National Affairs: Villains? Goat?

"People are tired of hearing of these oil leases."—Dr. Hubert Work, onetime (1923-28) Secretary of the Interior, now Chairman of the Republican National Committee.

The Oil Scandals, as everyone knows, began in the administration of President Harding. It looked last week as though the oldtime sins of commission had been followed, in the Coolidge era, by sins of omission.

Lease. Besides the Teapot Dome oil reserve in Wyoming, whilom Secretary of the Interior Albert Bacon Fall leased to Oilman Harry Ford Sinclair a tract adjacent to Teapot Dome on the north, in the field known as Salt Creek. Some 42 miles north of Casper, Wyo., the Salt Creek field is bigger than Teapot Dome. Its 2,000 wells produce some 38,000 bbls. per day, about 19 times the output of the 63 wells in Teapot Dome.

As in the case of the Teapot Dome lease, there were irregularities in this Fall-Sinclair transaction.

Investigation. Last January, while investigating Teapot Dome, the Senate Committee on Public Lands discovered that just before and just after Dec. 20, 1922, the date of the Salt Creek lease, Oilman Sinclair gave or loaned Secretary Fall $35,000. The day the bids for the Salt Creek contract were supposed to close, Oilman Sinclair was on a train returning from a visit to the Fall ranch in New Mexico. It was nine hours after the legal time was up when Oilman Sinclair sent in his bid, by telegram from Pratt, Kan. Simultaneously, Fall wired Assistant Secretary of the Interior Edward Clingan Finney not to be too formal about the bids. The belated Sinclair bid was accordingly admitted. When Fall returned to Washington he threw out twelve other bids and awarded the contract to Sinclair. It was a contract to extract oil from U. S. property on a royalty basis. In Fall's advertisement for bids nothing had been said about including in the lease an option to renew if the successful bidder found his bargain profitable. Yet into Sinclair's five-year contract was inserted such an option, to renew for another five years.

Renewal. The discovery of all these facts was in progress last winter just before and at the moment that Secretary Work had to decide about letting Sinclair exercise his Salt Creek option. Besides the Senate's investigation, the trial of Sinclair for criminal conspiracy was then fresh in Washington's mind. Sinclair's was an extraordinary name indeed, but Dr. Work took no extraordinary precautions. He simply asked the Solicitor of the Interior Department if he thought Sinclair's option was valid. Solicitor Ernest Odell Patterson said he thought it was.