Word: virginally
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...bedfellows. Hardly a guest was there who did not have a grievance against one or more of his fellow guests. Examples: Senator Dieterich v. Representative Rayburn on ''death sentence" legislation for utility holding companies; Senator Tydings v. Secretary of the Interior Ickes on the administration of the Virgin Islands...
More light was thrown on the character of that issue as the Senate investigation of Republican Governor Paul Martin Pearson's administration of the Virgin Islands droned into its second week in the sweltering Senate caucus room (TIME, July 15). Appearing with a strip of adhesive tape cocked over the eye which Columnist Robert S. Allen blacked for him last fortnight, mousy-looking Paul C. Yates called up the Islands' men of God to prove that gentle, idealistic Governor Pearson was somehow a blackguard. Witness Yates, ousted Pearson assistant and a prime instigator of 'the investigation, produced...
...Poorhouse." Despite their respective advantages in size and population, Kent County, R. I. (174 sq. mi.) and Granite City, Ill. (25,000 pop.) would have to devote themselves exclusively and persistently to murder, rape, arson, embezzlement and kidnapping to make the stir which the Virgin Islands have created during the past year. Three beauteous tropic specks off the eastern coast of Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands have helped split a President's Cabinet, drawn a steady stream of investigators and newshawks, kept themselves prominent in the nation's Press by as fantastic a comedy of political manners...
Nothing much happened to draw attention to the Virgin Islands between the time the U. S. bought them from Denmark in 1917 for $25,000,000 and the day Herbert Hoover paid them their first Presidential visit in 1931. Following a brief inspection. President Hoover publicly labeled them "a poorhouse." Not bothering to mention the fact that U. S. Prohibition had ruined the Islanders by destroying their chief means of livelihood, the manufacture of rum, the President left the three little Virgins to Civil Governor Pearson whom he had just appointed, sailed back to bigger headaches in Washington...
Meantime more trouble was brewing in Washington. There were only some 25 political plums to be picked in the Islands, but plenty of hungry Democrats wanted them. Maryland's Senator Millard E. Tydings quietly wangled a Virgin Islands job as government attorney for a Jewish constituent named Eli Baer. Island Police Director Michael J. Nolan shortly reported that CWA funds were being diverted to the purchase of refrigerator parts, the repair of Government House radios, the hiring of taxicabs for parades. At once Attorney Baer set out to investigate the administration of public funds in the Islands. He turned...