St. Louis Post-Dispatch from St. Louis, Missouri • Page 61

2 PublrVied Everu, Daq Week-deoj and Jundaojr rnthe SI LOUIS POST-DtSFJTCIl M. S. PART FIVE ST. LOUIS, SUNDAY MORNING, OCTOBER 29, 1950 PAGES 1 12G HU qj sa Cerip. fclL(B'3gji? Wmsy in He Learned About Taxes "Guide to Grownups' A i2-Year-Old Pens Lowdown on Adults By Gene Kramer Prison, Now Does Wide Business Getting Income Tax Refunds for Derelicts Billions Unclaimed, He Says, Which He Will Help Tap, for a Share BERKELEY, Calif, Oct.

28 (AP). MANY a kid has complained about grownups, but few ever did anything about it until Jill Owsley came along. At the age of 10, this neat, brown-haired girl amazed her mother by scribbling outspoken child's-eye-views of her elders. two years later, Jill, Now, By Peter Wyden A Staff Correspondent ef the Post-Dispatch COLUMBIA, Oct. 28.

LEDGER D. VEAZEY is the kind of man you would enjoy meeting in a Pullman club car. He is six feet talL powerfully built and wears a conservative business suit with the aplomb of a sales executive whose expense accounts are itemized as scrupulously as a corporate balance sheet. His handshake is hearty, his conversation sparkles with sophisticated witticism. Veazey (rhymes with is a student of high finance.

Indeed, he once taught college classes in accounting and has kept himself, as he puts it, "reasonably abreast of tax developments for more than 20 years." Officials of the United States Treasury Department consider him, frankly, something of a whiz at their own trade. Unhappily, this brainy citizen is also a convicted highway robber and forger. Thirteen of his last 16 years have been spent in confining circumstances. When he was finally paroled from the Missouri State Penitentiary last year, he adjusted himself with gratifying rapidity to an unobtrusive life in this comfortable college town. The transition from the convict's cotton to the salesman's serge was smooth for Veazy be- who lives in a modest but comfortable attic apartment with her mother, Mrs.

Alice Owsley, is Awaiting royalties from her first book. Titled "A Handy Guide to Grownups," it is a collection "i of her opinions on what makes grownups tick and now mas can get along with them. Jill short for Jennifer 1 startea writing, ner muiurr said good-naturedly, because "she thought she'd had a pushing around from the adults in her life. "She saw all the books on child care 1 was reading and decided children needed a handbook worse than adults. "When she was annoyed.

THE AUTHOR. JILl OWSLEY. IN THE THROES OF CREATION. LEDGER D. VEAZEY HE CLAIMS TO HAVE OBTAINED INCOME TAX REFUNDS FOR MANY FELLOW INMATES AT MISSOURI STATE PENITENTIARY.

THIS OPENED HIS EYES. HE SAYS. TO A VAST AND UNTAPPED SOURCE OF REVENUE, WHICH HE IS NOW TAPPING. she'd write something. Often he'd cross it out later.

The book is what is left." One of the gems it contains reads: "Hardly any mother will stop talking (on the telephone) until yon bother them quite a lot. I think it is perfectly fair to bother them as much as you have to. After all, they ean call their friends back after you have to be in bed. Some of the ways to bother them are: Going upstairs and railing them, starting downstairs without any roat on. ON THE JACKET.

Random House suggests the book is hilarious for adults and definitely of the "let's-be-sure-to-keep-this-from-the-kids" type. But, Jill insists, "the publishers misunderstood. It's for kids." "Of course." she added philosophically, "I guess there are more grownups than kids and they had to make money. Kids don't have as much money as grownups." "In our family they do," Interrupted Mrs. Owsley, beaming at her daughter.

ACTUALLY. MONEY PROBABLY won make any big changes In the congenial life of this mother-daughter team. Jill had strong feelings on grownups. She wrote them down apd had her mother type them. After appearing in Parents' magazine, they were printed In book form.

Mrs. Owsley wanted some time in which to finish a novel. She quit her job as a recreation director in Columbus. last Feb. 1, piled Jill and brother John, 18, in the family car ailed the "gas chamber" for a six-month camping trip.

Mr. Owsley has lived In New York for six years, although the family occasionally gets together for Christmas.) John wanted to join the circus. After touring from Florida to Texas, he connected with Ringling Brothers. Jill and her mother camping, "sleeping In sleeping bags, except once a week, when we needed baths and would go to a motel." They saw Idaho and Santa Fe, New Mexico, which Jill says are "tied" as the best places to live. "I would rather have birds wake me up in the morning than milk trucks of the city." IN EARLY AUGUST THEY arrived in Berkeley and Mrs.

