Connecticut Tax Commissioner William H. Blodgett faced grilling by a House committee investigating whether wealthy interests are secretly funding a lobbying campaign to repeal the federal estate tax. Representative Rainey of Illinois accused what he called "the richest lobby I ever came in contact with" of operating in the shadows, flooding Congress with letters and telegrams while arranging witnesses' expenses. Blodgett insisted his trip was paid by Connecticut and that he represented "respectable high grade citizens," but the committee pressed hard on who was actually funding the effort. Meanwhile, President Coolidge signaled his support for killing the inheritance tax entirely, believing states should have the revenue instead. The controversy echoed a similar battle two years prior that had also stirred questions about lobby funding.

This 1927 hearing captures a pivotal moment in American tax policy and the emerging power of organized wealthy interests to shape federal legislation. The estate tax fight foreshadowed decades of battles over wealth inequality and the government's role in redistributing it. The accusation that millionaires were secretly bankrolling a propaganda campaign—complete with planted newspaper stories and coordinated mailings—reveals how the mechanics of modern lobbying were already sophisticated by the Jazz Age. Coolidge's backing of the repeal, combined with reports of secretive hotel meetings and anonymous funding, shows how money was moving quietly through the Capitol even as the nation was experiencing unprecedented prosperity and consumer culture.

• The scandal nearly broke into open court: Rep. Rainey demanded that 'J. A. Arnold' be summoned to testify before the committee, but 'no one responded'—even though Rainey believed Arnold was physically present in the hearing room, apparently hiding.
• The Council of State Legislatures financing scheme was brilliantly obscured: each state was assessed $100, then that amount was raised through 'individual' donations, creating a legal but murky paper trail that Blodgett presented as transparent.
• A separate story reports that Guatemala's diplomatic minister, Senor Don Francisco Sanchez Latour, died of peritonitis after an appendicitis operation—but nine months earlier he'd shot himself in the chest in his study, with the family claiming it 'accidental.' He apparently never fully recovered from that wound.
• The New Britain Herald's circulation was 14,049 for the week ending November 5th—it was a thriving urban newspaper with twenty pages covering everything from national scandal to local aldermanic disputes.
• Alderman J. Gustave Johnson's scorching critique of the health department reveals he was proposing to spend public funds building an incinerator at $125,000 (roughly $2 million in 2024 dollars), yet he showed the actual garbage collection cost was only 41 cents per capita, not the $1.37 claimed by Superintendent Pullen.

• William H. Blodgett represented the 'Council of State Legislatures' financed by private subscription—this was essentially a 1920s version of ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council), organizations that still coordinate state-level policy campaigns today, though modern ones operate with far more transparency.
• The federal estate tax Blodgett was trying to kill had been in place since 1916 and would remain contentious for a century: the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act nearly eliminated it again, showing this November 1927 fight was just Round One of an endless political war.
• President Coolidge's position—letting states keep 80% of the estate tax revenue—presaged the 'devolution' debate that would dominate American politics from the 1980s onward: the question of whether Washington or state capitals should control taxation and spending.
• Rep. Henry Rainey, the Democrat calling out the lobby, would become Speaker of the House in 1933 under FDR and champion the New Deal—the complete opposite of what these millionaires fighting the estate tax wanted, suggesting this 1927 hearing was a preview of the ideological clash ahead.
• The story about Rev. Stephen Bartkowski arriving to lead a new Polish parish shows New Britain's rapid immigrant assimilation: by 1927, the city had established enough Polish Catholic population to need a second church, reflecting the waves of European immigration that reshaped Connecticut's industrial towns.