The Birmingham age-herald., 1920-09-09
DEMOCRATS WIN IN
 PLAN OF BLUFFING
 PROBE COMMITTEE
Put Republicans in Hole By Making It Necessary to Summons So Many
 Witnesses
By CLINroN VI. GILBERr

By CLINTON ". GILBERT
 Chicago. September S.-(Special J-Dem- ocratic members of the Kenyon investiga- ton committee and Judge Edmond II. Moore, per isonal representative of Gov ernor Cox here. are bluffing the repubI lican majority of the committee into conducting an endless fishing excursion regarding campaign funds.
 The big bluff came just before adjourn ment late yesterday afternoon, when the democratic senators and Judge Moore virtually threatened to walk from the investigation and abandon II.
 Judge Moore had been on the stand most of the afternoon. giving the com mittee the alleged evidence in support of CoX's charges. This evidence consisted almost entirely of names Of republican campaign fund collectors, whom the com mittee might cali as to quotas and amounts collected. Republican members were steadily becoming more and more dissatisfied with the position in which Judge Moore was placing them of aviPs to call everybody who had ~ money in the field for the rep illcsa fund on the chance that they migh nc something in support of the democ Sgilq candidates case, Senator spencer e ti5a- scuri had been especially lmpatieI at4 had been trying to make Judge Moe ~a- init that his leads led nowhere,
 PRODUCES THE LETTER
 Out of his portfolio Judge Moore ia A a circular letter, which said a quota ai 5000 had been fixed for Lenowee couag Michigan, and that the women wer -S- pected to collect une-third of 1t. This sas on official republican national con nat- tee stationery, bearing the name pt Mr Hays and Mi, Upham at the top aha the names for the republican ways e. means committee of Michigan at the sf- tom. Judge Moore had checked fou, Ne the names at the bottom as men wno would be likely to give us full information to the committee.
 Senator Spencer picked up the circular letter and asked: "Do you mean to intro- duce that as evidence? It is only d crcu- lar letter without anybody $ name signed to it."
 Judge Moore rose to his feet drama ticauy and picked up his papers as if to depart
 "I cannot 20 on; there is no use. What l have given you is not mere lead, but official evidence that in this county a quota was fixed. 1 cannot have any senator insinuate that the evidence l introduce is forgery Senator Reed also rose as ffto quie the hearing. He said, the examinatloa of this witness has been largely dis graceful He only offered to give the committee leads from which we might | obtain information and he is insulted i for offering d republican circular show | ing quota in one county. If there 1 were quotas in that county, there were l quotas everywhere"
 SPENCER BACKS DOWN Senator Spencer backed down and be- ! came quiet. Senator Kenyon told the witness wearily to go on. If the democrats had withdrawn, they would have insisted and Cox would have de- clared from the stump that the repub- licans had refused to make any real investigation into the campaign funds And the danger of this keeps the com mittee digging away although not the slightest evidence is in sight that any l exorbitant fund has been collected or
 was really in process of being collected, when Cox made his charges Judge Moore's leads were simply names of local collectors. He did not ! introduce scrap of evidence to show that any money had been collected for which Treasurer Upham had not ac- counted.
 l There were some apparent dis ! crepancies, but these were due to the fact that the local statement of funds
  from January 1 to date, while Judge Moore was comparing them with Mir Upham's accounts from July IA to date. When Mir. Uphams figures from | January 1 to July II were taken into considera ton, the local accounts all
 ways squared with Mr. Uphams re- ports.
 AN ENDLESS PROCESS summoning the local collectors through the country will be an end less process if the committee lets Judge Moore have his way entirely. On the disputed circular letter from Michigan were the names of four men whom he would like to have called He gave the names of six or eight from Ohio. and so on with several other states And he told the committee that rev names--'new leads" as he called them-were coming into him daily by telegram from all over the country.
 Calling these local collectors will establish large quotas fixed on the localities. As already explained in this correspondence, state committees took Mir Upham's state quotas and eN- banded them three or four times be- fire dividing them up among the b. calities. In this way undoubtedly some of the very large quotas for cities cons tained on Governor CoX's list wers probably fixed. Republican members of the committee naturally would like to keen these local quotas from coming out The professional money ratsers did an in1iscreet thing politically when they made these large local quotas Tor fund raising purposes. If the local quotas are established, Governor COX win have a certain talking point. He will declare that the republicans az ways intended to raise these large amounts, although all the evidence goes to show that they had no such intentions,
 Evidence before the committee rroves that the fund was popular fund and not one made up by large contributors There is not sign of the selfish interests or of people buy ing an underhold on the government anywhere in the record. And Judge Moore has not produced any proof
 In fact. the campaign fund is extraor- dinariy clean. The only fly in the republican ointment is the foolish sen of the professional money raisers who always multiplied everything that they were doing by three and thus nave given Governor Cox something to talk about
 Q ID HAC TAlR0