chapter devoted to dope and gambling in Washington.

One of Washington’s most important Negro underworld figures is Lamarr

(Polly) Brown who has been implicated in every form of illegality from

operating after-hour clubs to the sale of narcotics. Odessa Madre,

known as the “Queen of the Fences,” is just what her honorific implies.

Following the white pattern, the largest, gayest and most colorful

Negro section is also laid out in NW. This part of town abounds with

colored flats where a white man may take a white or colored woman.

These holes sell gin without licenses, provide bedroom accommodations

for those who want them, and girls for those who don’t have them.

Many Negro cab-drivers pimp for white girls, first getting acquainted

with them when they pick them up as passengers. They set them up in

apartments, most of which are in NW, and sell their services to white

or colored men. These cabbies also handle reefers and after-hour liquor.

If you rode with us in Washington, through the NW colored section,

these are some of the things we could have shown you:

First, we parked our car at the corner of 10th and B Sts., in front of

the Lincoln Barbeque. We waited five minutes, a colored man came out of

the restaurant and took our order for bootleg liquor. It happened after

two, when the bars were closed. His prices were moderate, no more than

50 cents to a dollar above the established tariff. But the stuff was

moonshine and cut.

Let’s go to 1919 14th Street NW. This house was formerly the Star Dust

Club, an after-hour drinking and gambling place. Now it’s a shoeshine

parlor. It’s owned by William J. “Foots” Edwards, a notorious Negro

gambler. If you want a game, you can find stud in the basement.

The dark corner of 5th and K looks quiet and serene. The colored

damsels who parade past here singly and by twos are not. Stop your car

at the corner and they will come over and solicit you. Business all

night. If you’re a Negro you’ll know where to take them. If you are a

white man they’ll go along in your car to an alley or steer you to a

buggy rooming-house. Another corner frequented by dusky hustlers in

search of white trade is 9th and Rhode Island.

At about this time, we’ll run through the 7th Street district, which

is the Broadway of the NW Negro section, with the chief shops,

restaurants, night clubs and theatres. You can make pick-ups anywhere

around 7th, Georgia and Florida Avenues, but these streets are brightly

lighted, so most white men who want to change their luck play the

darker streets. And there it is not unusual to see white girls brace

black men.

In addition to sex on sale at the corner of 7th and Florida, you can

buy reefers or policy slips.

U Street, from 7th to 15th, is another bright light belt in the colored

section. The Dunbar Hotel and the Whitelaw are the swank Negro inns.

The Dunbar was once the aristocratic white Courtland Hotel. In its

basement is the 20-11 Club, one of the Nation’s best-known colored

cabarets, which caters to the cream of the colony and is patronized

also by white novelty-seekers. Rich and visiting Negro celebrities

check in at the Dunbar. So do Feds and cops, who have occasionally made

pinches there for narcotics and morals violations. In the 20-11 Club

you can pick up girls of any race.

On the corner of 7th and T are three hot spots--the Off Beat Club, for

musicians, the Club Harlem, and the Seventh and T Club. We saw them

serve drinks after hours and cater to fairies of all shades, female

white thrill-chasers and Negro reefer addicts.

Washington, like Chicago, is a city of alleys in every block of

residential property and many business squares, bisected by the rear

passages. As in Chicago, they are conducive to crime, afford dark,

narrow lanes for rape, assault, robbery and the pleasanter crimes of

crap shooting and soliciting.

In some Negro sections where housing is at a premium, they live in

shacks in the alleys. These are some of the slums already referred

to--not many, but picturesque and odoriferous. One of the best-known

is an alley oddly named Temperance Court. If white people lived

there it would be fashionable at premium rents; it is similar to the

aristocratic Washington Mews in New York’s Greenwich Village. But

it is inhabited by some of the lowest members of the Negro race in

Washington--and that means low.

Temperance Court is between 12th and 13th, T and U Streets, near the

13th precinct station. More dope peddlers and ginmill operators are

annually arrested in this block than on any other street of comparable

size anywhere in the world. You can buy anything you want there--girls,

bootleg whiskey, cocaine and marijuana, stolen property, guns and

knives, articles of perversion and sadism. Anything but a virgin past

the age of puberty.

A notorious dope peddler operated there until recently and may still be

there when this comes out. He is John Frye. He has so many children,

some sleep on the roof, four on a bed, and there is always a new baby

in the carriage. Narcotics agents said he hid junk in the baby’s

diaper. A competitor in the same block was Wilbur Kenny, known to the

cokies merely as “Y.”

Another byway in the NW Negro section, which is unpublicized in the

slick magazines, is Goat Alley, off 7th Street, near M. This is

terribly tough, with reefer peddlers, two-dollar wenches, a mugging

a minute and murders common. Close by the Negro sections of crime

and perversion is Ledroit Park, once surrounded by the mansions of

aristocracy. This is back of Griffith Stadium, which, like Comiskey

Park, home of the Chicago White Sox, is engulfed in a sable sea.

Baseball lovers must travel through miles of dangerous streets to the

stadium.

Nearby is Freedman’s Hospital, the world’s leading institution of its

kind for colored people, one of the outstanding institutions in the

world. Its internes are Howard University medical graduates, and among

these are great doctors. They get plenty of practice. The worst Negro

assault cases go to Freedman’s. On Friday and Saturday nights the

floors of its emergency wards look like slaughterhouses. Knifings are

frequent; shootings run second. Even on weekdays the place teems with

police interviewing victims.

Garfield Hospital, also near a large Negro community, is the second in

assault cases.

One of the largest Negro islands in NE has as its center Central

Avenue--same name as Los Angeles’ Harlem, though purely coincidental.

