INQUIRY AND RIFTS
STAGGER THE OARP
Factional Break-Up Seen as
Possible Now for the
Townsend Plan.
ORGANIZATION IS CHANGED
By DUNCAN AIKMAN
WASHINGTON, April 4.—Indications of a possible factional
break-up of the Townsend Old-Age Revolving Pension movement are clearly
apparent here as a result of the second weeks' developments in the
hearings on the organization's management poli cies and financial affairs
being conducted by a House of Representatives investigation committee
headed by Congressman C. Jasper Bell of Missouri.
So far the committee's earlier intimations of sensational internal
scandals in OARP administration have borne little or nothing in the way of
positive results. On the other hand, committee members politically
unfriendly to the movement or skeptica l of the sincerity and "chemical
purity" of motives in its high command are insisting confidently today
that the investigation is having even more damaging effects on the
Townsend progress than violently scandalous revelations could be expected
to produce .
The tensions of the investigation already, in fact, have forced a
complete reorganization of the managing personnel of the national OARP
organization and, ostensibly at least, a drastic revision in its salary
scales and system of compensation for organizers and employes [sic] in
charge of the vital membership recruiting campaign.
Row Among Leaders
Moreover, while the OARP is adjusting itself to these basic
changes, it has become, for the time being, the focus of a violent quarrel
between leaders and ex-leaders and their nation-wide set of partisans.
Hearings in the investigation were resumed last Wednesday. During
the days in which they have proceeded Dr. Francis E. Townsend, founder and
remaining head of the OARP, between his tasks of organizing an almost
complete new national executive staf f and putting it to work, has been
not only busy issuing hot explanations of various implied criticisms of
his activities in Townsend management made by Robert Earl Clements,
recently resigned secretary-treasurer and co-founder of the movement, on
the com mittee's witness stand, but equally energetic in hurling
devastating replies to the more direct charges of political mismanagement
and bungling made by Representative John Steven McGroarty of
California, original sponsor of OARP legislation in Congress.
So hot has the situation become on these factional fronts that it
is an "open secret" that tips on potentially damaging explorations of
Townsend affairs have been "fed" to committee members this week through
the agency of the conflicting Townsend factions.
Further developments in the crisis provoked by the hearing have
even cast doubt from the viewpoint of many neutral Congressmen in
Washington, on the question of what the Townsend plan really is at the
present writing.
Bonds or Taxes?
The McGroarty bill, which ostensibly
expresses the movement's
legislative program, proposes to raise revenue for paying the OARP
pensions of $200 a month—or as near the $200 figure as
possible—for all Americans over the age of 60, from a transactions
tax. But in his controversy with Representative McGroarty this week, it
was brought out that Dr. Townsend had recently expressed favor of a
$10,000,000 bond issue plan for pension financing proposed by Sheridan
Downey, EPIC candidate for the California Lieutenant-Governorship in 1934,
who recently has become a power in the movement as Dr. Townsend's personal
attorney.
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Yet, after the OARP founder's attitude toward the bond program had
been cited from a preface which he contributed to a recently published
book of Downey's, Dr. Townsend countered McGroarty's
charges of
inconsistency by declaring that intimations o f his having abandoned the
transactions tax "were totally in error."
As to the investigation's actual progress, the Bell committee
members feel that they have made at lest three important disclosures: (1)
that while Dr. Townsend and Mr. Clements were representing their income
from the movement as $50 a week plus tr aveling expenses, they were
actually living in comparative luxury and Mr. and Mrs. Clements, with a
$14,000 income drawn entirely from OARP sources, also had practically all
their living expenses met out of the movement's fund; (2) that the
longevity and old age "vitality" advertisements for patent remedies
accepted by the Townsend-Clements-owned Townsend Weekly were in some case
of a type refused by provisions of minimum ethical standards, and that
consideration at least had been given from time to time to projects for
using the OARP movement to float sales promotion projects for remedies and
articles likely to interest the aged; (3) that the $1,000,000-odd
contributions paid into the Townsend treasury, mainly in the dimes and
quarters of pension-seekers , were subject to virtually unlimited control
of Townsend, Clements and Dr. Townsend's brother, Walter Townsend, the
OARP movement's original incorporators.
Control of Finances
Since Mr. Clements's resignation, this is still, according to the
implications of the committee's disclosures, substantially the status of
Townsend affairs except for the fact that the ownership emphasis has been
transferred to Dr. Townsend and hi s brother. In result, the
reorganization accomplished in the OARP executive staff this week is
strictly a Townsend process.
What Dr. Townsend has done has been to appoint a board of
directors, all of whom are strictly responsible to himself as president
and founder rather than to any vote or selective process carried on
through the rank and file of the Townsend clubs.
The new directorate includes Gomer Smith, Oklahoma politician
expected to oppose United State Senator Thomas P. Gore as a Townsend
candidate in the Democratic primaries, Gilmore Young of San Francisco,
recognized in OARP affairs as a spokesman for Edward J. Margett, San
Francisco area organizer for the movement who large membership commissions
and previous indictments while a member of the Seattle police force have
been a subject of the committee's inquires; Frank Arbuckle, former
California State Senator understood to represent Mr. Downey's interests on
the board; the Rev. Dr. Clinton Wunder, organizer of liberal con-sectarian
churches in numerous communities; J. B. Kiefer of Chicago and Nathan J.
Roberts of Florida, Townsend partisans in Clements's resi gnation
difficulties, and the Rev. Dr. Alfred J. Wright of Cleveland, said to be
the only member of the board on friendly terms with the
Clements-McGroarty faction.
National Convention
In appointing the board, however, Dr. Townsend has agreed to call
a national convention of the movement between now and the national major
party conventions, to clarify the OARP organization's 1936 political
program and to devise a method of repre sentation on the executive staff
by which the rank and file of the pension following may have a larger
share in the movement's management. He also has given orders that
regional, State and area recruiting organizers and mangers be paid
"straight salary" i n the future rather than commissions.
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