CALLING THE ROLL ON THE PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES NO. 2-A. MITCHELL PALMER
Calling The Roll On The Presidential Candidates No. 2—A. Mitchell Palmer AATTORNEY GENERAL A. Mitchell Palmer is the first avowed candidate for the Democratic nomination for President. In...
...In 1912, he was re-elected for a third term, and as a member of the Ways and Means Committee he figured prominently in carrying out the Democratic program of legislation...
...Gifford Pinchot, former Chief of the Bureau of Forestry and President of the National Conservation Association, addressed an open letter to the Attorney General on January 9, protesting against the abandonment of the suit...
...Veeder went on to say that Swift & Company had agreed to the agreement with Attorney General Palmer "only upon the express condition that it should in so many words recite that the decree does not adjudicate that the company has violated any law of the United States...
...Among friends of conservation, criticism of the Attorney General was bitter, his critics recalling that a similar suit involving only 6,000 acres of land had recently been appealed to the Supreme Court and reversed in favor of the Government...
...Announcing the policy of the Department of Justice in dealing with domestic unrest during the year 1920, Mr...
...The whole-hearted manner in which Mr...
...On October 22, 191 7, he was appointed Alien Property Custodian under the "Trading with the Enemy Act...
...Palmer urged Congress to adopt stringent peace-time espionage laws, restricting the right of free speech, free press, and free assemblage...
...As a new member, Representative Palmer spoke only a few times during the session...
...He accompanied his statement with a report that three persons had been convicted of hoarding and that there had been 99 seizures of foodstuffs illegally withheld from the market...
...In a statement appearing as a New Year's announcement on January 1, 1920, the Attorney General summed up his attitude on Bolshevism...
...and against these prosecutions will be promptly instituted and actively pushed which will in all likelihood have a prompt corrective effect...
...Should he be nominated and elected, Palmer will be the first Pennsylvanian to occupy the White House since James Buchanan...
...At nineteen years of age he was graduated from Swarthmore College with the highest honors' in his class...
...One of the largest properties sold by Mr...
...He declared that retail sugar prices had advanced 9 and 10 cents a pound as a result of Mr...
...Palmer's Record in Congress MR...
...He was defeat-ed by Senator Boise Penrose, who was a candidate for re-election...
...He urged maximum production, saving and elimination of extravagance by the people, and co-operation "with the Department of Justice in stamping out profiteering and hoarding...
...Palmer's course is clearly unfaithful to his public duty...
...In a speech March 27, 1914, Palmer urged his colleagues to "stand behind the President," with the plea: "Shall the American Congress sustain the President in his conduct of our foreign affairs, or shall we rebuke him while all the world looks on...
...The Department of Labor has issued monthly statistics since the drive against the profiteers began, showing a steady upward trend in living costs...
...More than any other leading Democrat, Mr...
...The Attorney General has been making a careful study of the situation as a whole and of the laws that can be applied to better it, and is convinced that under the stimulation and temptation of exceptional circumstances, combinations of producers and combinations of traders have been formed for the control of supplies and of prices which are clearly in restraint of trade...
...Friend and foe alike will agree that no Attorney General has faced more momentous problems than Mr...
...Labor leaders protested that in forcing the workers back into the mines, and by refusing to prosecute the coal profiteers, Mr...
...that such heavy restrictions were placed on the sale by Palmer and Garvan that only two persons were permitted to bid...
...Palmer declared prices were "under control" and that there would be a substantial drop in the early months of 1920...
...Palmer as Alien Property Custodian favored political friends in his appointments to enemy corporations is known to all of you...
...A dispatch appearing in the New York Times of December 19, however, declared that "the news from Washington of the settlement of the five big Chicago packers was received with what appeared to be enthusiasm" in their offices in Chicago...
...Meanwhile, agents of the Department of Justice conducted raids in the principal cities in which thousands of Socialists, labor leaders, and aliens were thrown into jail...
...Palmer As Alien Property Custodian AS ALIEN PROPERTY CUSTODIAN, Mr...