Gamblers in the NE section get action above the colored poolroom at 507

8th Street and E.

SW’s colored section is one of the largest in Washington and perhaps

the oldest. It begins within a thrown stone’s distance of the Capitol

and runs through to the Army War College. If you’ve read about this

neighborhood in some pinkish publication before seeing it for yourself

you will be looking for something awful. But you will drive through

miles of wide avenues with deep lawns. They’re littered with rubbish

and junk, of course. This homey residential section is reminiscent of

God-fearing, law-abiding middle-class sections in typical Southern

towns.

But what goes on inside these cozy habitations is not sleepy. The

streets, so quiet by day, take on a sinister aspect at night. This

whole section is known as Bloodfield. It’s worth a white man’s or

woman’s life to walk there unaccompanied. Even respectable Negroes are

not safe.

Young colored hoodlums of both sexes, adept at mugging and knifing,

prey on strangers. The white man who comes here for pastime will find

his luck all bad. The best he can hope for is a beating and maiming.

But white women who are known to be Negro lovers are given safe conduct

by the men, though they are attacked often by Negro women who resent

the intrusion. These streets are barely patrolled by police.

The main shopping and drinking boulevards of the SW Negro section are

4th and 7th Streets. Around here the Negroes moved into and drove out

what there was of a Jewish ghetto. The street where Al Jolson lived as

a child and where his father practiced as a cantor is now all Negro.

The SW dope peddlers and whores make their hangout on 6½th Street. The

chief madames are “Mamma Liz” and “Big Tit” Flossie.

We have indicated that many white women--especially government

workers--are receptive to sexual attentions of Negro men. But the

comparative ease with which a black man can get a white girl, even a

so-called respectable one, does not seem to deter colored men from

committing rape on women of their own race and whites.

As these lines were being written, all Washington was shocked and

alerted when a 22-year-old South American girl, visiting with a

diplomatic family, was stalked, attacked and ravished in a park near

Arlington Cemetery by a Negro, who, Tarzan-like, leaped from a clump of

trees entirely naked.

The popular form of Negro attack is mugging, a process in which the

assailant comes up behind a man or woman and throws his arm around the

victim’s throat, closing it sharply with the elbow out, and jabbing a

knee into the small of the back.

But in Washington colored people call it “yoking,” derivation of the

word unknown. It includes all forms of street assault. One process

consists of sneaking up behind a lone passer-by, usually one who

apparently has been drinking, and tapping him on the shoulder. As he

turns around, he is hit square on the jaw with a stiff arm, then kicked

in the groin when he falls. Most victims are robbed. But many young and

exuberant Negroes get up yoking parties just for the joy and excitement.

Three young colored boxers, aged 14, 16, and 17, terrorized Washington

a few months ago, committing at least 19 yoke robberies, netting more

than $2,000. The 17-year-old was a semifinalist in the 160-pound class

in last year’s Golden Gloves tournament. The youngest boxed at a boys’

club. The 16-year-old was a quarter finalist in the 135-pound class.

These activities are said to breed good citizens.

The three bet among themselves which would land the first punch on the

victim and whether it would be a knockout.

Police arrest hundreds of Negro yokers every year, most of them in

their teens. Thousands of yokings go unsolved. The yokers are usually

highly organized into juvenile gangs which fight also with home-made

pistols, sawed-off shotguns and switchblade knives.

Many of these young Negro gangs terrorize students, white and black, in

public schools, offering to sell them “protection” and punishing them

when they don’t pay up.

Startled public officials first heard about these gangs some months

ago after incidents at Banneker High. An 18-year-old colored boy was

held for the grand jury on a charge of robbing a 15-year-old Banneker

schoolboy of a wrist watch on the school playground. He threatened to

whip the younger boy if he talked. School officials were awakened to

the fact that all the schools in the city had this problem. According

to the assistant superintendent of schools G. C. Wilkenson, “the gangs

are made up of boys who aren’t in school and who aren’t working--mostly

from 16 to 21 years old.”

Officials try to minimize the situation, but there is a wave of terror

in every public elementary and high school. Young Negro gangsters lurk

about the schools, sell reefers, molest girls, and commit mayhem on

children who won’t pony up. Boys and girls thus forced to pay tribute

are told to steal from their parents or do a little shoplifting if they

have no other means of procuring the extortion money. Youngsters are

put on heroin and morphine by the youthful gangsters, and soon enter a

life of serious crime.

Other yokers use a tactic borrowed from the dacoits, a murderous

religious gang of India, throwing a cord over the victim’s head from

behind and garroting him.

Some of these colored juvenile mobs have been in existence for 15 or 20

years. When boys and girls outgrow them and become adult criminals on

their own, they are replaced by new children on the way up. Among the

older and better-organized kid mobs are the Fastest Runners, the Forty

Thieves, the Purple Cross Gang and the Protective Association.

The Fastest Runners is composed of younger boys who fight with

switch-blade knives. When they grow up they graduate into adult gangs.

All these organizations have female auxiliaries, membership in which

requires the young colored girls to solicit on the streets and turn the

proceeds over to the boys. Girls as young as 11 participate and at 12

are “debs,” with full standing.

Among offenses which are practically Negro monopolies in Washington are

the following:

_Numbers and policy slips._ Almost all numbers sellers, even in white

neighborhoods and in government office buildings, are colored men and

women. In other cities Sicilians, Puerto Ricans, Filipinos and Mexicans

get in on this activity, but there are no sizeable groups of such in

Washington. The modus operandi of numbers selling will be described in

the chapter on gambling.

