The Wilmington morning star., 1947-01-23
As Pegler Sees 1t
Copyright, By King Features Syndicate
BY WEsTBROOK PEGLER

By WESIBROOk PEGLEh
Copyright, By King Features Syndicate Inc
E YORK - Attorney General Tom Clark
emphatically impugned the administrator OF
Edgar H. Rossbach, the United States attorney,
in Newark, N. j., who last week lost an IN
come tax fraud case against Joe Fay, a notori-
Gus crook and a mighty man in the Frank
Hague political organization, of which Ross
bach is a member.
Clark SAID this defeat was a damned out
II ge'' and ordered an investigation of Ross
bach's office.
The same office lost a black-market case
in October, 1915, against another Matchmaking
union racketeer, as evil as Fay himself, after
a trial before the same federal judge who
heard the Fay case Thomas F. Meaney, also
a Hague man in politics. The defendant in
that one was Benjamin Pross, of New York,
who operates a local union OF the Vine, Liquor
and Distillery Workers Union. He is a thief
who worked in bankruptcy frauds before he
turned to the union racket and had been con-
victed Of three offenses. In the black market
Job it was shown that Pross compelled the
Schenley Distillers Corporation to allot to a
New York wholesale liquor firm 10, 500 cases
of whiskey above its rationed quota by threat
ening to strike the Schenley plants. his pretext
was that 106 employees of a small plant which
Schenley had bought and was closing down
must have work and that the handling of this
liquor would provide employment for them.
Actually. 10, 500 cases would provide only a
trifling spell of employment for only a few
men and there was no record showing that
more than five workers ever got jobs out of
the deal. These five did not appear to be men
displaced by the abandonment of the old,
small plant and the length of their employ
ment was not clearly shown. Moreover, Pross
did not report this deal to his union.
At that time, in the summer of 1943, the
liquor industry was ratlonIng whlSkey to It's
dealers and the black market was very active.
The Treasury showed that this excess allot-
ment went into the black market in the neigh
borhoods of Army training camps in Georgia,
Texas, Louisiana and other Southern states.
American soldiers paid as much as SIS a bottle
at retail and the excess price by the case, to
the Southern wholesale black market dealers
ranged from 81 to SIT.
Because he was a criminal with an unusually
nasty record, Pross was afraid to take the wit
ness stand in the federal court in Newark. He
may have been representative in this. Fay, too,
has a record, extending back about 25 years,
but he took the stand in his defense before
Mr.. Rossbach and was treated with admir-
able courtesy. In fact, Mr.. RosSbach conduct
ed his cross-examination from a sitting posi-
ton and did not embarasS the hoodlum poltl-
clan with a number of searching questions
LII 1lilSIiL HoFC given Il Oil Joiy q VSIy oA
favorable impression of him.. However, the
Pross case was conducted by Charles A. STAN
ziale, an assistant to Mr.. Rossbach, and it is
easily possible that he would have gone after
ProSs much more aggreSSlvely. Mr.. Stanzlale
said he prosecuted the black market case with
the utmost vigor and could not understand how
the jury could acquit Pross and still convict
two minor accomplices. All ended well for the
~accomplices, however, for the august and hon.
.oroh1a J11Goo Mnonnu cot ioCido thaIr pOnyJp-
tons on the ground that when the jury ac-
quilted Pross the trunk of the conspiracy was
cut. l thought it passing strange when / inter-
viewed Mr.. Stanziale last fall that he wouldn't
let me SEA the record and said the boss, Mr..
Rossbach might not thank him for discussing
the case with me.
Although brother Pross' local is a New York
racket of the A. F. of L., his jurisdiction ex-
tends into the Frank Hague territory in New
Jersey, where a man able to command liquor
in 1000 lots in black-market days and TO
shake down the industry at will at all times
by threats of labor trouble naturally would be
a. person of standing and high privilege. AS
elements of the CLIO have complained from
time to time. unioneering Is a highly political
racket over there. When the learned Judge
Meaney. who now has had the distinguished
honor to preside over the a%cuuittal of two Of
the nastiest parasites on the body of labor.
was up for confirmation in the Senate, some of
his zWarmest testimonials came from eminent
colleagues of brother Fav representing groups
and councils of A. F. of l.. unions.
Because the Pross trial was not ogled in
tently by the press the opportunity was lost to
observe whether the Jury was chosen with the
same simple trust in human nature that per-
mitted Mr.. Rossbach to accept on the FAY
jury a man who had been a member of Fay's
own union. Mr.. Stanziale thought he had just
about put the Illicit profits in brother Pross'
pocket, and so it seemed from the evidence in
review. Moreover, it did appear that if the ac-
complies were guilty, as the jury thought,
then Pross must have been guilty, too. be-
cause he was the one who bla Schen-
ley out of the 10, 500 cases most of which was
traced positively, by identifying data, into the
black markets. After a lapse OF time he bought
a voluptuous country estate. but by then he
had been cleared of profiteering on our brave
lads.
The practice of law, like the practice of
medicine, phrenology and gin = rummy, sur.
rounds the practitioner with an assumption of
good faith. Challenge it and indignation en-.
sues, or worse. The lawyer may snort and
bawl at a witness or defendant and vet ask
the wrong questions, ask questions the wrong
way or neglect to ask questions that another
lawyer thinks he ought to have. Not often,
however. or certainly not as a rule, does a
prosecutor waive his histrionic rights and
cross-examine a bottle-scarred old toss-pot
such as Fay in the mannerly tones that Ross
bach used, and from a sitting position. A judge
may maintain a position iInpeccably correct
in demeanor as we'll as in the law and still
weigh his thumb in the scales of justice by a
tone of voice, by unnecessary emphasis on the
sacred rights Of the accused and by scornful
illusions to scandalous clamor in the press
against a presumptive innocent. They did take
a written record of the performance in the
Fay case. but they didn't take movies or
sound-track.
Now Mr.. Clark is sending a fellow. I'm 70
NeWNark to have a look at that barn -