Epic Lobby

The Subcommittee of the Senate Naval Affairs Committee-precise, fingerpointing Senator Shortridge of California, square-jawed Senator Allen of Kansas, ruddy Senator Robinson of Arkansas-last week got down to investigating whether William B. Shearer, naval expert, had broken up the Geneva Disarmament Conference, whether U. S. shipbuilding companies had paid him for doing it.

As the hearings opened William B. Shearer himself, in a smart blue suit with a doublebreasted waistcoat and a red-striped necktie sat in. the front row. Beside him sat his New York lawyer, Daniel Florence Cohalan. Promptly Mr. Cohalan protested that Mr. Shearer should be called first to the stand. Senator Shortridge overruled him. First witness was Clinton Lloyd Bardo, President of New York Shipbuilding Co., subsidiary of American Brown Boveri. He told of a conference in which Shearer had been hired to go to Geneva: "The instructions were that he was to go as an observer and report. He had no authority beyond that. We were to pay a third of the agreed amount of $25,000 for his compensation and expenses."

He insisted that his company did not wish the conference to fail, but was interested in knowing if cruiser reductions were to be made. He thought Shearer was paid too much, that his "ordinary business judgment had been disarmed" by Shearer's plausibility. Shearer's reports had been full of "bunk." He had only glanced at two or three, and when he learned of Shearer's big-navy propaganda he had insisted on his discharge. Mr. Bardo admitted that Shearer was later re-employd by Laurence Russell Ilder on a project for building liners to cross the Atlantic in four days. On that project $143,000 had been spent on promotion but Shearer received only $5,000. Of the total, $24,000 went for hotel bills and entertainment in Washington.

Some of Mr. Bardo's opinions:

"I'd be a silly ass if I thought for a moment that a man could go to Geneva without power, backing or prestige and break up a conference. I regard Shearer as an undesirable man to have around. He was likely to do more harm than good. He wouldn't stay hitched. You might send him after the cows and he might take a gun and shoot the farmer's pigs instead. I never saw anybody who could get away with a hand-to-hand encounter with a skunk. I don't mean to call Mr. Shearer a skunk. . . ."

I would not give him 25 cents now to go anywhere!"

Second star witness was Charles Michael Schwab, benevolent-looking Chairman of Bethlehem Steel Corp. He declared that he would like to see every battleship sunk, he never met Mr. Shearer so far as he recalled, regarded his employment as unwise. Said he:

"Having just concluded the fiftieth year of active business in the steel industry, in the natural course of events, I do very little except touch the high spots now, and have implicit confidence in the person I always speak of as 'my boy'-although he is not a boy any more-to carry on the work of the Bethlehem Company better than I was ever able to carry it on; so that I am very happy in placing practically the entire responsibility with reference to everything pertaining to the Bethlehem company in Mr. Grace's hands."

Third star witness was Mr. Schwab's "boy," Eugene Gifford Grace, President of Bethlehem. He told that Shearer had been hired by S. W. Wakeman, vice-president of Bethlehem Shipbuilding Corp., without his knowledge or approval. When he heard that Shearer was propagandizing: "I told Wakeman to get rid of him. Wakeman said another payment was due Shearer. I told him to make it immediately and get rid of him."

Another star witness was Mr. Wakeman. Ke submitted a letter written to him last January by Mr. Shearer, in which Mr. Shearer boasted of having "saved the ship-building industry ... as the result of my activities during the sixty-ninth Congress." In the letter he took credit for the fact that there were then eight 10,000-ton cruisers under construction, and pointed out that as a result of the failure of the Geneva conference a $740,000,000 ship- building program was before Congress. Mr. Wakeman took the blame for Bethlehem's having hired Mr. Shearer, admitted it was a "damn fool decision."