Oral History Interview with Edward F. Prichard, Jr., November 24, 1982

Hellard: We’re going to be testing, one, two, three, four. Testing one, two, testing, testing. This is tape number three, third interview with Edward Prichard, taped on November 24th at twelve noon in his law office, interviewed by Vic Hellard.

:Have to come back to me.

Hellard:All right, Mr. Prichard, go right ahead.

: For the record, if this is a record, let me say that I’ve just returned from a four-day trip to celebrating the hundredth anniversary of Justice [Felix] Frankfurter’s birth. And this has brought back to me a great many memories of my period at the , which after all was four years: three years as a law student and one year as a teaching fellow. And I saw many people who were my classmates and friends. One of the people I saw was Mrs. Magruder, whose husband I’ve mentioned to you in a previous recording, who was there with her grown son. Dean [Erwin N.] Griswald, who—who taught conflict of laws and taxation when I was in law school. Dean Griswald was then—had just returned from a stint in the office of the solicitor general in where he argued many important tax cases before the U.S. Supreme Court. And after I left he became dean of the , some years later, and was a splendid dean and really brought the to—to new heights of imminence. He now is quite an elderly man in semi-retirement, practices law sort of casually. And I had not seen him for years. But I recall that during the time I was in , in nineteen hundred and thirty-seven, the president made his famous proposal to reform or reorganize the Supreme Court, known colloquially as the Court-packing bill. Dean Griswald, who was a moderate Republican, staunchly opposed that bill. And we had a big forum, a convocation at the law school in which Professor Griswald and Judge Magruder debated the proposal, Judge Magruder supporting it, and Professor Griswald opposing it—Judge Magruder was at that time Professor Magruder—and of course the students were permitted to participate, and Professor Griswald and I had a very, I won’t say heated—it wasn’t personal in any way—but a very lively exchange, I supporting it and Professor Griswald opposing it. And as I look back in retrospect, I think that my position was wrong. I do not think the Court-packing bill was a good proposal, and I am glad that it did not pass. Interestingly enough, there was much speculation about the attitude of then-Professor Frankfurter on the bill. Professor Frankfurter had been very close to Justice [Harlan Fiske] Stone, very close to Justice [Louis] Brandeis, and very close to many of the lawyers and scholars who opposed the Court-packing proposal. And it was widely assumed, in legal circles and political circles, that Justice Frankfurter was opposed to it but simply declined to take any public position because of his friendship with President [Franklin] . I knew differently. I felt at the time, without having any explicit statement from Justice Frankfurter, that his attitude probably was that he wished the president hadn’t made that exact proposal at that time and in that form. But that the president, having committed his prestige, and committed his political standing to the proposal, that Frankfurter sort of reluctantly went along with the president, but without ever making any public expression of his views. Since then I learn, have learned, first I learned it when I was a law clerk, and later learned it upon the publication of the Roosevelt-Frankfurter correspondence, that the—Professor Frankfurter wrote the President a handwritten letter at the time the proposal was offered expressing his support in somewhat guarded terms. He never, though, made a public declaration. And there were many people who believed that he ran with the hare and hunted with the hounds just a little bit. That he, perhaps, led both sides to believe he was with them. Whether that’s true exactly I don’t know, but I had the distinct impression from our personal conversations during that time, not so much that he loved the proposal as that he did not want to see the president defeated, and did not want to see his prestige dimmed and his leadership humbled by the defeat of the proposal, and therefore in essence [laughing] was probably more for it than against it. That’s a little interesting facet of history that I wanted to—to—to mention. Another thing that I remember at that time was that Justice Frankfurter was consulted by the president about one of his personal personnel problems in the Tennessee Valley Authority. At that time Mr. _____ was on the TVA board and Dr. Arthur Morgan, former president of Antioch College in Ohio, and they became very bitter enemies on the board, and the president began to feel that Dr. Morgan was too fractious and he was going to have to take some action. But the statutes provided that the president couldn’t remove members of the TVA board without cause. And he consulted Justice Frankfurter, and Justice Frankfurter talked with me about it, I was then just a student, but was his, I don’t know, yes, I don’t think that was after I graduated and came back on the teaching fellowship. And he and I concocted a notion that Justice—that the president remove Dr. Morgan for quote, “contumacy,” close quote. He directed him to report to him about certain of the quarrels and difficulties in the TVA, and when Dr. Morgan didn’t promptly respond he removed him from office for contumacy. And Dr. Morgan later brought a suit to set that aside and lost the suit. And Adrian Fisher, a year ahead of me in law school and one of my great friends and Princeton classmates as well—Adrian was later dean of the Georgetown University law school which my son attended, and was legal advisor to the state department when Mr. Atchison was secretary—he and I wrote a note for the Harvard Law Review on that very question, which was published. And Frankfurter was the sort of godfather of our investigating that matter. Frankfurter was one who—who had strong likes and dislikes, and it was very hard for him to get into any intellectual controversy without personalizing it in some degree. He—he—as Professor Powell use to say he—he used the ad hominem style often in arguments. He had come to that law school as a great friend of Dean Roscoe Powell, but before many years passed they had developed a bitter personal hostility between them. And I remember that Professor—Dean Powell wrote Professor Frankfurter a letter and chastised him for frequent absences from school, connected with his activities in Washington. There was an animated, long and bitter correspondence between them in which Frankfurter listed every time he’d ever been absent from classes and pointed out how infrequent it was. And then when Dean Powell resigned, after an interregnum, they named James Landis, an original Frankfurter protégé and co-author of him, with him, of numerous books and articles, as dean. But Justice Frankfurter quickly began to develop some antipathy for Dean Landis and really through the latter part of their lives they were never close again, although Dean Landis did not really serve until after Frankfurter went on the Supreme Court. But they never were as close as they had been in earlier years. Dean Griswald, who was Landis’ successor, on the other hand, had always been a sort of moderate to conservative Republican, and Frankfurter started out by taking a fairly dim view of Griswald’s ascendancy in the Harvard Law School. And I wrote him a letter, I remember, saying that I thought he was wrong that—that Griswald though—though conservative, was a man of strong intellectual views, a strong defender of freedom of speech and opinion, and that I thought he would stand for high standards and great intellectual excellence in the law school. And I remember several years later Frankfurter’s telling me how right I had been about Dean Griswald. Griswald made a believer out of him and he was a strong admirer of Griswald as a dean of the Harvard Law School. I’m trying to think if there’s anything else. Did I mention Philip Graham in my last—

Hellard:Only briefly.

Prichard:Well, he and I became very intimate during that time, probably he was my most intimate friend in the law school.

Hellard:Now, you met him at Harvard, not—

Prichard:That’s right. I met him at Harvard. He was a year behind me. I used to tell an apocryphal story that Frankfurter and I were strolling down Harvard Square one day and there emerged this sort of western-looking figure, seamy-faced figure, emerged from a local handbook, where he’d been placing a bet on a horse race, and that we told him to come on with us and he’d do better in the law school. This is all a fabrication. We just made that up. But we did get to know Phil during his first year. He was a year behind me. He was president of the law review during the year that I came back as a teaching fellow, and we were very close and saw a great deal of each other, and, you know, he was my most intimate friend. And he was a man of surpassing brilliance, marvelous sense of humor, a personality that was unforgettable. I think you can find a lot in David Halberstam’s The Powers That Be about those years and about my relationship with Philip Graham. I was the best man in his wedding [in 1940]. He was the best man in our wedding; that came later [in 1947]. But we became close and remained close all—as long—all the years that he lived and— I suppose that’s about enough about the Harvard Law School. I could just talk and talk and talk about it, but—

Hellard:Well, I think one of the problems we have, Prich, is that you— [microphone noise]

Prichard:Too much about everything—

Hellard:Let—let me pursue Philip Graham just a minute. What—what was your—do you remember the first occasion you met him?

Prichard:Uh-huh. First occasion on which I really met him to amount to anything was when he was elected to the law review. And I was already on and—and we became close friends immediately. You know the law review is a very close, at Harvard, a very close knit organization. You see each other day after day. It’s almost like a fraternity, or most of them. And when he was president of the law review, he and I worked together very closely at that time, of course I had graduated, but he sort of made me an unofficial colleague of his.

Hellard:What were—in those early days, did you perceive any faults in Philip Graham?

