The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1924-04-15

AANlC VI 0ClcbIOA WACOlCA ~ cat
one end of the country to the o
as usual. Wheeler summoned a
telephone manager and Detec-
tive Burns to the stand, before
his Investigating committee,
and proved:
Burns Agents After Wheeler
1. That Burns has had three men in
Montana, trying to get Wheeler, and
that they testified before the grand
jury.
2. That the Republican national
committee has had one Blair Coan
looking up evidence" against Vince
Ter in Great Falls, and George B. Lock
wood, secretary of the national COM
mittee, talked with Coan over the long
distance telephone from party head
quarters here on the day the news of
the indictment was published.
8. That Burns knew of the levi
dence to be used against Wheeler Sc
veral weeks ago, and discussed it with
Harry Daugherty, his lifelong crony,
in Daugherty's apartment.
Burns See His Friend
Burns was livid with suppressed i'll
temper when Wheeler, leaning across
the committee table and challenging
him to tell the facts, forced from the
detective the disclosure that this was,
as Wheeler had charged, just another
Burns game, deliberately played after
the administration had failed to stop
the investigation of Daugherty's rot
ten handling of the department of JUS
tice. He seemed to sense his own
downfall as the chief of the govern
ment secret service; he knew that the
white house was trying to find goat
for the whole plot, and that Attorney
General Stone had little stomach for
new scandals.
But there were bigger aspects to-
the matter than the prospective finish
of Burns career as public official.
The senate had approved the selection
Of its own committee-consisting of
Borah, Mclean, Sterling, Swanson
and Caraway-to report on the Great
Falls Indictment, and proposed to go
ahead regardless of Coolidge's instruc-
ton to Stone to have the Indictment
quashed if he thought it unwarranted.
Burns In Shipments Strike
While scores of witnesses and
dozens of lines of testimony wait their
turn before Wheeler's committee in
vestigating the department of justice,
the confession of Burns as to his part
in the Great Falls frameup has logi-
calIy raised the question as to Burns
own misuse Of power in that depart
ment. The country may soon learn
why 100 of the striking railroad shop
men were jailed, and why Daugherty
and Burns. found so much pleasure in
prosecuting these cases from behind
the protection of a gasbank of poison
ed press interviews concerning "revo-
lutionary radicals" dangerous boil
sheviks," and "dynamiters."
Burns and Heney
1t is one Of the ironies of fate that
just at the moment when Burns has
been caught red-handed, Francis ].
Heney comes triumphantly back to
Washington, at the request of ma
iority Of Senator Couzens' committee,
to direct the investigation into the
treasury department scandals. Heney
gave Burns his first job as an
investigator in the Oregon land fraud
cases, some Is years ago. He gave him
further chance in the San Francisco
graft trials. Then Burns helped to
frame Tom Mooney for the open shop
pers in San Francisco, and Heney
and Burns have not cooperated since.
Heney is about to shake the Mellon
organization and show up vast frauds
in the handling of income tax returns.
Mellon will probably be driven from
public life.