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About The Columbia sentinel. (Harlem, Ga.) 1882-1924 | View Entire Issue (Dec. 5, 1921)
Senator Thos. E. Watson’s Speech On The Ford-Newberry Case. (Continued from Page Two.) frankness, “Oh, well, there is no bribery.” Well, if there was no bribery, he did not buy his seat, If there was no bribery, nobody bought his seat. It seems to me that the admission of the Senator from Montana puts his case out of court, except for mere oratorical purposes and lor campaign use. I mean to let the country know that there is not a particle of testimony here that. Truman H. Newberry bought his seat or had It bought for him—not a par¬ ticle. I have not read all the thousands of pages of these questions and answers in the record, Our State supreme court, and I suppose other supreme courts, do not now tolerate the presentation of a case in that way. They require that the narrative form be adopted, so that the reader will not fiave to straggle and strug¬ gle with question and answer and cross-question and cross-answer through thousands of pages. But I have done this: I listened most of the three days to the very able Bpeech of the Senator from Ohio (Mr. Pomevene). I listened most of the two days of the very able speech of the Senator from Montana (Mr. Walsh), I heard them read into the Record what they supposed to be the strongest evidence against Truman H. New¬ berry. 1 have read the report of the majority. I have read the report- of the minority. I studied carefully the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States. It would seem that I studied it with more care than is customary with those who are contending that this man and his State should both suffer the greatest indignity which this body could put upon them. Acting as a juror and under oath. I must have evidence, competent testi¬ mony, which convinces me beyond a reasonable doubt that Truman H. Newberry was a party to the crime that put him in the Senate, if anybody committed a crime in that connection, else my own conscience would not be satisfied, and I think a good deal more of that than I do of the opinions of others. Mr. President, it seems to me that the issue in Michigan in the election between Mr. Ford and Mr. Newberry was pretty much the same as it was in Georgia, to wit, the League of Nations. We can not start up a rabbit on this side and chase him for 15 minutes, hut what we find him running into the League of Nations. Well, the rabbit may go in, but we are not going in. Michigan is normally a Republi¬ can State, just as Georgia is normally a Democratic State; and it is no more extraordinary that Michigan should send two Republican Senators here 1 than it is that Georgia should send two Democratic Senators here. It is a normal state of things. Anything else would be abnormal and would of itself excite suspicion and court investigation. As to the methods used and the money used and the laws of Michigan, I shall come to them later, and 1 Shall discuss them like a lawyer talking to lawyers. First of all, how did Mr. Ford get into the sena¬ torial race? The man who helped him found his magazine alleges, in the issue of September 17, 1921, that Mr. Ford did not wish to enter the race; that he came to Washington upon the invitation of President Wilson; that Mr. Ford Was accompanied on that trip by his attorney; that the attorney had a written statement in his pocket ready to give to the press telling the country that he would not he a candidate; and that after going into the White House and having an inter¬ view with President Wilson, he came out and told his lawyer to destroy that statement because he had deter¬ mined to enter the race. Has that statement been de¬ nied? Will anybody now deny it? Now is a pretty good time to deny It. President Wilson, holding the views he did, with the golden 14 points—his famous 14, which are now the "lost golden fleece” of nations, very naturally wanted a vote here in the Senate in favor of the League of Nations, Consequently he conscripted Mr. Henry Ford. He wanted Mr. Newberry defeated because he knew or believed that Mr. Newberry would vote against the League. It was necessary to bring into action another Senator who would support Wilsonism and the League of Nations. That is the real secret of the mighty ef¬ fort made in Michigan to overcome a normal Republi¬ can majority and that is the real secret of the savage hatred against Mr. Newberry such as has been shown on the floor of the Senate by the left-over Wilsonites. There are a few of them left, but there will be fewer 4he next time the people get a whack at them. Who is Henry Ford and what were his qualifica¬ tions for a seat in this Chamber, the most august law¬ making body in the world or that ever was in the world? He is a man who has made a wonderful suc¬ cess in accumulating millions of dollars. If he were in Wall Street, he would feel the thunder and lightning of my friend the Senator from Alabama at least once a week. (Laughter.) Henry Ford is a man who brought a libel suit against a certain newspaper in Chicago. He went on the witness stand, was sworn, and examined in his own behalf, and, according to the newspapers, he swore that he did not know how to read. He is as marvelous a witness ns he had been a marvelous