5% Is Enough

Cleveland's Jack & Heintz (Jahco) last week put their circus touch on lobbying. Bill Jack, Jahco's brass-lunged president, invited 525 Senators and Representatives to dine at his expense in Washington's swank Mayflower Hotel. He wanted to: 1) explain Jahco's renegotiation troubles (TIME, Jan. 24); 2) make a proposition.

About 80 Congressmen-- and some 180 free riders--sat down with tieless, sport-shirted Bill Jack, ate seafood cocktail with Russian dressing, tiny brown-bread-&-cheese sandwiches, terrapin soup, breast of capon and Virginia ham, potatoes au gratin, lettuce and grapefruit salad, ice cream, demitasse. Well-fed--a few grumbled because there was no liquor--they listened to Lobbyist Jack's proposition.

All he wanted from Congress was a little piece of legislation guaranteeing Jahco 5% profit on gross war business, after taxes. (On this basis Jahco's 1944 profit would be $5,000,000, just 50 times Jahco's total worth in 1940.)

Cried Bill Jack: "If anyone says Jack & Heintz are profiteers . . . he is a liar."

Pennsylvania's Representative Herman P. Eberharter quietly interposed that he had heard that Jahco's top executives had trebled their salaries. Red-faced, indignant Bill Jack roared back: "That's a lie. I will not profit one cent from this war."

This brought Illinois' stocky Republican Representative Calvin D. Johnson hopping to his feet. Said he solemnly: "I wish there were more men in American industry like you."

But many an absent Congressman, mindful of the $891,000 in salaries that Bill Jack, his family and Partner Ralph M. Heintz have collected in two years, was less enthusiastic. Mused Wyoming's Senator Joe O'Mahoney: "It seems to be rather interesting that they have money enough to stage an affair of this type."

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