Owsley went to work in an Oakland bookstore "because we liked eating." Jill returned to the seventh grade of junior high. She arises daily at 6:45 a.m., cooks breakfast and awakens Mother. After school. Jill washes the breakfast dishes and cooks supper. "Mother just has to go to work and wash the supper dishes," Jill says proudly.

Except for these homemaking talents and her ability to write amazingly penetrating observations for a kid, Jill seems a normal girl. She wants to be a writer or a psychiatrist but frankly hasn't started thinking about courses to take or what college he'll attend. As for the book, it is hard to believe that statements like children, all of them college grad- uates. His sister holds a Ph.I degree. He attended high school in Austin, and graduate -from Nixon-Clay College, Austin, with the degree of bachelor of accounts.

He took courses at tha University of Texas, attended ao evening law school and then "became principal of one of the largest business schools in the south' for a year and also taught elsewhere. He married in 1925, was divorced in 1928. There were children. IT is not clear what he did In the ensuing years, but evidently he did not get -into trouble until the fall of 1934. He says he was unemployed and doing a lot of traveling, and that one day he and a man named William Madden were given a ride by a Warsaw, Mo, merchant.

During the course of the ride, the merchant was held up and robbed of $10. Both Veazey and Madden drove away in the car. They were caught at Kilgore. Tex. Returned to Missouri, they both pleaded guilty to first degree robbery, and were sentenced to 20 years each.

Veazey maintains he just happened to be traveling with Madden, didn't know that robbery was planned and describes himself as an "innocent bystander" to the crime. In fact, be insists he did not learn the real name of his companion until afterward and that he pleaded guilty under "undue coercion." His verdict of the affair: "It was a bum rap, to use a coarse expression." In the Missouri State Penitentiary, where records list him as a stenographer and accountant, his record was excellent at first, In 1936, he was awarded two years merit time for service in the prison hospital during epidemics. He also worked as a clerk in the kitchen, the commissary and the prison farm office. Then, on Sept. 3, 1938.

less than threa months before he would have become eligible for parole, Veazey escaped. Veazey is not fond of doing business in a hackneyed groove, and so his temporary leave-taking from the pen was accomplished in simple yet original fashion. He was working in the prison farms office at the time. On a day when Paul V. Renz, Commissioner of' Farms, was away, he talked another official into giving him an outside pass to make a trip to St.

Charles. for the farm office. He said he was to pick up a load of barrels to be used to preserve pickles at the prison cannery. HE got the pass, went to tht prison garage, was given truck and driver and journeyed to St. Charles.

There, he told the driver to wajt while he inquired about the barrels. It appears that the driver waited for some time long enough for Veazey to leave for St. Louis, where he caught a westbound plane. His freedom lasted for nearly two years. He turned up in a court at Los Angeles, was convicted of forgery and sent to Fol-som Prison, Calif, on July 24, 1940.

where he served four years of an Indeterminate sentence. Paroled from Folsom, he was returned to the penitentiary at Jefferson City where he embarked on his thriving business career. He was paroled August 2, 1949. because of his "excellent record" after bis sojourn on the West Coast and remains subject to state supervision until Dec 11, 1957. One of the things that never failed to impress parole authorities was Veazey's mastery at obtaining recommendations and sponsorship for himself outside the prison wlls.

They have a number of laudatory letters about their curious guest JSrom nationally known business firms and one from the president of large university. When Veazey first applied for parole be had been offered home and a job by a California school principal who had been director of education at Folsom prison, a Veazey alma mater. The other day, a penal authority speaking at the Congress of Correction in St. Louis said "a criminal is nothing else but you and me, at our weakest, found out. Veazey read the definition and aayt tt explains hla mm "interviewers for 'man In the street work and described the job as follows: "No selling or house-to-house canvassing.

Work part-time, evenings, Saturday and Sunday. Must enjoy approaching strangers on the street to complete questionnaires for corporation in new-type business. Permanent, extraordinary earnings." THOSE who replied received neatly typed letters on the conservative stationery of the Tax Management Corporation. P.O. Box 127.

Columbia. Ledger D. Veazey was listed as president and the firm was described on the letterhead as "Members American Institute of Tax Consultants." The numerous certified public accountants and Government tax men I have asked about this organization have never heard of it. Veazey says he is "a principal member" of the "institute." "We have your application and are impressed," went a typical letter Veazey sent to a job-seeker who answered the ad, "but until we talk with you personally, we cannot be sure that you are really adaptable to the unusual type pf interviewing we require. "We are an organization of expert tax consultants specializing in small income-tax refund claims for persons ih the low-income bracket who do not realize they have money coming to them, and who are not qualified, or too indifferent, to get these refunds for themselves.