...Pinchot, branding the latter's communication as "cowardly" and "contemptible...
...Representative Palmer was recorded voting for the previous question with the Clark-Underwood organization...
...A second injunction was secured, at the instance of the Attorney General, by which President Lewis of the United Mine Workers, under penalty of fine and imprisonment, was compelled to rescind the strike order...
...Announcement by Mr...
...Palmer's drive to reduce the cost of living, so far as the packers were concerned...
...Palmer had authorized its sale for $4,000,000...
...Southern Pacific stock jumped 14 points and the New York Sun estimated that the market value of the road's stock would be more than doubled by Mr...
...In permitting his petitions to be filed for the Georgia preferential primary, he served notice that his "hat is in the ring...
...The Forces Behind Palmer WHETHER or not the Attorney General has the active support of President Wilson for the Democratic nomination will probably remain a secret until the convention meets at San Francisco...
...The Palmer-Farr Episode AFEW WEEKS before the expiration of his last term in the House, Palmer arose to answer an attack made upon him by his colleague, Representative Farr, of Pennsylvania...
...Palmer bad made the Government the ally of capital against labor, to the injury of the consuming public...
...Large stores of hoarded food stuffs were seized by Government agents, Congress responded to the President's message with a large appropriation and additional legislation, and the Attorney General issued vigorous statements almost daily to the press...
...Attorneys for the "Big Five" issued formal statements declaring that "certain concessions had been made to the Government in the spirit of patriotic co-operation during the trying reconstruction period...
...Who's Who in America" for 1919 lists him as director of the Stroudsburg National Bank, the Scranton Trust Company, the Citizens Gas Company, and the International Boiler Company...
...He has taken a definite stand, however, on most of the issues before the country...
...Like the Republican convention, the Democratic parley at San Francisco will be made up chiefly of uninstructed delegates...
...Palmer's platform...
...My colleague has seen fit to cast aspersions upon my honor and integrity as a man, as a lawyer, and as a member of this House," said Mr...
...Officials of the National Association of Clothiers, in annual convention in New York, announced in January that clothing prices are about to be further advanced...
...Palmer, Pinchot wrote to President Wilson, February 3: "Mr...
...His political enemies declare that the Palmer of 1920 is no more like the Palmer of 1912 than the Woodrow Wilson of 1920 is like the Woodrow Wilson of 1912...
...The attitude of William Jennings Bryan on the Palmer candidacy remains undisclosed, but Palmer is a "dry" and it is recognized that Mr...
...Palmer as Alien Property Custodian was the Bosch Magneto Company...
...The Attorney General drafted the Davey Bill, providing penalties of a $10,000 fine and 20 years imprisonment for seditious acts or utterances...
...He deplored the fact that capital had been forced to "plead upon its knees," for prop-er consideration against organized labor, and intimated that further legislation will be necessary in dealing with the industrial situation...
...Numerous experts, many of them officials of the Government, have declared there is "no hope" for lower prices during the present year...
...For several weeks the public was treated to tbe novel spectacle of a crusade against the men who had been charged by the Trade Commission with "boosting prices" during the war...
...When the Hobson resolution for tho submission of a prohibition amendment came to a vote December 22, 1914, Palmer voted "No," but he was generally regarded as a "Dry...
...Senator Frelinghuysen continued: "That Mr...
...Palmer enjoyed a lucrative practice, interesting himself in varied business concerns...
...Representative Tinkham, author of the resolution, charged that Mr...
...As soon as the Democrats secured control of the House, the Clark-Underwood leadership assumed on many questions the conservative role played by Cannon and his aides prior to 1910...
...Palmer As Attorney General IT IS CHIEFLY upon his record as Attorney General that Mr...
...The case involving the Bosch company sale is still pending in the New York Courts...
...New York American, January 16, 1920...
...Palmer's platform will be his actual record as Attorney General, in which office he has committed himself by his acts beyond anything he can say as a candidate...
...But in spite of opposition, not only from these oil men, but also from persons of great influence within the Government, Mr...