gath¬ erer of gold. Talk about golden chariots! The New¬ berry family could hardly furnish pin money for Henry Ford’s family. Henry Ford Is reported to have sworn that he could not read, and yet he is editing a weekly paper devoted to war upon the Jewish race—not upon some criminal Jew, convicted or unconvicted, but upon the whole race—the race that produced Moses, Solomon, David, Rachel, Ganibetta, Disraeli, Sir Moses Monte fiore, and Jesus Christ. All Christendom rests upon a Book, and that Book is the Book holding the creed of the Jew. Nevertheless, Henry Ford condemns the whole race, forgetting that in all our wars the Jew has fought side by side with the Gentile, forgetting that the soundest principles of democracy and good govern¬ ment and catholic humanity are to ,be found In the sacred parchments of the Jews, forgetting that the present French Republic was founded by a Jew, and that Jews compose music that will perhaps outlive the Pyramids and every government that now stands upon the globe. 1 would wage relentless warfare upon a convicted Jew, and would have him punished for a heinous crime, as the Jewish law Itself provides, but I doubt the sen atorial fitness of a man who indicts a whole race be¬ cause of the faults of some of its black sheep. In that famous Chicago case Henry Ford is le pCirted to have sworn that he did not know who Bene¬ dict Arnold was, but was Inclined to believe that lie THE COLUMBIA SENTINEL, THOMSON, GEORGIA. was the man who wrote Matthew Arnold’s literary works, it is a wonder to me that Mr. Ford did not say that one or the other of these Arnolds wrote Shakespeare's plays and Washington's Farewell Ad¬ dress. What were the relations between Mr. Henry Ford and President Woodrow Wilson? Mr. President, as my friend from Alabama (Mr. Heflin 1 would say, this is a serious question. Did not Henry Ford give $50,000 to Wilson’s campaign fund during the Mist month of the struggle in 1916, and do so at the personal re¬ quest of Mr, Tumulty? It is so stated in this paper published by Henry Ford's ex-partner, and it was published in September, and now we are nearly at December, and nobody has denied It. Will anybody now deny it? It is a pretty good time to make a denial. Did that liberal gift have anything to do with keeping Henry Ford’s son out of the Army, when so many hundreds of thousands of other men s sons were in the Army, thousands of them fighting, suffering, dying in Flanders and in France, while Edsel Ford was continuing to make tin lizzies to run against golden chariots? Mr. President, i supposed that the last golden chariot that we ever had went up to heaven when a Jewish prophet went up. Did (he Senator from Kentucky ever see a golden chariot? Mr. President, what else did Henry Ford get out of Wilson's honest and patriotic administration? It was repovted that he got $14,000,000 for the construc¬ tion of Eagle boats which were either useless or not constructed; and when that fact wa brought home fa Henry Ford he said he was going to return the money to Uncle Sam. I was anxious to have a front seat and see Henry do that, but he never has done it. Let us come to something more specific, proven by the records of the War Department. The Ford Motor Co., according to the War De¬ partment, rereived from Wilson’s Administration $249, 000 for tools which were never delivered. I suppose Heury has them yet. He also has the money, unless he has spent it on this election. The Ford Motor Co., for tractors: Number deliv¬ ered, none. Amount paid, $1,209,000. Where are those tranors? They might be converted Into golden chariots, for all I know. The Ford Motor Co., for spare parts: number de¬ livered, none. Amounts paid, $5,517,000. That leaves out the Eagle boats. Those facts came from the War Department to Congressman Begg, and they came out after the fishing trip'which Mr. Ford took with President Harding. If President Harding now knows those facts, Henry Ford may not again go fishing with the President. There was a proseeution of Truman H. Newberry and a number of his workers—-135 as I remember the number. The records of the Department of Justice show that Mitchell Palmer, the Attorney General, paid out $73,000 for fees for extra lawyers. If there was such a plain and simple case against Truman Now¬ herry and these 135 men, why could not the Attorney General or one of his assistants, or the district attor¬ ney and one of his assistants, conduct the case? Besides that, the Department of Justice sent to Michigan more than 100 detectives to rake the State with a comb to find evidence of criminality on the part of Truman Newberry and his workers. Did they find it? If it was there, they should have done so. If they found it, what became of It; it is not in this record. Talk about loss of papers! We heard a great deal about loss of papers. Who lost the papers from Mitchell Palmer's Department of Justice as to the ex¬ pense acounts of these 100 detectives during the months and months that they were combing Michigan in the effort to find testimony upon which to convict Mr. Newberry and his workers? It is not in the Depart¬ ment of Justice. How were these detectives paid? Were they paid by checks? If so, where are the chepks? Was there a stub for each check? If so, where is the stub? Was there an expense