The Press: Contemptuous Item

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A few months later (after Long got rid of various political friends of Ewing's) the States dropped Huey. Subsequently Publisher Thomson's Item and Tribune decided to back him. They stuck with Long and his successors for nine years while the Tribune's circulation soared to 47,817, then relapsed; the Item hit a peak of 67,603 and likewise receded. Meanwhile, Colonel Ewing died. Publisher Thomson tried to buy the States and merge it with his Item. Instead, to his bitter surprise, the Times-Picayune got the States for an afternoon edition.

Last year the Tribune's circulation was down to 28,614, less than when it started before Huey's rise to power. The Item (64,894) and the States (46,818) were approximately where they stood in 1924. But the Times-Picayune had risen from 78,571 to 111,529, was still New Orleans' favorite newspaper.

Frost. It was a States reporter who last June unearthed the scandal in Louisiana's administration that sent President James Monroe Smith of Louisiana State University to prison, and so far has brought four other convictions in New Orleans alone on charges of fraud. One day Reporter Meigs Frost (who once got honorable mention for a Pulitzer Prize) heard that WPA materials from the University's carpentry shops were going into a private home at Metairie, a rich New Orleans suburb in adjoining Jefferson Parish.

Out to Metairie with a photographer went Meigs Frost. They crawled through weeds and bushes on a neighboring lot, snapped pictures of a university truck delivering millwork. The house was for a close friend of Governor Richard Webster Leche. Two days later, after poring over deeds and checking facts, the States broke Reporter Frost's front-page story. Next day the Times-Picayune followed suit. Fortnight later, Governor Leche resigned, and his Lieutenant Governor, Huey's brother Earl Long, took his place.

With Louisiana in an uproar and Federal investigators hastening down from Washington, the Item abandoned Huey's followers to their fate. Suddenly the Item came out with an editorial platform calling for punishment of "all who have stolen from State and Federal Governments," rigid State economy, honest elections. Next day, in an editorial headed At Long Last, the States sarcastically welcomed the Item "to the fold of those who are battling to save Louisiana from political racketeers, political thieves and corruptionists."

Silent Shushan. What got the Item in trouble last week was a case that opened in Louisiana's Federal court against Abraham Lazard Shushan (who once backed Huey Long financially, in return got his name on New Orleans' palatial Shushan Airport) and four other defendants accused by the Government of using the mails to defraud. According to the grand jury's indictment, they shared a fee of $496,000 on a false claim that they had saved the Orleans Levee Board $2,000,000 in a bond-refunding operation.