At Detroit

More & more does the American Legion recognize itself as a political power. At Syracuse early this month, baldly eloquent Major General James Guthrie Harbord, A. E. F. Chief of Staff who is now board chairman of Radio Corp. of America, told the New York State Legion: ''You are destined ... to play a paramount role in American politics for more than a generation and within the next 15 years to dominate both the State and Federal Governments, have a majority in both houses of Congress and have one of your number in the presidential chair" (TIME, Sept. 14).

In Washington's Mayflower Hotel last week, the Legion's committee on unemployment held a sweaty, shirt-sleeved meeting, conducted itself as gravely as if it were meeting on Capitol Hill. Officially it had convened to draft a set of recommendations to alleviate joblessness, to hand them to President Hoover. Actually it constituted a steering committee, the rank which would indicate what the file was to concern itself with when the Legion nationally convenes at Detroit this week. Prime issues were Bonus and Beer.

Bonus. Any U. S. War veteran may now borrow up to 50% of the face value of his adjusted service certificate. Legislation to this effect was pushed through Congress last winter (TIME. Feb. 9 ct seq.). The Veterans of Foreign Wars started the move, which was rushed to a successful conclusion by support from the Legion, whose membership had previously snowed it under at last year's Boston convention. Agitation was last week afoot in some quarters of the Legion to ask Congress to pay the full value of the certificates at once, although they do not mature until 1945. Payment of the bonus in full would require the appropriation of $2,159,.000,000. Proponents of the plan argue, as was argued last winter, that the money would set the nation's wheels of commerce spinning.

Early this month the V. F. W. met at Kansas City. Mo. Assistant Secretary of the Navy Ernest Lee Jahncke and Director Frank Thomas Hines of the Veterans' Bureau were despatched from Washington to the convention to urge the organization not to agitate further inroads on the depleted national treasury. They were disregarded. The V. F. Vv. went on record in favor of an immediate Bonus payment in full.

As the Legion converged on Detroit this week the question was: Would the Legion again second the V. F. W.? Fortnight ago, National Commander Ralph T. O'Neil of the Legion guardedly assured the nation that "if it is shown that further liberalization of Bonus legislation will place a burden on the country, the Legion will not ask for it."

Not so guarded were the remarks of General Harbord, who popped up at the steering committee's meeting in Washington, not to praise the Legion but to give it a bit of Dutch-uncle advice. He had seen a preliminary canvass of Bonus sentiment among the 48 State delegations. Eleven, with Michigan in the van, were instructed to vote for immediate payment. Five (Oregon, Nebraska, Kansas, New Jersey, Wyoming) were to vote in opposition. Twenty-six more delegations were uninstructed. Six were undecided.

The day in Washington was sweltering. Tempers were short. Discarding forensic veneer, speaking "as one soldier to another." the veteran of Chateau-Thierry and Soissons said: "What I have to say is that there is a little uneasiness in this country about the American Legion. I can't imagine anything more ridiculous than for you to go down to Detroit with a program of relief for the whole country and at the same time hold out a tin cup. If you do that you will be laughed at. And I say that as a man in favor of the Bonus legislation in 1924."

Beer foamed up as an issue, spigoted by President M. J. McDonough of the building trades department of the American Federation of Labor. He started talking about the malpractices of private employment bureaus, but everybody stopped wiping their faces and listened when President McDonough became suddenly impassioned and declared: "The coming winter is going to be the worst in history. I am not a press agent for breweries, but prior to 1919-21 the brewing industry was the fifth largest in the country. If the incoming Congress will vote as they drink, they will legalize beer. I am talking from an economic viewpoint. If the law is revised there will be from 1,000,000 to 1,200,000 men employed in breweries within six months. Putting that number of men to work--think what it will mean to other industries!"

These figures were at wide variance with others given out at the White House last week by Secretary Walter Hughes Newton, who said he had got his from the Census Bureau, not at the instance of President Hoover but for an enquirer whose name was not revealed. Government statistics showed that in 1914, at the peak of U. S. brewing, some 75,000 men were employed in breweries. By 1919, State Prohibition laws had cut that number to 42,000. Still making near beer are 6,500 workers.

Host. Meanwhile. Detroit prepared to receive its visitors, the largest convention of Legionnaires ever held. Three members of the "Little Jewish Navy'' gang were executed in an apartment house for hijacking $110,000 worth of liquor which had been imported to slake the palates of thirsty Legionnaires. One of the deceased, ''Nigger Joe" Leiboutz, was not only a Legion member but belonged to the local committee for the registration of delegates.

When the Detroit scene was set, 125,000 Legionnaires, their wives and families trouped in. Decked out in gold, blue and maroon uniforms, they filled every hotel room in town, overflowed into Canada across the river. Some had to sleep in parked Pullmans. All over the city were Wartime Salvation Army and Knights of Columbus huts. The society of the 40 & 8, inner sanctum of the Legion, had brought its French freight car, symbol of the organization. Mascot goats, Gila monsters, rattlesnakes, dogs, skunks, burros were displayed everywhere.

Into this tumult suddenly came word that President Hoover had changed his mind at the last minute, decided to come out from Washington to address the gathering. Then indeed the Legion felt itself an important national body. Bonus whooping, which had been the chief exercise of pre-convention gatherings, increased in fervor. More than 18,000 strong, delegates and guests packed into Olympia Arena to hear their President. Few were sanguine enough to believe that he would subscribe to an immediate Bonus payment in full. Some expected a compromise might be suggested. All listened in respectful silence to the grave, stirring speech in which the President called on the Legion to forget the Bonus entirely for the time being (see p. 13).

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