Messiah on the March

Lives of football heroes, child actors, prodigious poets and boy Senators have demonstrated time & again the perils and penalties of early fame. Spotlighted in Washington last week was the rarer but less tragic phenomenon of a man to fame came late. Seventeen years ago Dr. Francis Everett retired to California to spend last years in the sun. Like that of every physician, his life in South Dakota's Black Hills had been a hard one which had him no fame and very little Legend has it that Dr. Townsend's new life began when he looked out of his California window one day, saw two crones dining from a garbage can. It is more reasonable to suppose that the old physician was set to brooding on the sorrows of the aged poor by the fact that his own savings were swept away by Depression and, instead of enjoying the well-earned ease and security which he had expected, he was forced at 60-odd to scrape a living as a real-estate salesman. In these circumstances Dr. Townsend conceived his Plan to pay every citizen over 60 a Government pension of $200 per month for life. Good & Grey. Dr. Townsend appeared on the national scene some two years ago as a gaunt, grey, gentle old man sincerely bent on doing good. Intelligent observers unanimously denounced his Planacea as a monstrous fantasy, but for Founder Townsend they had only pitying sympathy. He might be simpleminded, but he was also, they were sure, greathearted. Even when ugly rumors rose that the Townsend Plan had turned out to be only another mean racket, with poor deluded oldsters as its victims, such charges simply made most observers believe that good, grey Dr. Townsend was being used as a front by sharpers who had swarmed into his Old Age Revolving Pensions, Ltd. First hint that Dr. Townsend was more than a simple, pious figurehead came last March when shrewd young Robert Earl Clements, cofounder, national secretary and working boss of Old Age Revolving Pensions, suddenly resigned from the organization on the eve of his appearance before a special House investigating committee (TIME, April 6). It was then revealed that Dr. Townsend had been made violently jealous by public recognition of young Mr. Clement's real importance in OARP. The resulting split left the oldster undisputed master of the movement. Meantime anecdotes began circulating in Washington to the effect that his enormous publicity, his vast audiences, his worshipful followers, his new-found wealth and the obvious terror in which timid Congressmen held him had gone to Dr. Townsend's head. "World by Tail" From Old Age Revolving Pensions, Dr. Townsend testified, he had received salary and expenses totaling $16,557. His dividends from the National Townsend Weekly amounted to some $38,500. Of this total he said he had only about $500 in the bank. Although Dr. Townsend last March publicly assigned 90% of the National Townsend Weekly's profits to OARP "as long as there is need for it," he still owns a 50% interest in it. The Weekly, said he last week, is "worth $1,000,000." The committee's young Counsel James R. Sullivan of Kansas City quoted some letters written by Partner Townsend to Partner Clements last year.

"You and I have the world by the tail with a downhill pull on this thing, Earl, if we work it right . . ." wrote he from Washington. "You should be here to see the jitters that some of the Congressmen are in as a result of the mandates they are receiving from their constituents. It is fun. I am always spoken of as a soft-voiced, mild-mannered old chap. I have not received an unfriendly word from a single man at the Capitol building."

Commented Dr. Townsend last week: "I still think we have the country by the tail."

"To Hell with Them!" Urging formation of a Townsend third party in a letter to Clements last September, Dr. Townsend wrote: "I tell you, Old Fellow, the way for us to lick the stuffing out of the old parties is to become militant and go after them hammer and tongs for being totally incompetent, as we know they are. . . . We should begin ... to talk about the 'Townsend Party,' not wait in the foolish hope that one of the old groups will adopt us. If they do, they will treat us like poor adopted trash. To hell with them!"

Noting that Dr. Townsend's picture appeared with those of Washington and Lincoln on the cover page of the Townsendite "Manual for Speakers," Michigan's Hoffman asked its significance.

"I should like to be classed with them," replied Dr. Townsend blandly. "I hope to attain that place."

Did Dr. Townsend, inquired New York's Gavagan, like Townsend Plan literature which referred to him as "Christ reincarnate?"

"Yes," said Dr. Townsend, "I like it."

