Another Fishing Trip

One of Vice President Garner's last acts before going off fishing last week was to name a crew of Senators to conduct, with colleagues from the House, the great fishing expedition called for by President Roosevelt in his message about millionaire tax-evaders (TIME, June 14). That this expedition, beginning this week, would not greatly enliven Washington's hottest weeks and not give the newspapers something very much better to talk about than strikes and the President's defeat on the Court Plan, observers suspected when Mr. Garner put Mississippi's urbane Pat Harrison at the head of a crew among whom only Wisconsin's La Follette really thirsts for millionaire blood. The others were Massachusetts' tame Walsh, Utah's sick King, Georgia's bland George, calm Capper of Kansas. From the House, where quick thinking by Representative O'Connor had kept command of the expedition, and therefore its publicity, in Congressional hands instead of passing it over to the Treasury (TIME, June 14), the chief fisherman was bald old Chairman Doughton of the Ways & Means Committee.

The Messrs. Harrison & Doughton went promptly to the White House to get instructions as to just how Franklin Roosevelt wanted his millionaires taken: gently in nets, with hook-line-&-sinker, or by harpoon. What he told them was not, of course, revealed. But Washington soon guessed that harpooning Old Deal millionaires while gently netting or releasing New Deal millionaires, was going to call for nice piscatorial skill. Before sailing time on Wednesday the fishermen very properly refused to name their quarry. They left that to their guide and first witness, Secretary Morgenthau. But Senator Harrison announced politely: "I am sure that the committee will want full publicity."

In downtown Manhattan, the cool, deep haunt of many a millionaire, a surprising disturbance took place even before Mr. Morgenthau went into action. Cards printed in haste but with greatest dignity suddenly announced the disruption of the venerable law firm of Hughes, Schurman & Dwight. This is the firm from which the Chief Justice of the U. S. resigned to mount the high bench in 1930. The present senior partner, Charles Evans Hughes Jr., announced the formation of Hughes, Richards, Hubbard & Ewing. His former partner, the business & tax expert of the old firm, announced under the name of Dwight, Harris, Koegel & Caskey.

Manhattan and Washington quickly guessed what had happened. Lawyer Dwight's name was, rightly or wrongly, down on Secretary Morgenthau's list as a practitioner of income tax devices such as the White House was now condemning. However remotely, Partner Hughes's father's name might now be linked with that of a specimen in the Congressional fishbowl. Instant dissolution of this link was the only thing possible for Mr. Hughes Jr.

Burning with a hot sense of injustice, Lawyer Dwight explained through his lawyer that, yes, he had executed a tax-saving maneuver on his 1933 return, but he had carefully explained his reasoning to the Treasury and specifically asked for a ruling, which it had not yet given. "Under these circumstances," fumed Lawyer Dwight, "the moral implication of the Administration's criticism is inexcusable!"

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