Prichard:Not many. I knew that he was a man subject to a great many tensions, operating at top speed and under great pressure. And I always had to won-—the fear that he might subject himself to too much stress and strain, that did not occur until years later. And I can’t say really that I thought of it in the sad and disastrous terms that later came to pass. But I never thought of him as having all that many faults. I don’t know. He was—he was brash, but so was I. He was, you know, would say things that most people would say, you know, couldn’t be said. And I had some of that tendency myself, so I suppose we were regarded as sort of in some ways Peck’s Bad Boys, you know, the people that would mention the subject that was unmentionable. But beyond that, I saw no great flaws or faults in him. And the faults and flaws that developed later, I think, were the results of neurotic strains and impulses, you know, I don’t think they were sort of character flaws.

Hellard:Well, you all shared many—many common ideas—

Prichard:Oh, I would say greatly. Yes, we were both sort of in those days what you might call leftish. I don’t, again, I don’t mean we were Communists or anything like that, but we tended to be pretty—pretty well on the left. Supporters of loyalist Spain, supporters of the popular front in Europe against the Hitlers, against the Hitlerites, collective security, strong supporters of the labor movement—in those days we were having the strikes in the auto and steel industries—strong supporters of the, what you might call the left wing of the New Deal. We both supported the Court-packing plan.

Hellard:What about classmates that you had who—who—who were on the opposite end of the spectrum? Do you recall any of those? Any of them rise to prominence or—

Prichard:Oh yes, had a classmate named Bob Amory, A-M-O-R-Y, who later became high in the CIA, was pretty conservative, but we had a lot of good friendship. Oh, I’m trying to think of who else, Lord, had so many classmates. Henry Royce, was a year ahead of me, course he wasn’t the opposite side. Did I mention him last time?

Hellard:Yes.

Prichard:Henry Royce. Oh, I would have to go through—I—I’m sure I’ll think of millions of them next time, but—

Hellard:Can you think of any particular exchanges of a humorous or—or interesting between you and Philip Graham?

Prichard:Oh, not particularly, no. I don’t—I don’t tend to think of those things unless they just occur to me. It’s hard to bring them up when you want them.

Hellard:Well, then, did Philip meet Katherine in—while he was in law school?

Prichard:No, in Washington.

Hellard:In Washington.

Prichard:Uh-huh.

Hellard:Okay, do you think we’ve—is there anything else you want to talk about as far as Harvard goes? Where we are now is you were teaching at—you were a teaching assistant at Harvard when Justice Frankfurter was gone to Washington—

Prichard:Just when he left.

Hellard:—and you continued in that capacity until you—

Prichard:Till the end of that year.

Hellard:Right.

Prichard:And then I went to Washington. And—

Hellard:Now you went to Washington to become Justice Frankfurter’s law clerk?

Prichard:Law clerk, uh-huh.

Hellard:And what—what did that entail? What did that involve?

Prichard:Well, let me say that in the summer between that last year in law school and the year I went up as a teaching assistant, I had my first job in Washington. I worked during the summer of 1938 as a junior staff member to the Senate subcommittee on civil liberties, that was a subcommittee of the Senate committee on education and labor. And the chairman of that subcommittee was Senator Robert La Follette [Jr.] of Wisconsin. And he was conducting an investigation primarily into the invasions of civil liberties of labor organizations. It was investigating such things as the Harlan County coal operators, the little steel co-—companies and their relations with organized labor. And primarily I was working with him on investigation of the “little” steel companies, that’s the Youngstown Sheet and Tube, Bethlehem, and Republic Steel. And we were investigating the employment of labor spies, private police, the use of violence and espionage to break up labor organizations. And during about three months I worked up there on that with the Senator La Follette subcommittee. And that’s when I first began to meet a few of my Washington friends whom Justice Frankfurter had given me introductions to. And I wasn’t there long enough to see very much of them, but later on they became—they became close friends. And—

Hellard:Had Justice Frank-—Frankfurter secured this employment for you?

Prichard:Oh, I’m sure he did. I—I’ll it put this—I’m sure that Senator La Follette asked him to recommend somebody and that he recommended me. There can be no doubt about that.

Hellard:Did you get to know Senator La Follette ____

Prichard:Very well. And I thought he was one of the greatest senators I ever knew. He was a—he was not a charismatic person. He had a brother, Philip, then Governor La Follette [of Wisconsin], who was charismatic, but Robert LaFollet was a solid, studious, strong-minded senator who worked his way quickly into the Senate establishment, which is a—a very hard thing for a liberal senator to do, ’cause the Senate establishment was primarily institutionally conservative. But Senator La Follette, he got on the finance committee, for instance, and he—he had influence beyond what most liberal senators had in those days. He was a master of the facts. He—he—he—won his fights not by eloquence, not by dazzling power of techniques, but by—by mastery of the facts, the statistics, the background information. And he taught me—in so far as anybody could teach me anything—he taught me the absolute importance of having the—having the back—the facts and the record in your case or your cause at your command so that you couldn’t be undermined by your opponents by some attempt to overwhelm you with facts and statistics. He was a master at that. And I—I benefited immeasurably from my association with him. He was also a—a very staunch man. He didn’t, you know, go way up on the mountain top and then fall way down in the—in the valley. He—he—he maintained an even pace all the time. But it must have subjected him to very great strains, because in the end he took his own life.

Hellard:What other senators served on that committee? Do you recall? Did you develop any close relationships with any of them?

Prichard:No, really not. He ran the whole subcommittee, and I’m not sure any of the others sat in on the hearings. I’m sure Bob Wagner was on the committee, for instance, I think he was chairman of the full committee. And I knew Senator Wagner, and his son, Robert, later mayor of New York, was a friend of mine—although he went to the Yale Law School not Harvard. But he’s—but really Bob La Follette ran that subcommittee pretty much by himself. And he had a big staff, including several of them who were Communists, unknown to him.

Hellard:Do you recall anything specific that was learned about the Harlan County—

Prichard:Yes. I did not participate personally in that, but the record is there. There are printed records of all those hearings, and would be fascinating to reveal them today. But there’s no question, I have read them, they showed a pattern of brutality, of official tyranny. There was a sheriff down there named Theodore Middleton who deputized a lot of thugs at the commission of the coal companies to go out and beat up organizers, break up meetings, spy on organizers when they came to town, there was no question but what—they established beyond all doubt a pattern of pervasive oppression and tyranny in those coal fields. And as a result of that investigation, the federal government, through the Department of Justice, returned an indictment against the entire Harlan County Coal Operators Association and all of its individual members, charging them with a conspiracy to deprive the workers in the coal fields of their civil rights. Namely, the right to organize and bargain collectively as guaranteed by the National Labor Relations Act. That resulted in a very dramatic trial at London, Kentucky, I believe in the year of ’39, somewhere along in there, ’38, ’39, at—at which Judge Ford was the presiding judge and the prosecutor was then assistant attorney general Brian McMayor, who was later senator from Connecticut and chairman of the Atomic Energy Committee in the Senate. And that trial resulted in a hung jury. And they were about to retry the case when a settlement was negotiated under which in return for action by the Coal Operators Association in signing the master contract with UAW, including a closed shop, the government dismissed that indictment. But that all resulted from the work of the La Follette committee. Now, I didn’t work on the Harlan County matter, it was just finishing up when I got there.

Hellard:But I suspect because of your Kentucky ties you were particularly interested.

Prichard:Oh I was, and talked to a lot of the people on the staff about it, and worked a little on the report, but the actual hearings had been before my work there.

Hellard:I—I—

Prichard:I worked on the little steel. I—I sat next to Senator La Follette when he cross examined Tom Gerdler, for instance.

Hellard:Well just—just one more minute on the—on the coal fields. I guess it’s safe to say that because of the coal operators influence in Frankfort, the state government did nothing at all to—to assist—

Prichard:No.

Hellard:—or did they just stay out of it?

Prichard:Well, that’s interesting. That was during the period when Mr. [A. B. “Happy”] Chandler was governor for the first time. When Mr. Chandler ran in nineteen hundred and thirty-five in the primary my recollection is that Mr. Chandler—

Hellard:Do you want your pills?

Prichard:Yes. Mr. Chandler was supported by the coal operators in that primary, due particularly to—to the support given him by Mr. Herb Smith from Harlan County. You may have heard of Herb Smith, who was a leader and Democratic politician up there for twenty-five or thirty years. So in general in the primary Happy, having the coal operators on his side, the UMW had no place to go but to support Tom Rhea. And indeed—

Hellard:Well just—hold just a minute. It’s time to change the tape.

