Committed in a Cathedral

For five long years Louisiana has been held fast in the political fist of its crudest, rudest demagog--Huey Pierce ("King-fish") Long. By last week it appeared that his grip was gradually weakening. His prestige has been badly damaged at home because patronage from President Roosevelt has been going to anti-Long men, a situation which caused Senator Long to blurt out at a Milwaukee veterans' convention: "To hell with the Administration!" And over his head hangs the threat of Federal court action on charges of income tax evasion.

In 1932 a Republican Senate appointed a committee headed by Nebraska's Robert Beecher Howell. now dead, to investigate campaign expenditures. Also last year Senator Long, by a feat of political rough-&-tumble. had his henchman John Overton, a Grade B Representative, nominated (and automatically elected) to Louisiana's other seat in the U. S. Senate. Defeated for renomination. Edwin Sidney Broussard spent his last days in Washington crying that he had been politically raped and robbed.

Last February the Howell committee, still Republican, went to New Orleans to scrutinize the Overton-Broussard contest. During an explosive two weeks it became clear that the foes of Senator Long were trying to put the "Kingfish" and his crowd on trial instead of Senator Overton. The inquiring Senators scattered, dismissed their counsel. For nine months the inquiry slept. Fortnight ago it was revived as the result of vigorous protests from such outraged Louisianans as Mrs. Hilda Phelps Hammond, sister of one of the publishers of the anti-Long New Orleans Times-Picayune, and her Women's Committee of Louisiana (TIME, Oct. 9).

This time the investigating body was predominantly Democratic, but again it was Senator Long and the Long machine which were under fire. Chairmanned by Texas' long-legged, handsome Connally, the committee included Utah's white-socked Thomas and Kentucky's big-bodied Logan. Also present was tousle-headed John G. Holland, for years a pugnacious, canny investigator for the Department of Justice, the man who dug up and prepared much of the Teapot Dome evidence for the late Senator Walsh. That Investigator Holland was on hand was due to no fault of the committee which had retained him. He had been compelled to pay his own fare from Washington. A courageous gadfly, he raised much Ned during the hectic hurly-burly which accompanied each day's hearings in the assembly room of the Scottish Rite Cathedral. He threatened to ''blow the lid off this investigation" if he were gagged. He referred to Senator Long, who during one of the early sessions sat hunched over a table with hate and malice knotting his puffy face, as "the rat from Louisiana who sent Senator Howell to his grave." "You kept me bottled up in Washington for four months," he raged at the committee. "You came down here to close this case and not to investigate!" When Senator Connally failed to make his appearance the first two days of the hearings, belligerent Investigator Holland branded him as "yellow." On this occasion the Texan asked newsmen: "What would you do to a moron like that unless you threw him down and spit in his ear?" "I didn't know he was going crazy," commented Kentucky's Logan, imperturbable beneath a huge banner on which were painted the 32 Masonic symbols, with Ordo ab Chao blazoned in the middle.

In one of their daily passages with Investigator Holland, the Senators had complained that their sleuth had brought no specific evidence of corruption in the Overton-Broussard primary race. Mr. Holland embarrassed them with a sharp reference to the seven mailbags of documents which remained unopened in Washington. From witnesses which Holland, Broussard and the Honest Election League did gather, however, there was evidence aplenty of how the Long machine works.

Last week one witness testified that a man slated to be a Broussard poll watcher had served in that capacity for Overton, for which he was rewarded with a $300-per-month job with the New Orleans Dock Board.

Two more Broussard representatives failed to serve, one because he "over-slept," another because he was warned that if he did "it would be just too bad."

Accommodating Overton men had supplied poll tax receipts for their partisans on election day, had instituted "curb service" for lady voters.

Recalled one Broussard watcher: "Like Houdinis, the Overton commissioners produced ballots out of nowhere."

Previously the committee had been told that in some precincts the method of counting ballots was for Overton commissioners to shuffle the votes together and announce to cowed Broussard men: "We'll give you 50 and if you don't like it, try and do something about it."

Other testimony: a policeman voted three times in New Orleans; Overton workers marked ballots for voters outside the polling places; a blind man who tried to vote for Broussard had his ballot snatched away by an Overton lieutenant.

This travesty on popular suffrage, said anti-Long witnesses, was made possible by a practice which Senator Long freely admitted on the witness stand. Every primary candidate in Louisiana is permitted a staff of poll workers. In one-third of Louisiana's parishes, the Kingfish testified, his machine had paid the entrance fees of dummy candidates who subsequently withdrew in favor of regular Long candidates but left their poll workers in the field.

Offended by the bargeman and butcher-boy atmosphere of the hearings, one by one Plaintiff Broussard, his counsel and the Honest Election League had by last week withdrawn from the investigation, declaring that it "had degenerated into an effort to purify Huey Long."

At that point, the Senatorial committee retired to take thought. "I don't know where we are," mused Senator Logan. "Gentlemen, we're treading on dangerous ground. Texas went Republican once. Suppose there's a close contest between Republicans and Democrats for the control of the Senate. Senator Connally, how'd you like to have your Texas Republican opponent contest your certificate of election on the grounds that Texans didn't allow niggers to vote?"

Utah's Thomas shook his head. "There is no precedent to guide us."

"This case," pontifically agreed Senator Overton, "is sui generis."

Suddenly a bright idea hit practical Senator Logan. "There is not one line of a charge against Senator Overton with the U. S. Senate yet," he recalled. Senator-reject Broussard, whose accusations had been filed with the Senate committee, although he had not formally contested the election, was advised that charges should be brought "on behalf of the people of Louisiana" to the Senate. The widespread belief that the none-too-courageous Senate committee, in the face of overwhelming evidence of political wrongdoing, was foxily preparing a technical "out" for itself stirred up equally widespread resentment and rage in Louisiana. Last week Senator Long's foes were confident that they could soon harness these popular emotions to dethrone the Kingfish.

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