Casper Daily Tribune

Chicago Hostess Still Able to Serve "Pre-War Stuff" Despite Dry Enforcement, Baseball Czar Says When Called Before Committee

WASHINGTON, May 2.—With the picturesque emphasis that made him famous long before baseball took him from the federal bench to become its high commissioner, Kenesaw Mountain Landis today gave the senate Daugherty committee his opinion of prohibition enforcement and other administrative questions as they have been dealt with in recent years by the federal government.

At dinner parties in Chicago, he said, "pre-war stuff" held out remarkably well, and he confessed that he himself had not been able to resist the enticing invitation of his hostesses to try some of it.

But he added that the department of justice appeared to be doing the best it could in view of the fact that it didn't always have the best lawyers on its payroll.

Called to testify about the house of correction sentence he imposed on Philip Grossman for liquor law violations, he said he couldn't understand to save his life how Grossman got his pardon from President Coolidge.

He thought Fred Upham, treasurer of the Republican national committee and other Republican leaders in Chicago were to be criticized, and he told the committee in a way no one could misunderstand that he believed politics should have no more to do with executive clemency than with decisions handed down from the bench.

Then, under the urge of a sharp cross examination, he got up from the witness stand, and strode up and down the room, and between puffs on a long black stogie, summed up and reiterated all of his statements about the Grossman case and the conduct of the department of justice in general. When the committee was satisfied, he departed with an invitation to all of its members to come along with him and see a ballgame.