...On August 5 he gave a statement to the press, announcing he would bring suit at once in the Federal Court, charging violation of the Anti-Trust Laws by the "Big Five" packers...
...In April, 1915, President Wilson appointed Mr...
...Palmer's Platform SINCE declaring his candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination, Mr...
...Palmer took over and administered property owned by German citizens, estimated to be worth $700,000,000...
...There are many property owners in this country and many citizens who are complaining of the policy of that Department, and it seems to me that we will be derelict in our public duty if we do not ascertain how that office has been administered...
...Underwood had voted against anti-Child Labor legislation and other progressive measures in the House, and has been consistently reactionary during his service in tho Senate...
...Palmer has endorsed the President's stand on the Treaty accounts for the general acceptance of the idea that he is the Administration candidate...
...Palmer and Labor THE failure of the Administration to check the rising cost of living was reflected in the fall of 1919 in widespread industrial unrest...
...Palmer, since he took office one year ago...
...In 1912, at Baltimore, Palmer was one of the "original Wilson men," who co-operated with Bryan in defeating Champ Clark for the nomination...
...Pinchot, "Mr...
...Palmer continued: "This Department, as far as existing laws will allow, intends during the forthcoming year, to keep up an unflinching, persistent, aggressive warfare against any movement, no matter how cloaked or dissembled, having for its purpose either the promulgation of these ideas or the excitation of sympathy for those who spread them...
...The article contained the following paragraph: "It is an open secret that up to the present time the potential presidential candidate who has been highest in favor with the most influential element in Tammany has been United States Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer, —whose friends—especially since President Wilson has been ill—have been effectively active among Democrats in this State...
...Palmer, an injunction was issued by a federal court, restraining the union officials from the use of the union funds in prosecuting the strike...
...He pointed out that since Mr...
...In the final analysis, Mr...
...On May 2, 1912, the House Committee on Post Offices and Post Roads reported out a "rider" to the Post Office Appropriation Bill which substituted a parcels post satisfactory to the Express Companies in place of the system urged by the progressive members of Congress...
...Palmer announced that the strike had been broken...
...There was particular satisfaction," the dispatch stated, "in the establishment of Swift & Company because that concern has been in process of dissolution for two years...
...The prices the people of this country are paying for everything that it is necessary for them to use in order to live," the President declared, "are not justified by a shortage in supply, either present or prospective, and are in many cases artificial and deliberately created by vicious practices, and ought immediately to be checked by law...
...In November, 1908, Mr...
...The Southern Pacific Oil Case ON December 5, 1919, Attorney General Pal-mer announced that he would not appeal from the decision of the District Court of Los Angeles in a suit to recover from the Southern Pacific Railroad Company 160,000 acres of oil lands said to be worth $500,000,000...
...Palmer's action...
...but that Mr...
...The test vote on the "rider" came on the previous question...
...Palmer voted with President Wilson in his demand for the Panama Canal Tolls Repeal...
...Attorney Henry Veeder, of Swift & Company, and M. W. Borders, general counsel for Morris & Company, declared that under the injunction "no violation of the law was admitted by the packing interests," and Mr...
...Palmer has made no formal announcement of a platform...
...They accuse both Palmer and Wilson of abandoning the Democratic pledges, taken in 1912, to destroy monopoly and lower the cost of living...
...Attorney General Palmer had already set in motion the machinery of the Department of Justice...
...So powerful is the influence of the Administration in the selection of these delegates that the convention will, in all probability, be "stampede proof...
...Palmer has been in close accord with the President's stand for the ratification of the Treaty without reservations or amendments...
...Palmer as Alien Property Custodian made many friends in Tammany Hall and many Democratic organizations up state aligned with Tammany...
...As reported in the press of January 16, the papers filed in the supreme court in Westchester County, New York, charged "that Palmer and Garvan permitted the sale of the company to their own friends...
...Palmer had been appointed Attorney General of the United States, his report as Alien Property Custodian, under the law referable to the Department of Justice, would be subject to final review by himself...
