In the Ford-McAdoo controversy which has lately been aired in some of the papers, G.E. Leibold, general secretary of Henry Ford makes mention of “the Hebrew secretary” of the Interstate Commerce Commission Office during the war.
Leibold, who is said to be a Pole and is held by some to have been principally responsible for leading Henry Ford into his anti-Jewish aberations evidently seeks in his response to McAdoo to arouse the prejudiced in his behalf by intruding into the question the Jewishness of one of the Interstate Commerce Commission officials, a detail which has nothing whatever to do with the question at issue.
Leibold charged that McAdoo had first spoken with Ford over the telephone while the former was Director General of the railroads, and that McAdoo had invited him to present some “constructive suggestions” for improving the railroad situation during the war period.
Ford thereupon sent Leibold to Washington, according to Leibold, who declares he first visited the office of the Treasury and was told that Mr. McAdoo was at the Interstate Commerce Commission. He went there and the “Hebrew Secretary”, Leibold says, told him that McAdoo was out of the building.
He concluded then, he declares, that Mr. McAdoo did not desire the cooperation of Mr. Ford. It may be, he adds, that Mr. McAdoo does not remember the facts of the case or that some one else presented himself as Mr. McAdoo in the telephone conversation with Ford. If so, he adds, it shows the type of men Mr. McAdoo surrounded himself with.
Mr. McAdoo declares that Leibold’s statements are “pure imagination” and has wired Mr. Ford for details when the alleged telephone conversation took place.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