account? If so, where is it? When a Government loses its records, it seems to me that there is something more mysterious about it than when a private individual loses one; and 1 do not think it lies in the mouth of the Government to be making criminal charges against Newberry and his friends when it paid out so much of the people's money without authority. How many people in this country know that in addition to the district attorney and his assistants, the Attorney General and his, $73,009 of their money was put into the pockets of lawyers to have convicted Mr. Newberry and his friends? How many of the people of this country know that the Department of Justice was so eager to put Nwberry in the penitentiary, where he could not vote againBt the League of Nations, that they sent more than 100 Secret Service men to Michi¬ gan and kept them there for months hard at work to drum up testimony which they could not find? It is said that the Department of Justice under Mr. Mitchell Palmer spent more than $400,000 In their efforts to convict Mr. Newberry and send him to the penitentiary. Were they simply trying to get rid of Newberry, or were they trying to get Ford in? That Is a common-senRe question, A mere vacancy here was not worth $400,uOO. It is not worth that much now. Now I come to the amendment offered by the Senator from Montana (Mr. Walsh). In substance that amendment says that Michigan held a primary in which rival candidates ran for the nomination and that nobody got the nomination. It says, in effect, that Michigan had a general election in which there were rival can¬ didates, and in that election nobody got alePetl Oh, what a strange state of imbecility Michigan has fallen into—nominating primaries, and no nomination; gen¬ eral elections, and nobody elected. Well, If Mr. New¬ berry was not elected, why wsr not Ford the man who should have had the commission? Usually, when two men run, one of them is entitled to the commission; and they were so anxious to get Mr. Ford in here, with his vote in favor of the League of Nations, that they had a recount. That doeB not look very much like they were Ignoring the claims of Mr. Ford. It has been said here with a good deal of empha¬ sis that Mr. Newberry was not known In hlg own State. Mr. President, that Is no unusual thing in a public servant. One of the best men who ever represented Georgia in Washington City sat on the Interstate Com¬ merce Commission in his earlier days, Judson Q. Clements, and 1 do not suppose he was known to a hundred men in Georgia. A. O. Bacon was Senator here for many years, and he mixed so little among our people that not half the people of his own city—Macon, Ga.—knew him by sight. He was a name, an honored name, but only that;'and had he run for something else, or indeed when he did run for re-election, he needed publicity and he got it in the daily papeis and in the weekly papers, and 1' assume that it cost something; and I think if it did he violated no la\v. Mr. President, there is pending i: the House of Representatives a very serious charge, made, not by an obscure Frenchman, but by the eminent author of the latest liisto y of France, Gabriel Hanoteaux. In that statement, first given out in Paris, and which came to my notice two years ago, this historian says that our country was “propagandaed” into the war by the international banking house of J. P. Mor¬ gan & Co. A Congressman has introduced a btll m the other House to, have that charge investigated, and no investigation is made. As the Senator from Ala¬ bama (Mr. Heflin) would say, “Mr. President, this is a very serious mater.” How was the sale of the Liberty Bonds to our people, to the amount of $25,000,000,000, put over? Were there any newspapers paid to carry full page advertisements? Were there nny speakers hired to make speeches? Were there any commisions give? What was the power that compelled our people to go into the depths of debt and misery to buy this enor¬ mous issue of bonds, $26,000,000,000 of them, if not publicity, just such as is charged was used in this campaign, or propaganda? It was propaganda. Hu¬ man nature is so constituted that the reader of a daily paper, seeing the same thing written day after day, and nobody allowed to deny, finally takes it to be the truth. Some Frenchman, I think it was Mirabeau, said that the wisest man would come to believe the silliest thing, if his valet repeated it to him every morning while he was dressing. A great, many of our people, take their opinions from the headlines of the daily papers. Comparatively few read anything else, and 1 am sure the Senator from Kentucky will agree with me about that. The point 1 wished to make was that the method employed by Truman H. Newberry to make himself known to the voters of Michigan, while he was serving in New York, was substantially the same used by the Wilson administration in putting over those vast isues of bonds. My friend the Senator from Ohio (Mr. Fomerene) became humorous when he spoke of the picturq which Commander Newberry had taken of himself on a wooden ship in Central Park, N. Y. That is a good deal nearer than you ever got Henry Ford to the war. and it was a good deal nearer than you ever got Edsel Ford to it. You never got him on any wooden ship or any other kind of ship. You