Prichard:All right.

Hellard:This is side two of tape three, Prichard interviews. Now, if you would continue Mr. Prichard about Harlan County. Coal operators supported Chandler—

Prichard:How much have I talked to you about my participation in Chandler’s first campaign for governor [in 1935]?

Hellard:Well, you had made—you just indicated you made some speeches for him around and had —

Prichard:Yeah.

Hellard:—been very active in that campaign.

Prichard:That’s right. And also I—let me—let me just make a footnote or two before I get into the UMW and the ’38 senatorial race. As I told you before, I had been very active in his campaign in 1935, made quite a few speeches through particularly central Kentucky. That was the year I finished college and just before I went to law school. And I remember we had a big crowd over there at Paris in the second primary when he opened his campaign, and I—I made a speech introducing him. We had about, I’d say, 10,000 people there, terrific crowd.

Hellard:Do you want a light for that?

Prichard:Yeah. Got it?

Hellard:Just a little more. There you go. Okay, about 10,000 people?

Prichard:Yeah, huge crowd. You drew big crowds then, Vic. It was different. You know, you could get five to ten thousand people at a campaign opening then, big barbecues and burgoos, and, you know, stomping and whistling and throwing their hats in the air. Well of course after he was elected, or nominated, I went on to law school. But the next summer, he gave me a job over here in Frankfort working in the revenue department at the munificent salary of a hundred twenty-five dollars a month. And I thought it was a munificent salary then. I’m not saying that sarcastically, you know; in those days that was good money. And I commuted back and forth, I believe, that summer. And he and I were very close. He had me working in the, now let’s see, that was the fir-—end of my first year in law school, that’s right, ’cause his campaign was the year I graduated from college, and his first year as governor would have been the summer of ’36. Roosevelt was running for reelection. Happy appointed me head of some Young Democrats for Roosevelt, and I did some work on that. And he’d take me around to various speakings with him. I’d spend the night sometimes in the mansion. And we were really very close. And my father and I had both supported him in 1935, and so we were certainly on friendly terms. And at that point he professed great enthusiasm for the Roosevelt program and the New Deal. And the next year, next summer when I was in law school, I came back. He gave me another job that paid about ten dollars a month more, and we were still on very friendly terms. I got to know Dr. Martin. I was working under Dr. James Martin and Clyde Reeves. That’s when I first became close friends with them, and that friendship’s continued ever since.

Hellard:Was that—that was after the reorganization that Dr. Martin effected?

Prichard:Uh-huh. That’s right. Reorganization was passed in the ’36 session, and I came and worked here in the summer of ’36 and the summer of ’37, and very close ties with the Chandler administration. And my father ran for the legislature the first time in 1937, and was supported by Chandler, and was elected. Then came the split. Chandler began to become, show hostility to Roosevelt and the New Deal. He started to cast his lot with his friend Harry Byrd and the conservative Democrats and began to show his ambition and intention to run against Mr. [Alben] Barkley. And it caused me a lot of—lot of problems. And he did run for the Senate. But I want to go back to the gubernatorial race and the mineworkers. As I said, in the primary, since he was the candidate supported by the coal operators, the mineworkers, having no place else to go, supported Mr. [Tom] Rhea, although they had no very great enthusiasm. When the primary was over, Happy wanted their support. In those days they had a big day—was it Labor Day, I think it was—where they met in Pikeville and had a great mineworkers rally, for years, and John Lewis would speak, and I believe it was on Labor Day. And they had 30,000 people there that fall of 1935. And Happy went up and spoke to them. And after it was over, he met with John Lewis, and they signed a peace pact, and Happy, the mine workers agreed to support Happy, made a big donation to his campaign, and Happy agreed to try to help them get their right to organize in Harlan County. And that night, after the Labor Day celebration was over, Happy went, I believe, to Whitesburg, I’m not sure, and met in a hotel with the coal operators and took their money and promised [laughing] them that he would stand with them against the mineworkers. [Hellard laughs] And from then on, he was totally in the pocket of the coal operators. And so when the federal government started its investigation down here to bring that indictment I was talking about, Happy’s crowd was the crowd that was either indicted or mixed up with the people that were indicted. And the federal authorities were prosecuting the case. And by that time, the race between Chandler and Barkley had emerged. Chandler decided definitely and was taking on Barkley [for the Senate in 1938]. And so to some degree, this trial took on the character of a Chandlerite versus Barkleyite, or Chandlerite versus Roosevelt trial. And when the thing resulted in an agreement by which the coal operators in Harlan County signed the union contract, that was a great defeat for Chandler. But as I say, now that was going on while I was in Washington with the La Follette Committee. The actual investigation by the committee had gone on the previous year, but I followed that with great eagerness. And during that summer, you know, just kind of by long distance. And before I went up to Washington, I committed myself to Mr. Barkley, and so did my father. And we helped set up his organization in Bourbon County, which was very traumatic ’cause—’cause it was the first time that my father and I had ever been on a different side from our dear friend Mr. Paton, who managed Chandler’s campaign. And that caused a little strain between Mr. Paton and my father and me. And particularly it caused a strain since Barkley carried the county by twenty-eight votes over Chandler, when it was suppose to go 1,200 votes for Chandler. And that’s when my friend Bill Baldwin first got active in politics. I think I got him to manage Barkley’s campaign that year.

Hellard:Now was Bill out of law school then?

Prichard:Yeah, just out. I think he was just out.

Hellard:Uh-huh.

Prichard:He got out the same time Bert Combs did and I think it was just about that time. Well, I was very, you know, I was very dedicated to Barkley in that because I thought of him as the New Deal candidate. And I—I—I—I didn’t turn personally against Happy at that point, I just thought he was on the wrong side. But things were never the same between us after that, and—

Hellard:Was that the campaign that—that Happy professed to be poisoned?

Prichard:Yeah, that’s right. That’s the one where he had the press in to take pictures of him sitting up in his bed after he’d been poisoned, and John Y. Brown [Sr.] said, “There he was sitting in that bed with a hundred-dollar bathrobe and a silly grin on his face.” [Hellard laughs] Yeah, that was the campaign which he professed to be poisoned and in which President Roosevelt came to Kentucky and Happy butted in on the proceedings, you know, and got in the car on one side at Covington, Barkley on the other, and Roosevelt endorsed Barkley. And there’s a very good piece on that campaign in the recent issue of The Register of the [Kentucky] Historical Society, give you full coverage of it.

Hellard:What was President Roosevelt’s reaction when Happy got in the car, do you know? Did you ever hear?

Prichard:Well, he told me that it was the nervy-ous thing he ever saw. [Hellard laughs] That he—he—he just thought it took the prize for gall, but he thought it was funny. I mean, you know, he wasn’t so much indignant about it [laughing] as just a little bit amazed.

Hellard:For those people who don’t know, I guess it’s fair, that we ought to say that—that Roosevelt had—had come to Kentucky for the express purpose of endorsing—

Prichard:Right.

Hellard:Barkley.

Prichard:That’s right. And he—his train came to Cincinnati, and then I believe proceeded on to Louisville by motorcade, and they went over to Latonia Racetrack. And the motorcade started over to the Latonia Racetrack, and Happy just jumped over the side of the car and got in, uninvited. And there the president was with Barkley on one side and Chandler on the other. And he later on made a speech in which he said, “I think that Governor Chandler’s made a good governor and would make a good senator, but he can’t match the experience and the depth and the knowledge of Senator Barkley.” And so Happy tried to turn that to his use, and he went around the state saying, “Why even President Roosevelt said I’d make a good senator.” And John Y. Brown in his speeches replied, “It was just like an old man putting his hand on a young fellow’s head and saying, ‘you’re a good boy but you won’t do.’” [Hellard laughs]

Hellard:Was Mr. Brown, obviously supporting Barkley, was he a cam-—an official in the campaign?

Prichard:He was the main stump speaker for Barkley. I mean, he—he had fallen out with Happy, you know, in 1936.

Hellard:Having to deal with sales tax issue?

