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Some lovers of fair play have organized a branch of the American Civil Liberties Union, to teach the people of this community the elementary idea that the Constitution applies to the poor as well as to the rich. True to our program of the open forum, we call upon Mr. Rice and courteously invite him to set forth his ideas of constitutional rights to one of our audiences. Mr. Rice declines the invitation, and so does Mr. Harry Haldeman, president of the Better America Federation, and so does Mr. Marco Hellman, the banker, and So does Captain John D. Fredericks, congressman-elect of the Merchants’ and Manufacturers’ Association and the Chamber of Commerce—it is reported that they put up twelve thousand dollars additional salary for him, because so important a man could not afford to go to Congress otherwise!

Among the “tips” which came to me in the course of the struggle was one to the effect that Captain Plummer and Chief Oaks were each presented with a gold watch as a tribute of gratitude from the Merchants’ and Manufacturers’ Association. At a hearing before the Ministerial Union I had opportunity to ask Captain Plummer about this matter; he admitted with evident embarrassment that he had got a gold watch. I asked him if it was engraved in acknowledgment of his services to the Merchants’ and Manufacturers’ Association; his answer was that it was engraved “From the Merchants’ and Manufacturers’ Association for services to the community.” He added, somewhat naively, that he could not imagine how I had got that information. “No one but Mr. Rice and the jeweler were supposed to know about that watch!”