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Clay July 1932 Letter

Page history last edited by Michael 10 years, 2 months ago

Saturday, July 23rd, 1932

Washington

 

 

Hello all,

 

I hope things are going well. I haven't heard much from Carl or anyone since March. I only have time for a quick letter now, I'm due at a committee session in half an hour. I hope this reaches you all while you're still all gathered!

 

It's looking pretty bad here in the States; way too many folks are out of work. President Curtis is very unpopular, and a month ago the Republicans chose Senator Joseph France, of Maryland, to be their presidential candidate. The original leading candidate at the Republican convention, Senator Blaine of Wisconsin, afterwards announced his support for the Democratic candidate, Governor Roosevelt of New York! France is a good fellow - though a terrible public speaker - but people are very angry with the Republicans, and are demanding that the Government do something. Since the Republicans took all the credit for the prosperity before the crash, they're getting all the blame now. I don't see any way that France can win, unless something unnatural happens before the election. He's already had rotten fruit and stuff thrown at him during parades and speeches since the convention; I hope nobody takes a shot at him!

 

There's a large camp of army veterans on the banks of the Anacostia River here; they're mighty upset about the economy, and about not getting a bonus payment promised long ago. Some people are worried that these men might be influenced by Communists or worse. The President hasn't done much either way about them yet. There are rumors that a million unemployed men will march on Washington in August.

 

Roosevelt has been promising a "new deal" for the economy, including a lot of social welfare programs, and ... let's see ... "a more equitable opportunity to share in the distribution of national wealth." Of course, a lot of the plutocratic sorts are calling him a socialist, a communist, and such. Oh, and he flew in an airplane to Chicago to give his acceptance speech, mighty modern of him.

 

Roosevelt wants to end the selling-off of Indian lands, and he wants to put in John Collier as head of the Bureau of Indian Affairs; all of that should take some steam out of the less crazy folk on reservations. He's also chosen Senator Tom Walsh, of Montana, for the job of Attorney General; Tom and I get along pretty well. Oh, don't go letting on about the Attorney General thing, it's not made public yet. Tom's been in the Senate since 1913, but I've managed to get into the House Justiciary Committee due to some finagling with the Democrats back when I was elected - he's only on the Senate Committee on the Disposition of Useless Executive Papers, and I think it riles him some - seeing as how he led the Senate investigation into the Teapot Dome dealings back in the Twenties. Tom's sweet on a Cuban girl half his age, and is thinking of asking her to marry him. The Cuban girl, name of Mina de Truffin, reminds me of a girl I knew in Missouri, back in the Eighties - Eleanor, her name was. She moved to Yankeetown, Florida though, to care for her grandfather; he died in 95 ... no, it was 96 ... when a hurricane knocked down the house. Armanis Knotts - Harbor Knotts, as he was known - lived in Yankeetown, too ... though not when the hurricane came by - his mother was one of the Ohio Bells, an old family there. Margaret Bell had come over during the famine, with her brothers; one of them, Wallace ... no, wait, it was William ... set up the first steam-powered forge in the Western Reserve. Anyway, Margaret, she married James Knotts, and had five children - they had a farm of 80 acres, one of the children, David, ran off to work on the Panama Canal, as a steam-shovel operator. He got buried for half-an-hour by a mudslide, but survived; however, he gave up on the canal. Oh, where was I?

 

The Democrats also have plans to destroy lots of crops, and to kill millions of cattle, pigs, and such to stabilize prices. This summer the drought in the midwest seems to be continuing from last year - the Agriculture Department has some very frightening predictions for dust storms around October or November.

 

Lamont Coleman has him some important job over at the Treasury; I think he reports to the Surgeon General.

 

I've gotten Mr. Tesla on the government payroll, and we've set up an organization to try and detect, prevent or minimize whatever's bound to happen at Manhattan in October. There are some level-headed engineers, and some wild-eyed young kids from Princeton and Harvard, in the group I've put together. Tesla himself is quite a handful, and doesn't like being managed. We've set up a lab for him in Brooklyn, and there's a larger plant with a generator and other heavy equipment being built on Long Island, near the airfield at Garden City. Tesla's got a lot of theories and plans - that's the problem, sorting out the wheat from the chaff!

 

It's still very hard getting folks here in Washington to understand what's going on, and what might happen. There are more and more groups -- newspapermen, ministers, local politicians, officers in the Army -- coming to the government and presenting evidence, and asking what's to be done. You asked me to look into the Pentheus Corporation back in March; they've been sounding out the government about what to do in the case of a big natural disaster. Fortunately or not, President Curtis and the Republicans aren't likely to spend much money on a national response to a disaster - mostly just have the Army provide a lot of tents and help with feeding people right afterwards, like when there was that big earthquake in San Francisco back in '06. I'd say if Pentheus wants to have major government involvement in their schemes, they'd have to sound out Governor Roosevelt - he's talking about having jobs programs involving millions of men, some of them in large, isolated camps out West. I've been pushing the Treasury Department to look into where Pentheus gets their money from - are they paying their taxes - etc. One thing I do know:  Pentheus has been spending a lot of money to get chummy with the American Legion; building Legion halls, sponsoring conventions, putting senior officers of the Legion on the company payroll with fat salaries, and other shenanigans.

 

There was a big appropriation in the War Department budget that was just passed for Citizens' Military Training Camps. I haven't been quite able to figure out what the Army intends those for; it's possible that some faction within the Army is working with Pentheus, or someone else, to recruit men for something. Officially it's all just some preparedness thing with no particular person behind it.

 

There aren't any signs of Marklin's plans - whatever they were. So many calamities have happened since he was in Washington that whatever he was up to isn't likely to have any mundane influence.

 

The Army is holding pretty close to their sources of Ectochrome film, I'm afraid. But Tesla is working on some viewers that won't need film, and will let you see abnatural stuff as it occurs!

 

The issue of what's going on in Russia since January has the State Department and War Department pretty concerned, I can tell you. It's amazing how little is known about what's going on inside a country larger than North America for six months!

 

Have you heard of a fellow named "Father Divine"? He's an odd type, claims to be a god, has a lot of people doing what he says in Harlem. I ran into some of his followers while we were setting up Tesla's workshop on Long Island. The newspapers say he has a couple of million members of his International Peace Mission church. Is he onto something? Could he be helpful in Manhattan? Or harmful?

 

On the Judiciary Committee, we have seen some pretty unpleasant proposals for laws to establish emergency military tribunals - to create a Federal police force, or to make all police everywhere in the country officers of the Justice Department - to require national identity cards, and to prevent travel or migration between states without permission - and lots of other ideas for benevolent dictatorship. People are very upset about crime in this country, what with the bootleggers, motor bandits, and other violent criminals about. In good news, most everyone's in favor of repeal, by the way; it's pretty certain we'll see the end of Prohibition in a year or so.

 

Keep in mind that in January the Democrats will probably control Congress, and I'll be on a much less interesting committee.

 

Give my best to everyone there!

 

Yours,

 

Rep. Clay Morrison

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