AMERICAN PROPAGANDA

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXII, Issue 18761, 18 July 1935, Page 5

AMERICAN PROPAGANDA

OPPOSITION TO BILL DELUGE OF TELEGRAMS WASHINGTON, July 17. The Senate Lobbying Investigation Committee had as its principal witness to-day the manager of the telegraph company in the small town of Warren, in Pennsylvania, who told an astonishing story of how a representative of a utility holding company had sent an avalanche of telegrams to a Congressman from that district urging him to vote against tho so-called “death sentence ’’ feature of the President ’s Utility Bill. According to the manager, the utility company’s representative wrote the text of the messages-, then, using the city directory, and affixing names from it to 1300 messages, paid for their transmission to Washington. Apparently none of the persons whose names were used were consulted as to whether -they desire to protest against the legislation. Congressmen became sceptical when there were so many protesters whose names started with the letter “B” and an investigation revealed their origin. As a climax to his testimony, the manager revealed that the original copies of the messages had been burned, although it was a company rule that such records should be kept for a year before being destroyed. He claimed that one of his subordinates had ordered the messages to bo burn ed on the suggestion of the utility company representative.