They are on-the lowest socio-economic level; they are to be found in 'skid rows' and flop houses, near Gospel missions, in public parks, and in similar places. In the United States there are over 10.000,000 such persons thousands of them in the St. Louis area who are legally and rightfully entitled to refunds. Using our complete instructions, it will be your job to find these persons, talk to them, fill out a simple questionnaire form, mail it in. That's all you do.

We'll do the rest." The letter went on to say that the "client" received 50 per cent of the total refund, without deductions, and that the agent would get 40 per cent of the other half. "Your earnings for each person interviewed and signed up will average $12," the letter said. "A fair consistent working average is one to two clients per hour, although some of our interviewers in other cities have signed up as many as 28 in one day." A typical customer, Veazey relates, may be a gandy dancer or section hand for a railroad. If he is a heavy drinker he may work just a few months of each year, at minimal pay, and spend the rest of the time in leisurely and not always sober style. If Veazey's men can catch up with hirn within three years after he worked such a schedule, they induce him to give them some information about his employment and earnings so they can apply for his refund.

Why does he have a refund coming? Because income tax withholdings are calculated on the assumption that the employe will hold a job all year. If he doesn't, he may not have to pay taxes at all because his total wages for the year may not amount to enough. Why doesn't he apply for his own refund? Because the chances are that he doesn't know he can get one. And even if he does, he may not care enough to do a lot of paper work. THE one frustrating thing about this apparently legitimate setup is that no one man is very likely to milk it dry.

"Taxation is the biggest business in America today," Veazey informed me. "About 60,000,000 people are involved and more than a year that's bigger than the next 50 largest businesses combined. As far as I know, no one does what I do on a comparable scale. I have no fear of competitors because there is room for hundreds to do what I do." He says that Individuals could collect two and a half billion dollars in refunds and "the percentage I can attend to is almost negligible." Government men admit, by the way, that Veazey's figures are probably correct. Looking up Veazey at HIM South Eighth street, just a block down the street from the Tiger Hotel in downtown Columbia, I found that the address was a small two-story apartment house with an appliance business on the ground floor.

Ledger D. Veazey and the Tax Management Corporation -were listed on the mail box as living in Apartment three. Upstairs, Veazey received me cordially and invited me for lunch. He is a persuasive, likeable type and looks older than his most recent picture. At 44, what little hair he has left has turned gray, and so have the impressive bushy eyebrows.

He told me that eight or nine agents are rounding up "clients" for him now in St. Louis, Kansas New Orleans, Houston and Los Angeles. Veazey has done some interviewing of "nomads and transients" himself, and knows they are not easy people to approach. Most of them don't believe the Government owes them anything. When they finally sign up it's usually because they have nothing to lose.

"There's no cost or obligation," the president of the Tax Management Corporation, likes to say, "either you draw or you win." Veazey says he has trained local "lawyers, clerks and stenographers" to do the actual work of making out refund claims under his supervision. "In all our 3000 cases there haven't been half a dozen errors." he said, "and those were entirely due to our being furnished with erroneous information." He was plainly annoyed at the sloppiness of the "clients" who spoiled his almost unblemished record. If Veazey has really collected 3000 refunds averaging $64 each in 1946, 1947 and the year or so since he left prison, he has grossed $192,000 for three years of work. To date, bis pursuits have failed to attract attention among good people of Columbia. Veazey and his small, friendly wife are living quietly.

A. D. McLarty, manager of the Columbia Chamber of Commerce, and other businessmen, have never heard of Veazey or his corporation. Has be "resocialized himself he promised Id the advertisement placed from his cell? It's too early to tell, but perhaps look at his a-ecord may provide a clue. Veazey is understandably reluctant to talk about his past.

From his own sketchy account and the more specific notations of various police departments, prisons, and the F.B.L. the jigsaw puzzle falls into place about like this: He was born May 1906, in New Iberia, La. (pop. wheo mwBbt of his family still lire. Ha was ti third of three had plenty of time evenings and weekends.

There was no place to go, you know. No nightclub-bing or anything like that." He smiled amiably as he said it. Prison officials say that the administration evidently did not realize how much money Veazey was making in 1946 and 1947. When the sums finally became known, shortly before the present warden, Ralph N. Edison, took office, the entire enterprise was stopped.

By that time, the Internal Revenue people were intensely interested. They now claim that Veazey owes them $1819 for failing to report fully his own income for 1946 and 1947. Veazey is outraged at this suggestion. "The Government isn't suing me," he says. "I am suing the Government!" He says he has overpaid his taxes by $2000 to $3000 and is asking for a "re-determination" of his proper tax in Federal Tax Court.