_Sale of reefers._ Almost all marijuana retailers are colored, which

also is unique to Washington.

_Theft and conversion of government checks at the lower level._ The

men, because so many are janitors and elevator boys, have entree to

apartment buildings and tenement houses and access to mail-boxes. These

thieves strike at the middle or at the end of the month, when checks

are sent out by the Treasury for G.I. remunerations, Social Security

benefits, pensions, army subsistence and similar regular allotments.

Those who do the manual stealing seldom attempt to cash the checks,

which are turned over to fences, often white, including storekeepers

and sometimes bankers.

Another Negro industry is _the sale of bootleg booze_. The rings

operate in many fashions. On some streets you find peddlers who sidle

up beside you, or come up to your car when you stop for traffic lights.

Many shoeshine “parlors” are moonshine dispensaries. Groceries and

poolrooms also sell, usually gin, but sometimes what is supposed to be

bourbon--corn for the Southern taste. The gin is mixed with cider to

dilute the taste of raw kerosene and the combination has a wallop.

That good old Negro money-raising institution, known as “the rent

party” elsewhere, has a specific, generic name in Washington, where

it’s called a “chitlin party.” Chitlins, hogs’ innards, are a delicacy

in some blacker parts of the South and are used here as a decoy

to attract guests to the homey brawls which are a regular part of

Blacktown’s social life. In New York’s Harlem and Chicago’s Bronzeville

the paying guest at a rent party gets nothing in exchange for his

contribution except the right to bring his woman, drink his gin, and

get into the fracas.

We met a white fellow who has run Washington’s chitlin industry up into

a million-dollar-a-year class. He gets the stuff from the butchers for

nothing. They’re almost willing to pay him to cart it away. Then he

packages it in 10-gallon jars which he sells for $2.50, or two bits a

gallon. That means the capital’s Negroes consume 4,000,000 gallons a

year.

These chapters were, of course, not in print when a young man known as

“The Sniper” was, for a few days, the most famous person in Washington.

If he were around now, our critics might have said we incited him. The

Sniper--a young white man--was a congenital Negro-hater. He boiled up

into an insane rage every time he saw a sable woman or man. He hid in

various sections and hit bullseyes from roofs, behind trees and through

open windows.

Before he was caught there was a wave of terror. For days Negroes

remained indoors. Crime sagged, because even the worst elements were

afraid to leave their homes.

Police Lieutenant Barrett, now Major and Superintendent of the

Metropolitan Force, got him after he had killed a half-dozen men and

wounded scores.

While the Sniper was in jail on suspicion, he met a drug addict, one

Richard Harlowe, and confided in him where he had hidden his gun, in

Baltimore. Barrett recovered it and came back to find his bird had

escaped. He was recaptured in Georgetown. Barrett’s fame helped him to

become the chief. His friends say it had nothing to do with the fact

that he was related to Major Edward Kelley, a previous chief.

8. CHINATOWN CHIPPIES

Sam Wong, an owner of the China Clipper, Quonsett Inn, the Dragon and

other popular restaurants, was indicted on a $250,000 tax fraud. The

government charged he gave most of it to two blondes--sisters--who

lived with him. The case was tried in Baltimore. (_Note_: Though

Washington is the nation’s capital, it is merely part of the Maryland

Internal Revenue collection district.)

When the case was called, the courtroom filled with poker-faced

orientals. The government called some, the defense called others,

including Wong, whom it put on the stand.

But not one Chinese witness testified coherently. They gave their

names, addresses, and so on, muttered and mumbled irrelevant replies.

Even the defendant remained mute after being put on the stand by his

own attorney.

The lawyers had read _Chicago Confidential_, in which these reporters

revealed that Chinese will have no truck with American courts or

American law. So they gave a copy to the court and D.A., hoping the

judge and jury would realize the impossible position in which the

defense legal battery was placed. It did no good. Wong got a year. The

blondes weren’t Chinese--and they convicted him.

Some go to Chinatown for chop suey and chow mein. We will write about

those who seek other delicacies.

Washington’s Chinatown is neither as large as Frisco’s, as colorful as

New York’s, nor as odoriferous as Boston’s. You will see no ancient,

pajama-clad women on its streets, and only a few young slant-eyed

Sadies.

Chinatown is a mere three or four blocks on H Street, beginning

in a block about 8th and extending barely to 5th. It’s almost all

neon-lighted restaurants, with the shops of a few wholesale merchants

and traders sandwiched in between. H is a typical wide Washington

street with set-back buildings. If it weren’t for the garish Chinese

characters on the illuminated signs and windows, and the pale

yellow-faced men with sad old almond eyes sprawling on the stoops,

you’d think you were anywhere but in a Chinatown.

As in all Chinese quarters, various locations and various businesses

are divided between the tongs. Only two operate in the East, though

there are scores in California.

The On Leongs are dominant here, though not in the nation, through an

alliance with the Hip Sings, cemented many years ago, when they drove

the competing organizations back to the West Coast. Then they turned on

their ally. After a series of bloody wars, they established themselves

as the top dogs, with the Hip Sings the poor cousins.

The tongs are, primarily, trade and benevolent associations. Their

membership is comprised of certain families or immigrants from certain

villages in Canton. When the authorities clamped down on tong wars in

the 1930’s, the tongs began to enforce their decrees and decisions by

peaceful means, which include trade and social boycott.

