The Key West citizen. [volume] (Key West, Fla.) 1879-current, 1934-05-07

WASHINGTON HEADLINERS
Yankee Lawyer Cummings Finds Uncle Sam Exacting Client


Try Associated PressD
BY FRANK /. WELLER


gazed with pale blue eyes across
his desk and observed that in the
business of being attorney general
for the United tates there are a
great many things to be done.
There was a ready and frank
reasonabieness in the tone of
Homer S. Cummings carefully
thought-out words.
"a new life can be breathed
into the department of justice, I"
he said. "just as it can be breath
ed into that living organism which
is sometimes aloofly described as
the national machinery of gov
eminent"
/! Machine Gun" Kelly and a
long list of other imprisoned rae
keteers found just how quickly
the department could snap into
action.
With Humor and Eloquence
That, however, is not the whole
picture. In the clustered cabinets
of state, other knotty problems of
procedure and precedent are aris-
ing from efforts to obtain econom-
ic recovery. The job of investi-
eating their constitutionality is
among the great many things to
be done"
Cummings has an harassed and
exacting client in nervous old
Uncle Sam, but the 63-year-old
descendant of that Draw laddie,
Cummin. who fought Robert
Bruce, handles him with ready
humor and flashes of el0quence.
Cummings stands six-feet-four
in his old shoes. That's not a wise
crack. either, for the general has
the rare habit of taking off his
glasses to read and putting on old
shoes to dress up.
The eyeglasses he wears only
to correct distant vision. The foot
gear oddly arises from the fact.
that he is distressed by new shoes
and therefore sees no sense in
wearing them when he is out to
enjoy himself.
i Likes Literature
Cummings keeps up great
amount of reading. Les Miser.
ables is his favorite book. Pericles
the figure in history he admires
most and Othello the play he likes
best. For outdoor sport he
chooses golf.
Cummings is known to the pub
lie as a very successful attorney.
But he is regarded also as an ex-
pert criminologist and penologist,
pursuits which are much more
than hobbies to him.
He took his sheepskin from
Yale three decades ago and hung
up his shingle as lawyer in STAN
ford. Conn.,, where the inherent
bent for outside interests started
him being mayor when he had
just turned 80.
1t was during his 10 years as a
! states attorney that he made
legal history. later to be stamped
by the Wickersham committee re-
port as "a noble example of the
proper discharge of the prosecu-
tors duty"
Protect The Innocent
A man had been shot down on
the streets of Stamford in the
midst of early evening crowds.
The assailant was described by
eye-witnesses. even to details of
MS attire. Soon a ne'er-do-well
carrying revolver with one emp
~ chamber was apprehended.
identified and influenced to sign
a confession.
4 NAN SUI FGASG VI EVERYONE.
Prosecutor Cummings, rising in
criminal court to press the states
charges, asked for a nolle prosequi
instead Of conviction.
His record of the great many
things TO be done" before justice
Is meted out showed error Of
vision and Identification and q
/ oailistics proof of innocence.
| One judge said OF it, Nothing
OF ITS kind can excel the cogeney
OF that assemblage Of facts. :.
The guilty cannot escape such an
official; no more can the innocent
suffer through him."
In - now widely-quoted foot
mote Cummings wrote Of the az
fair:
1T goes without SAYING that Il
rs just ~ important for . states
attorney 10 use the great power
Of his office 10 protect the inno-
- a -