The Government, he maintains, merely countered his petition. The tax people at Kansas City deny the accuracy of this version, but Veazey is looking forward to his day in court. "Naturally, I will be my own, counsel," he announces. While his business idyll was still flourishing behind iron bars, Veazey began planning for the future. He needed a job before he could apply for parole.

So he ran a "help wanted" ad in a St. Louis newspaper. "Will you help an ex-convict?" the headline ran. "He needs a job from someone who will make him feel he is wanted." it went on, "and who will help Tiim in his determined anxiety to resocialize himself quickly and permanently." It detailed Veazey's notable "civilian" background and added: "He needs a real friend not financial help." It was signed "Inmate No. 45509" and gave Veazey's usual business address, P.

O. Box 900. Jefferson City, which happened also to be the mailing address of the penitentiary. "I got about 400 replies with job offers from $40 a week to $10,000 a year," the advertiser asserts. "Also several marriage proposals, a lace bedspread and a chocolate cake.

It was a very good cake, and it had no saw blades in it, either." One of the writers who answered the ad was in Columbia, and when Veazey was released on parole Aug. 2, 1949, he came here and went to work for his friend as an accountant. Shortly afterward, he met and married a local girl. And last Feb. 4, he recorded with the Secretary of State the incorporation of a firm known as Tax Management Corporation, Vi South Eighth street.

Columbia. He was listed as holding 98 per cent of the 100 shares issued by the corporation at a par value of $100 each. Again working in his spare time, the ingenious Veazey was back in business. This fall he ran another ad in St Louis, this time In the nam of hi corporation. Ha wanted cause his chief occupation remained the same, in jail and out.

Only that once he was no longer behind bars he could branch out to operate on a national basis and soup up his income. Aglow with pardonable pride, he has just told me of his unique little business. Additional sidelights may be forthcoming Nov. 13, when former inmate No. 45509 is scheduled to appear in Federal Tax Court at Kansas City in a polite controversy with the Government about a few thousand dollars.

The Government insists Veazey owes the money in back income taxes for money earned as a tax expert while he was in prison. Veazey protests that he overpaid and that the Government owes him the money. It's all part of what he resignedly calls "the curse of having too good an income." The curse hit Veazey right after the war. He had just returned to the penitentiary at Jefferson City after an eventful six-year "vacation" and time was heavy on his nimble hands. Building up a vast library of books on taxation and subscribing to a number of professional tax services he hit on an idea.

At least, he thought, it would keep his mind from getting rusty. Ke became an income tax consultant for his fellow-inmates. "After all, he says a bit apologetically, "the only clientele I could develop -at that time were those around me. You might call them shut-ins or a captive audience, if you like. INVOLUNTARILY, the prison administration virtually set him up in business by giving Veazey the job interviewing all new inmates as they were processed through the identification section.

Thus be met each new house guest and established contact with his customers. If the newcomer had a job for part of the current year and withholding tax was deducted from his check. Veazey would have him fill out the Internal Revenue Bureau's Form W-2. If the client had worked six months and had $150 deducted, he could probably get a refund for the entire amount. Veazey did the paper work and collected 50 per cent of the proceeds for his trouble.

"It was an interesting and lucrative business." he fondly recalls. "I was merely collecting for them what was legally and ethically theirs. The prison officials were fully aware of what I was doing and had no objections." Is making out 3000 of these small income tax refund claims within three years. Veazey found that the average claim netted only $64. So it was necessary to develop a good volume of business to make the undertaking worthwhile.

And this he did. "My postage bill alone ran $100 a month during my uh incarceration," he explains, "and I had to employ other inmates as typists and runners. Naturally, they were selected and paid compensation by me. Fortunately, I THE COVER DESIGN OF "A HANDY GUIDE TO GROWNUPS." WHICH IS A COLLECTION OF THE AUTHOR OPINIONS ON HOW KIDS CAN GET ALONG WITH THEM. to understand adults you need to understand a little about the way they think about money." could be written by a 12-year-old without help from her mother, or an editor.

But both publisher and mother insist the work is all her own. and the spectacled young woman makes statements just as candid in normal conversation like "people you meet campinr are diffirent from those in motor courts." Or on the sizes of people "there axe more adults and they stay the same sixe and shape, so furniture is made for them instead of kids. FOR THIS REASON, SAID Jill, she's glad she's growing up. It's easier than it used to be, she declared, to reach the dishes she's washing. And "when I fry bacon it doesn't pop in my face like before." It is on the note of growing up that Jill closes the book with the postscript: "I am beginning to be adolescent now.

I am more mixed up in my feelings than I used to be. Writing this book was fun, but I seem to have gotten more mixed up as I went on. This is probably because I kept growing up myself all the time. I couldn't stop and neither could you, even if we wanted to." BROTHER COULD VdSH yf0 "SPARE A DIMC'TIL Ml). jr i.