Cannon v. Inquisitors

Willingly into the Lobby Investigating Committee room, where some of the Senate's loudest lions roar, a quiet-appearing Daniel last week limped on one crutch, wearing a blue sack suit and old-fashioned "Congress gaiters," peering through rim less glasses. He was Bishop James Cannon Jr., Chairman of the Board of Temperance & Social Service of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, a man of political prominence whose spiritual loins were somewhat ungirded last month when his church's convention required him to ex press contrition or stand trial for ''bucket shop" gambling (TIME, May 19). He seemed nice lion-bait, so the room was packed with spectators, including Representative George Holden Tinkham of Massachusetts, who accused the Methodist Board of lobbying, and Mrs. Alice Roosevelt Longworth, wife of the Speaker of the House, who regarded the scene through alert lorgnette.

Some time prior the Committee had heard Lawyer Edwin Cornell Jameson, New York political giftmaker, testify that he had contributed $65,300 to Bishop Cannon's anti-Smith Presidential campaign in Virginia (May 19). While on its face nothing was wrong with this contribution, it was mostly in cash, and Wisconsin's Senator John James Elaine, Mon tana's Senator Thomas James Walsh, the only lobby lions present, apparently thought something pertinent to their investigation lay hid behind it.

During the first hours of three sessions, he followed his purpose, boasted that his church could raise $300,000,000 if necessary, for Prohibition maintenance. When they began to press the Bishop about his anti-Smith financing, he declined to answer 100 questions.

Senator Walsh, the Senate's most famed and feared inquisitor, warned him he was risking the fate of Oilman Harry Sinclair, who went to prison for contempt of the Senate. But the Bishop contended stub bornly, sometimes waving his crutch in anger, that this Committee had no authority to expose anyone's political activities. He read aloud Supreme Court utterances which, he said, denied all committees the right to make "fruitless inquiries into citizens' personal affairs." He protested: ''This appears to me to be an effort to attack me and to impair my influence exactly as the Wet and Catholic Press have been doing."*

Bishop Cannon rose in the middle of a heated debate, used his crutch as bumper against the crowding audience, stalked from the room. A shouted controversy accompanied his flight.

Senator Walsh: You are not excused!

Senator Blaine, (hurriedly): Bishop Cannon, I desire to put into the record the telegrams and communications between you and the Chairman of the Committee so that it may indicate exactly how and why you came before the Committee. I want you to know that now--

Bishop Cannon (pushing out): That is in the record, sir!

Senator Blaine (as a parting shot) : And I also want to subscribe to every word that my colleague . . . has said--

Bishop Cannon (vanishing): I am at my office whenever a subpoena is issued.

Later Senator Walsh declared the Bishop to have been "in plain contempt of the Senate," but the Bishop replied that as the Committee lacked a quorum to subpoena him then and there, it was no committee, could not hold him officially in contempt.

In his Jonesboro, Ark., home Senator Caraway, Chairman of the Lobby Committee and a Dry Methodist, who has ruthlessly heckled all manner of witnesses before his committee on their private and political affairs, did a remarkable about-face on Bishop Cannon's case. Declared Senator Caraway: "I see no occasion to insist on the Bishop testifying. The investigation is aimed at lobbying and not political matters. As he came at his own request, if he did not care to answer questions, he should be excused." Later Senator Caraway, shamefaced, left-about-faced: "I do not sustain Bishop Cannon for snapping his fingers at the Committee. A witness who goes before the committee withdraws at his own peril."

In the Senate, Senator Norris of Nebraska had the clerk on the rostrum read aloud a letter which, he said, he had received from Cross Roads, Tex. Excerpts:

"My name is Sally Gamble. My husband, Joe Gamble, is in the penitentiary. I want you to get him out. Joe was the cashier of a small national bank, the only bank at Cross Roads. He thought he saw remarkable opportunities to make lots of money by buying options on Wall Street; but the market went down instead and Joe has been sent to the pen. . . .

"What I would like to know is, 'How Joe can be sent to the pen while Bishop Cannon is guilty of the same crimes Joe has committed and gets complete forgiveness from his people?' Joe gambled with other people's money. As nearly as I can find out Bishop Cannon did the same thing. Joe is in the pen, but the Bishop is able to defy even the United States Senate and still retains his high position in the church."

Senator Norris insisted the letter was "all right," despite the fact that it was dated a day before Bishop Cannon's first "defiance" of the Senate. He chuckled loudly at the suggestion that Sally Gamble was a descendant of Cornell's fictitious statesman of last month, Hugo N. Frye (TIME, June 9.)

*Senator Elaine is a Wet. Senator Walsh is a Roman Catholic.

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