Prichard:Well, no, no, no, he fell out with Happy—he fell out with Governor Lafoon over the sales tax issue in 1932 when he was Speaker of the House. But he and Chandler, both, fought the sales tax at that time. Brown later on changed and became an advocate of the sales tax, but that was up in the fifties. But, no, he fell out with Happy because he said, and I believe it to be true, that Happy had promised him that if he supported Happy and Happy were elected governor, Happy would support Brown for the United States Senate in 1936. And I don’t have a doubt in the world that Happy promised that to him. And Happy has never to this good day denied it, in so many terms. When the election came in ’36, that was Senator Logan’s term expiring, and Senator Logan ran again, and Brown announced. And then General Percy Haley and the Binghams decided that Governor Beckham ought to be the candidate for the Senate. And they persuaded Happy and Mr. Talbott, Dan Talbott, to trot Beckham out. And thus you had three candidates: Brown, Logan, and Beckham. And Brown turned very bitterly against Chandler for betraying him and literally became a spoiler in the campaign. And in the end Logan defeated Beckham by twenty-eight hundred votes and Brown got something like sixty-five, seventy thousand votes, which was enough to defeat Beckham. And from then on, for several years, Brown was what you might call the leader of the anti-Chandler forces in the party. And he blistered him in 1938 when he supported Barkley on the stump.

Hellard:So every dog has its day?

Prichard:That’s right. And—well—

Hellard:Let’s go back to the subcommittee just a minute now. What—what was your—you were working with Senator La Follette the—with the little steel companies.

Prichard:Uh-huh.

Hellard:What kind of—what’s your remembrance of that?

Prichard:Oh, mainly I would work on preparing interrogations of witnesses, you know, we’d take a list of questions and exhibits, we had taken, subpoenaed their records of all their various negotiations with these espionage organizations and these security police that they used, things of that sort. We’d subpoenaed their correspondence. We had taken statements from various organizers and various people. And so we would use those to base, you know, an interrogation, as you would do if you were taking a deposition. And I would help prepare the interrogation of these witnesses and we would always list the questions and then what the probable answer would be, and what it might be or might not be. And then I would sit up on the dais by the senator and, you know, furnish him material.

Hellard:Uh-huh. Let me—let me go back to the Kentucky scene. It’s been a—you’ve mentioned several people. What—what were your impressions, then, of, say, Dr. Martin?

Prichard:What they are now? He’s one of the finest men I ever knew. Very able, highest possible integrity, energetic. Here he is now almost ninety years old, still full of pep. One of the greatest benefactors of Kentucky I have ever known. His only weak spot was for Chandler. You know, Chandler was like a kind of a son to him. And he—he could overlook some of Chandler’s faults. But other than that I—I found Dr. Martin to be just—just a great person.

Hellard:And what were your—what’s your opinion of John Y. Brown Sr.? Has that changed over the years or—

Prichard:No. I’ll never forget the first time, did I tell you the first time I ever met him, when he came to our school and gave a chapel speech, and I was just dazzled by him, eloquent, full of force, and I—I just thought he was marvelous. And I’ve followed him ever since with interest. I’ve sometimes been for him, sometimes not. We’ve been good personal friends, always.

Hellard:Is there—how about—

Prichard:He’s even been a benefactor, but I think that he has some tendencies to be a demagogue. He is not a profound intellect. He has a good command of language, a good command—good presence as a speaker. As he’s got older, he’s tended to be a bit garrulous. He has a big ego. But I think he’s, in his way, he’s always been for the common man and the little man. Naturally, he has a weakness for his own son. Who wouldn’t? There’s a certain element of casuistry in his makeup, rationalization. But by and large he’s been for more good things in Kentucky than he has bad things. He’s sponsored a lot of progressive legislation. He has been a strong defender of the working man, of the people that needed help. As I say, there’s some foolishness about him, some, a lot of ego. But on the whole, this is a better state than would have been if we hadn’t had him.

Hellard:Did you know Dan Talbott?

Prichard:Very well.

Hellard:What were your—your views on Dan Talbott?

Prichard:Dan Talbott was a—a good influence on Happy Chandler. And it was when Dan Talbott died, slipped away, that—that Happy deteriorated worse. Dan Talbott was a tough, rough, gruff, ba–ba-ba-barking old professional politician, but he was pretty doggone honest. And he was a very practical master of the art of government. And I think it’s attributable to men like James Martin, Dan Talbott, and Clyde Reeves—they weren’t the only ones, but men like that—that Happy’s first administration was a good administration, which I think it was. Many ways progressive. But you see, when Happy got prosperous, got in the big time, and Dan fell on hard times, Happy paid no attention to him. Happy left him to the mercies of fate. And if it hadn’t been for Judge Charles I. Dawson, who gave him a retainer with the Kentucky Home Life, Dan probably would have had severe financial problems, because he’d been so honest. Dan, you know, if things had been the way they had been later, Dan Talbott would have gone out of Happy’s administration a rich man. But he wasn’t. And Happy had no time for him. And Dan’s family, to this day, despises Happy Chandler. Dan Talbott was a sensible, practical, tough, both politician and—and—and government man, both, had those combined talents.

Hellard:What about Governor [J. C. W.] Beckham? Did you know Governor Beckham personally?

Prichard:Yes.

Hellard:What—what were your impressions of him?

Prichard:I thought he was kind of a pompous fraud. I—I thought, you know, here he’d been a boy governor and all that. I found him reactionary, egotistical, lazy. Rather pleasant, he was awfully nice to me, he and I use to take walks. I stayed here one summer of the two summers I worked here in Frankfort, it was the summer of ’37 I guess. I had a room over here up on, I guess, the corner of Shelby and somewhere, Campbell. And I use to go down to the Manhattan Restaurant to eat supper. Governor Beckham would eat in there. He and Charlie White had an apartment down at the Farmer’s Bank, and we’d take a walk every night. And he was very nice to me. But he was living in the past. And he should never have made that last race for the United States Senate [in 1936].

Hellard:Well, why did—Colonel Percy did you say—

Prichard:Percy Haley.

Hellard:—Percy Haley—

Prichard:Percy Haley.

Hellard:and the Binghams want to run Beckham?

Prichard:’Cause he’d been Beckham’s mentor all his life. Percy Haley came from Frankfort. His father had a saloon down in north Frankfort. And when Percy Haley was a young boy they use to meet in the room back of his father’s saloon to have caucuses, politicians and the legislature. And there was a long fight in the legislature in 1898 as to the election of United States Senator, which was then elected by the legislature. The Democratic candidate was the then incumbent Senator Joe Blackburn, Joe C. S. Blackburn from Woodford County. The Republican candidate was W. Godfrey Hunter from Leitchfield. The Republican caucus used to meet in the back of old man Dennis Haley’s saloon. Percy was about sixteen years old. He found a garret up over the room where they met. He bore the hole in the wall and listened through the hole to everything that went on in the Republican caucus. And then went and reported it to Senator Blackburn and William Goebel and all the Democratic leaders. That made him a great favorite of the Democrats. And when Goebel and Beckham ran, he became a very prominent member of the party, and Beckham made him Adjutant General. And he was Beckham’s close political advisor and mentor all through his political life. In his last years Judge Bingham put him on the payroll of the Courier-Journal as a political advisor. And he had an apartment in the, I believe, Brown Hotel in Louisville. He was provost marshal by appointment of Chandler during the flood of 1937, contracted pneumonia during that flood as a result of exposure and died that year. For years he had an apartment over the Farmer’s Bank, which was later occupied by Doc Beauchamp.

Hellard:Can you recall any other prominent members of the Chandler administration, first Chandler administration, who you came in contact with?

Prichard:Sure, Ward Oakes.

Hellard:And he was highway commissioner?

Prichard:No. He was then in the revenue department, later on became revenue commissioner, and then later finance commissioner in the second Chandler administration. There was Ward Oakes, let’s see, J. W.—Bob Humphreys, then highway commissioner, got to know him very well.

Hellard:Well what was Bob Humphreys like?

Prichard:Typical old fashioned, slow talking politician. Knew the game well. Never anything very positive or achieving about him, but never anything very vicious, could get along with most factions and most sides. Professional Democrat from down in the [Jackson] Purchase.

Hellard:Was he the one that was later referred to as Mr. Democrat?

Prichard:Uh-huh, that’s right.

Hellard:Did he—did—by being in the Chandler administration, did he stay with the party or did he go with the—with Happy in the long run?

