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Twice I have read, among other inaccuracies in TIME, accounts of Detroit's politico-economic situation written by or obtained from persons either deliberately unfriendly to Mayor Frank Murphy, or ignorant of the facts.
In TIME of July 20 you say that fraud and embezzlement were found in the dole administration AFTER Ford Motor Company officials cited hundreds of dole getters who were also drawing Ford pay. Additional facts are necessary to give the truth. The first and only significant embezzlement was discovered by two young bankers who became suspicious of the sudden wealth of one Alex F. Lewis, a clerk in the welfare department, who through an ingenious fraud obtained $207,000. He fooled not only the welfare administration but the Detroit Yacht Club which admitted him to membership and the Ford Motor Company, which permitted him to buy an interest in a Ford agency with his stolen funds.
The Lewis embezzlement was the signal for an attack by the Ford Motor Company on Mayor Frank Murphy who had refused to use his influence in setting aside a city tax levy on a $2,000,000 Ford tunnel. The chief of the Ford Motor Company police department was chosen as the Ford spokesman. He hurled charges wild and vague, finally narrowing them down to 329 specific cases of "apparent fraud" in which Ford workmen accepted city welfare. To date less than 100 of these cases have been shown to be fraudulent—100 cases out of 30,000. . . .
You say that as a result of the fraud disclosures welfare expenditures in Detroit have been limited to $300,000 a month. This is definitely untrue. By Councilmanic mandate poor relief expenditures (doles) have been limited to $400,000 for July, August and September. When this $1,200,000 has been spent, $5,700,000 will be provided by Common Council for poor relief in the next nine months. . . .
Detroit itself is ill-informed on the subject, because two of its newspapers deliberately misinform their subscribers and the third paper (Hearst) while making an honest attempt at being fair succeeds only in making itself a little silly by ineptness.
JERRY H. BACON
Detroit, Mich.
No Detroit Syndicate Sirs:
In your July 20 issue of TIME, p. 17, article referring to the dole system used in Detroit, I beg to advise that you have been misinformed with reference to a syndicate being formed, consisting of the Chrysler Corp., Packard Motor Car Co. and Fisher Finance Corp.
This statement appeared also in the Detroit papers, and was immediately contradicted by Alvin McCauley of the Packard Motor Car Co. and Mr. Fisher of the Fisher Finance Corp.; also the controller of the Chrysler Corp. stated that he had no knowledge of any such syndicate. It seems that the statement had its origin with the Detroit City Controller Roosevelt. However, the later editions of the paper stated that no such syndicate had been formed for the purpose of lending Detroit $59,500.000.
A loan of $5,000,000 from Henry Ford, however, is authentic. . . . WALTER F. STEBENS
Detroit, Mich.
TIME thanks Reader Stebens for a correction which did not catch up with original news reports from Detroit. Last week Controller Roosevelt was talking about raising $53,000,000 for Detroit on short-term notes.—ED.
Who Knows Turtles'?
Sirs: