"381--3"

THE CONGRESS

"38163"

Driving along a Washington street one day last week. Farmer-Laborite Representative-at-Large from Minnesota Francis Henry Shoemaker bumped a taxi. When Charles Newman jumped out of his cab to protest, he said Statesman Shoemaker doubled up his ready fists, slugged him. knocked him to the ground twice, cursed him roundly. "I'm a Congressman! Nobody can arrest me!" boasted Statesman Shoemaker few days later when he learned that Newman had sworn out an assault warrant against him.-- Then he quietly slipped out of the House of Representatives, disappeared. Presently two Washington detectives appeared at Statesman Shoemaker's Capitol office. His secretary assured them that the Minnesota Representative was not in. They decided to wait and see. Twice the secretary went home, twice returned. The third time, just before midnight, the secretary found the detectives ambushed in a dark corridor. He went into the ofifice, emerged grinning: "If you're waiting for Mr. Shoemaker, he will be glad to see you now." Statesman Shoemaker was escorted to the police station, released on $25 bail. By that time Taximan Newman had decided to sue for $100,000 damages. To defend him Statesman Shoemaker got his House colleague. Representative Raymond J. Cannon of Wisconsin who was once attorney for Jack Dempsey. also for Joe ("Shoeless") Jackson in the 1919 baseball scandal. It was not the first time that stocky, pugnacious Francis Shoemaker had been arrested for assault. Last April when he was annoyed by the radio of one Theodore Cohen, a neighbor in Washington's Chastleton Hotel, he marched into Neighbor Cohen's room and punched him on the jaw. "I asked him like a gentleman over the phone to stop the racket." explained the Minnesota Congressman. "Then I went up and stopped it myself. But I got a doctor to sew him up." Two months before that Francis Shoemaker had been involved in a newsworthy fracas in Minneapolis. While under the influence of an opiate administered for a tooth extraction, he was taken to the wrong hospital. Recovering consciousness, he became so violent that the superintendent had him removed to his hotel in a police ambulance.

Born in Renville County, Minn. 44 years ago. Francis Shoemaker began to show insurgent leanings at 14 when he campaigned for farm organizations. He drifted to Panama to become a gang boss during the Canal's construction. A char ter member of the Minnesota Farmer-Labor Party, he was nominated for Vice President in 1924, declined to run. Ac tive in the steel strike of 1919. the packinghouse strikes of 1920, he was for six years editor of the People's Voice at Green Bay, Wis., is still editor of the Organized Farmer of Red Wing, Minn. Five years ago he addressed an envelope to a Red Wing banker thus: "R. W. Putnam, robber of widows and orphans." Tried and convicted in Federal court of sending defamatory matter through the mails, he was fined $500, sentenced to a year and a day in the Leavenworth Penitentiary. In Washington, where he has made much radical noise, Representative Shoemaker is shamelessly proud of his prison sentence. He tried unsuccessfully to insert in his Congressional Directory biography: "The first man straight from prison to Congress, instead of from Congress to prison." When he was swept into office in 1932 by 317 votes, he promptly arranged to have special automobile license plates struck bearing his prison number: "38163." Last July President Roosevelt pardoned him, thus restoring his civil rights (TiME, July 17). In the House are five Farmer-Laborites, in the Senate only one. Last week Farmer-Laborite Shoemaker announced himself a candidate for the Senate seat held since 1923 by tall, grey-haired Henrik Shipstead of Minnesota.

--';Senators and Representatives . . . shall in all cases, except treason, felony and breach of the peace, be privileged from arrest during their attendance at the session of their respective Houses, and in going to and returning from the same. . . ."--Art. i, Sec. 6, U. S. Constitution.

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