Prichard:He stayed—stayed with Happy until—until Happy got defeated. When [Harry Lee] Waterfield was defeated by Combs in 1959 and Happy tried to organize a vote, Bob Humphreys stayed with the party. And when [Bert T.] Combs became governor I think they gave Bob some kind of a little job, and so did [Edward T.] Breathitt, and he stayed with the party.

Hellard:Okay, now, we’re going to stop. I’m going to—

[end of tape]

Hellard:The Prichard interviews on 11-24-82 in Mr. Prichard’s office. This is tape number four, side one. Well Mr. Prichard, the Chandler administration, in the first Chandler administration, you give pretty high—high marks as being a progressive administration.

Prichard:Yes sir.

Hellard:How much is that is attributable to Happy Chandler, and how much is attributable to the times that he happened to be governor in and the people with which he surrounded himself?

Prichard:Well, it’s not easy to distribute praise in that connection. He was governor, and you’ve got to give a governor credit for the people he surrounds himself with. And you’ve got to give a governor credit for the measures and the plans that come out of his administration. Now, I think it’s fairly obvious when you judge the difference between the first and the second Chandler administrations that there were some differences, and yet Chandler was governor both times. I do think part of it is attributable to the times. We were in a progressive period [in the 1930s], change was coming everywhere. The federal government was starting a lot of new programs—Social Security, unemployment insurance, old-age pensions, many of those things. Happy became governor at a time when it was possible for the state to pass legislation to participate in those programs, and that was done. And most any governor would’ve done that. On the other hand, we certainly needed a reorganization of state government. We had had no really basic effort to reorganize state government, ever. Governor [Edwin] Morrow named a committee on efficiency back during his administration and they had, was a nonpartisan committee, and it had made a lot of very fine recommendations which had been totally ignored. That was in about 1922 or ’3. I think Happy, largely under the impetus of Dan Talbott and Jim Martin, put into effect a very sound, progressive, and for those days efficient reorganization of state government. You know, whether it was Happy or Jim Martin, Happy was governor.

Hellard:Right.

Prichard:And I think that he’s entitled to a lot of that credit. I don’t like what he, the way he developed later, the stands he took and the things he did. But I’m bound to say that his first administration was a really, in some ways, a landmark of progress in Kentucky.

Hellard:Do you see, or have you seen over the years, any real consistency in Happy’s political stands?

Prichard:Well of course not. Inconsistency is the very name of the man. You know, he can, let’s just take the race issue. You know, he—he—he made it possible—so he says— for Jackie Robinson to play in big league ball. And he did have some part in it. It was really Branch Rickey. And all that Happy did was remove the barrier that prohibited Branch Rickey from doing what Branch Rickey wanted to do. But nevertheless, it couldn’t have been done if Happy hadn’t of changed Judge [Kenesaw Mountain] Landis’ ruling which prohibited blacks from playing in major league teams. Well, how can one deny him that credit? And yet in nineteen hundred and thirty, in nineteen hundred and forty-eight he supported Strom Thurmond for president. Mrs. [Mildred] Chandler was the first name signed to the petition to put the Dixiecrat electors on the ballot in Kentucky. Orval Baylor, the editor of the Woodford Sun, was chairman of the States’ Rights Party in Kentucky. There isn’t any doubt that Happy was a Dixiecrat. That was inconsistent, in my way of thinking, with a lot of his professed stand on the race question. But then when Happy was governor the second time and the Supreme Court decided the desegregation cases, Brown v. Board of Education, and the time came to desegregate, and there was violence and resistance—I believe over at Clay in Webster County—he sent the militia over there [to Sturgis and Clay in 1956] and enforced the Constitution and the law. I think you’ve got to give him credit for it. On the other hand, when he was running for president in 1956, he went to the Democratic Convention, went to the Alabama delegation, made a blatant racist appeal for the support of the southern delegates, and bragged that his father was wounded at the battle of Shiloh. Well, his father was born sixteen years after the battle of Shiloh, but he—he—he made that play. Now, how you going to, how you going to say he’s consistent? When John Kennedy ran for president, Happy made some very eloquent speeches on the religious toleration issue, but you don’t know what he might do the next time. Consistency has never been his hallmark.

Hellard:What was the—do you have any remembrance of what the legislature was like in ’36 and ’38?

Prichard:Uh-huh. They did just what he wanted them to do. He might have had a little rump of opposition left over from the [Ruby] Laffoon administration, holdovers in the senate for instance. But Happy had them under absolute control.

Hellard:Was that by sheer personality, or just because of the political tools he had to work with?

Prichard:By a combination. I’m sure his personal force added to the tools, and the tools added to the personal force, but I’d say primarily the tools, because governors with less force than Happy have exercised the same control.

Hellard:Well, let’s go back to Washington now, and after your work that summer with the sub—

Prichard:Civil liberties.

Hellard:—Senator La—La Follette’s committee. At what time did you go to work for Justice [Felix] Frankfurter?

Prichard:Well, after that summer I went back to the law school as a teaching assistant and stayed there for a year. Now half the year I was with him, then after the Christmas holidays he went on to the court and I had to remain to fulfill my commitment as a teaching fellow. I recall he was appointed during the Christmas holidays, or nominated, and I was at home with my family in Kentucky. So I sent him a telegram, “When do we leave?” He wired me back, “I leave when I’m confirmed, you leave next fall.” I stayed for that extra half year and helped Dean Landis teach the labor law course, helped Professor Henry Hart teach the federal jurisdiction course, and I enjoyed all that very much, particularly as I was getting paid. I was getting paid twenty-four hundred dollars for that year and, you know, that—that was a lot of money in those days.

Hellard:Well what—what did you go to Washington, the fall of—

Prichard:The fall of nineteen hundred and thirty-nine. Well, during the summer I stayed here in Kentucky, and the clerk of the court mailed me all the certiorari applications, and I would do memoranda at home here and mail those to Justice Frankfurter. He spent the summers at New Milford, Connecticut with his close friends Dr. and Mrs. Alfred Cohn. He was—Dr. Cohn was a professor of medicine in the Rockefeller University, then called the Rockefeller Institute but now the Rockefeller University. Toward the latter part of the summer I went up for, oh, I’d say ten days or so to New Milford and stayed there. And Justice Frankfurter and I then spent those ten days going over the applications that I had written the memoranda on, and he would reach his conclusions. Then in October we went to Washington and the term commenced.

Hellard:So that was the summer of, what, 1938?

Prichard:Thirty-nine.

Hellard:Thirty-nine.

Prichard:Summer of ’39, and the term began in October of ’39. Supreme Court terms generally run from October through June.

Hellard:Now, that summer were there any political campaigns going on in Kentucky?

Prichard:Sure.

Hellard:That wasn’t the sena—the senatorial race was earlier, the Chandler-Barkley race was earlier wasn’t it?

Prichard:Oh, that was ’38, yeah, and I was up with the La Follette committee right during the height of that. As I say, before I came to Washington with the La Follette committee, I did work to organize our county for Mr. [Alben] Barkley.

Hellard:What are your recollections of Mr. Barkley?

Prichard:Well, I sort—

Hellard:Did you—did you know him well?

Prichard:Yes. I knew him before I went to Washington, saw a lot of him in Washington, and saw a fair amount of him through all the years. You know, he was attractive, humorous, fine stump speaker, a good Senate floor leader, had a quick mind, handled himself nimbly on the floor. He was not what I ever thought to be a man of profound convictions. He—he was a good party man. In general had what I would call liberal tendencies all through his life but was not a real ideologue or, he, you know, he was a poor country boy who had a lot of sympathy for the poor devil, but he enjoyed a good life.

Hellard:Prich, hold it just a minute will you? [pause] How was he chosen? Do you—do you recall how he was chosen to be vice president?

Prichard:Well, I—

Hellard:Or why he was chosen?

Prichard:I first remember how he was chosen to be Democratic floor leader in the Senate.

Hellard:How was that?

