by Jon E. Lewis
The CHAIRMAN. When you say you smelled a rat, you mean you had an idea that they were not telling the truth?
General BUTLER. I could not reconcile and from the very beginning I was never able to reconcile their desire to serve the ordinary man in the ranks, with their other aims. They did not seem to be the same. It looked to me as if they were trying to embarrass the administration in some way. They had not gone far enough yet but I could not reconcile the two objectives; they seemed to be diametrically opposed. One was to embarrass the administration of the American Legion, when I did not want to go anyhow, and the other object will appear here in a little while. I do not know that at that moment I had formed any particular opinion. I was just fishing to see what they had in mind. So many queer people come to my house all the time and I like to feel them all out.
Finally they said, “Now, we have arranged a way for you to come to this convention.”
I said, “How is that, without being invited?”
They said, “Well, you are to come as a delegate from Hawaii.”
I said, “I do not live in Hawaii.”
“Well, it does not make any difference. There is to be no delegate from one of the American Legion posts there in Honolulu, and we have arranged to have you appointed by cable, by radio, to represent them at the convention. You will be a delegate.”
I said, “Yes; but I will not go in the back door.”
They said, “That will not be the back door. You must come.”
I said, “No; I will not do this.”
“Well,” they said, “are you in sympathy with unhorsing the royal family?”
I said, “Yes; because they have been selling out the common soldier in this Legion for years. These fellows have been getting political plums and jobs and cheating the enlisted man in the Army, and I am for putting them out. But I cannot do it by going in through the back door.”
“Well,” they said, “we are going to get them out. We will arrange this.”
That was all that happened the first day, as I recollect it. There were several days of it, and I will tell you everything that happened, but I cannot check it with the specific days. So they went away. Two or three days later, they came back in the same car, both together, the second time. Doyle dropped out of the picture, he appeared only twice.
The CHAIRMAN. What was the second talk?
General BUTLER. The substance of the second talk was this, that they had given up this delegate idea, and I was to get two or three hundred legionnaires from around that part of the country and bring them on a special train to Chicago with me; that they would sit around in the audience, be planted here and there, and I was to be nothing but an ordinary legionnaire, going to my own convention as an onlooker; not as a participant at all. I was to appear in the gallery. These planted fellows were to begin to cheer and start a stampede and yell for a speech. Then I was to go to the platform and make a speech. I said, “Make a speech about what?”
“Oh,” they said, “we have one here.”
This conversation lasted a couple of hours, but this is the substance of it. They pulled out this speech. They said, “We will leave it here with you to read over, and you see if you can get these fellows to come.”
I said, “Listen. These friends of mine that I know around here, even if they wanted to go, could not afford to go. It would cost them a hundred to a hundred and fifty dollars to go out there and stay for 5 days and come back.”
They said, “Well, we will pay that.”
I said, “How can you pay it? You are disabled soldiers. How do you get the money to do that?”
“Oh, we have friends. We will get the money.”
Then I began to smell a rat for fair. I said, “I do not believe you have got this money.”
It was either then or the next time, or one of the times, they hauled out a bank-deposit book and showed me, I think it was $42,000 in deposits on that occasion, and on another occasion it was $64,000.
The CHAIRMAN: They took out a bank book and showed you what?
General BUTLER. They took out a bank book and showed me deposits of $42,000 on one occasion and $64,000 on another.
The CHAIRMAN. Do you know on what bank that was?
General BUTLER. I do not. They just flipped the pages over. So, I have had some experience as a policeman in Philadelphia. I wanted to get to the bottom of this thing and not scare them off, because I felt then that they had something real. They had so much money and a limousine. Wounded soldiers do not have limousines or that kind of money. They said, “We will pay the bill. Look around and see if you cannot get two or three hundred men and we’ll bring them out there and we will have accommodations for them.”
This was getting along about the first of August, I should say. Well, I did not do anything about it. MacGuire made one other trip to see me, this time by himself, to see how things were getting along, I said that I had been busy and had not had time to get the soldiers together. Then on this occasion I asked him where he got this money. He was by himself when I asked him that. Doyle was not around.
“Where did you get all this money? It cannot be yours.”
He said that it was given to him by nine men, that the biggest contributor had given $9,000 and that the donations ran all the way from $2,500 to $9,000.
I said, “What is the object?”
He said the object was to take care of the rank and file of the soldiers, to get them their bonus and get them properly cared for.
Well, I knew that people who had $9,000 to give away were not in favor of the bonus. That looked fishy right away.
