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For its own counsel the Commission planned to get Ferdinand Pecora, but that able inquisitor, who is now a New York judge, was unable to oblige. Last week's quizzing was done by a restless, brilliant New Dealer who celebrated his 33rd birthday the day before the hearings opened. Counsel Samuel Becker, like many on the Commission's telephone staff, is a graduate of the La Follette school of Wisconsin liberalism. Though he did not participate directly in Wisconsin's famed telephone inquiry, which resulted in three rate reduction orders during Depression, he became executive counsel to Governor Philip Fox La Follette in 1931, went to PWA in 1933. After graduation from the University of Wisconsin (Class of 1922), he romped through Harvard Law School, where he became friends with Felix Frankfurter. After teaching law at Tulane University, he practiced his profession in his home town, Milwaukee. Occasionally Counsel Becker leaps from his bed in the dead of night, scurries to his office to perfect an idea that struck him suddenly. Just as suddenly he sometimes drops his work, heads for the nearest pool parlor for relaxation. Young though he is, Counsel Becker made even self-possessed Mr. Gifford squirm on the witness stand last week. President Edgar Selden Bloom of Western Electric, big A. T. & T. manufacturing subsidiary, complained that Mr. Becker "shut him off" every time he started to talk.
After Mr. Becker elicited the well-known fact that Mr. Gifford receives $206,000 annually, he asked the dapper, round-faced witness if he worked the regular A. T. & T. five-day week. "That's correct," replied President Gifford, adding, "plus the other two days. I don't suppose there is a day in the year that I don't devote some time to the telephone business."
To involved questions about A. T. & T.'s connections with the cinema, Mr. Gifford finally laughed: "You're getting in over my depth. I don't know." Another angle plugged by Counsel Becker was the relationship between Western Electric and Graybar Electric, another telephone equipment company, which Western Electric sold to Graybar employes in 1928. Contending that Graybar was still in fact controlled by Western Electric, the inquisitor implied that the price of telephone equipment was too high. Mr. Gifford countered that A. T. & T. got into manufacturing to see to it that the prices were "reasonable."
Becker: You mean that the public relies on your integrity, etc.?
Gifford: No, the public relies on our not being stupid.
Diversion. While this line of attack was significant, it made few headlines. Forthwith, Counsel Becker ordered a flank diversion, trying for two days to "smear" A. T. & T. with revelations about teletype service furnished to racetrack tipsters and their gambling clients. A. T. & T. revenues from this source amounted to only $43,000 per month. Smart Counsel Becker knew its news value to be much greater.