(Jewish Daily Bulletin)
Direct financial damages resulted to Sapiro upon the publication of the “Dearborn Independent” articles accusing him of being a member of an alleged “international Jewish conspiracy”, Sapiro showed today in the course of proceedings in his $1,000,000 libel suit against Henry Ford and the “Independent”.
Continuing on the witness stand under the fire of Senator Reed’s questioning Sapiro testified that he was requested to resign from the Oklahoma Broom Corn Association because of articles published in the Ford-owned “Dearborn Independent” pointing out he is a Jew and seeking to connect him with an international Jewish conspiracy to control agriculture.
“As a matter of fact it let you out because it was practically bankrupt and could not afford to keep you, didn’t it?” demanded Reed.
“No,” returned Sapiro.
An interesting moment at the trial took place when Senator Reed, chief of Henry Ford’s defense counsel, and mentioned in many quarters as a possibility for the Democratic Presidential nomination, exchanged angry words with Sapiro over the status of Frank O. Lowden, former Governor of Illinois, regaided by some as Republican party Presidential nominee timber.
Senator Reed was seeking to gain from Sapiro a history of the national cooperative organizations he had represented.
He hit upon the National Wheat Growers Advisory Committee, formed at a meeting called in Chicago in September, 1923, by Judge Robert W. Bingham, publisher of the Louisville “Courier Journal” and the Louisville “Times”.
In the list of those who attended was Mr. Lowden, who became chairman of the committee.
Senator Reed sweated and raged to show that Sapiro left the powerful American Farm Bureau Federation because he could not rule it and thereby control the American wheat crop.
Laboriously, and with little profit, he tried to pin “plot” on the meeting of these notables with Sapiro to form the National Wheat Growers Advisory Committee.
“Plotters,” he cried.
“Friends of the American farmer,” shouted back Aaron Sapiro.
Sapiro, winner of most of the day’s contests, replied with the accusation that John W. Coverdale, secretary of the Federation, had tried to put the Wheat Growers under the golden thumbs of the Armour Grain Company, a subsidiary of the packing corporation, and Rosenbaum Brothers &Co., another Chicago firm.
He termed Lowden “a splendid lawyer and a fine farmer, probably the largest farmer in some respects in the entire United States.”
“Does he make his living farming, or is he the son-in-law of Pullman of the Pullman Car Company ?” asked Reed with a tone of sarcasm.
“I don’t think he makes his living as the son-in-law of Pullman,” responded Sapiro. “He makes his living by his work as a lawyer and by his work as a farmer.”
The names of Bernard Baruch and Eugene Mayer, Jr., figured when Sapiro listed the following as at the meeting, which he also attended: Senator Arthur Capper of Kansas, Gov. McKelvie of Nebraska, Tom Campbell of Montana, George Jewett of North Dakota, Carl Williams of Oklahoma City, Walton Peteet of the American Farm Bureau Federation, a Mr. Chappell of Kansas, W. C. Langsdon of Kansas, William Settle of Indiana, Bernard Baruch of New York, Herman Steen of Chicago, Clifford Gregory of Chicago and Dan Wallace of St. Paul.
Eugene Meyer, Jr., chairman of the United States War Finance Corporation, came, but not as a committee member, said Sapiro.
A libel suit for $100,000 instituted by Dr. A. Coralnick, one of the editors of “The Day”, against the “Freihelt”, was opened yesterday in the Centre and Pearl Street Court.
Dr. Coralnick said that the “Freiheit”, Jewish Communist paper of New York, used libellous terms in referring to him in its columns.
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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.
