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All four cases were, of course, appealed. Harry Ford Sinclair, looking like a tired Mussolini, had plenty of money left to go on arguing that any man with money enough is as fully entitled to shadow juries as is the U. S. Government. To support this contention, Sinclair's lawyers might even cite certain earlier activities of William J. Burns, when he was Chief of the U. S. Bureau of Investigation under the defamed Daugherty regime. Another argument which, though it failed to impress Justice Siddons, the Sinclair lawyers may try out on the U. S. Supreme Court, is this: that Sinclair hired the Burnses to shadow the jurors to protect the latter from being tampered by Sinclair's "enemies"—i. e. the U. S. Government.
With the Sinclair, Day and Burns sentences recorded, the Federal prosecution prepared to act against each & every one of the 14 Burns detectives employed in the jury-shadowing; prepared also for a retrial of the Fall-Sinclair criminal conspiracy case itself, to begin April 2.
Meantime the Senate Committee on Public Lands pressed its investigation of the short-lived Continental Trading Co. through which Sinclair & friends, undeterred and perhaps aided by Col. Stewart of the Standard Oil Co. of Indiana, made eight millions on paper one day in 1921, of which three millions were realized, turned into Liberty Bonds and mysteriously distributed. Last week the list of known distributions stood as follows:
$800,000 to President James E. O'Neil of the Prairie Oil Co. (closely affiliated with Standard Oil of Indiana). Mr. O'Neil skipped the country when the Oil Scandals broke. Later he returned from Europe to Canada and handed over the $800,000 to the Prairie Oil Co. to which he had "always felt" the money belonged.
$763,000 to Harry M. Blackmer, board chairman of the Midwest Refining Co. (subsidiary of Standard of Indiana). Mr. Blackmer skipped the country, too, and has repeatedly refused to return and testify. His share of the Continental profits were located last week in a Manhattan safety deposit box. His son, Myron K. Blackmer, testified that Harry M. Blackmer will not soon return to the U. S. from Paris. "He told me he liked it there," said Son Blackmer.
$233,000 to Albert Bacon Fall, Harding Cabinet man who gave the Teapot Dome lease to Sinclair, as "payment" by Sinclair for a one-third interest in the Fall's New Mexico ranch, which was to have been turned into a country club but still remains a ranch.
$34,000 to the Republican National Committee, from Sinclair, as a contribution towards the deficit incurred in the Harding campaign.
$61,000 to H. M. Osier, a Canadian lawyer who went through the motions necessary to form the Continental Trading Co.
This total, $1,891,000, left some $1,109,000 of the Continental Trading Co.'s profits yet to be traced. The committee called more witnesses, including Will H. Hays who was G. O. P. Chairman at the time the Continental profits were being passed around.