According to members of the Chinese colony in Washington, there are

only 500 of them, but these figures are far out of line with our

count of at least 7,500. There are hundreds of Chinese restaurants

and laundries in the town. Chinese always underestimate their

population, as do Negroes. But with them there are more concrete

reasons. Three-fourths are entered illegally, through many subterfuges,

such as forged birth and marriage certificates, as well as actual

body-smuggling over the Mexican and Canadian borders and from the West

Indies. The price of entering a Chinese now is $5,000, as against a

modest $1,000 twenty years ago. The fee is paid the smugglers by the

Chinaman’s tong or family society, for whom he then works to pay it

off. Nowadays most of this illegal entry is by air.

Chinese are cagey at census time, because if the rolls show anywhere

near as many in the country as there are, the difference in numbers

between those here and the ones on record would be so startling, it

would cause an investigation and wholesale deportation. Another reason

is that they are on a gentlemen’s agreement quota basis with agents of

the Federal Bureau of Immigration and Naturalization. When an agent

runs across a group of illegally-entered Chinese, he gets practical

about the whole matter.

If he turned them all up at once, he’d get a pat on the back from his

superior, then have to go on a new job next week. But if he reports

only one every two weeks, he doesn’t have to do another lick of work

for months. So the agent makes a deal with the head of the tong, who

delivers the unfortunate Chinese at set intervals, and thus everyone is

happy: the government because it gets the Chinese, the agent because he

can loaf, and the wealthy Chinese laundry and restaurant owners, who

are not suddenly faced with labor shortages.

Washington’s Chinatown is important beyond its numerical strength

because it acts as a lobby for Chinese all over the country, regardless

of tong affiliation, and for Chinese merchants and enterprises all over

the world. There are not enough Chinese voters in the country to enable

them to influence elections, but they make up for lack of numbers by

intelligence, ingenuity, wealth and Oriental cunning developed by

centuries of intrigue with no qualms of honor owed the white man.

Communists never overlook a trick. They quickly took advantage of the

Chinaman’s unique possibilities. Many Chinese are vulnerable because

they have relatives in the old country. Thus they are subject to

pressure. Many are technical law-breakers or illegal entrants, so the

Reds, with their influence in high places, can threaten effectively.

Chinese societies make swell “drops” for the transmission of messages

and intelligence, and are being used, an angle not yet brought out

publicly.

They’ll tell you it isn’t so, but some of the recent tong fighting is a

war between Nationalists and Communists.

Chinatown, only a few blocks from the White House, the Capitol and the

center of the business and commercial life, is a focal point for all,

whites as well as Orientals, visitors and natives. In this town, where

almost everything shutters by midnight, the Chinese propensity for

staying up all night and sleeping most of the day has brought about

several phenomena. Unless you are welcome at a bottle club, there is

no late place to go to in Washington except Chinatown. Most of the

restaurants there are open all night, selling food. More than a few

serve liquor after 2 A.M., if they know you, in a tea-pot.

There is hectic activity all evening. Most of the white bag-swinging

street-hustlers work the neighborhood. Any cab-driver will direct you

there if you ask him, “Where can I get a girl?” These self-sellers

usually ask $20, but will take what they can get. They go on duty at

around 8, and by 10 most have made arrangements. From 10 to about 1 or

2, the restaurants are taken over by respectable people, mostly young

couples who stop in for a bite of exotic food after the movies. After

1, when the tarts have completed their rounds, they come back again

for more trade. At this time the drunks who have been ejected from the

cocktail lounges and night clubs are transported wholesale by cab to

Chinatown. Many of the drivers have deals with certain girls and some

of these girls have deals with the Chinese restaurants they habitually

visit.

Many of the hookers hang out at the Mai Fong.

We could find no Chinese whores in Washington. The proportion of

Chinese women to men is one to ten. Any Oriental girl, no matter

how homely, can make an attractive marriage. Many Chinese men are

married to white women. There are no Chinese waitresses in the Chinese

restaurants, except an occasional relative of the owner; they are

whites. Few are for sale, but many will help get you one who is.

When the tramps finish their second round with the guys they have

picked up at 2, they come back to Chinatown at 5 or 6 in the morning,

by which time the waiters, chefs and bartenders, all Chinese, are

locking up for the night and ready for a bit of shacking up themselves.

Many of the prostitutes live with Chinese men from the restaurants and

the gambling joints. These are useful to the Chinese colony, which

entertains influential white people lavishly. Many members of Congress,

high government officials and influential lobbyists are feted at

private parties, where they are served exotic twenty-course meals of

raw octopus and lambs’ eyes, washed down by shark’s fin soup. Police

Chief Barrett, always accompanied by his aide-de-camp, a lieutenant, is

frequently entertained in these private rooms.

Amiable blondes are supplied by the hosts if wanted, and rooms are

available down the block, at the Eastern House, a cheap Chinese and

white hotel, where federal agents frequently pick up dope-peddlers.

Selling narcotics is another large Chinese industry. Unlike other

cities, it is not confined to selling to Chinese. In all other Eastern

cities, opium, the favorite Chinese dream-smoke, is peddled by members

of the On Leong Tong, who have the cream of everything, won through

violence and chicanery.

In other cities, Hip Singers must content themselves with the sale

of white stuff--heroin, morphine and cocaine--which is seldom used

by Chinese. In Washington, Chinese are among the main retail dope

purveyors for the white trade as well as their own people. There are

few Puerto Rican and Italian drug passers available. So both tongs sell

everything. Junkies cruise Chinatown at all hours of the day and night

in search of dope, and can make a buy without any trouble. If anyone

stands on a corner and looks sad for more than five minutes, he will be

approached by a peddler.

The net result is that, with narcotics as with girls, the Chinese find

a potent weapon with which to further the interests of their fellow

Orientals all over the country. More than one high government official

is on dope, which he procures from Chinese dealers, who in turn have

him at their mercy because they control the source and because they

have the power of blackmail.