Asked to explain a recent appeal in the Townsend Weekly for a "defense fund" to be placed at his personal disposal on the "very great possibility" that the House investigating committee would impound OARP's funds, Dr. Townsend admitted after persistent questioning that he knew the committee had no power to impound his organization's funds.

"Then this statement was simply in-tended to divert contributions to your own pocket, wasn't it," asked a committeeman.

"That was the purpose of it," replied Dr. Townsend.

"Nonsense." Fretful and fidgety grew Dr. Townsend as, on the second day of questioning, committeemen tried to pin him down to the details of his Plan. He conceded that a transactions tax to raise pensions funds would involve the licensing of every farmer, collection of a tax on every sale from a dozen eggs to a bale of cotton. Had he ever pointed that out to his rural followers?

"No," said Dr. Townsend, "it was not necessary."

Would his tax fall on the poor?

"Naturally, it would fall on everybody," declared he. "Taxes always fall heaviest on the poor because there are so many of them."

Peppered with questions which he could not answer about the cost of administering the Plan and the basis for estimating the probable yield from a universal transactions tax, Dr. Townsend finally turned on his questioners, expressed his opinion of all such petty quibblings in a sharp bleat: "Oh, why all this nonsense?" Townsendgrams & Fraud. Third morning's questioning involved another Townsend appeal for funds. In January 1935 four men went to Washington to lobby the Townsend Plan through Congress. To pay their expenses Townsendites were asked to contribute to a special Congressional Action Fund, supplied $23,400. Four months later the four lobbyists quit their work, left Washington, having spent only $1,800 of the $23,400 fund. Nonetheless there promptly went out from Townsend headquarters a second appeal for contributions to the fund. To secretaries of some 5,000 Townsend Clubs were mailed "Townsendgrams," got up to look like Western Union messages. Each club was assigned a quota of 15-c- per member. Responses came in in apologetic driblets, but they added up to $11,490 in addition to the $21,000 already in hand for a lobby which no longer existed. That transaction, charged Counsel Sullivan, constituted a plain case of using the mails to defraud. To questions about it, flushed and flustered Dr. Townsend sullenly pleaded ignorance. Finally he asked for a five-minute recess, went out to pace the corridor. The committee adjourned until 2:30 p. m. At that hour Dr. Townsend did not reappear. His personal attorney, Sheridan Downey, pertly announced that he would not show up until 3:30. Was he ill? asked a committeeman. "No," said Mr. Downey. "My Duty." At 3:20 Dr. Townsend stalked into the room, his gaunt face drawn and grey. Trembling, he approached the committee table, said in a near-whisper: "I have a statement I desire to read to this committee." Chairman Bell explained that he would first have to examine the statement, asked to see it. Ignoring him, Dr. Townsend crumpled the paper in his hand, straightened his bony shoulders. "In view of the apparent unfriendly attitude of the committee," quavered he, "and the unfair attitude it has shown to me and to members of my organization, I deem it my duty to say that I shall no longer attend these committee meetings. ... I do not propose to come back again except under arrest. . . . Goodby, gentlemen." With this astonishing defiance of the U. S. Congress, the oldtime country doctor clapped on his sailor straw, turned his back on the committee, marched out of the room and into a waiting taxi which whizzed him out of sight. Martyr or Fool? Too dazed to move for a few minutes, the committee finally pulled itself together, had the room cleared, went into executive session. Hour later it was announced that the committeemen had voted unanimously to recommend that Dr. Townsend be cited for contempt of the House. After the House had convened next day, however, it was announced that action had been postponed. Torn between the alternatives of asking the House to make a martyr of Dr. Townsend or of letting Dr. Townsend make a fool of Congress, the hapless committeemen floundered through two more executive sessions, decided nothing.

Meantime from his retreat in Baltimore where he lolled in blue-striped pajamas while receiving newshawks, Dr. Townsend telegraphed his underlings to flaunt the Congressional subpoenas as he had done. "Dr. Townsend now prophesies," prophesied Dr. Townsend, "that the committee will not have the courage to put this matter up to the House because they will be afraid to give him a hearing before that body. They will weakly evade the issue and put this unhappy baby in the lap of the District Court. The case will not come to trial before the election."

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