got him in “tin Liz¬ zies” all right, and you got. him in the United States Treasury nil right, and you did not get any “Eagle” boats worth mentioning, but lie got millions of your money for goods he never delivered. Up was the man who was commandeered to come in here as a and he said himself that he thought Benedict Arnold wrote Matthew Arnold’s essays. Mr. President, I find that the Michigan statutes are quoted in the very able brief filed in the Supreme Court, by Mr. Charles E. Hughes, now Secretary of State, who last Monday made that noble speech before the Limitation of Armament. Conference which still rings round the world, and will have its benign influ¬ ence on generations yet unborn, not only in this, but in every other country. I will read from the brief, because the print is better than the print used in the Pomorene report, and therefore it is easier for me to read. The statutes of Michigan are exceedingly broad as to the money which a candidate may use, or which his friends may tise for him. There is virtually no limit to these expenditures. The first group of activities for which money may be spent includes traveling expenses, printing, stationery, advertising, postage, expressage, freight, telegraph, tele¬ phone, and public messenger services. That is a pretty broad scope, am! would permit the expenditure properly of a very large amount of money. I know that during my campaign in Georgia there was a speech of my own which ! wanted to get in a certain daily paper, and I asked what would be charged to print it, and the price was so high as to be prohibitive, and I could not and did not have it printed. Everybody knows that ft campaign year is a picnic year for newspapers—weekly, trl-wcekly, daily, and monthly. 1 read now from the brief the list of those things for which expenditures might be made: Second, For dissemination of printed information 10 the public. Third. For political meetings, demonstrations, and Conventions. Fourth. For the rent, maintenance, and furnishing of offices. Fifth. For the payment of clerks, typewriters, stenog¬ raphers, janitors, and messengers actually employed. Sixth. For the employment of challengers at prima¬ ries and elections to the number allowed by law ns such. Seventh. For the payment of public speakers. Mr. President, I have been making public speeches since I was 19 years old. I never got paid for a public speech in my life, except a strictly advertised lecture, confined to a lecture hall, and to a lecture audience who paid their admission fee. But the statute of Michigan allowed Henry Ford and Truman Newberry to hire speakers to go out, accompanied by bands of mu s^cians, to influence voters, You would not want a speaker who could not influence a voter, would you? You would not hire n speaker who would drive off voters, would you? Y’ou would not want a band that did not play good music, would you? You would not want a band that would make such a jangle of discord that everybody would run off, would you? You would hire the best that was in the market, and that would take a good deal of money. I tried to hire a band once in my campaign in Georgia, and 1 found that they wanted a hundred dol¬ lars, and as thnt was more than I thought the music was worth, I did not hire them. Rigfiffi. For coming and classifying, etc. Ninth. l or mailing canvasses of voters. It is as to the construction of that last clause that my friend from Montana differs from me, as to the hiring of canvassers for voters. He says that Bimply means to find out how a man is going to vote. I think that is a very narrow constrution. If It did not mean something more than that, they would not be worth paying for. It means what a speaker means; it means what a band means; it means, in my judgment, the presentation to the voters of whatever claims the can¬ didate may have. A man may be a very finished orator; he may be 3 able to make the welkin ring, to use our old friend as an expression; he may be able to sway the multitude by his voice and by his eloquence. He is hired for that purpose, and yet in private conversation he might bo as dull as a grindstone which sharpens other things and never gets sharp itself. Why, Mr. President, If the hiring of men to make canvasses docs not necessarily imply that they canvas.-, what is the meaning of the word canvassers? A Can¬ vasser is a man who does canvass, presumably with legal propriety. i read further. Eleventh. For employing: an counf-el. attorneys licens¬ ed to practice in accordance \v 'i the laws of the State, and for the necessary expenses of such counsel. That covers almost everything that one could ex¬ pect to be done to carry an election. It absolutely covers everything that is in this record. The man who was Henry Fords partner in the establishment of his magazine and who could not agree with him about his policy has said that Henry Ford's managers had the Michigan statutes before them al) the time and carried them out to the letter and in the spirit as far as they understood them. Much has been said here about the failure to pro¬ duce a witness whose illness, as claimed by the Sena¬ tor front Missouri (Mr. Spencer), was somewhat de¬ risively referred to by Senators on this side. In this magazine of September that very matter is referred to. The name of the