The Chinese import some, obtain the rest from the central Mafia sources

in New York, Philadelphia and Baltimore, or directly from abroad, as

will be described later. They frequently cooperate with the Mafia in

smuggling narcotics and other contraband. It is a matter of record

that many Chinese secret societies have worked with their ancient

Sicilian counterpart, the Mafia, over the centuries. Both Cantonese

and Sicilians are widely dispersed over the world, but each faction

is bound together by a common language and secret societies. Chinese

societies are remarkable transmission belts. And among Chinese are many

natural-born gangsters--sly rather than bold in white men’s countries.

Dope can be hidden in rice, vegetables and even wet-wash. The Chinese

societies also provide the Mafia with facilities for transporting

contraband money from country to country or from town to town.

There’s hardly a location in Chinatown without some form of gambling

going on, quite often open to the street. Almost every restaurant has

a game in the rear. Many stores are blinds for the huge wagering that

goes on behind. If you came in and asked to buy some article you saw

in the window, you’d be laughed at; they are usually dummy props. Huge

sums are won and lost in these games, and bankrolls of a hundred or

two hundred thousand dollars on the table are not unknown. This is

always syndicate money. Sometimes as many as 500 or 1,000 partners all

over the country are in the play. These games go on 24 hours a day,

without pause. Each syndicate’s players are chosen for their ability as

gamblers. They play in teams with others who relieve them.

We saw open gambling in the Fong Wah Co., in Eng Hon, in the On Leong

building, and at numbers 601, 603, 606, 607, 608 H Street, in Chinatown.

The police know all about this gambling, but take no action unless

white men put in a beef. They explain you can’t make a pinch stick on

Chinese: the games they play are not understandable to whites, and it

is almost impossible to make an identification of an Oriental, or to

get one to testify, for or against.

When the Chinese hook a fat white sucker, the game moves every hour to

a different location.

Sixth Street, at H, is the dividing line between Hip Sing and On Leong

territory, with the Hip Sings below 6th, the less desirable part of

town. The division of businesses gives all restaurants to On Leongs

and the laundries to Hip Sings, therefore all chop suey parlors in

Chinatown are above 6th Street.

Kwon Seto is the local On Leong boss and one of the most powerful men

in Washington. George Moy, secretary of the On Leongs, is the “mayor”

of Chinatown. A man named Yee is the real boss. Moy owns the Joy Inn,

where an investigator for a crime committee was steered by a District

official, then “mickeyed.”

9. THE OVERFLOW

Of every 100 residents of the metropolitan district, 45 live in the

suburbs--over the line in Maryland and across the Potomac in Virginia.

The take from these sections, in legitimate taxes and the proceeds of

vice and crime, is so attractive that the city fathers of Washington

have their greedy eyes on annexing this adjoining land onto the

voteless District.

Almost everywhere else, unincorporated territory across city lines is

a world apart. These county sections usually look different, smell

different and are different from the city. They are bad or good,

where people go to get away from the law, or go to get away from the

lawlessness of the big city.

The border of D.C. is arbitrary. As the population of the capital grew,

it spread. For all practical purposes, nearby Maryland and Virginia are

as much a part of the city as any part of the city itself. Most of the

residents of the suburbs work in the capital.

The entire area is really one municipality, though those living in

Virginia and Maryland can vote.

There are no caste or social lines between the District and the

suburbs. Society people may live in Washington, Virginia or Maryland.

Residences of high government officials are spread over the three. The

big wheels of the underworld are likewise scattered. The same overlords

control the rackets in the entire metropolitan district.

The state lines provide gangsters with yet another safeguard.

Extradition warrants are required to move them from one area to

another. For some specific crimes, the authorities are hampered by the

fact that no extradition is authorized. Smart lawyers take advantage of

these false barriers. For instance, each day’s collection of lottery

money in the District is moved into Maryland. Conversely, much of

Maryland’s bookmaking take is deposited in District banks. That is all

done on legal advice.

Technically, police officers in hot pursuit may cross state lines

to make arrests, even for traffic violations. But few crimes are

committed in the presence of a cop, and almost never any involving the

upper echelons of crime. The satellite regions are remarkably free

of Negroes, who prefer the city which they have all but taken over.

That’s why the suburbs grew in size to such extent that Silver Spring,

Maryland, adjacent to the District, of which outsiders seldom hear or

read, is now the second largest city in the state.

The suburbs run the scale from swank sections where only those of

great wealth reside to dingy squatters’ rows where moonshining, murder

and mayhem are daily dillies. Most of the ritzier suburbs are on the

Virginia side. Chain Bridge Way, Warrenton and Middleburg are peopled

by the horsey set, where there are great estates lived in by possessors

of ancient, honorable family names, as well as by the newly-made

aristocrats of the New Deal, union officers, left-wing lawyers,

five-percenters and State Department aides. Chevy Chase, partly in

the District, but mostly in Maryland, is tony, too. So is Bethesda,

Maryland.

But the great mass of suburbanites in both states are middle-class

government employes who commute to and from work, play bridge, go to

the movies and propagate.

As will be seen here, you can find almost anything in the way of crime

or vice in Washington, but what you miss can usually be met in some

of the Maryland suburbs when the heat isn’t on, especially in Prince

Georges County, which, for its size, probably has more slot-machines,

strip-teasers, resident hoodlums and general deviltry than any other

place in the world--subject to a “clean-up” in progress at this writing.

_A. Maryland_

This is the Free State, where anything goes.

Chicago has Cicero, Washington has Prince Georges County.

