Great Lobby Hunt

Great Lobby Hunt

Lobbyists generally prey on Senators. They are fatter, more influential prey than Representatives. Last week Senators-- five of them as a special investigating committee--began to prey on lobbyists. Witnesses winced and twitched uncomfortably as Senators Caraway, Walsh of Montana and Borah took the lead in uncovering their undercover work. The week's developments: Pottery. Fredrick L. Koch is a Tariff Commission expert on ceramics. During the Senate tariff hearings he prompted Senator King with questions to show that the industry was not as depressed as its leaders made out. For this the potters unsuccessfully attempted to have him discharged from the Commission's employ. The chief complaint against Mr. Koch was the man who had given him his Com-mission job--William Burgess of Pennsylvania, onetime (1921-1925) Tariff Commissioner, now vice-president of U. S Potters Association. Lobbyist Burgess, now 72, denied he was a lobbyist, but explained that the potters paid him $7,500 per year to represent them in Washington. The National Electrical Manufacturers Association paid him $2,500 for the same purpose and the National Association of Wool Manufacturers $1,800. He also did business on a contingent basis for the greeting card industry. He had, he said, gotten his start in Washington by means of a card from his college chum. President Thomas Woodrow Wilson, which still helped him approach Democratic Senators. Lobbyist Burgess had requested the dismissal of Mr. Koch because, he explained, he had put the pottery industry in "the wrong light" before the Senate Finance Committee. Mr. Koch was not dismissed, though potters carried their complaints even to President Hoover. Sugar. Frank were the avowals of Harry A. Austin, secretary-treasurer of the U. S. Beet Sugar Association, of his efforts to obtain a higher tariff on sugar as a protection to the domestic industry. He told investigators that his headquarters had spent $500,000 in seven years to "educate" the public. He even admitted that most of his press releases were "bunk." For his services he receives $8,000 per year. He admitted that he had misrepresented William Green, president of the American Federation of Labor, as favoring a higher sugar duty, but said it was an "accidental mistake." Denying that he was a lobbyist who buttonholed Senators, Lobbyist Austin protested that his activities were entirely ethical and aboveboard, that they were necessary to combat the "propaganda" of foreign sugar interests, particularly the National City Bank, in favor of a low duty.

In Connecticut. The climax of the committee's week came in its scrutiny of how one Senator had deliberately hired a lobbyist and taken him, disguised as a Senate clerk, into the Finance Committee's secret hearings as a means of getting higher tariff rates for his State (TIME, Oct. 7). The Senator was Hiram Bingham of Connecticut. The lobbyist was Charles L. Eyanson, tariff "expert," assistant to the president (of the Connecticut Manufacturers Association. Together Lobbyist Eyanson and Senator Bingham secured tariff increases for 44 of Connecticut's 51 industries. They averaged about 4% and were worth approximately $75,000,000 in "protection" to the State's manufacturers.

Last February Senator Bingham asked Elijah Kent Hubbard, president of the Connecticut association, for the "loan" of a man to help the State's interests on the tariff bill. Mr. Eyanson was sent to Washington, settling himself in Senator Bingham's office. During the open hearings he sat at the Senator's elbow and whispered questions to be asked witnesses. He prepared press statements for the Senator, supplied him with technical arguments, "ran errands." His assistance to Senator Bingham, who pleaded ignorance of Connecticut's industrial needs, was "invaluable." No Senator except Bing ham knew that Eyanson was the hired man of the Connecticut Manufacturers Association, which praised his work as "splendid" and assured him that he had "made good" and given the association "more than we ever bargained for." Employment of Eyanson by Senator Bingham produced financial complications. As the manufacturers' agent. Lobbyist Eyanson was continuously paid by them his salary ($10,000 per year). As a Senate clerk he also signed the U. S. payroll and drew a salary at the rate of $3,000 per year from the Government. This he turned over to another Bingham clerk. After he had left Washington in August, Senator Bingham sent him a personal check for $1,000.

Two terrible hours Senator Bingham spent on the witness stand before the Senate Lobby Committee explaining, trying to explain and justify Eyanson. Savage and sneering was his examination by Senators Walsh, Caraway and Blaine. When he attempted to speak in self-defense, Senator Walsh jerked him up with: "The trouble you're in now is due to the fact that you talk too much." He writhed in his chair and his cheeks were crimson in contrast to his white hair as the investigators spoke of "falsification" and "serving two masters."

Fuming against what he considered the "discourteous treatment" he was receiving from the committee, Senator Bingham defended Eyanson as a "good teacher," denied that he actually lobbied, made much of the technicality that he had not personally cashed his Senate pay checks. In the end, though, Senator Bingham was concerned into the admission that: "I probably made a mistake." He stepped from the stand a very wilted and word-bruised Senator. His colleagues, however, had scant sympathy for him. He has never been a popular member of the Senate because he attempts to manage debate in the same wise-teacher-and-drill-pupil manner he conducted his classes in South American history at Yale.

Lobbyist Eyanson took the stand but could add little to the story his employer had told the day before. He could see nothing wrong in the "service" he rendered. So evasive was his testimony that Senator Walsh charged him with deliberately developing a "feeble memory."

Significance. The first week's disclosures before the Senate's lobby committee, observers thought, seriously imperiled the whole tariff bill now before the Senate. Vague and generalized have been the charges heretofore that special interests exert special influence through lobbyists to obtain special tariff favors. Now opposition Senators were supplied with damning specifications for use in debate. Every tariff increase was suspect. The investigating committee tasting blood, was in full bay after that prime tariff lobbyist, Joseph R. Grundy of Pennsylvania, vice-president of the American Tariff League. The rotund Grundy shadow has moved about the Capitol almost continuously since the House first took up the tariff last winter.

So hot was the trail of the lobbyists and so important was their reluctant testimony in relation to the pending tariff bill that the Senate committee even pondered the advisability of asking the Department of Justice for a detachment of Secret Service operatives to run down clues, to bring skulking lobbyists up out of their holes.