The Wilmington morning star., 1946-07-06
Fair Enough
BY WEsTBROoK PEGLER.
Copyright, by King Features Syndicate,

NEW YORK. 1t appears that the indie
pendent Citizens Committee Of the Arts.
Sciences and Professions is paying Jimmy
Roosevelt $25, 900 a year as chief organizer.
The chairman of the committee is 10 David
son. the sculptor, who got $40, 900 Of the tax
payers money for doing portrait busts of a
group OF Latin-American presidents. some of
whom already have left office, giving way
to successors, as a gesture of
on the Fart of the colossus of the north to
the peoples OF our sister republics to the south.
1t may be wondered whether the indie
pendent Citizens Committee, a sort of minor
league Political Action Committee. with artv
and Intellectual pretensions, is naive, extrava-
CANT and m in hiring the eagIet at
this price, or practical and shrewd. However,
the right of the members including some of
our inveterate communists of the Hollywood
and Broadway fronts, to spend their money
as they please cannot be challenged. It isn't
much. in proportion to their incomes derived
from the favor of the common man through
radio, the stage and the movies, and they
may have thought that the name Roosevelt
was an asset Of itself, over and above the
actual value of his services. l disagree, but
anyone who can drain of that communist
money has my best wishes.
With the exception of his term in the White
House when he cut his price to $40, 900 a year
to assist his father during the war on want.
$3.50 0 has seemed to be Jimmy's minimum
base pay. He got that from the National Grain
Yeast Corporation, of Belleville. N. j., when,
in 1885, he was hired to be it's president by
Frank j. Hale, a former prohibition agent,
of whom it is stated in the proceedings in
Congress that he had been "summarily dis.
missed"
Jimmy had had no experience in the yeast
business and, although he was only % years
old, and there were many executives of proven
ability available for legitimate work. Hale,
nevertheless. selected him, of all men, to or
ganize his sales force end install an account
ing system. Harold Goldman, the secretary
treasurer of National Grain Yeast, said Jimmy
was '1ikeable'' and KNEW his way around"
He had hardly begun his labors in yeast,
however, when Henry Morgenthau, then Sec
rotary of the Treasury. sent a detective to
Belleville whose confidential report was soon
followed by Jimmy's resignation.
Jimmy's salary was $?5, 900 when he be-
came a Hollywood movie executive, again a
find" in an unfamiliar field, at a time when
the movie industry was worried lest the De-
partment of Justice should dismember it
through antitrust proceedings. The appre-
tensions later were happily dissolved, al
though pullman and aluminium were less fortu-
nate.
Some months ago, having business to dis
cuss with Ham Fish, the former congressman
who always beat the lare President Roosevelt
on his own home grounds until his district
was gerrymandered and he became a dis
placed person, I lunched with him at the
Harvard Club, in New York. My business was
to ask him If It were true that in the early
days of the new deal and early in Jimmy's
career in the insurance business, he had in
troduced Jimmy to Walter Clifford, the presi-
dent of the American Telephone and Tele-
graph Company, in an insinuating way.
Mr.. Fish said, oh yes to be sure. he had.
He said he brought Jimmy into Mr.. Gifford's
presence and, after the introduction, said,
"You know who he is, don't you. Mr.. Clifford.
He is a son of President Roosevelt"
Mr.. Fish said Mr.. Clifford was we'll aware
that Jimmy was the presidents son and Mr..
Fish then remarked that Jimmy wanted a
business and that 1t could do A. T. and T.
no harm TO have a friend at court.
Apparently abashed by my own expression
of amaZement at such naive candor, Mr.. Fish
added: - don't know. Perhaps I shouldn't
have said it. But Jimmy was a Harvard man
and SO was I and I liked him and wanted
to do him a favor"
Mr.. Clifford put him on an even footing
with other insurance agents and refused to
give him an advantage.
Mr.. Gifford's company later was not
through a difficult and very expensive %investi-
cation the result Of which was exoneration in
all but a few small particulars.
During the 1914 conventions in Chicago,
hearing CT the difficulties that the publication,
Esquire. was suffering With the Postoff:ce de-
partment, which held portions of its contents
to be indecent, 1 called or Dave Smart, the
publisher, at his office in the Palmolive build
ing.
The Postoffice department was censoring
the magazine and it was necessary for an
editor to make a monthly trip to Washington
to submit his drawings and text.
where do you buy your insurarce?" I
asked Mr.. Smart.
Mr.. Smart said he had bought a large
amount from Roosevelt Sargent. Jimmy's
firm, and that both partners had honored him
with a joint call in the course of which he
was thoroughly persuaded of the wisdom of
this deal.
There were, he said, four policies on his
life, aggregating $375, 000, in favor of his pub
fishing company. They were written in Au-
gust. 1887, and dropped in July. 1889.
We then reviewed certain difficulties that
he had endured in the federal court. under
Indictment. with several of his associates, on
charges of violating the securities and ex-
change law in a stock transaction. In 1941.
he and others had pleaded "nolo contendre''
and had come off with fines which seemed
relatively small. and had been placed on pro
baton. l remarked that l thought they had
got off easy.
It is my personal view that if the hide
1--4 %v.4:-.-o Co~oroiI+o- Sc n oyioC T.xo~.-I