Fall Trips

Albert Bacon Fall made his first great expedition in the world when, aged 10, he accompanied his parents from Frankfort, Ky., his birthplace (1861), to Nashville, Tenn.

In 1883 he made a trip back to Texas, to marry Emma Garland Morgan. A few years later he rode in the first Mexican Central train from Mexico City to El Paso, whence he went to New Mexico.

In 1898 he went with Company H, 1st Territorial Volunteer Infantry, to fight in the Spanish War.

In 1912, he made a splendid trip to Washington. He was one of New Mexico's first two Senators.

In 1921, he made his greatest trip of all --to Washington to become President Harding's Secretary of the Interior.

Two years later, Albert Bacon Fall made a sad trip, back to Three Rivers, N. Mex., resigned, suspect, disgraced. People were saying he had accepted presents from oil men in return for giving them rich leases and contracts on Government reserves.

While criminal and civil actions were being prepared, Fall took a trip abroad with Oilman Harry Ford Sinclair (who paid his expenses). If they had stayed abroad, as two other characters in the Oil Scandals did, Fall would have been spared further sad trips between the Southwest and Washington to his trials.

Last week began another of those trips. Cleared of conspiring with Oilman Edward L. Doheny to defraud the U. S., Fall has yet to be cleared of taking a $100,000 bribe from Doheny.* With his 68th birthday only seven weeks off, with a physician beside him to watch over his infirmaries, Fall boarded a train at El Paso. Entraining at Los Angeles to testify at the trial was Alleged-Briber Doheny, himself an aging man but no longer under indictment.

*Fall has also to be cleared of conspiring with Sinclair to defraud the U. S. It was with Sinclair that Fall last went on trial, two years ago, when Sinclair shadowed the jury and a mistrial was declared. When that case was retried in the spring of 1928, Fall was too ill to be a codefendant. Sinclair was acquitted (TIME, April 30, 1928).