National Affairs: Mercy! Mercy!

The Governor of Washington, the Governor of California and the Governor of Pennsylvania had something in common last week. Each was begged by a celebrated individual from far outside his State's boundaries to extend executive clemency to a prisoner of his State. The prisoners were a boy, an aging man and a political zealot. In one case, California's, the plea was publicly resented as an impudent intrusion. In the other two cases public opinion was chiefly favorable to the prisoner and his advocate from afar.

Boy. One night last August a peaked 12-year-old named Herbert Niccolls broke into a grocery store at Asotin, in southeastern Washington. Sheriff John L. Wormell, 72, went into the store after him. From his hiding place behind a pickle barrel, Herbert Niccolls shot & killed the aged officer. At his trial it was brought out the boy's father was in a hospital for the criminally insane. Already Herbert was something of a criminal prodigy: at nine he had stolen an automobile, and tried his hand at a mail robbery. For the latter offense he was jailed 15 months, later released in the custody of his grandmother. A rural jury thought Herbert was a fairly hopeless case, felt that he should be locked up in Walla Walla penitentiary for the rest of his life.

While Herbert, the youngest prisoner ever to enter the institution, was amusing himself with his harmonica, being kept away from the older felons, a first citizen of Omaha, Neb. became interested in his case. He was Father Edward J. Flanagan. Father Flanagan was born in Roscommon, Ireland, 45 years ago. He entered one of Omaha's poor parishes in 1913. The hardships of his own people had accustomed but not blinded him to human misery. In the winter of 1914 he began trying to feed and house a few down-&-outers, many of them drunkards and criminals. What made them that way? wondered Father Flanagan. Deciding that the best place to combat human woe is near the beginning of human life, he borrowed $90, found five urchins, started a home for homeless, wayward, neglected boys. Since 1917, Father Flanagan's Boys' Home has become a source of pride to Omaha, a model institution for the nation. Through Father Flanagan's hands have passed 2,984 boys from 36 States. On the Flanagan board of directors are President James Edward Davidson of Nebraska Power Co., Protestant and Shriner, and Henry Monsky, a leading Omaha lawyer, Jew and Shriner. Proud is Father Flanagan that the footsteps of none of his boys, many of them handed over to him by the courts, have ever led to jail or prison.

Not above helping his Home along with a bit of publicity, Father Flanagan broadcasts his boys' band, gets celebrities to visit the institution, among them: Tom Mix,* Admiral Byrd, Paul Whiteman, Babe Ruth, Jack Dempsey, Will Rogers. With a fanfare from the local Press, Father Flanagan got up from his sick bed fortnight ago and set out for Seattle to plead with Governor Roland Hartley for Herbert Niccolls' custody. Said Father Flanagan: "I am willing to back my reputation of years of work that I can aid this boy to become a useful citizen. . . . No boy of twelve can be a murderer at heart. . . . I now have the pleasure of watching a 10-year-old lad at our Home, also once charged and convicted of murder, developing into a fine specimen of American boyhood."