More Inside

Just before he was finally led off to jail last July, aged Albert Bacon Fall published some reminiscences of his bold, exciting years in Washington as President Harding's Secretary of the Interior (TIME, July 27). Among other things he took credit for ushering Herbert Hoover into national politics by getting him his job as Harding's Secretary of Commerce. Last week the public was apprised of more reminiscences of the Harding administration, this time by Harry Micajah Daugherty.* If Fall took a bitter pleasure in telling what he thought of Daugherty and how he "objected" to his appointment as Harding's Attorney General, even more pleasure does Daugherty now take in telling a pretty tale of how Fall got into the Cabinet.

"A. B. Fall and I," says Daugherty, "could never have been chums in any political enterprise. I think at the last moment Harding began to feel the unspoken antagonism between us and hesitated to make the appointment.

"And Fall met the crisis in his usual bull-headed fashion. He sent Harding an urgent telegram asking his immediate appointment, signed my name to it without phoning me, wiring, or in any way hinting his purpose.

"This message he boldly charged to A. B. Fall. . . .

"The appointment was made and the mine laid for an explosion about to shake the nation."

Curiously enough, Daugherty, too, claims credit for getting Herbert Hoover into the Cabinet. His story is the same as Fall's--that Senators opposed to Hoover were persuaded to let him in as the price of making Andrew William Mellon Secretary of the Treasury--but Daugherty says it was he, not Fall, who "talked turkey" to potent Senators Knox and Penrose of Pennsylvania. "Penrose was quick to catch my ultimatum--no Hoover, no Mellon. Old Penrose grinned and held out his hand: 'All right. You win. Announce Mellon's appointment and I will kill the movement to reject Hoover.' "

It is suggested that Daugherty lived to regret befriending Herbert Hoover. In dedicating the Harding Memorial in Ohio, the President spoke of Harding's "be-trayers." Onetime Attorney General Daugherty, who says his resignation in 1924 was due to a plot by Senators Lodge of Massachusetts and Pepper of Pennsylvania, thinks that anyone who speaks of President Harding's "betrayers" shows a "lack of taste."

*The Inside Story of the Harding Tragedy, by Thomas Dixon in collaboration with Daugherty, to be published shortly by Churchill Co., Manhattan.

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