Prichard:He had been a very stalwart supporter of the Roosevelt policies, supported him very strongly on the Court-packing bill. And Roosevelt had come to rely on him increasingly, because Senator Robinson, the Democratic floor leader in the Senate, was rather conservative in his views, was pretty loyal to the president but I’m sure had reservations about some of the New Deal measures. As you recall, the president was pretty well committed to name Senator Robinson to the United States Court, Supreme Court. But when Justice—I believe it was [Willis] Van Devanter—retired, instead of naming Senator Robinson he named Hugo Black. And Robinson had a heart attack and died and a vacancy occurred in the Democratic leadership in the Senate, and the contest was between Senator Pat Harrison of Mississippi, who was a trusted lieutenant of Joe Robinson’s and a rather conservative Mississippi Democrat, and Senator Barkley. And senator—and Mr. Roosevelt wrote a letter to the Democratic caucus, the famous “Dear Alben” letter, which was interpreted as a laying on of hands for Senator Barkley to become the floor leader. And he was elected in a fairly narrow margin as the floor leader. And that made a great bond between Mr. Roosevelt and Mr. Barkley. And Mr. Barkley was very loyal to Mr. Roosevelt. But he, there developed one breech, during the war period—I believe it was in 1943. The president had urged the Congress to pass tax legislation to raise a larger part of the cost of the war through taxes. The Congress was very reluctant and rebellious, and they passed a tax bill which might have raised a little more revenue but didn’t really do very much in that direction, but which granted a lot more what we might now call shelters and freebies to special interests. I was working in the White House at that time, and the president asked us to write a message to veto that tax bill, and Justice [James F.] Byrnes and Ben Cohen and I worked on that message. And the message had in it a statement, “This was a bill which contained relief for the greedy instead of the needy.” Well, Mr. Barkley had heard rumbles about this veto message, and he came—sent word—I believe he called Judge Byrnes, and then he sent Keen Johnson to see Fred Vinson and me—to urge that we not do it, but the president did it anyhow. And Barkley very dramatically resigned his post as the Democratic floor leader, and the bill was passed over the president’s veto. And then of course Barkley and the president shook hands, and he resumed his position as floor leader, but in my judgment, it cost him the vice presidency in 1944. He would’ve been, in my opinion, the Democratic candidate in 1944, and would have been the president, if it hadn’t been for that flare-up with Mr. Roosevelt.

Hellard:When you went to Washington in ’39, the fall of ’39—

Prichard:Yes sir.

Hellard:—what was the sense of the state of the nation?

Prichard:Well—

Hellard:How did you, how did you, in what terms were you thinking of—of your going to Washington? I mean, obviously you were excited about it.

Prichard:Well yes, ’course I was. I was primarily, I guess, committed to two things. One was the, you know, to keep the New Deal in place. It was regarded widely as incomplete. You know, we hadn’t solved all the problems of the economy. There had been a big set of hearings over a period of a couple of years, joint commission called the Temporary National Economic Commission, chairman was Senator [Joseph C.] O’Mahoney of Wyoming. There had been a lot of basic studies about economic policies. You know, we had, we had come out of the Depression, but we had come, but far from reaching full employment, unemployment was still in double-digit levels. We had never revived capital investment. And we—I say “we,” I’m using this in the broadest terms, I was just a little pin prick—but we were all interested in, in trying to solve some of those fundamental economic problems. But looming over everything was this, almost this certainty of a world war, foreign policy had come more and more, Mr. Roosevelt had made in 1937 his speech advocating the quarantining of aggressors. We’d begun talking about preparedness, increasing national defense. The president had sought to secure a repeal by Congress of the neutrality law so that we could ship arms to friendly nations. That had been turned down by the Congress almost on the eve of the war. So I suppose those were the two primary basic concerns. Trying to get the economy to continue on an upward grade, to attain full employment, raise living standards, bring more social justice to people, on the one hand. On the other hand to prepare for the possibility of a world war in which it was almost certain we would ultimately be involved, a feeling that we must in one way or another take the side of the victims of Hitler’s attempts at world conquest. That was a terrible wrench for liberals, Vic. The liberals had by and large in the ’20s and ’30s been pacifists, isolationists—

Hellard:Uh-huh.

Prichard:—had felt that war was a means by which big business and the bankers took the government over, and by which dissent was suppressed and social trends turned backwards. We saw that had happened in World War I, the suppression of—of the socialists, the abrogation of free speech, the Palmer Red Raids, and many liberals swore never again. And it was a wrenching process by which liberals were converted from isolationism to interventionism, and they were converted by [Adolf] Hitler. They weren’t converted by Roosevelt, they were converted by Hitler. And one of the interesting coincidences, or phenomenon, is that in nineteen hundred and seventeen the man who led the fight against the declaration of war was George W. Norris of Nebraska, and that in nineteen hundred and forty-one after Pearl Harbor he voted and spoke in favor of the war. Now that was a tremendous turn around.

Hellard:When you went to Washington to be—

Prichard:Robert M. La Follette Sr. opposed World War I, but Robert M. La Follette Jr. voted for World War II.

Hellard:When you did go to Washington, did—was there any doubt that you were going to stay beyond the years that you would be with Justice Frankfurter?

Prichard:Well, I’m not sure that we have ever thought that out. There were two things, both imprinted in my mind. One was that I would ultimately return to Kentucky. I think Justice Frankfurter and I talked about that when I was a first- or second-year law student. And it was always my aim to return to Kentucky. On the other hand, I think it was probably understood that I wouldn’t go immediately back. And of course as the national emergency came on more and more, there was a feeling that, you know, a fellow ought to serve in Washington. But during that year that I served with Justice Frankfurter—you know, there’s a lot to talk about there just on the Supreme Court. One is that was the year when the new court came into being, what you might call in broad terms the Roosevelt court. Before Justice Frankfurter was appointed, Mr. Roosevelt had had only two appointments to the Supreme Court. See, during his entire first term he didn’t have a single appointment, not a single vacancy. And indeed, Justice [Louis] Brandeis and Chief Justice [Charles Evans] Hughes thwarted President Roosevelt by keeping Justice Van Devanter on the court when he really was senile and unable to write opinions, thereby denying the president any what might have been the normal process of naming people on the court. And while the Court-packing plan—did I talk about the Court-packing plan earlier?

Hellard:Only that you supported it at the time, and you decided you were wrong in later years.

Prichard:And did I tell you about Frankfurter’s attitudes?

Hellard:Yes.

Prichard:Uh-huh.

Hellard:You had privately written a letter to him.

Prichard:That’s right. Now, Brandeis was very much upset by some of the New Deal measures, particularly the so-called NRA [National Recovery Administration], which he felt was a kind of, oh, corporate state, you know, sort of a wartime economy measure. Brandeis was never a collectivist. Brandeis was a strong believer in individualism. By that he meant true individualism, the small business, the fragmentation of power, strong labor unions, strong local government, strong farmer co-ops. What Ken Galbraith would later have called countervailing power, and with the government acting as a referee and a stimulant but not the government having a general control of the economy. So the NRA frightened Brandeis. He thought it was a too broad a delegation of power to the president and that it centralized sort of a corporate state. And this gave Brandeis a dim view of some of the New Deal legislation, not all of it, not things like Social Security, or the triple A [Agricultural Adjustment Administration], or minimum wage, or those things, but the—the NRA particularly. And this led him to resist the normal process of attrition by which Mr. Roosevelt would have named members of the court in due order. And I think it’s due some of the responsibility for the precipitate and rash nature of the Court-packing plan. So when Roosevelt did propose the Court-packing plan, and when things hung in the balance, and it was not clear whether it could be passed or whether it was going to be defeated, then Brandeis and Hughes allowed Van Devanter to retire and that took all the steam out of the Court-packing plan because it gave Mr. Roosevelt an appointment to the court. And Mr. Roosevelt in turn paid them back by naming Hugo Black, which was regarded as a very adventurous appointment. The only other appointment he had then was Stanley Reed, which was not a very adventurous appointment, very conventional. That was the status when Frankfurter came. Justice [Benjamin N.] Cardozo had been ill for a long time and he died and Frankfurter was appointed to take his place. That was the third Roosevelt appointment, enough to shift the balance of power on the court.

Hellard:Where did the idea of—of packing the court come from? Was that a Roosevelt original or some people in his administration—

Prichard:It—

Hellard:—advisors?

Prichard:—it came from his attorney general, Mr. [Homer S.] Cummings, who in turn secured it from one of his assistants, who later became a federal judge, a man for many years in the Department of Justice named Alexander Holtzoff. Apparently such a proposal had been suggested many years before, not to pack the court, but simply to deal with the problem of increasing age. So they dug this old bill up. It was a very crude way to go about any effort to deal with the problem of the court. And the—the New Deal advisors had very little to do with it. After the fat was in the fire, then the fight for the court bill was turned over to Tom Corcoran and Ben Cohen, who hadn’t originated it at all, and who didn’t like it, but who loyally fought for it and almost passed it. I’m quite sure that Frankfurter sub-rosa connived with them.

