The Wilmington morning star., 1947-01-10
Pegler Sees 1t
BY WEsTBROOK PEGLER

Copyright by King Features Syndicate, Inc.)
WASHINGTON, Jan. 9When Thomas F.
Meaney was up for confirmation by the Sen
ate on his appointment to the United States
District Court for New Jersey, in 1912, there
was much complimentary testimony as to his
personal character, his patriotism and his
legal ability. But all the opposition did object
On the ground that he appeared to be a pont-
ical creature of the boss, Frank Hague, CT
Jersey City. Charles Edison, the governor,
! a democrat himself and late Secretary OF the
Navy under President Roosevelt, said: The
record indicates beyond any question that ne
has done his boss will. The basic question
is whether you are not, in effect. putting
Frank Hague on the bench. The conclusion is
yes
Mr.. Meaney was confirmed, nevertheless,
but he must have realized that in time he
would find himself under cold and questioning
observation in a criminal trial OF some such
old friend of Boss Hague as Joe Fay, the
drunken, brawling union racketeer, who now
comes before Judge Meaney charged with
evading his income taxes on the enormous
graft which he extorted from the contractors
on the Delaware aqueduct job. Judge Meaney
may be incorruptible, but he has no right to
object if others observe his conduct OF this
trial, and the outcome, in the mood OF the
governor who believed he had done the boss
will before and might do it again.
Ia Dooo IL l W AAo 0N
Fay has been one of them Cor years. Fay is
a vice-president of the operating engineers
union, made up OF the men who run the ma
chinery and perform a lot of mock-jobs
amounting to political patronage on heavy
construction projects. Among those mock-jobs
is that of Hamburger man." a political bum
who gets $40 a day ostensibly to oil machinery
which needs oiling about as often as your
watch, and actually puts in his time sitting
around the hamburger joint. On public con-
struction he does this at your expense. The
union has been a shakedown device for Fay
andSa lot of other arrogant crooks-he is now
under conviction and a long prison sentence
in the state of New York for years and
years. Fay's home and headquarters have
been in Newark, where Judge Meaney sits
in the federal court.
Fay worked both sides of the street. He
not only bossed and bullied the honest work:
ing stifts who did the work, but he operated
a company which chartered heavy machinery
to the contractors. He could withhold labor
from contractors who didn't rent his ma
chinery. And. of course, he regularly collect
ed shake as insurance against labor trouble
no matter where the contractors got their
heavy equipment.
All this while, he was as close to Hague as
Judge Meaney was. He still is a Hague man.
Meaney is a Hague man. And those who
came down to Washington in 1912 to indorse
Med1eY lnC1uQeQ hODerC r. Lync1, lne pIeSl-
dent of the Hudson County Building and Con-
~struction Council, and Joseph Quinn, the pres
idet of the Hudson County Central Labor
Union. Those both are within Fay's jurisdic-
ton as vice-president Of the operating engi-
neers, and Hudson county is the county in
which Meaney sat tor II years as judge of
the juvenile court and five years as judge
of the court Of common pleas before he was
nominated to the federal court.
D,Iripo tho hporipOc m Moopoysc copfir ~, a
ton, H. Alexander Smith. OF Princeton uni
versity, one of the few republicans who spoke
against him, the other opponents being anti
Hague democrats, tried to put in a capsule
the particular deal or coincidence which
aroused most of the suspicion. He had a
theory that Meaney had taken part in a poll
teal move so that Boss Hague's young son,
Frank Hague, Jr., could be appointed to the
Court of Errors and Appeals, which is the
Supreme Court Of the state Of New Jersey,
when he was just a cub lawyer.
He said he was shocked when Governor
Moore, a Hague man, said sit would please
young Hague's father if he got this Job.
the time was II know it will make his daddy
happy"
The sequence of events was this: Meaney
quit the common pleas court, which paid SIS,
900 a year, to become counsel to the state
banking department to handle the affairs Of
the distressed New Jersey lItle Guaranty ana
Trust Co. at $780, 900 a year. Judge Walker
stepped down from the Court of Errors and
Appeals to Meaney's place on common pleas
and young Hague got Walkers place. Meaney
finished his job in the bank case and in due
time was nominated to the federal court.
John Longo, another democrat and a hell
raising martyr, appearing against Meaney,
said: II charge that many Hague directors of
the New Jersey Title Guaranty and Trust
Company knew it was ~insolvent 10 days be-
fore its closing and used their to
permit Hague favorites to withdraw enormous
sums. I charge that Meaney was placed in
his bank position to assure the Hague organ
ization that the circumstances under which
favored depoSitors were preferred over less
fortunate depositors would be forever sup
pressed"
Longo did nine months in jail, without bail,
by order Of the same court of common pleas,
but not by Judge Meaney's order, while men
accused of murder easily got bail. He finally
was stuck with a technical conviction on a
perjury charge. Meaney denied that he had
suppressed any records in the bank case and
the senate finally did give him the benefit
of the doubt and confirmed him.
Recently, Meaney sat in a trial Of Ben
Pross, as rotten a crook as you will meet
in the rogues' gallery of the American Fed
GRAFTON of Labor and two other defendants
in a black market liquor case. Pross had
three convictions on his record, including a
four-year stretch in Atlanta, so he didn't dare
take the witness stand. 1t was an open-and-
shut case involving 10,00o dozen bottles OF
booze eased into the black market at south