How a Cedar Rapids Newspaper Busted Bootleggers, Gamblers and Government Crooks

Every year, the State Historical Society of Iowa presents the Benjamin F. Shambaugh Awards for the best Iowa history books published during the previous year.

The award’s namesake served for 40 years as the State Historical Society’s superintendent, taught at the University of Iowa, and vigorously promoted the study of state and local history.

This year, Jerry Harrington won an honorable mention for his book, “Crusading Iowa Journalist Verne Marshall: Exposing Graft and the 1936 Pulitzer Prize,” which award juror Pamela Riney-Kehrberg reviewed below.

In 1936, editor Verne Marshall and the Cedar Rapids Gazette won the Pulitzer Prize for more than a year of vigorous muckraking. Two years earlier, a police raid of a Cedar Rapids canning plant had uncovered evidence of illegal liquor and gambling. The tendrils of the scandal led in many directions, including a tangle of allegations in Sioux City involving Iowa’s attorney general, Edward O’Connor.

Marshall was infuriated by the thought of Iowa officials flouting the law for their own benefit, so he launched an immensely expensive and time-consuming crusade that sent reporters statewide in search of miscreants. As Marshall said in 1935, “I think it is a newspaper man’s job to go after any dishonest public official who is pretending to serve the public, regardless of who it is. And when he gets the news he should print it, regardless of how much it costs.”

What it cost was more than a year of turmoil. Attorney General O’Connor was tried for corruption and eventually resigned. Harold Cooper, head of Iowa’s newly created Liquor Control Commission, also resigned. However, the investigation of campaign finance irregularities ground to a halt without any measurable results, and the indictments for illegal liquor sales and slot machines produced no convictions.

Even so, the scandal forced officials to pay attention to by-the-drink sales and gambling. Slot machines disappeared across the state. The media spotlight prompted several other resignations and led to a restructuring of law enforcement in Sioux City and Woodbury County. But it’s not entirely clear that Marshall succeeded in clearing the state of vice and crooked politicians in the way he had intended.

It is certainly not the author’s fault, but the book ends on a decidedly down note. After crusading against vice in Iowa, Marshall decided to crusade against American involvement in World War II. He founded the No Foreign Wars Committee and led a strident and shrill campaign, which ended with Marshall’s nervous breakdown. The skills he used in his journalistic crusade did not translate well into the political arena. He never again had the bully pulpit or the influence that he had in the 1930s, and he died in 1965.

“Crusading Iowa Journalist” is a thorough book and a dense one. For readers who delight in detail, there is detail a-plenty. The author clearly did his research. For those who want analysis, there was probably room for a bit more.

Nevertheless, this book is an interesting, fact-packed examination of vice in Iowa in the 1930s and a portrait of the man who made it his business to clean up the state.

— Reviewer Pamela Riney-Kehrberg teaches American history at Iowa State University.