...Palmer's candidacy, and that while he may not publicly endorse him, he will place no obstacles in his path...
...Palmer, as Alien Property Custodian, has administered, I think, several thousand trusts," said Senator Freylinghuysen...
...Palmer and the "Reds" A NOTHER outgrowth of the excessive living costs, so closely connected to the industrial disturbances that the two were often confused, was the unrest which evidenced itself in 1919...
...Palmer had given the sugar growers immunity from prosecution against profiteering...
...Lithe election of 1914, Palmer was nominated as the Democratic candidate for United, States Senator from Pennsylvania, with the strong endorsement of President Wilson...
...Prices, instead of taking the expected drop after the armistice, were still soaring...
...He has had placed in his custody, estimated nearly $700,000,000...
...His political friends believe that as Attorney General he has measured up to the new issues of reconstruction, and that he could lead his party to victory in November...
...He voted, with the other Democratic members, against the Payne-Aldrich Tariff Bill and against the adoption of the old rules, under which Cannon ruled as the "czar" of the House...
...In the 63rd Congress, Palmer introduced a bill to prevent interstate commerce in the products of child labor, which was passed February 15, 1915, by a vote of 233 to 43...
...On December 19, the nation was surprised by the announcement that criminal and civil action against the "Big Five" had been dropped...
...Representative Farr refused to retract his original statement...
...That is what I said...
...Palmer's policy during the coal strike...
...After the signing of the Armistice, sensational charges were made as to the manner in which these sales had been conducted...
...Palmer was elected to Congress, and he served in the 61st, 62nd, and 63rd Congresses from the 26th Pennsylvania District...
...He continued in this office until March 5, 1919, when he was appointed Attorney General to succeed Thomas W. Gregory, resigned...
...Senator Calder's resolution and Senator Frelinghuy-sen's charges were never acted upon by the Senate...
...That the party organization favors Palmer has been evident since January 8, when the Attorney General was given an ovation at the Jackson Day dinner...
...Ha took office as Alien Property Custodian in October, 1917...
...Ha defended himself warmly against the implication that ha had been guilty of impropriety...
...Bryan's influence at San Francisco will be directed mainly toward the selection of a "dry" candidate...
...Palmer issued an open letter in reply to Mr...
...I have attacked him because of his hypocrisy, his wicked demagoguery, in pretending to bo one thing here when he knows he is another in his own State...
...Palmer stated he had appeared before committees of tho House and Senate at Harris-burg during the session of 1907, as Attorney for the railroads, to urge the rejection of legislation which his clients regarded as unjust...
...It is conceded, however, that the President Is exceedingly friendly to Mr...
...The land in question was part of a grant to the Southern Pacific, under the terms of which oil lands were specifically excluded and withheld for the use of the Government...
...Palmer Judge of the United States Court of Claims, but he declined the Commission...
...Palmer's foes admit that as Attorney General he has won the friendship of powerful interests, but they predict that the hostility of labor and the disappointment of the consuming public in the failure of the Administration campaign against high prices would bring to the Democratic party, with Palmer as its standard bearer, defeat as crushing as the rout under Alton B. Parker in 1904...
...The injunction was invoked under the authority of the Lever Food Control Act, which had been passed by Congress to protect the public against the profiteers during the war...
...When President Wilson returned from his second trip to Paris in mid-summer, 1919, he found public indignation against the profiteers at white heat...
...Receiving no reply from Mr...
...They contend that the precedent established means the destruction of the right to strike...
...Palmer's decision...
...that in a financial statement of the new company, investments in patents' were listed at $500,000, while these patents were listed by the original appraisal at $1.00...
...He declared that "the grant to the Southern Pacific specifically excluded lands containing oil," and recalled that Attorney General Gregory, with the support of Secretary of the Navy Daniels, had used every means to protect the public interest when it was found that the Southern Pacific "had obtained the oil land in spite of the law...
...Labor union officials have vigorously condemned Mr...
...The plaintiffs alleged that the stock was worth $16,000,000, that the corporation had a surplus of $8,500,000 and no debts...
