Introducing "A Debauch"-as BORAH characterized it, is a brief prologue to the astonishing story of the Newberry scandal, in

CHAPER III, THEY APPRAISE THEMSELVES Introducing forces higher up: Reveals the Senate machine in its relation to the powers that be; with illustrations of this dominant "administration influence” in—

CHAPTER IV, THEY SUPPORT THE PRESIDENT With the official facts concerning- ́

Ladd walks the plank: Wherein they discipline the Independents and disclose the standards, tests, and character of the pro-Coolidge Senate machine.

Trying to save Denby, and opposing the WALSH report: Significant "sitting on the lid" episodes in connection with oil and other scandals.

They O. K. appointments: Shows their record on confirmations, with some outstanding derelictions of duty, all this coming to a climax in the controversy over—

"Sugar Charley" Warren: Which is emphasized for two reasons- the President's unconstitutional insistence that the Senate perfunctorily approve the nomination because this episode reveals precisely how Senators are "lined up" at the present time.

Introducing the composite picture: Is just that, followed finally by the constructive part

CHAPTER V, WHOSE SENATE SHALL IT BE?

*

Mr. Haines charges flatly that Andrew Mellon has no right to hold the office of Secretary of the Treasury. The original act creating the Treasury Department provides:

"That no person appointed to any office instituted by this act shall directly or indirectly be concerned or interested in carrying on the business of trade or commerce or be the owner, wholly or in part, of any sea vessel, etc."

This law is still in force. It blocked the appointment of A. T. Stewart, the New York merchant prince, as Secretary of the Treasury during Grant's administration, but it has been ignored in order that Mellon might be chief of the Treasury.

Mr. Haines shows that Mr. Mellon is "engaged in trade and commerce" from his partnership in the Overholt Whisky Co. to his dominating interest in the Aluminum Trust, which from an original investment of $20,000 has come, through reinvestment of profits, to have a capital and surplus of some $110,000,000, and which owns mining, manufacturing, rail, and utility properties scattered over half the world.

Mr. Mellon is likewise the dominant figure in the Gulf Oil Corporation, which has a fleet of 30 of those "sea vessels" which no appointee to the Treasury Department is permitted by law to own. Mr. Haines sums up the case as follows:

"First, that Mr. Mellon holds the office of Secretary of the Treasury in violation of the spirit, if not the letter, of the law.

"Second, that he is undoubtedly the outstanding worldwide exponent of modern industrialism, having practiced every device that monopolies may employ for purely private purposes; and

"Third, that his official positions are such as to constitute a supergovernmental influence which can be utilized to advance his own enterprises and those of the industrial class to which he belongs at the expense of the public welfare." As to how Mr. Mellon has used his opportunities, Mr. Haines says:

"Today, after four years of Mellonism, the corporations of America are evading surtaxes on a total of undivided profits that probably exceeds $30,000,000,000."

It would seem that "Andy" had not forgotten himself while granting indulgences to his fellow corporationists. His Gulf Oil Corporation has a surplus and depreciation reserve of $205,000,000, nearly twice its total capitalization-all profits which have dodged the high surtaxes of the income tax law.

Perhaps the most startling part of Mr. Haine's Mellon chapter is that dealing with "refunds and abatements." A refund is money that Uncle Sam pays back after collecting it. An abatement is a credit that he gives the favored individual or corporation before payment.

Rich men and companies, of course, employ the best lawyers they can find to figure out their income tax returns and keep their contributions down as low as possible. Yet Mr.

Haines shows that in the four years of Mellon's administration there have been refunds and abatements to the amount of $1,567,658,077!

Small wonder he considers Mellon the real head of the administration.

The story of the Newberry scandal is intensely interesting. So is that of the tariff, and of the way the Senate has "supported the President," with roll calls giving the names of Senators who voted for and against the people's interests.

Mr. Haines has put a few tons of political T. N. T. together and called it a book. Which is right, for a book is the highest kind of high explosive.

This is a work which no one who wants to know the truth about affairs in Washington can afford to fail to read.

"I agree with that last conclusion. Because this book deals so fairly and fearlessly with public issues of far-reaching fundamental importance, every voter should be informed of its character, its purposes, and, above all else, be told where to get it.

"Therefore, I regard it as a duty to urge all my fellow citizens everywhere to write the Searchlight Publishing Co., Lenox Building, Washington, D. C., for a copy. This book is so timely and revealing as to be worth many ordinary volumes."

Whitewashing Bakery Combine THE

HE Coolidge Administration, through an Attorney General appointed by President Coolidge and through Federal Trade Commissioners appointed by Coolidge, has given a "consent decree" to the Bakery Combine to do with impunity the acts which both the Attorney General's office and the Federal Trade Commission itself had officially declared were in violation of Section 7 of the Clayton Anti-Trust Act.

The Federal Trade Commission had found that the Continental Baking Corporation had acquired the stock of 25 baking companies operating 83 or more bakeries throughout the United States. Here is its conclusion:

"The Continental alone is large enough to dominate the bread baking industry of the United States. Its baking plants are located in every section of the country, and the territory served by it includes approximately one-half the population of the United States.'

Note this evidence of wholesale watering of capital:

"The latest available Census figures show the capitalization of the bread making industry as approximately $400,000,000, while the Continental's authorized capitalization is $600,000,000."

In other words, the new baking combine proposes to collect dividends on $200,000,000 more capitalization than the entire actual capital invested in the baking industry of the 48 States and the District of Columbia!

The Department of Justice complaint had charged that the corporate defendants

"have acquired . . . the whole or a substantial part of the stocks or other share capital . . . of other corporations engaged in interstate trade and commerce in the baking and related industries. . . in violation of Sec. 7 of the Clayton Act."

