Brothers Howell

The first son born to Daniel Howell, Warrenton, Ga. blacksmith, was killed in the Civil War. Last week Blacksmith Howell's 22nd child was indicted by a Federal grand jury in Atlanta for misusing WPA funds. And Blacksmith Howell's 23rd and last offspring declared that the charge marked the beginning of a New Deal "reign of terror" in Georgia.

Brother Hugh Howell, last of the blacksmith's brood, was for years a satellite of, but no relation to, famed Atlanta Lawyer Albert Howell, brother of Clark Howell, publisher of the Atlanta Constitution. Hugh Howell emerged from obscurity when he stage-managed the Roosevelt pre-election junket to Georgia. With the rise of Eugene Talmadge, Hugh Howell was made chairman of the Democratic State Executive Committee. Brother Hugh did not forget his older brother Alexander, a country schoolteacher, who soon became State School Supervisor. Last autumn "Alex" was also put in charge of WPA Project No. 1744, in which a number of idle girls were employed gathering public school records for the past 15 years. Last month when the anti-Roosevelt Congress of "Goober Democrats" gathered at Macon (TIME, Feb. 10), on each & every seat lay a copy of The Georgia Woman's World, a four-page throw-away devoted largely to photographs of President & Mrs. Roosevelt consorting with Negroes. Promptly the local WTAdministration announced that Brother Alexander Howell had used WPA labor to wrap and mail copies of The Georgia Woman's World. Last week's indictment followed.

Stormed Brother Hugh Howell: "Within a few hours of the moment I nominated Eugene Talmadge for President [at the Macon convention], the wheels were set in motion to hang something--anything-- on Georgia opponents of the National Administration. My wife was called on by Federal tax experts and made to show every check stub from 1933. They hoped to make a tax-evasion charge against me. Then they went after my brother. ... If you don't bow down and worship the Wallaces, the Tugwells and the Frankfurters, they want to put you in the penitentiary!"

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