...Mr...
...On April 6, 1914, he introduced in the House a joint resolution for the submission to the States of a constitutional amendment granting woman suffrage...
...So far as actual results are concerned, Mr...
...These two measures, together with amendments to tho Underwood Tariff Bill, constituted his principal contributions to legislation during his three terms in the House...
...Palmer as Custodian, and Martin E. Kern, who bought the stock sold by the Government officials and re-organized it as the American Bosch Magneto Company...
...Prices Still Soaring THUS ended Mr...
...that these two persons were agents of Palmer and Garvan and bid $4,150,000 for the plant which Palmer's own appraiser had valued at $8,000,000...
...One of the incidents of the controversy between the miners and the mine operators was the statement by former Secretary of the Treasury McAdoo, that the operators had made exorbitant profits during the war...
...Palmer's Early Life ALEXANDER MITCHELL PALMER was born May 4, 1872, at Moosehead, Pa., the son of Quaker parent...
...Palmer declared the agreement was a complete victory for the Government and that as a result of it "the price of meat is within the control of the people themselves...
...Senator Joseph Freylinghuysen of New Jersey, speaking in the Senate August 25, 1919, urged the adoption of a resolution introduced by Senator Calder providing for an investigation of the Alien Property Custodian's office...
...Tammany in New York, Roger Sullivan in Illinois, and the army of Federal office holders who will make up the vast majority of the delegates at San Francisco, regard the Pennsylvanian with high favor, and definite word from the White House would undoubtedly make him the party nominee...
...Palmer declared: "I am satisfied that the evidence adduced indicates a clear violation of the anti-trust laws and prompt action will be taken accordingly...
...Every member who voted for the previous question voted to shut off amendment," commented La Follette's in the issue of June 8, 1912 under "Roll Call on Men and Measures...
...The President appeared before a joint session of Congress on August 8 to deliver a special message announcing an administration campaign against the profiteers...
...The action demanded an accounting from A. Mitchell Palmer, Francis P. Garvan (who succeeded Mr...
...Re-elected to the 62nd Congress in the Democratic landslide in 1910, Palmer became a leader in the House...
...At the conclusion of his colleague's explanation, Farr shouted: "He was in Harrisburg as the paid legal lobbyist of the corporations of Pennsylvania...
...He said: "Its sympathizers in this country are composed chiefly of criminals, mistaken idealists, social bigots, and many unfortunate men and women suffering with varying forms of hyper-aesthesia...
...that these close associates of the officials got complete charge of the company...
...Palmer is now a candidate for President...
...In a statement issued December 22, Me...
...It is well understood that if elected President ha would pursue the same policy in industrial disputes and in the advocacy of anti-sedition laws as he has followed as Attorney General...
...Pinchot had stated in his letter: "Case after case within my own experience has been won for the people against the lukewarmness or even opposition of Government attorneys on what seemed in advance a more slender hope than this...
...The Attorney General stated that the case had not been appealed because, in his opinion, it could not be won...
...In the 61st Congress, Representative Palmer Voted with the Democratic minority throughout the session...
...On November 1, 450,000 bituminous coal miners went on strike...
...Under an amendment to the Alien Property Act, the Custodian was given the general power of sale...
...Palmer has had the faculty, during his political career, of making warm friends and bitter enemies...
...Palmer's fight on the high cost of living has been a fiasco...
...Palmer declared in a speech to the National Press Club at Washington, March 4, "that the arrogance of capital" had been broken in the United States, and he indicated that he regards the fight against monopoly as already won...
...He has declared, and in fact called it a charge, that I am the paid attorney of the Delaware, Lackawanna, and Western Railway Company, and that I have been the paid lobbyist before the Legislature of Pennsylvania, representing that corporation...
...Citing the sensational findings of the Federal Trade Commission in its investigation of the meat packing industry, Mr...
...Prior to the walkout Attorney General Palmer had declared the strike to be "illegal...
...In my State it was evident that the majority of those selected were selected because of their political affiliations...