He gave me the names of two men: Colonel Murphy, Grayson M.P. Murphy, for whom he worked, was one. He said, “I work for him. I am in his office.”
I said to him, “How did you happen to be associated with that kind of people if you are for the ordinary soldier and his bonus and his proper care? You know damn well that these bankers are not going to swallow that. There is something in this, Jerry MacGuire, besides what you have told me. I can see that.”
He said, “Well, I am a business man. I have got a wife and family to keep, and they took good care of them, and if you would take my advice, you would be a business man, too.”
I said, “What has Murphy got to do with this?”
“Well,” he said, “don’t you know who he is?”
I said, “Just indirectly. He is a broker in New York. But I do not know any of his connections.”
“Well,” he said, “he is the man who underwrote the formation of the American Legion for $125,000. He underwrote it, paid for the field work of organizing it, and had not gotten all of it back yet.”
“That is the reason he makes the kings, is it? Pie has still got a club over their heads.”
“He is on our side, though. He wants to see the soldiers cared for.”
“Is he responsible, too, for making the Legion a strike breaking outfit?”
“No, no. He does not control anything in the Legion now.”
I said: “You know very well that it is nothing but a strike breaking outfit used by capital for that purpose and that is, the reason they have all those big club-houses and that is the reasons I pulled out from it. They have been using these dumb soldiers to break strikes.
He said: “Murphy hasn’t anything to do with that. He is a very fine fellow.”
I said, “I do not doubt that, but there is some reason for him putting $125,000 into this.”
Well, that was the end of that conversation. I think it was then that he showed me the deposit of $64,000.
The CHAIRMAN. MacGuire had the money?
General BUTLER. MacGuire had the bank book. He did not have any money yet. No money had appeared yet. There was nothing but a bank book showing deposits. It was in his name.
The CHAIRMAN. In his name?
General BUTLER. Yes.
The CHAIRMAN. Not in Doyle’s name?
General BUTLER. No. Doyle had faded out of the picture and his name was never mentione
d again and has never been mentioned since I do not know but what Doyle just rode along with him.
The next time I saw him was about the 1st of September, in a hotel in Newark. I went over to the convention of the Twenty-ninth Division. Sunday morning he walked into my room and he asked me if I was getting ready now to take these men out to Chicago, that the convention was pretty close. I said, “No; I am not going to Chicago.”
“Why not?”
I said, “You people are bluffing. You have not got any money.” Whereupon he took out a big wallet; out of his hip pocket, and a great, big mass of thousand dollar bills and threw them out on the bed.
I said, “What’s all this?”
He says, “This is for you, for expenses. You will need some money to pay them.”
“How much money have you got there?”
He said, “$18,000.”
“Where did you get those thousand dollar bills?”
“Oh,” he said, “last night some contributions were made. I just have not had a chance to deposit them, so I brought them along with me.”
I said, “Don’t you try to give me any thousand dollar bills. Remember, I was a cop once. Every one of the numbers on these bills has been taken. I know you people and what you are trying to do. You are just trying to get me by the neck. If I try to cash one of those thousand dollar bills, you would have me by the neck.”
“Oh,” he said, “we can change them into smaller denominations.”
I said, “You put that money away before somebody walks in here and sees that money around, because I do not want to be tied up with it at all. I told you distinctly I am not going to take these men to Chicago.”
“Well, are you going yourself?”
I said, “Oh, I do not know. But I know one thing. Somebody is using you. You are a wounded man. You are a bluejacket. You have got a silver plate in your head. I looked you up. You were wounded. You are being used by somebody, and I want to know the fellows who are using you. I am not going to talk to you any more. You are only an agent. I want some of the principals.”
He said, “Well, I will send one of them over to see you.” I said, “Who?” He said, “I will send Mr. Clark.”
“Who is Mr. Clark?”
“Well, he is one of our people. He put up some money.”
“Who is he?”
“Well, his name is R. S. Clark. He is a banker. He used to be in the Army.”
“How old a man is he?” He told me.
“Would it be possible that he was a second lieutenant in the Ninth Infantry in China during the Boxer campaign?”
He said, “That is the fellow.”
He was known as the “millionaire lieutenant” and was sort of batty, sort of queer, did all sorts of extravagant things. He used to go exploring around China and wrote a book on it, on explorations. He was never taken seriously by anybody. But he had a lot of money. An aunt and an uncle died and left him $10,000,000. That was the story at the time. So he said, “I will send him over to see you.” I said, “All right, you send him over.”
