ATTORNEYS CLASH IN FINAL ARGUMENTS
Attorneys Clash in Final Arguments SCARCELY less startling than many of the charges and revelations made by witnesses on the stand during the investigation of the so-called Ballinger-Pinchot...
...Nevertheless counsel made three charges,—that the administration of the Interior Department showed a lack of fidelity to the public interests...
...He bore heavily on the Secretary's policy in the Alaska coal cases, showing how in office and out, Ballinger had ever souizht to advance the interests of private designs in Alaska...
...He ridiculed the zeal for saving Alaska, ice-bound and mountainous with a dwindling population, and drew an ironic picture of Pinchot creating the Shugach forest reserve of mountains and glaciers and Glavis standing guard "against Guggenheim and Rosenheim...
...Indian reservation in which interior officials said $700,000 rad been wasted...
...And he traced it all to the door of former Secretary of the Interior James R. Garfield and the animus of it to Garfield's disappointment at not being retained in office and at seeing his policies abandoned...
...that Ballinger was actually and substantially responsible for what occurred, and that the President had been committed to Ballinger because on at least three critical occasions he had been deceived as to what had really occurred...
...It was all "a great conspiracy by this Garfield-Gifford-Glavis group...
...Only the vigilance and determined protest of Glavis at four distinct, critical times to spare what he saw would be a great scandal prevented the final passage of these great coal lands into private hands...
...Braniff denied that there had been any such waste...
...that Ballinger had done so and consequently could not be censured was the position taken by Vertrees...
...Pinchot, G. W. Pepper said that Pinchot at no time desired to raise the question of the propriety of his dismissal by the President...
...Nothing less than a conspiracy to, in the first place, discredit President Taft and, in the second, to injure Secretary Ballinger is the fantastic explanation offered by Mr...
...An incident of last week's session was the filing for the record of an affidavit by E. A. Braniff, who had charge of the forest work done on the Menomonie (Wis...
...When a private citizen after having been land commissioner he had acted ;is attorney for coal claimants, making use of governmental information, yet later as Secretary he had refused to act for the people by professedly turning these cases over to subordinates...
...Connolly denied that he had ever been on the sinking ship in question and the day before Lawler wrote his letter of retraction brought suit for $20,000 damages against Lawler...
...President Deceived, Says Pepper APPEARING for Mr...
...In all these things had been shown a disloyalty to the government that needed no law to condemn it and that "tie was one friend of whom the President should be mercifully relieved...
...His course in the coal cases was susceptible of no interpretation but a determination to advance the interests of great private designs, to the forestry one of hostility and his attempt to displace the director of the Reclamation Service by a mere politician was denounced as demoralizing...
...but had shown no zeal to protect the public rights...
...Attorneys Clash in Final Arguments SCARCELY less startling than many of the charges and revelations made by witnesses on the stand during the investigation of the so-called Ballinger-Pinchot controversy, were the charge made by Ballinger's counsel in the final arguments before the congressional committee last week...
...Another incident was the receipt of a letter from Oscar Law-ler, attorney general for the Department of the Interior, in which Lawler retracted his charge made on the witness stand that C. P. Connolly of Collier's Weekly had trampled upon women and children in an effort to escape from a sinking ship...
...that the latter had complied with the wishes and desires of the executive and "that the cabinet officer who carries out the will of his chief cannot be censured for wrongdoing...
...Vertrees, counsel for Ballinger, as the cause of the present controversy...
...Ballinger's restorations of power sites were not due to the demands of legal observance, but the legal excuse was later invented...
...Together they had planned the exposure made by "this creature Kerby...
...but a series of acts fraught with embarrassment to the President and injury to the people...
...Pepper and Brandeis, the committee adjourned to meet again in two weeks, bv which time attorneys will have filed their briefs...
...Glavis fell because loyal to his real employer, the people of the United States, but his rervice will be gratefully remembered...
...He declared him lacking in the essential quality of resoluteness, that he is easily responsive to pressure and only where there has been pressure from both sides has there been doubt as to his course...
...With the submission of briefs by the attorneys, the committee will now proceed to a determination of the case and the verdict or verdicts may be reported by the end of the present session of Congress...
...In other words, the President would be made the goat by the Secretary's counsel, and Ballinger himself overlooked or regarded as merely incidental...
...As a necessary corollary to this far-fetched view was counsel's partisan appeal to make the determination of the verdict on the issue of standing by or against the President...
...When Garfield saw that he would not be retained in office, his zeal for the public good turned to revenge and when Pinchot saw his ambitions thwarted he joined with Garfield...
...As to the necessary inference in the placing of blame for wrongdoing, if any had been committed, counsel was silent...
...Brandeis showed how contrary to all reports by special agents, Ballinger had ordered the clearlisting of the Cunningham claims, and not only that but these patents, which were to be such important precedents, were hurriedly written out...
...After listening to brief rebuttals by Messrs...
...His whole course had been a devious one, destructive of the morale of the service, which had sought to discredit the previous administration, set bureau against bureau, and had even humiliated other cabinet officers...
...There had been no administration of the Interior Department worthy the name...
...Ballinger Unfit Says Brandeis IN HIS argument, L. D. Brandeis, representing L. R. Glavis, charged that the whole course of events since Ballinger took office showed him notoriously unfit to administer his great charge,—not judged by the standards of a police court but by the standards the American people had a right to expect...
...Yet telegrams and letters read by Brandeis showed that the final determination in all things was by Ballinger himself, who was surrounded "by slaves who on the winking of authority understood the law...
...If the President had chosen unwisely between him and Ballinger, he (Pinchot) had no complaint and hoped that all would work out well...
...This conservation hubbub was an eastern agitation and fad, popular in no other section...
...That a cabinet officer should be loyal to his chief and endeavor to carry out the latter's wishes...
...The so-called "Garfield policies" explained everything...
...It was the abandonment by Ballinger of these policies that has caused all the trouble...
...He declared that the President, after deliberate investigation, had found nothing wrong in the course of Ballinger...
...Vertrees Charges Conspiracy IN RESPONSE Attorney Vertrees declared that the attack on Ballinger was a movement to discredit the present administration originating with Garfield...
Vol. 2 • June 1910 • No. 22
