks of it. " Six persons saw the car leave the hills, according to Kimberling. The eight men in a large sedan, answering the description of the one used in Elizabeth when the streets were raked with fire from a machine gun, were seen at eight o'clock yesterday morning on Johnson avenue, near Plainfield. An hour later they were seen near the crippled children's home, outside of Scotch plains. A third person saw them on the Quarry road near the Baltusrol golf club, in Springfield. tion Before Presenti Corruption Charges INDIANAPOLIS, IND., Oct. 16. - - Thomas H. Adams, publisher o Vincennes, Ind., Commercial, sai day that he will not take his s ing charges of corruption in In politics before Senator James A. I senatorial investigating committe Chicago Monday unless an invi comes from the committee. Adams recently has been pr for an investigation by the Reed mittee, but he said today he felt if the committee desired inform it would invite him to appear b it. The Marion county grand jur vestigation of Adams ' charges w recess today until Monday. On day John H. Kiplinger, attorne D. C. Stephenson, former grand d of the Ku Klux Klan, will be c Stephenson is in the state prison, ing a life sentence for the murd Madge Oberholtzer. Adams ha clared that Stephenson holds th to evidence which would corrob his charges of corruption. KILLED AT CARD GAM Dispute Over Game Causes Shooting of Young Attorney DETROIT, Oct. 16. - (AP) - A believed to B. E. Johnson, 35, M apolis attorney, was shot to during a dispute over a card ga a soft drink place here tonight. slayer, an unidentified man, esc The dead man had asserted he to Detroit from Ann Arbor afte tend the Minnesota-Michigan fo game there. DIES FROM WOUNDS Virginian Succumbs Following S ing By Unidentified Enemy
Source: Holding institution