I thought no more about it until the end of the week, when Clark called up and asked if he might spend Sunday with me. I said, “Yes,” and he said, “I will take the 9 o’clock train from New York.” I said, “All right; I will meet you at the station.”
Well, this was getting down to something real. I was there on time, and he stepped off the train, and I recognized him. I had not seen him for 34 years, but I could see that he was the same man, a long, gangling fellow. His hair had turned gray, but it was the same man. We got in the car and drove out home and had lunch. He did not approach the subject until after lunch. Then we went out on the porch and he began to talk about my going to the convention along with him; that he had reservations. He said something about a private car attached to the Pennsylvania Limited; that we could get on at Paoli and go right out with him, and that he had a suite of rooms for me at the Palmer House and he would see that I had a chance to speak.
He said, “You have got the speech?” I said, “Yes. These fellows, Doyle and MacGuire, gave me the speech.” I said, “They wrote a hell of a good speech, too.” He said, “Did those fellows say that they wrote that speech?” I said, “Yes; they did. They told me that that was their business, writing speeches.” He laughed and said, “That speech cost a lot of money.” Clark told me that it had cost him a lot of money. Now either from what he said then or from what MacGuire had said, I got the impression that the speech had been written by John W. Davis – one or the other of them told me that – but he thought that it was a big joke that these fellows were claiming the authorship of that speech.
I said, “The speech has nothing to do with what I am going to Chicago for. The speech urges the convention to adopt the resolution that the United States shall return to the gold standard.” MacGuire had said, “We want to see the soldiers’ bonus paid in gold. We do not want the soldier to have rubber money or paper money. We want the gold. That is the reason for this speech.”
“Yes,” I said, “but it looks as if it were a big-business speech. There is something funny about that speech, Mr. Clark.”
The conversations were almost the same with both of them.
That was the end of that and we talked pleasantly on personal matters after that. I took him to the train about 6 o’clock and he went home.
The convention came off and the gold standard was endorsed by the convention. I read about it with a great deal of interest. There was some talk about a flood of telegrams that came in and influenced them and I was so much amused, because it happened right in my room.
Then MacGuire stopped to see me on his way back from the convention. This time he came in a hired limousine. It was not a private one this time. He came out to the house and told me that they had been successful in putting over their move.
I said, “Yes, but you did not endorse the soldiers’ bonus.”
He said, “Well, we have got to get sound currency before it is worthwhile to endorse a bonus.”
He then went away and the campaign here in New York started. They were electing municipal officers, a political campaign. A marine was running for public office over here in Brooklyn and I came over to make a speech for him.
I was met at the train by MacGuire. He seemed to know just where I was going and he said he wanted to go with me, and he did.
I think there was one other visit to the house because he (MacGuire) proposed that I go to Boston to a soldiers’ dinner to be given by Governor Ely for the soldiers, and that I was to go with Al Smith. He said, “We will have a private car for you on the end of the train and have your picture taken with Governor Smith. You will make a speech at this dinner and it will be worth a thousand dollars to you.”
I said, “I never got a thousand dollars for making a speech.”
He said, “You will get it this time.”
“Who is going to pay for this dinner and this ride up in the private car?”
“Oh, we will pay for it out of our funds. You will have your picture taken with Governor Smith.”
I said, “I do not want to have my picture taken with Governor Smith. I do not like him.”
“Well, then, he can meet you up there.”
I said, “No, there is something wrong in this. There is no connection that I have with Al Smith, that we should be riding along together to a soldiers’ dinner. He is not for the soldiers’ either. I am not going to Boston to any dinner given by Governor Ely for the soldiers. If the soldiers of Massachusetts want to give a dinner and want me to come, I will come. But there is no thousand dollars in it.”
So he said, “Well, then, we will think of something else.”
I said, “What is the idea of Al Smith in this?”
“Well,” he said, “Al Smith is getting ready to assault the Administration in his magazine. It will appear in a month or so. He is going to take a shot at the money question. He has definitely broken with the President.”
I was interested to note tha
t about a month later he did, and the New Outlook took the shot that he told me a month before they were going to take. Let me say that this fellow has been able to tell me a month or weeks ahead of time everything that happened. That made him interesting. I wanted to see if he was going to come out right.
So I said at this time, “So I am going to be dragged in as a sort of publicity agent for Al Smith to get him to sell magazines by having our picture taken on the rear platform of a private car, is that the idea?”
“Well, you are to sit next to each other at dinner and you are both going to make speeches. You will speak for the soldiers without assaulting the Administration, because this Administration has cut their throats. Al Smith will make a speech, and they will both be very much alike.”
