Riot Report

The President feared that the American Legion Convention meeting in Portland, Ore. would censure him for removing the Bonus Expeditionary Force from Washington last July. Therefore he ordered his Attorney General William DeWitt Mitchell to draw up the Administration's justification. On the morning the Legion Convention opened the President published it.

"It is probable the Bonus army brought to Washington the largest aggregation of criminals ever assembled in the city at any one time," declared the Attorney General. He reported: 1) 4,723 bonuseers who got travel loans from the Veterans" Bureau were fingerprinted; 2) of these 1,069 had police records; 3) 829 of them had been convicted; 4) of the convictions 138 were for larceny, 95 for drunkenness, 80 for old military offenses, 69 for vagrancy. Between a quarter and a third of the known members of the B. E. F. could not be identified as War veterans.

To soothe legionaries who were among the B. E. F., President Hoover said: "I wish to state emphatically that the extraordinary proportion of criminal, Communist and non-veteran elements amongst the marchers should not be taken to reflect upon the many thousands of honest, law-abiding men who came to Washington with full right of presentation of their views to Congress. This better element acted at all times to restrain crime and violence, but after the adjournment of Congress a large portion of them returned to their homes and gradually these better elements lost control."

In Portland, Secretary of War Patrick Jay Hurley, regarded as a personal representative of the President, was booed as he walked to the convention platform. He was seated as an Oklahoma delegate, thus being apparently obliged to join in voting for immediate payment of the cash Bonus. (The Oklahoma delegation was also pledged to vote for repeal of the 18th Amendment.) After a safe & sound speech on armament, Secretary Hurley was let off the platform with more cheers than boos.

Professional B. E. F. leaders tut-tutted the Mitchell report, called it a "political alibi." They pointed out that even if 1,069 bonuseers did have police records they were all proved by the Attorney General's own words to be real veterans entitled to the Bonus.

So pleased was the President with the gains he had been told he was making (see col. 3) that he decided to hold his campaign fire until October. He would then make at least two speeches in the Midwest, possibly in Minnesota and at his native West Branch, Iowa, in the farm strike area. There might also be speeches in Chicago and New York. P:Thirty years ago young Raymond Robins was prospecting for gold in Alaska when he had a vision of a gigantic luminous cross against a snow-clad mountain. He fell on his knees, prayed. After making his fortune in gold, he returned to Chicago, took up social reform. A pallid-faced, burning-eyed young zealot, he crusaded up & down Halsted and West Madison Streets against vice, liquor, crime, cor ruption.

Last week President Hoover invited his old friend Col. Robins, now rich and famed, to lunch at the White House. Reformer Robins missed the meal, sent no explanation. He had last been seen leaving a Manhattan club. President Hoover. spreading his alarm on the front page of the nation's Press, ordered a search by Federal agents. Mrs. Robins feared her husband had been kidnapped by gangsters to avenge his Dry sleuthing in Florida last spring. Acquaintances later reported seeing him hurrying around Chicago. Commented Lemuel Parton, oldtime newsman: "Col. Robins, no longer like Mirabeau, has changed a lot. Halsted and West Madison Streets haven't changed at all." P:After a two weeks' vacation Hoover Secretary Theodore ("Ted") Joslin returned to his White House job. His substitute Edward Tracy ("Ted") Clark, old-time Coolidge secretary, faded out of the picture, returned to Drug, Inc. P:Informed by Secretary Mills that treasury funds are now available, President Hoover ordered the expenditure of $186,224,000 in public works--a provision of the 1932 Relief Act which the White House bitterly opposed. Purpose: to make more jobs. The President announced that this fiscal year the Government will spend more than $750,000,000 on construction jobs to provide employment, "more than double the normal pace." P:Next day President Hoover announced that he expected to whittle not less than $500,000,000 out of the 1934 budget. Said he: "A part of this can be accomplished in reduction of construction activities. . . . Such expenditures will be less neces sary for employment purposes after June of next year." Herbert Hoover may not be President when the 1934 budget becomes operative July 1, 1933. P:Last week President Hoover accepted the resignation of John William Pole, Comptroller of the Currency. For 17 years a civil servant, Mr. Pole had been made Comptroller during the final days of the Coolidge regime. He showed rare courage in office by allowing national banks to carry their bonds at fair values through the worst of Depression, thus saving them from insolvency. Mr. Pole becomes president of Fidelity Investment Association of Wheeling and Manhattan.

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