The same cause which gives Washington the unenviable lead as the Number

1 law-breaker among cities--public apathy--is what usually makes Prince

Georges County unique among county areas of the country. Washington

does not have the vote, the residents of Prince Georges do have it.

And they exercise it by usually voting Democratic and corrupt. Last

November they kicked over the traces for the first time since 1864.

But the Republican county commission won’t get far, even if it tries.

Without a dream of winning, the GOP nominated well-meaning nonentities

without a policy, organization or knowledge of the local problems.

Their victory was as surprising to themselves as to these reporters.

The facts for this chapter were gathered shortly before the November

election. The new county government was sworn in on December 5.

We returned to Prince Georges in early February for a recheck and

found little changed. The new sheriff, Carlton Beall, made ten raids

since New Year’s Eve. But the strip-joints still ran, though not so

blatantly. Instead of featuring the nudies in their ads, they gave them

second billing and headlined the male M.C. instead. But the babes were

just as bare.

The gambling was under wraps, too, but it still flourished. The big

gamblers took the precaution of moving their books and their bank

accounts back to the District, whence they had fled a decade ago.

The crime syndicate’s technique was to keep moving across county lines

from Anne Arundel to Howard to Prince Georges in the area near Laurel,

where the three join.

The militant Republicans fired the Chief of Police and appealed

to Senator Kefauver for aid. At this writing, the Senate Crime

Investigating Committee tossed the hot potato right back into Maryland.

One of Kefauver’s four colleagues on the Committee is Senator Herbert

O’Conor, Maryland Democrat, elected with the aid of the corrupt

Democratic machine so soundly trounced last November.

The second act of the new Republican commission was to hire another

Democrat to succeed the ousted Democratic Police Chief.

The Prince Georges border is a 15-minute drive from the heart of

Washington. Depending on the road you take out of town, you soon reach

Bladensburg or Colmar Manor. The latter is Rum Row, with several blocks

of dirty drinking-joints where wind-broken broads solicit drinks, roll

drunks and whore, often as a pastime when no dough is available.

If you go to Colmar Manor to spend money, Silver Spring in adjoining

Montgomery County is the place where you can get money. This is no

gag. The entire main street of Silver Spring and nearby Mount Rainier

in Prince Georges is lined on both sides from the District border

for more than a quarter of a mile with personal loan agencies. This

is because D. C. law makes it almost impossible for small loan firms,

which lend you money on your own signature or that of co-signers,

to operate. It so limits the interest rate as to make the business

unprofitable, fixing it at one percent a month. On the other hand, both

Maryland and Virginia are much more liberal with the loan companies.

The former allows three percent monthly and the latter two-and-a-half.

The Washington wage-earner, working for the government or privately

employed, does his borrowing across the borderline. If he should

default, the loans are collectable in the District, though its courts

are increasingly looking into the conditions under which the loan was

originally granted and refusing to issue judgments where they believe

the interest is usurious.

Most Washingtonians know Prince Georges County as a place to go to have

fun. This is not because Maryland’s laws, or even their enforcement,

are more liberal than the District’s. With few exceptions, they are not.

The legal liquor closing on weekdays is 2 A.M. in both. No hard liquor

can be sold at all on Sundays. They cheat in Prince Georges.

Prince Georges County is lined with dumps that specialize in

strip-teasers. There are also many fag-joints. Peeling isn’t against

the law in Washington, either. It goes on in the 9th Street burlesque

houses when they operate, and at Kavakos’, near the navy yard. But

Washingtonians prefer not to patronize the nuders near home. Their

feeling of delicacy is overcome when they drive five miles.

Washington’s huge homosexual colony overflows up to the Baltimore

Highway and into a place called the Conga. Mike Young’s occasionally

specializes in fairy shows, too.

Prince Georges is a long strip predominantly devoted to gaiety,

night life, gambling and whoring. At this writing, one of its most

famous places is in a barnlike structure called the Crossroads. It

has strippers and corny shows. Its huge bar is loaded for a pick-up.

In case you do, but are not prepared, “sanitary rubber goods” are

dispensed in slot-machines in the men’s rooms. The night we were there,

we saw three fancy one-armed bandits whirring and swallowing. These

were manufactured by Bell, which means their take goes direct to Frank

Costello, instead of reaching him indirectly through other subsidiary

companies, which sell machines to local syndicates. The Crossroads is a

hangout for hoodlums. We recognized some well-known police characters

there.

One of its owners is local gambling overlord Snags Lewis, about whom

more later. Last year there was a shooting in the room, but Prince

Georges County Patrolman Burgess made no report because his father had

a piece of the place. Burgess is now off the force.

The Dixie Pig is a few yards down the road from the Crossroads. This

barbecue bazaar is a hangout for prostitutes and gamblers. It is owned

by Earl Sheriff, who, strangely enough, was the sheriff of Prince

Georges before he went to Lewisburg penitentiary on an income tax

charge, after pleading nolo contendere to protect the top shots.

Sheriff, now out on parole, is still electioneering, fixing and

collecting campaign funds for the local Democratic machine. He worked

hard for defeated Senator Tydings.

While Sheriff was having his troubles, Ralph Brown, late chief of

the Prince Georges County Police, settled with the government out of

court. The Democratic leaders of Prince Georges who were unaware of the

vice there, or blind, are Congressmen Lansdale G. Sasscer, T. Howard

Duckett, and T. Hampton Magruder. The latter two are attorneys.

Prince Georges County has a police force of 41 men, plus its village

and town cops. But the county never asks for State Troopers. That is

not surprising, because while we were gathering information for this

book the Prince Georges grand jury said there was no gambling in the

county. We saw a lot of it with our own eyes. Maybe state cops could

stumble on some of it. Maybe.

