"Who the hell's Smith?" Huey Long snorted in 1930 when one of his stooges suggested that Dr. James Monroe Smith would make a properly pliant president for Louisiana State University. Last week a pertinent question in Louisiana was-"Where the hell's Smith?"
James Monroe Smith was dean of the College of Education at Southwestern Louisiana Institute at Lafayette when Huey snatched him to Baton Rouge. Tall, bald, Dr. Smith shaped into an ideal academic puppet. Huey began to spend $13,500,000 on L. S. U. for sumptuous buildings, a monster swimming pool, "professional" footballers, a huge Medical Center in New Orleans. Contractors, politicians and public jobsters fattened, and the student body jumped from 2,100 to 8,550. Midway in this adventure into education, Huey announced: "If there's any title I'm proud of, it's Chief Thief for L. S. U."
That title is now in jeopardy. Dr. Smith installed himself & family in a campus mansion (built & paid for by the university), bought a $3,000 car in a year when faculty salaries were in arrears. No man to stop the fun was Huey's political heir, Governor Richard Webster Leche (rhymes with "flesh"). "I swore to uphold the Constitution of Louisiana and the United States, but I did not take any vows of poverty," Dick Leche used to say. One of L. S. U.'s new buildings is Leche Hall.
When prospering, arthritic Dick Leche found it wise to quit last week and turn over the Governorship to Huey's brother, Earl (TIME, July 3), James Monroe Smith was nowhere in sight, someone having seen to it that he had plenty of time to vanish after he resigned. By the week-end the man whom L. S. U. students publicly derided as JIMMY THE STOOGE had become a peril to the whole post-Huey machine in Louisiana, and particularly to Earl Long's hopes of being elected Governor in his own right next year.
More was soon known of the educator's finances. Three banks in New Orleans and Baton Rouge disclosed that they had just lent Dr. Smith $500,000 on notes signed by himself as president of L. S. U. The big brokerage house of Fenner & Beane in New Orleans had just asked him to withdraw $375,000 in L. S. U. bonds which he had posted as collateral for gambling in wheat futures. The State Attorney General announced that these notes were worthless and the bonds were unauthorized.
The East Baton Rouge Parish (County) Grand Jury indicted Dr. Smith for embezzling $100,000. Broker Charles Fenner said that Jimmy Smith in his gamblings had acted for perhaps a dozen "friends." First to be so identified was small-fry Business Manager Edgar N. Jackson, who had put $2,000 on the chance that a European war would boom wheat prices.
All that was publicly known of President Smith's movements for seven days was that Jack Adams drove Dr. and Mrs. Smith to the Chisca Hotel in Memphis on June 25, then returned to BatonRouge where he was arrested as a material witness.