...Four months after Senator Frelinghuysen's speech in the Senate, Otto Herns and Albert R. Klein, stockholders, filed suit in New York, January 5, 1920, to rescind the sale...
...A few weeks later, Mr...
...Aligned With Tammany ON DECEMBER 17, the New York Times published a news article which is interesting in connection with the allegations in the Bosch suit, instituted one month later...
...He voted for the 'fake' parcels post in the interests of the Express Trust...
...Instead of prosecuting the food monopoly, Attorney General Palmer announced an agreement between the packers and the Department of Justice, under which an injunction would be issued eliminating the "Big Five" from control of meat substitutes "with the exception of eggs, butter, poultry, and cheese...
...On December 10, Mr...
...Admitted to the bar in 1893, he practiced with Ex-Congressman John B. Storm of Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, until the latter's death in 1901...
...Mr...
...At the instance of Mr...
...As late as February 13, J. Ogden Armour declared that the prices of meat and other foodstuffs handled by the packers are not affected "by the arrangement brought about by the Attorney General...
...Full participation by the United States in the League of Nations and in the carrying out of the Treaty with Germany is one of the main planks in Mr...
...On the following day it was announced at Washington, following a conference between Charles F. Clyne, District Attorney for Chicago, and Attorney General Palmer, that criminal prosecutions on charges of consipracy as well as civil action would be brought under the anti-trust laws in connection with the Government's fight against the meat packers...
...Gregory stuck to his guns, appealed an adverse decision to the Supreme Court of the United States and won...
...Referring to the existing legal weapons which the Department of Justice would utilize, the President continued: "Some methods by which these prices are produced are already illegal, some of them criminal, and those who employ them will be energetically proceeded against...
...Palmer recently denounced as a "slander," the Department of Labor statistics showing a 4 per cent increase in living costs during December, 1919, but on the issue raised between the two Departments of the Government, there is no doubt that the public verdict has been against the Attorney General...
...He was appointed judge of the United States Court of Claims in April, 1915, declining his commission...
...They are enemies of the Government, of the Church, and of the home, and advocate principles which mean the abolition of all three of these safeguards of civilization...
...When Oscar W. Underwood, Democratic leader, retired from the House March 4, 1915, to take his seat in the Senate, Palmer eulogized him in a set speech in the House as "one of the greatest Americans of his time...
...The Attorney General announced that the Department of Justice had a card index containing the names of 60,000 agitators who would be vigorously prosecuted as soon as Congress passed the sedition laws...
...Gregory was bitterly opposed by great oil interests, such as those for which you yourself have been employed as an active attorney before the Government departments...
...On March 4, the House adopted a resolution authorizing the Judiciary Committee to investigate Attorney General Palmer's conduct in concurring in the proposal submitted by the District Attorney of New Orleans, which permitted the Louisiana Sugar Planters to fix a price of seventeen and eighteen cents for last year's sugar crop...
...Several hundred aliens, branded as "Reds,' were deported, a majority of the refugees going to Soviet Russia...
...PALMER was elected to the 61st Congress in November, 1908, taking his seat when President Taft called a special session in March, 1909...
...Palmer of the dropping of the suit brought a violent flurry on the stock market in Wall Street...
...If persisted in until the time for an appeal expires, it might readily become suspicious in the view of those who will recall that he has been an active attorney for large oil interests...
...In the heated colloquy that followed, the exchange of personalities became so bitter that the House called upon the Speaker to enforce the rules of parliamentary debate...
...Palmer disposed of many valuable patents, factories, and in some instances entire corporations...
...In his effort to enforce the law, protect the Navy, and save the nation's property," wrote Mr...
...It is predicted that Bryan will be as powerless to rush the Wilson delegates off their feet as was Roosevelt at Chieago in 1912, when Taft controlled the men sitting in the convention hall...
...I have not attacked his honor or his integrity, or the fact that he had no right to represent a corporation...
...Under these circumstances, the Attorney General must be reckoned with as one of the real factors at San Francisco in June...
Vol. 12 • March 1920 • No. 3