Clean-up or no, there usually are more floating crap-games, illegal

bookies and after-hour spots in Prince Georges than there are in Reno,

where all such things are legal. The Republicans may temporarily drive

them under cover--or back to the District--but those boys never stop.

The local Democratic machine was so powerful that, in 1947, the United

States Department of Justice had to intervene directly with Maryland’s

then Governor Lane to close down some joints. State troopers quickly

shut all gambling houses--save one run by Mike Meyers, who was too

cantankerous even for them. They finally drove him out by stationing

police-cars around his joint every night, and taking the names of

customers. After the heat was off, however, the county reopened wide.

The Prince Georges underworld was ruled until his death last year by

Jimmy La Fontaine, who is known in gangland circles to have been a

20-percent partner with Frank Costello, the Mafia boss in New York, who

handled the other 80 percent of the Prince Georges take. La Fontaine

was a big financial backer of the local Democratic machine, though his

own plush gambling casino across the street from the District line

is now closed, pending probate of his multi-million-dollar estate by

Attorney Charlie Ford, who gets the cream of all gambling, whoring and

other organized criminal cases in the District of Columbia, Maryland

and Virginia.

Now the underworld is run by lieutenants of those who operate as vice

overlords in Washington. Among them are Monk Seal, the bookmaker, who

also has a piece of the Crossroads, and the aforementioned Mike Meyers,

who handles the dice end. Snags Lewis is the local representative of

the nationwide horse wire service, owned by the heirs of the late Al

Capone, and is Frank Costello’s direct representative.

Policy-slip collections in the District are paid off to Pete Gianaris

at night at the close of business. Gianaris is an interesting character

who ran a $50,000 party in the ballroom of the Statler Hotel to

celebrate the christening of his young son. This was cheap, considering

that he imported such expensive Broadway stars as Buddy Lester to

entertain the cream of local society. He is a beloved, big-hearted

citizen.

The Costello interests were operating hundreds of slot-machines in

Prince Georges. Some years ago, they were legalized by local option,

but they remained contrary to state law, which was not enforced. Some

locals, pushed out of the picture by Costello’s strongarm boys, started

a tax-payers’ suit in the state courts and the Prince Georges local

option law was thrown out. But some of the officials apparently haven’t

heard of the decision yet.

That is not so surprising, since the sheriff, who seldom finds

time to enforce the state laws, is busy applying the lash and

cat-o’-nine-tails. Archaic Maryland law provides for whipping some

classes of prisoners, the sheriff acting in person.

Among other joints in the county is one called the Hilltop, in

Hillside. It was formerly a barbecue pit, now is a snake pit--a noisy

madhouse catering to school and college kids who want to see what the

well-undressed peeler isn’t wearing. The Quonset Inn, also in Prince

Georges, is run by the Chinese syndicate of the District, which has

established perfect harmony with the white bosses. You can see naked

women at the Senate Inn, Waldrop’s, and occasionally at La Conga.

Meanwhile, the temporary exodus of Prince Georges gamblers has

stepped up wagering activities in other nearby Maryland counties.

Montgomery, mainly residential, with swank Chevy Chase and hard-working

middle-class Silver Spring, woke up to find its Elks’ Club the victim

of a police raid.

Then Sam Morgan, also of Silver Spring, described as one of the most

important gamblers in the area, was locked up by State Troopers

when they swooped down on “lay-off” establishments near Laurel Park

and Ellicott City. These were nerve-centers for the transmission of

contraband money in and out of the District. Morgan drew a suspended

sentence. No one ever goes to jail.

The Baltimore Highway houses many tourist cabins, where pleasure-bound

Washingtonians can drive and hire a room without baggage for $3, if not

using it all night. A big turnover is the gravy for these guesthouses.

A few cabin resorts are reserved for Negroes only.

The Negro population of this part of Maryland is comparatively small,

most of its members doing menial or service labor for the white folk.

However, the well-heeled boys of Washington’s colored set like to drive

up the road a bit with their dusky dames in their Cadillacs.

The nearest amusement park to the city of Washington is Glen Echo,

about seven miles away, in Maryland. This is the typical smalltown

Coney Island, with swimming-pools, crazy rides, dancehalls, hot dogs

and the inevitable pick-ups. Many professionals work the park in the

summer, but they are outnumbered by the forlorn femmes from Washington

who come there in pairs or even larger parties, looking and hoping.

_B. Virginia_

The Virginia suburbs present a more respectable exterior, though under

the surface there’s plenty going on. The policy of the Old Dominion is

policy.

Virginia’s laws do not permit the sale of hard liquor for on-premises

consumption. Only beer and wine may be drunk that way. Hard stuff

must be bought at liquor stores and taken out. This isn’t conducive to

anything like gay night life. Virginians go into the District or up to

Maryland if they want hi-jinks. Otherwise, most of their fun-making

takes place at house parties. There are a few dives. But the after-hour

“bottle-clubs” which plague Washington are to be found in Virginia too.

One of these is the Commonwealth at South Pitt and Wolfe, in Alexandria.

The average resident of Virginia’s suburbs is financially a step or two

above his Maryland neighbors. There are more fine homes and estates on

this side of the river. The Negro problem is not so incendiary, because

this is Virginia, where Jim Crow is king by statute, and colored people

live in restricted areas and behave, or else. This is one of the

reasons why the Negroes floated into the District, where they changed

places with the whites, who overflowed back into Virginia. Remarkable

was Prince Georges 64-percent population increase in the decade; but

Arlington County, Virginia, had 125 percent.