[end of tape]

Hellard:Tape number four, interview number four, side two, of Edward Prichard interviews. Mr. Prichard let me, something I think would be interesting is to—to recall for us if you could the Kentucky congressional delegation during this period.

Prichard:All right.

Hellard:Senator Barkley—

Prichard:I’m very—very glad to do that. I do want to say that we ought to get back to the Supreme Court before we’re through.

Hellard:We will indeed.

Prichard:The Kentucky delegation when I went to Washington was Senator Barkley and Senator Chandler. Senator Barkley, of course, had been there all the time. Senator [Marvel M.] Logan had, as we recall from the previous part of this interview, been reelected in 1936 for a six-year term. Chandler tried to maneuver an appointment to the federal bench to get Logan out of the way, and Logan refused to do it. Logan died in the, I guess late summer of 1939, just about the time I was going to Washington. And Governor Chandler resigned from the governorship and was appointed by Governor [Keen] Johnson to the United States Senate, Governor Johnson having just been nominated for a full term as governor. So those were the senators. The delegation in the House was Noble Gregory from the first district, father of Sug Pettit in Lexington; Beverly Vincent from Brownsville in the second district, a cousin of Clifford Smith, member of a big Edmondson County Democratic family—

Hellard:Vincent?

Prichard:V-I-N-C-E-N-T. —Emmett O’Neal from Louisville in the third district, later defeated by Thruston Morton; Ed Creal from Hodgenville in the fourth district—we then had nine districts—Ed Creal from Hodgenville in the fourth district; Brent Spence of Fort Thomas in the fifth district, served many years later Chandler and the banking and currency committee, served many years while he was blind; Virgil Chapman from Paris in the sixth district; Joe Bates from Greenup in the seventh district, he having succeeded Fred Vinson when Fred Vinson was appointed to the U.S. Court of Appeals; Jack May from Prestonsburg in the ninth district, chairman of the military affairs committee. Did I say the ninth? That’s the eighth district.

Hellard:Okay, eighth district.

Prichard:John Robsion from Barbourville the ninth district.

Hellard:Was he the one that later ran for governor?

Prichard:That was his son.

Hellard:His son.

Prichard:His son was in Congress from the third district in the ’50s and then ran for governor against Bert Combs in 1959. But John Robsion Sr. was there for many years from Barbourville.

Hellard:Now were most of these folks New Deal Democrats?

Prichard:Oh, it would be hard to say what some of them were. I would have always placed Noble Gregory as a fairly conservative Democrat, not open rebellion, but leaning to the conservative side; Bev Vincent pretty much went along with the party line; Emmett O’Neal was what I’d call a Roosevelt Democrat; Ed Creal middle of the road; Brent Spence very liberal; Virgil Chapman very conservative; Joe Bates pretty liberal, pretty much administration; Jack May very conservative, belonged to the coal operators; John Robsion typical conservative Republican.

Hellard:Had most of these gentlemen been in the House for some time?

Prichard:All had a good deal of seniority.

Hellard:Which would be the—which would have the most powerful position?

Prichard:Well, Noble Gregory was on the Ways and Means committee, that’s always powerful.

Hellard:Did you get an opportunity to meet these—

Prichard:Oh, I knew them all. I—I really knew many of them before I went. I’ve known Virgil Chapman all my life. Fred Vinson and my father had been classmates at Centre [College], our families had intermarried. Joe Bates I knew casually; I knew Jack May casually; Robsion casually; knew Bev Vincent pretty well; Emmet O’Neal very well, he went to Centre; knew Mr. Spence. Yes, I knew most of them.

Hellard:How did Roosevelt deal with these men that were of a more conservative nature?

Prichard:Well, he tried to bargain with them, and, you know, he dealt with them to a great degree through intermediaries, through Mr. [Sam] Rayburn. Many of them would do more for Mr. Rayburn than they would for Mr. Roosevelt, and Mr. Rayburn was very loyal. Fred Vinson, who had been on the Ways and Means committee and was a powerful Democrat in the House even after he resigned and went on the federal bench, was still active, very close to Mr. Rayburn. And he would try to help line them up, and later on when he was in the White House even more. And—and, you know, sometimes they’d vote with the administration sometimes they wouldn’t, most of them usually would, but there were only two or three of them that were almost totally dependable.

Hellard:In terms of gubernatorial politics, was there a breakdown between Chandler and—and anti-Chandler congressmen, or did they in fact take very much of a hand in gubernatorial politics?

Prichard:They usually tried to keep the—keep their hands out of it, or keep from getting caught. That wasn’t altogether true, but Fred Vinson never liked Happy Chandler. At that point I didn’t think Noble Gregory liked him very much, their ties were with Ed Gardner and the [Tom] Rhea forces originally. Noble Gregory got to be on better terms with him later and, of course, supported him for governor in 1955, and that caused Gregory to get beat for Congress by [Frank Albert] Stubblefield. The rest of them, you know, really tried to maddle, paddle their own canoes.

Hellard:What kind of fellow was Virgil Chapman?

Prichard:Well, Virgil Chapman was a very strong-minded, conservative, Confederate Democrat. He—he wouldn’t have been for any civil rights legislation. He wasn’t for much labor legislation, strong for the tobacco farmer, strong for agricultural legislation, strong for the veterans, strong for the military, but basically a conservative states’ rights Democrat.

Hellard:How was Chandler perceived by his peers in Washington?

Prichard:You talking about his Senate peers?

Hellard:Yeah, yes.

Prichard:Oh, I guess some of them thought he was useful to them. I don’t think that any of them had any profound respect for him, and several of them, you know, didn’t care for him very much. I think some of them used him, you know, if he would take, take up a cause they were interested in, something like that, but he was regarded as fractious, kind of a jack-in-the-box. He was not profoundly respected. But he was respected in the sense that they thought he had a certain talent for projecting himself.

Hellard:Now in ’39, then, who was running for governor?

Prichard:Keen Johnson.

Hellard:Keen Johnson and—

Prichard:Well, in the primary, John Y. Brown [Sr.]. It was a very hotly fought race. Johnson beat him. And the shift in power between the Barkley race—you know, Brown wanted to rerun the Barkley-Chandler race of ’38, in which case he could have won. But the Louisville Democratic organization which had given Barkley, oh, I don’t know what, a 30,000 majority in 1938, turned the thing around and gave Keen Johnson about an eighteen- or twenty-thousand majority in ’39, and that made the difference.

Hellard:Who was in control of that organization at that time?

Prichard:Mike Brennan and Miss Lennie [McLaughlin].

Hellard:What kind of person was Miss Lennie, or is Miss Lennie?

Prichard:Going to say, she’s still here. Very astute politician, master of detail, she knew every precinct and kept informed on the registration and the captains. She had John Crimmins as her right-hand person, and John Crimmins was a—a detail man. She always maintained a good relationship with the Courier-Journal. I can hear her say now, “You can’t ever forget those newspapers” [imitating Miss Lennie]. She always, you know, she might get irritated with them, they might give her trouble, but she never got so far away that she didn’t have access to the Courier-Journal, and wouldn’t pay some attention. On the whole, she believed in running candidates of good quality. Wilson Wyatt for mayor, for example. Neville Miller for mayor. She—she was a very practical politician. I expect the party headquarters was financed during her period to a great extent by kickbacks from the wire service that furnished information to the handbooks. Patronage was highly organized. Mike Brennan had kept the Democratic Party going during the lean years of the ’20s, had been able to raise enough money to keep a headquarters going even though they were getting beat a lot. So when the party came into power and Roosevelt became president, he was able to capitalize on that, and that organization was supreme in Louisville from 1933 until nineteen hundred and sixty-one, that’s a pretty long period for an organization. Mike died in the late ’30s 1:00, there was a period of interregnum there, and Lennie took over.

Hellard:What were her credentials to take over? Did she come up through the ranks?

Prichard:Up through the ranks. She had come to Louisville in the ’20s and when Barkley ran for governor in 1923, Selden Glenn, who was very close to Barkley, put her in charge of the headquarters, and there she met Nike—Mike Brennan and Shack Miller, who were her close friends from then on.

