National Affairs: Great Lobby Hunt

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Great Lobby Hunt

Lobbyists generally prey on Senators. They are fatter, more influential prey than Representatives. Last week Senators— five of them as a special investigating committee—began to prey on lobbyists. Witnesses winced and twitched uncomfortably as Senators Caraway, Walsh of Montana and Borah took the lead in uncovering their undercover work. The week's developments: Pottery. Fredrick L. Koch is a Tariff Commission expert on ceramics. During the Senate tariff hearings he prompted Senator King with questions to show that the industry was not as depressed as its leaders made out. For this the potters unsuccessfully attempted to have him discharged from the Commission's employ. The chief complaint against Mr. Koch was the man who had given him his Com-mission job—William Burgess of Pennsylvania, onetime (1921-1925) Tariff Commissioner, now vice-president of U. S Potters Association. Lobbyist Burgess, now 72, denied he was a lobbyist, but explained that the potters paid him $7,500 per year to represent them in Washington. The National Electrical Manufacturers Association paid him $2,500 for the same purpose and the National Association of Wool Manufacturers $1,800. He also did business on a contingent basis for the greeting card industry. He had, he said, gotten his start in Washington by means of a card from his college chum. President Thomas Woodrow Wilson, which still helped him approach Democratic Senators. Lobbyist Burgess had requested the dismissal of Mr. Koch because, he explained, he had put the pottery industry in "the wrong light" before the Senate Finance Committee. Mr. Koch was not dismissed, though potters carried their complaints even to President Hoover. Sugar. Frank were the avowals of Harry A. Austin, secretary-treasurer of the U. S. Beet Sugar Association, of his efforts to obtain a higher tariff on sugar as a protection to the domestic industry. He told investigators that his headquarters had spent $500,000 in seven years to "educate" the public. He even admitted that most of his press releases were "bunk." For his services he receives $8,000 per year. He admitted that he had misrepresented William Green, president of the American Federation of Labor, as favoring a higher sugar duty, but said it was an "accidental mistake." Denying that he was a lobbyist who buttonholed Senators, Lobbyist Austin protested that his activities were entirely ethical and aboveboard, that they were necessary to combat the "propaganda" of foreign sugar interests, particularly the National City Bank, in favor of a low duty.

In Connecticut. The climax of the committee's week came in its scrutiny of how one Senator had deliberately hired a lobbyist and taken him, disguised as a Senate clerk, into the Finance Committee's secret hearings as a means of getting higher tariff rates for his State (TIME, Oct. 7). The Senator was Hiram Bingham of Connecticut. The lobbyist was Charles L. Eyanson, tariff "expert," assistant to the president (of the Connecticut Manufacturers Association. Together Lobbyist Eyanson and Senator Bingham secured tariff increases for 44 of Connecticut's 51 industries. They averaged about 4% and were worth approximately $75,000,000 in "protection" to the State's manufacturers.