The Waterbury Democrat., 1939-03-29

C1lC lIlllk 1lQuSUIy.
 Even the National Dairy Pro- ducts Corporation, whose Wash ington attorneys are Ambassador Joe Davies and ex-NRA boss Don- aid Richberg, and whose chairman, Thomas McInnerney, is one of the most powerful business executives in the country, was brought to trial.
 Almost no one knew it, but that indictment marked the climax of a long uphill fight for the prose- cution of the milk trust. Promin- ent leader of the fight was Jer- ome Frank, one of the most fear less and tireless battlers for the underdog in an administration which includes many such battlers.
 The story of Jerome Frank is unique. He is a JeW-brilliant unassuming, unselfish, unashamed of his religion, yet with the sen- sitiveness of that race. His bat tling illustrates the deplorable ex- tent to which racial prejudice has crept into government since the days of Hitlerism, even despite a president vigilant in his cham pionship of tolerance.
 THE FIRST PURGE
 Jerome Frank came to Wash ington during the earliest days of the New Deal as Counsel of the AAA, soon gravitated to the Brain Trust, became a crusader for the farmer-consumer, and as such collided head on with George Peek, Chester Davis and other champions of the big meat-pack- CTS, canners and milk distribu- tors.
 It was Frank who led the fight for grading the contents of canned goods, who tried to lessen the price gap between the cattlemen and the meat-pack- CTS, and who worked to expose the monopoly of milk.
 This expose showed that two big distributors, National Dairy Products and Borden held mon- opolistic sway over 3,000,000 dairy farmers, refused to return the bot ties of independent companies and succeeded in boosting the price of milk to 13 and IS cents a quart in many cities when it could easily be or 8 cents.
 Eventually Jerry Franks activi- ties caused a secret meeting of the big milk distributors in Phila- delphia, where they listed for of ficial decapitation the young men who were helping him.
 They were Garnder Jackson
 and Fred Howe, of the COnsum- CTS Counsel; Einar Jensen, milk
 administrator for Boston; Jerry Frank and his young assistant Lee Pressman. All had commit
 ted the cardinal sin of trying
 to protect the housewife.
 The list was submitted by the big milk companies to Art Lau- terbach, head of the AAA milk section, with the demand that they be purged.
 For reasons best known to himself, Henry Wallace, Secretary of Agriculture and boss of the AAA complied. The above were asked to resign. Thus came about the famous New Deal Purge of 1885.
 MILK TRUST BUSTING
 Four years later it was the same Art Lauterbach ex-chief of the AAA milk section, and part insti- gator of the purge, who came to Trust-busting Thurman Arnold to lobby regarding the indict- ments. He had become the lobby ist of his old friend the big milkmen. The indictments, in- cidentally, covered almost the same points raised by Frank and his friends four years before. JUDGE FRANK PROMISE
 After he left the AAA, Jerry Frank performed all sorts of odd jobs which the New Deal wanted doing. He took a hand at the impossible task of recognizing certain decrepit railroads, was given the chore of helping the sugar industry in Hawaii and Puerto Rico, won the Supreme Court battle with the Duke Power company over the right of muni- cipalities to build power plants with PWA money, and wrote a penetrating book, Save America First"
 Finally in 1887 he was of- fered the job of Commissioner on