The Birmingham age-herald., 1914-05-17

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 rression of all securities and business Tn New England. It would have spread all over the country, and at this time. when business Is halting and timjd be- cause of the enactment of two great untried laws which so materially effect the business of the country-the tariff and the currency laws-such a state of affairs was to be avoided if possihla To avoid this consummation and at the same time to get full reparation from the New Haven, in the shane of an agreement to within a certain time to divorce itself from It's unlawful holdings, was an achievement for the department of justice. such as has not been brought about for years, if in the enactment of the sherman antitrust law.
 Gives Them Immunity Bath
 Now comes Solicitor Folk of the interstate commerce commission. act ing under the Norris resolution for an investigation of New Haven and in or der to create a sensation, and agitate and inflame the public mind he gives the officials of the New Haven an Immunity bath. by making them wit nesses In this investigation before the interstate commerce commission To make them witnesses will bring no great amount of information to the Senate, that was not already in the hands of the department of justice, and could have been furnished.
 IL, Ill fact, accomplishes nothing but an advertisement for MT Folk, and the permanent removal of the club over the heads of these officials held there py the Attorney General, and as so a hal the agreement entered into by the road and the Attorney General for it's dis solution would be lived up to. With the danger of criminal prosecution re : moved. there arises the further dan ger. that these same people now no longer stared in the fact by criminal proceedings. may find some way to throw monkey wrench into the ma chlnery of the department of justice, and wreck the carefully wrought agreement of dissolution
 The alacrit with which President Meilen and others connected with the New Haven's operations in the past agreed to testify Is a proof, If any was needed. that they were only too glad to smbrace this opportunity. so kindly held out to them by MT. Folk to remove the shadow of the peniten- tiary> from the view.
 NV Delense TOT Buccaneers
 There Is no defense for the criminal I financial operations of the band of buc- cancers who for years fleeced the stockholders and the public in the con duct of New Haven affairs But after their machinations have been exposed and theC have been deprived of power surely there is no occasion to make he innocent suffer and further retard q healthy and normal return to business by a rehash of all the rottenness If high New Haven finance, even if the vaudevilleS stunt Is rendered by the original cast. with MT. Folk as the ringmaster.
 The Attorney General has been charged with providing a harbor of refuge for New Haven criminals, be- cause he objected to the scheme of making them testify before the in- terstate commerce commission, but since it is fact that through giving testimony in that hearing they are re- moved from the fear and made im- mune to criminal proceedings. it is hard to arrive at any other conclusion, but what MT. Folk himself is the ac- tual savior of their hides.
 Mir. Folk jumped into fame by a distinct service to the city of St. Louis, albeit 1t was a muckraking proceeding then in which he was engaged. The undertaking that he Is doing now Is a different proposition, because the coun- try will learn nothing that it does not already know. and thinking men here believe thet he 10 committing Grave 'fflly, in order to bt little sensa-
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