This is what the Attorney General's office found

after a year's investigation, as charged on December 19, 1925.

On April 2, 1926, both the Attorney General and the Federal Trade Commission majority (Humphrey, Hunt and Van Fleet) find that this "violation is to be punished with a "consent decree" and the complaint dismissed.

How much deliberation was given to the dismissal of this case which had engaged two Federal departments over a year?

Fifteen minutes.

Here is the official statement of Chairman Nugent, who, with Commissioner Huston Thompson, emphatically dissents from the action of the Coolidge majority on the Federal Trade Commission:

"Let the record show that I dissent particularly from the action of the majority members of the Commission in railroading this matter through within about fifteen minutes, without giving me an opportunity, which I requested, to examine the memorandum of the Chief Counsel and the proposed consent decree, notwithstanding I stated I would be ready to act tomorrow. The proposed decree upon which the order of the majority is based has not even been read for the information of the Commission."

The "consent decree" had been arranged in executive conference between the Attorney General and chief counsel for the bakery combine, and then "railroaded" through the Federal Trade Commission "within about fifteen minutes" by the Coolidge majority-without giving Chairman Nugent and Commissioner Thompson opportunity even to read the dismissal order and consent decree.

Commissioners Nugent and Thompson, in their formal dissenting opinion, released for publication June 15, quote aptly from President Coolidge's recent letter to the Women's National Committee for Law Enforcement:

"This earnest manifestation of interest in enforcement of law, is gratifying. Such interest on the part of those citizens not officially connected with the execution of the law is heartening to those charged with that responsibility. In this message I desire to reiterate "The law represents the voice of the people. Beyond it, and supporting it, is a divine sanction. Enforcement of law and obedience to law, by the very nature of our institutions, are not matters of choice in this republic, but the expression of a moral requirement of living in accordance with the truth. They are clothed with. a spiritual significance, in which is revealed the life or death of the American ideal of self-government." Dissenting Commissioners Nugent and Thompson attach the following fitting comment to the President's touching and "spiritual" letter:

"It is evident that the Attorney General and Commissioners Hunt and Humphrey, who were appointed by President Coolidge, and Commissioner

Van Fleet, are not in accord with the statements of the President on law enforcement.

"As public officials, they are, to quote the President, 'charged' with the 'execution of the law,' and, so far as the Continental is concerned, they not only executed Section 7 of the Clayton Act but they buried it, 'unwept, unhonored, and unsung.'"

Here is the picture of an administration which, in its letters to women organizations, attaches "spiritual significance" to the "execution of the law":

The greatest bakery combine on the globe, charged by the Government with holding stock in violation. of the Clayton Anti-Trust Act, is left, as dissenting Commissioners Nugent and Thompson officially state, "in the quiet, undisturbed, and unchallenged ownership and possession of the capital stock of corporations owning and operating 83 bakeries, among which are the largest in the country."

The Government finds that this combine, created through the illegal ownership of the capital stock of 25 corporations, produces 1,000,000,000 pounds of bread and 60,000,000 pounds of cake, in which it consumes 2,600,900 barrels of flour and 112,793,970 pounds of sugar, shortening, yeast, milk, eggs, fruit, and sundries-and then in 15 minutes, by vote of the Coolidge appointees, dismisses the complaint and grants a consent decree for the combine to assess the public-the Sherman and Clayton Anti-Trust Acts to the contrary notwithstanding. Coolidge officials delivered the Coolidge "divine sanction."

YOUR GOVERNMENT AT WASHINGTON

(Continued from page 7)

"Now, gentlemen, let us see whether or not the spirit of exploitation and the spirit of special privilege does or does not dominate the present administration. Who is the most potent and the most dominant figure in this administration? All of you do know. It is not necessary for me to put in the Record even the alphabetical symbols that name the most potent influence in this administration. The most compelling name in this administration is that of the Secretary of the Treasury, Andrew W. Mellon. The present Secretary of the Treasury has often been compared to Alexander Hamilton. If what history records about Alexander Hamilton is true, Alexander Hamilton no more completely dominated and controlled the Federalist Party of his day than the present Secretary of the Treasury controls his party and the administration to which he belongs. [Applause.] Alexander Hamilton controlled his party by the marvelous genius of his mind and the quality of his logic, and the present Secretary of the Treasury no less dominates and controls the present administration.

"His power, perhaps, springs from a different source than that of Alexander Hamilton, but in this day the peculiar power he possesses is probably more compelling than even the brilliant mind and charming personal manners of Alexander Hamilton.

Thinkers throughout the country are becoming increasingly disturbed by existing conditions and tendencies in our public life. There is a growing conviction that our institutions are ultimately in danger.

In an address, recently prepared, the writer made an attempt to provoke really serious thought on the subject. I have had an unusual opportunity to observe, at first hand, the character and operations of American politics. This experience, plus an unpartisan point of view, guided my pen.

A new idea is advanced, to which the reaction from political scientists has been remarkable. It has, as I hoped, stimulated real thinking.

In response to requests for its publication, this address is presented under the title, "The Missing Link in Public Affairs."

Only one aspect of the situation is especially stressed, that pertaining to dynastic politics, whereas reconstruction should include other departures from our orthodox conceptions. But there is here a sufficient discussion to suggest an entirely different condition of public affairs than that to which we have been accustomed.

Your criticism is invited. Certainly the best minds in America must now be focused upon the problem of proper public relationships.

THE SEARCHLIGHT ON CONGRESS WASHINGTON, D. C.

LENOX BUILDING

Subscription rate: $2.00 a year. Single copies 20 cents.

Entered as second-class matter May 26, 1919, at the Postoffice at Washington, D. C., under the Act of March 3, 1879.