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One by one California's McAdoo, Nebraska's Norris, New York's Wagner, Missouri's Clark and Montana's Wheeler uprose to chime assent. No Senator raised his voice in objection. No Senator knows when he himself may be heading an investigation, needing all the power he can command.
Ripping into his critics, Senator Black charged that the same kind of seekers of special privilege who had organized the Liberty League were behind "fake farm unions, sentinels of the republic, protectors of liberty, guardians of the Constitution, self-defense leagues." Picking out the Chicago Tribune for special mention, he declared that, "a gross and malicious campaign of misrepresentation" had been launched against his Committee.
Specifically, Inquisitor Black denied that he had seized the files of the Liberty League, that the Federal Communications Commission had helped him round up his telegrams.
Meantime in his Committee hearings the sharp-tongued Senator was making out a more concrete case for his seizures. Vice President Stephen B. Severson of Buffalo, N. Y.'s Republic Light, Heat & Power Co., a Cities Service subsidiary, admitted that without authorization he had signed the names of some 30 relatives and friends in his home town of Stoughton, Wis. to telegrams opposing the utilities bill, sent them to the Representative from that Wisconsin district. Copies of those telegrams in the company's files and 7,000 others had been destroyed, but Vice President Severson did not know how, when or by whom.
Officials of Crew Levick Co., another Cities Service subsidiary, likewise testified that their anti-utilities bill telegrams had been burned or otherwise disposed of. "And all this being true," Senator Black asked a Crew Levick sales manager, "the only place on this earth where the Committee can get this information is from the telegraph companies?"
Said the sales manager: "That is right." Finally the squabble was brought to a temporary intermission by the unanimous passage by the Senate of a resolution introduced by Senator Borah directing the Federal Communications Commission to supply a detailed report of all its activities in investigating messages.