When the showdown came, Father Charles Edward Coughlin folded his weekly, Social Justice, for good. Three weeks ago he blamed "Jews and Communists and New Dealers" for Attorney General Biddie's charge of sedition against the paper, and dared the Government to call him to the witness stand. But last week he did not even show up to defend his second-class mailing privileges. Instead he wired meekly to Postmaster General Frank Walker saying he "approved" the formal promise of Social Justice that it would go out of business.
But the Government did not call it quits. A Federal Grand Jury went right ahead questioning employes of Social Justice. Attorney General Biddle, bent on closing up some 95 so-called "vermin" publications, was clearly determined to indict those responsible for the "clearly seditious" statements published in Social Justice, under the Espionage Act of 1917 (penalties: $10,000 fine, up to 20 years in prison).
Why Father Coughlin had suddenly chosen to submit could only be surmised. Said Detroit's Archbishop Edward Francis Mooney, no patron of Coughlin's: "My understanding with him is sufficiently broad and firm to exclude effectively the recurrence of any such unpleasant situation."