A Jury On Oil

It was like having the horizon move into your front yard. Imagine being a bricklayer, an electrician, a clerk in a music store, an instructor of long distance telephone operators or a tire repair man, and being unexpectedly confronted, in person, with two men whose names have been appearing in newspaper headlines for four years. Connected with their names--Harry Ford Sinclair and Albert Bacon Fall--was something about oil, oil in Wyoming, oil belonging to the U. S. Navy. Millions of dollars had been involved. Mr. Sinclair and Mr. Fall were accused of doing something wrong about a lease, some liberty bonds, various oil companies, subpoenas, jurisdictions, previous decisions-- all very complicated.

Imagine being seated in the jury box of the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia, Justice Frederick Lincoln Siddons presiding, and quizzed by immensely professional lawyers to see if you were a fit person to decide the guilt or innocence of the Messrs. Fall and Sinclair.

Mrs. Annela L. Bailey, the music store clerk, young, bobbed, pretty, smartly dressed, was asked if she had any bias. "Certainly not," said she. "It really didn't interest me." All she knew was what she had not understood in the headlines. She was accepted as a jury member.

Samuel Cooperman, grocer, the next talesman called, said he had read about the case. "Have you formed any opinion concerning the guilt or innocence of the defendants?" "I certainly have!" said Grocer Cooperman. He was excused.

It was noticeable that other talesmen who had read about the Fall-Sinclair oil scandal in the newspapers were opionated as Grocer Cooperman as to the probity of the defendants. But few talesmen had read about the case at all. A dozen peers whose lack of knowledge was adequate were soon chosen to try whether or not the Messrs. Fall and Sinclair conspired criminally to defraud the U. S. Besides the bricklayer, clerk, telephone instructress, electrician and tire repair man, the dozen included an auto salesman, a baker's delivery man, a leather worker, another clerk, a floorwalker, an ice salesman, a tailor. They settled themselves in their box and prepared to try to understand, weigh, decide.

They curiously eyed the personages in the courtroom.

Albert Bacon Fall, once an ambitious Kentucky boy, founder of "Fall's Business College for Young Men" at Nashville, Tenn., who reached wealth, fame and a place in the Harding cabinet via law, mining, cattle dealing, lumber trading and being Senator from New Mexico, still carried his broad-brimmed black hat, still chewed unlighted cigars, but bore his 66 years tiredly. His grey mustache drooped, his grey suit hung loosely, he slouched silent in his chair.

Harry F. Sinclair-- once a druggist's lazy son in Independence, Kan., who one day shot himself in the foot while out hunting and from the accident insurance money built up an oil fortune big enough for him to help back the late Federal Baseball League (1915), to play with his Rancocas stables (including World's Champion Horse Zev) and to be offered (so the story goes)' the throne of Albania--fleshy but firm, quiet but quick-eyed, Harry P. Sinclair sat erect and whispered incessantly with his counsel.

Lawyer Owen J. Roberts opened the prosecution for the U. S. with a rapid-fire rehearsal of accusations which every one but the jury had heard many times before.

The jury seemed more at ease when dapper, smoothly tailored Lawyer Martin W. Littleton, for the defense, repeated the prosecution's story more slowly, with polite explanations, with emphasis that made it seem an appealing exposition of innocence.

While the jury tried to digest the whole long story, observers wrote about the trial's highlights.

P: How Lawyer Littleton "blamed" the son of a great conservationist, Col. Theodore Roosevelt, for the secrecy that shrouded the Teapot Dome lease. As Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Col. Roosevelt ordered secrecy in the interests of national defense.

P: How Mr. Fall startled the Court and his own counsel by taking the floor himself to beg (unsuccessfully) that his onetime subordinate, Judge E. C. Finney, who still is Assistant Secretary of the Interior, be allowed to answer questions helpful to the defense.

P: How onetime Governor Nathan Miller of New York, present in court on behalf of Oilman H. M. Blackmer, a witness much wanted by the government, arose and announced that he had counseled Mr. Blackmer to break a U. S. law and not appear in court. (Mr. Blackmer was last week living at a Paris hotel, playing golf daily, keeping late hours).

P: How Dr. George Otis Smith, head of the U. S. Geological Survey, and other experts, testified that they had told Mr. Fall there was no oil oozing away out of the Teapot Dome pool, thus shaking the defense thesis that Mr. Fall executed the lease for the "patriotic" purpose of tanking the oil before nature drained it.

The jury was excused for a long time while the lawyers battled over whether or not Mr. Sinclair's testimony, before a senate committee in 1923, about visiting Mr. Fall in New Mexico prior to the lease, could be introduced as evidence; how Justice Siddons finally deferred decision as to whether this testimony should be admitted.

The jury heard that they would probably have to sit and listen for two weeks more, at least, before it would be their turn to make a speech.