witness is B. F. Emory, a clerk in Cite Newberry headquarters during the campaign. What does this ex-partner of Ford say about that witness? He said: I have never seen him, that T know of. but T hav« looked in' his ca e and have had a personal experience that impressed me. There were many sneers in the l-'ord report, and one would think that the illness which kept him from going: to Washington was a fake. By a coinci¬ dence Emery was injured by one of Henry Ford's auto¬ mobiles—that is, belonging: to Ford. The machine tipped over— Not the golden chariot, but the “tin Lizzie”— pinning Emery under it. There were three fractures >( the skull, an injured chest, broken ribs, dislocated hip, and other bruises. lie was in the hospital many weeks and is still a great sufferer from his injuries. For which, by the way, lie has brought suit against Mr. Ford. Another interesting item in this paper is that Mr. Henry Ford made a present of an automobile to everv Ford club in Michigan. If that is allowed by the Michigan statutes, I fail to get their meaning. A good deal has been said about the failure of Mr. Newberry to appear before the committee. Well, he has been absent from the Senate during the whole time that these savage attacks have been made upon him. Supposing him to lie a gentleman of some feeling, 1 can respect his absence. 1 would not have wanted to sit here and listen to such tirades of abuse leveled at me as were leveled at him. If I could not then and there have replied, 1 would have absented myself from the Chamber and remained away untlDYhe storm passed over, leaving it to my friends and all fair-minded men to take care of the justice of my cause. Speaking for myself, I do not. know Mr. Newberry by sight. I parsed him one day in the corridor when the Senator from South Dakota (Mr. Sterling) had been suddenly taken ill. That is the only time J» ever saw Mr. Newberry. I was there , to do what I could tor the Senator from South Dakota, ratlier than any¬ thing else. Mr. Newberry has already made solemn oath to the fact that he spent nothing to sain his seat and did not consent to or know of the use of any money in hla behalf. His swearing to it, a second time would not have added to the strength of Iiis first affidavit. Mr. President, I think it an unfortunate thing that Senators from the South should take such a prom¬ inent part in what I consider a political persecution. If I may he alloved the expression of an opinion, it is that unless the evidence absolutely compelled us to speak it would have been better for us not to have spoken. We should remember that Michigan held the frontier in the War of 1812, met the Ken¬ tuckians at the River Raisin, fought side by side with the Kentuckians there, and gave Andrew Jackson time to come up to the defense of New Orleans. It is true that poor old Gen. Hull, from New England, and not from Michigan, did surrender when the court-martial said he should not have done it. I am glad to remem¬ ber that it was a Southern President, James Madison,* who reversed the finding of that court-martial and gave that old man back his honor and his freedom. The passions of the Civil War, the most deplorable war thnt mankind had ever known prior to the late World War, are far from dead. The ashes cover them, but the live coals are there, and we meet the sectional feeling on every turn where it is section against sec¬ tion, interest against interest. It would he a wise policy if It could be made consistent with principle and conviction for us never to do a thing that would blow those cooling embers into another blazing flame. When we do so f we simply injure our own people and our own selves. Mr. President, during the time when the passions of the Civil War were still raging and the waves of hatred were leaping up like storm-tossed waves on the ocean Congress endeavored to impedch a southern man, Andrew Johnson, a man whose powerful speeches had done more to save the border States to the Union than all other influences combined. But when he.ventured to differ from the radical Republicans of that day they endeavored to Impeach him and to bring everlasting disgrace upon him, his family, and his State. They failed by one vote, and that vote came from Kansas. So great were the passions of that era that the man who was brave enough to spenk his convictions to save the Southern man never again held a public office. According to my recollection, he died last year. But Tennessee resented the persecution of Andrew Johnson on what they now commonly accept as frivolous charg¬ es nnd she returned him to the Senate, where he could face on equal terms the men who had arraigned him and tried to disgrace him. Of course, it is in the power of the Senate to expel Truman II, Net/berry, who has been sitting here for more than a year and who will, an surely bb day fol¬ lows nlght i come back If we do expel him. The work would be entirely futile, would defeat Itself If It were done. I am finding no fault with the Senators whose convictions lead them to ipeak against him or to vote against him, but I have Bhtdled this case as thoroughly as any Senator here, and my convictions are perfectly satisfactorily to my own conscience and l shall answer for them to the only people to whom 1 am responsible, tli© people of Georgia.