Hellard:What price would Miss Lennie extract for—for supporting a candidate?

Prichard:Loyalty, loyalty. In those days governors didn’t tell the Louisville organization what to do, the Louisville organization told governors what to do as far as Louisville was concerned. They were an independent force.

Hellard:So she would have total control, or the organization would have control over patronage—

Prichard:Right.

Hellard:—contracts—

Prichard:That’s right.

Hellard:—big projects.

Prichard:And governors didn’t mess in Louisville except through that organization.

Hellard:It’s difficult to understand how a man like Wilson Wyatt could accommodate himself to a situation like that.

Prichard:He did.

Hellard:That’s very—well we’ll get, we’ll get to that later on.

Prichard:Oh, he did, he was very close to Lennie. And when he was running for governor in nineteen and fifty-nine, before they merged with Combs, Lenny was for him one hundred percent.

Hellard:Did Miss Lennie ever—or the Louisville organization ever support Chandler?

Prichard:No. In 1950, ’35, they supported Tom Rhea. I don’t believe that—I believe this—that time Jefferson County split about even, it was pretty close. But had it not been for the organization, Rhea would have had nothing. In nineteen hundred and fifty-five she supported Combs and he carried Jefferson County by 18,000. In 1959 they supported Combs and Wyatt and they carried Louisville by thirty some thousand. They supported Ned Breathitt in 1963, that was about her last year, and he carried Jefferson County by about 20,000. They pretty nearly had the winner the—1935’s the only year they didn’t have the winner.

Hellard:And what was your involvement with Miss Lennie, just friendship or a political nature or when did you first meet her?

Prichard:Oh gosh, I met her back in the ’20s. First time I can remember meeting her was at Democratic state convention in 1928 when Pearce Paton took me up there with him as a kind of a mascot, I was thirteen years old. And I saw—that was when Al Smith was running, and Mike and Lennie were there, and that’s when I met her.

Hellard:Did you know at that time who she was and what she represented?

Prichard:Well yeah, I knew they were the organization and that they represented that. I might not have known all about her amours and [laughing] something to that sort, I was a little naïve about those things.

Hellard:Well now, speaking in the political sense.

Prichard:Why sure, [Hellard laughs] I mean.

Hellard:We have just a little bit of tape left and—and I would like to save the Supreme Court for the next, for our next interview. What I would like to do though is just talk very briefly about your trip that you’ve just come back from, you told me of some of the people you saw and some of the recollections of your—why—

Prichard:Yeah, well, we went up last Wednesday, which was whatever day of the month that was, and we were met by some friends at the airport, had dinner at our hotel, and I had dialysis six o’clock the next morning. Then at noon on Thursday we went to the law school—no we rested in the afternoon, then we went to the law school for a dinner of all the law clerks, at which we had some speeches. I spoke, Joe Rauh spoke, a couple of others spoke. We had a very, a very fine, very fine dinner, lots of emotion, lots of sentiment. Interestingly, the deans of the Harvard, Yale, and Columbia Law Schools were all there, and all three of them were Frankfurter law clerks. Isn’t that amazing? The next day we had a convocation at the law school at which Paul Froen, professor emeritus, spoke, a man of surpassing eloquence and grace, probably one of Frankfurter’s intellectual favorites, never his law clerk, too old for that. He’s now retired but he gave a graceful and beautiful speech that just really stirred us and brought us to our feet. Then we had a luncheon that day. Ruth Gordon and her husband Garson Kanin were there. Felix’s sister Stella Frankfurter was there, who next year will celebrate her sixty-fifth reunion at Radcliffe College, and has been to China three times in the last four years, she’s eighty-six years old. Anthony Lewis was there, Barney Frank was there, who by the way went to Harvard Law School when he was in the Massachusetts legislature, made the law review and turned it down ’cause he didn’t have time for it, being in the legislature and law school both, and you remember just reelected to congress in that famous race with Margaret Heckler just this year, he was there.

Hellard:They were the two incumbents—

Prichard:Uh-huh.

Hellard:—that were put in the same district?

Prichard:Same district, and he won. The Chief Justice of the Maine Supreme Court was there, he was a Frankfurter law clerk. We had, after the convocation, we had panels which discussed various aspects of Frankfurter’s career. I was on the panel which dealt with personal reminiscences. On that panel were James Rowe, Tom Corcoran’s law partner, assistant in the White House to President Roosevelt, very successful Washington lawyer; Donald Hiss, the younger brother of Alger Hiss, and Frankfurter’s personal attorney and executor; and Judge Charles Wyzanski, still sitting on the district court in Massachusetts at the age of eighty, appointee of President Roosevelt. We had a great time, a lot of our friends were there. Then I went to a panel right after that, which I was not a participant in but which I got into before it was over, which was called biographies of Frankfurter. And we had [H. N.] Hirsch, the recent biographer who had attacked Frankfurter, and we had Joe Lash who had written a biographical essay, and a man named, oh, [Michael E.] Parrish from Stanford who’s just written the first volume of a two or three volume life of Frankfurter. And that got into a brew ha ha, as you can imagine. Hirsch had written these critical remarks—a kind of a psycho biography—and many of the Frankfurter loyalists just stabbed him mercilessly. [Hellard laughs]

Hellard:I’m sure you refrained.

Prichard:I did because I thought that some of the things he said had to be dealt with. And I joined this to say that I thought that they were turning this into a hate Hirsch session, and that it was unfair, that I thought Hirsch had given only given one side of some things, but that I thought if you dealt with Frankfurter’s life as a whole you had to face some of those problems. And I really think that I exerted a little bit of a healing influence on what had become a very ugly situation. But anyway, many of them seemed to appreciate the fact that I did get in and pour a little oil on troubled waters, ’cause it was getting awfully ugly. But it—then—then on Friday night we went to dinner at Ken Galbraith’s house with the Schlesingers [Arthur and Alexandra], and Kay Graham and her daughter Lally Weymouth, and the Rauhs, and Thomas Winship and his wife, he’s the editor of the Boston Globe, there were twelve of us. And we had a very wonderful time, stayed there till one o’clock. Discussed everything from the state of the economy to the next presidential election, and—

Hellard:It sounds like you had a good time. Were there any reminiscences of your panel that you’d care to—

Prichard:Oh—

Hellard:_______

Prichard:—well, I told about—I told about the time he had once played a game with me as to what was the most overrated reputation in Washington. And he decided it was Bernard Baruch and the second most overrated was Harold Ickes and we went through that little story. I talked about the English children that lived with him during World War II. The children of a British barrister who was a friend of his, and some of the fun and experiences he had with them, what a real change in his life that brought about and what happiness that brought him to have those kids there. He’d never had any children. And—talked about the first time I’d met him, which was, I’ve told you before, when I was an undergraduate at Princeton. And told about his funeral, which was most impressive, had at his apartment, had Issac Bush to play, and the prayer for the dead from the Jewish ritual read by his former law clerk Lou Henkin, now a professor at Columbia Law School. Frankfurter had said to me and several other friends, said, “I was born a Jew, I came into this world a Jew, I want to go out of it a Jew.” And he chose that funeral to affirm his identity with the Jewish people and, by the way, I told you, didn’t I, that Ruth Gordon and Garson Kanin were there?

Hellard:Yes.

Prichard:He loved them very much, they were great favorites of his. Ruth Gordon, gosh, she’s remarkable, she’s eighty some years old and like a girl.

Hellard:Yes sir I saw an article in either Time or People or Newsweek about her.

Prichard:Isn’t she amazing?

Hellard:She certainly is. And I also saw her interviewed recently with Carol Burnett.

Prichard:Is she that old?

Hellard:She’s so vigorous and so alive.

Prichard:How old is she?

Hellard:Who?

Prichard:Carol Burnett.

Hellard:Oh, Carol Burnett’s probably late forties, early fifties.

Prichard:Yes.

Hellard:But I’m talking about Ruth Gordon being so big—

Prichard:Oh, yes.

Hellard:—Carol Burnett was interviewing her.

Prichard:Interviewing her, yes. Ruth Gordon is just as vital as she can be, it’s just amazing. I said to her and Gordon Kan-,Garson Kanin, I said, “Felix loved you two.” She said, “Yes, but he loved me the most.” [Hellard laughs]

Hellard:Okay, well, I think that’s going to do it for today.

Prichard:Well good.