The Tacoma Times

DOZENS OF LEAKS ALWAYS

BY C. E. RUSSELL

(Newspaper Enterprise Association)

WASHINGTON, D. C., Jan. 25.

My idea of a good racy indoor sport is a committee that goes solemnly about looking for a news leak.

It doesn't find anything, but it affords no end of amusement to the spectator, and pure, innocent amusement is what the world most pants for these days.

Leaks, why, they are commoner than green onions! There isn't a ship of state afloat that hasn't had them until it looked like a sieve, and nobody has ever been able to tell where they come from or to caulk them so they would stay caulked.

Investigations Before.

Twenty-seven years ago a special committee of the United States senate started out to discover how the news of every executive session invariably "leaked."

A few months ago another senate committee of the same kind was appointed to make the same inquiry.

The first committee didn't discover, and neither did the last nor all the other like committees in between, and yet the news of executive sessions continued to "leak" just the same and does yet.

Know Cabinet Choices.

There isn't a new president's cabinet that isn't perfectly well known in Wall street as fast as it is selected, no matter what pains may be taken to keep everything dark.

Three weeks before Mr. Wilson took office Wall street learned whom he had picked for the treasury and, not liking the choice, was depressed. A few days later the first selection fell through, another was made that was more satisfactory and up went the market like a balloon.

Messages Leak.

In spite of every attempt to maintain the strictest secrecy the essentials of every president's message are perfectly well known before it is delivered.

A historical "leak" at the census bureau a few years ago isn't likely soon to be forgotten in Washington.

It was advance information about the government's cotton crop bulletin. Somebody got hold of that and played the markets, resulting in a horrible scandal and an indictment.

As a result, the government's crop reports are now prepared in secret and inspections.