The Birmingham age-herald., 1924-02-17

the audience, he lost now and then his
 elf control. "A liar"--"a society !, ootlegser''-.'a drunky-these epithets
 aried his testimony. In session of
 K weeks, the Senate heard sixty wit .esses, took 1,700 printed pages of
 estimony in open session, filed nearly ,0U exhibirs of documents. The i'm iuisitors could not run down every ,tory of inefficiency and irregularity ill the Veterans. Bureau. However, they covered pretty thoroughly the main issues. The findings were con densed and classified in General DRyan's report, as introduced into she Senate on February 9 of tlHs year Jy Reed of Pennsylvania. With sol alierly bluntness, he charges corruption, unfairness. inefficiency and wasteful- ness of method.
 The Department of Justice, meantime, apparently took no action until last October, eleven months after news of the Perfyville sale reached President Harding. Then,at about the time when the Senate committee convened for tes- timOny it appointed John w. Grim special prosecutor, He. took over the Senate's evidence, and at last accounts was working on Veterans Bureau case in Chicago, Concerning this de- lay. Washington tells many inside" stories; not all to the dlscredit of the department. <.
 - General Hines Active ! ! z The story is not ended; cannot be until Mir. Grim has finishelt his work. But the old regime in the Veterans Bureau has passed into History Gen ,eral Hines, from the day of his appoint meIit, took off his coat and went. to work, No one doubts his honesty of intention and Of deed. He has sreorl ganized the bureau, to the great bene. fit. doubtless, a6f future Budgets; lie has carried on with speed and efficiency the plan of hoseitalization. He has shown less boldness in dealing with personnel. Colonel Forbes has resign ed. Four or five others have been shifted. But the Veterans Bureau still keeps on-- its, payroll employees most unfavDrably mentioned in the tes- timony before the Senate committee. Perhaps General Hines is awaiting the time when Grim shall have finished his work, and when the Director of the Veterans Bureau may act with as- sured certainty.
 said in the beginning that the sit 'uation in the Veterans Bureau cost the taxpayers on the giving end, and the disabled on the receiving, some $100, 900 ,000 a year. That is the rough estimate of the Senate investigators. No one will ever know exactly. The American public, reading such figures concerning such a transaction, jumps normally to the conclusion that it all went in graft. In this case, in most cases of the kind, such a conclusion is false.
 ', One who has digested the evidence catches everywhere the scent of graft {; here and there, through the central office and the subsidiary offices, must have worked men, who were getting their bit That bit, often, was not money some of the unfairstrhnsaction turned probably on the gift of political influence. ,. Wtecking department or business in order to pick valuable fragments from the wreckage, is an old game. But the wrecker seldom gets d thousandth part of what he wastes. At. worst, only a mOdicum of that hundfed millions reached the pockets of persons in the Veterans Bureau. But it was dead loss to the taxpayers and to their pathetic wards, the disabled, just the same
 (The end of stOry)