The absence of night life in the nearby Virginia suburbs has been

noted. This minimizes prostitution. Gambling is an important industry,

as it is all over the nation.

Virginia authorities are disturbed by an influx of bookmakers and

policy-sellers, white and black, from the District. Recently a Negro

woman was arrested in Arlington with $3,000 in a paper bag, which was

picked up that day in pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters--for numbers

bets.

Sam Lano, who used to operate the Syndicate slot-machines in Prince

Georges, is president of the Arlington Music Corporation, which flooded

the county with pinball machines, many being used as gambling devices

by local merchants. Lano came here from New York two years ago. Over

a year ago he was convicted in Marlborough Circuit Court for having

threatened a Prince Georges tavern-owner with prosecution on a bad

check if he didn’t keep Lano’s machines in his place. He was sentenced

to a year and his conviction was upheld by the Maryland Court of

Appeals. So far, however, Lano hasn’t served one day in the cooler, and

no effort was made to detain him when he transferred his operations

to Virginia. The police of Bangor, Me., are looking for him for the

removal and concealment of mortgaged property.

Considerable moonshine liquor is available in the Virginia suburbs. It

comes from stills operated in the mountains in the western part of the

state, and from Georgia.

On the whole, you might compare this area to the best of Westchester,

or Chicago’s North Shore outskirts, or Beverly Hills. That doesn’t mean

there isn’t plenty of dirt. It does mean it has to be something special

before it hits print.

Meanwhile, considerable friction is developing as well-heeled

northerners flock in; a repetition of the carpetbag days.

10. UNCLE SAM: LANDLORD

This is Washington’s largest segment--the federal domain. More than

40 percent of the property in the District is owned by Uncle Sam.

(Queen Wilhelmina of The Netherlands is said to be the largest private

owner of real estate in the District. She owned the huge Westchester

apartments, but sold the property recently to Hilton.)

Though not contiguous, it has an entity of its own. It is immune from

local law. That is important, because some federal property oozes

across District borders, such as the Pentagon and the National Airport,

both on the Virginia side.

To complicate the confused problem of law enforcement, this federal

potpourri has its own local police--not one force, but several. The

Capitol Police have jurisdiction on the Capitol grounds and several

blocks on either side, as far as the Washington Union station. The

Terminal Police police that. The White House Police are the cops for

the Executive Mansion and surrounding areas. They are under supervision

of the Secret Service, a branch of the Treasury. The Capitol cops are

under control of Congress itself. The terminal, owned by the railroads

and the government, picks its own bulls.

The Park Police are part of the National Park Police, a division of the

Department of the Interior. They are the law in the parks and squares,

on the boulevards, and on the road in Virginia leading to the Pentagon

and the Airport.

All other government buildings are policed by the Public Buildings

Police, a Treasury unit. The National Airport, in Virginia, has exempt

status. Its own cops not only patrol the grounds, but the main road.

The Pentagon, Arlington Cemetery and other military establishments in

the vicinity are under jurisdiction of the Armed Services Police.

Hundreds of thousands are employed in this federal domain. Many more

use its facilities or live in its lee. This makes the task of policing

almost too complex to be figured out by any court.

Elsewhere, when there is a conflict of authority over the situs of a

crime, both jurisdictions fight for the right to arrest and try the

accused. In the District it works the other way around. If it’s a

borderline case, both sides duck.

For instance, if you’re pinched for anything on or along the road

leading to the National Airport there is a conflict between the

National Park Police, the Airport Police, the local Virginia Police,

municipal and county police, and possibly, the MP’s. No one wants any

part of it. So there is merry law-breaking in this federal domain.

At this writing, 27,000 people are employed in the Pentagon. It is

a city within a city. Like all cities, it has its peccadillos. Many

elevator operators are runners for bookies. Many colored messengers,

male and female, sell policy slips. Reefers can be had. The cops--all

kinds--don’t know what to do about it. The military police don’t like

to arrest civilians, even those employed by the Army. The Virginia

police say they have no authority because it’s federal property.

The same apathy that marks everything in Washington pervades the

Pentagon and other federal buildings. A high Army officer, highly

placed because his brother is close to the President, is a homosexual.

He had gathered 95 other officers of similar inclinations to form what

was known as the “Fairy Brigade.” Though scandalously abnormal acts

have been committed within the Pentagon walls, no consequences ensued.

No one knew how to go about it. Instead, the suspected fairies were

transferred to distant posts--separately, of course--in the hope that

when they got into trouble in their new stations their commanding

officers would pick up the buck.

More recently a Signal Corps captain in the Pentagon was apprehended

lurking in the stair wells, where he exposed himself to young women.

The Army took the easiest way--transferred him to Fort Monmouth, where

he was eventually chased out of the service.

The same situation applies in all government buildings in the District

and in the suburbs. No one wants to do anything about anything. There

is scarcely a government installation anywhere in Washington where

you can’t place a bet or buy a numbers slip. When elevator jockeys

aren’t selling them, clerks and typists, white and dark, are. Dates and

assignations are made on U. S. property by government girls looking for

fun or extra earnings, and by come-getters who barge in and solicit men

for dates after work--even sometimes for affairs right on overstuffed

leather couches which we own, you too.

Any punitive action in these cases is not by police officers. When

things get out of hand, department heads fire the culprits.

While the Kefauver Committee was investigating bookmaking, two elevator

operators in the Senate Office Building, in which the hearings were

conducted, were taking bets on horses with full knowledge of most

Senators, many of whom were placing wagers.

That guy you see at the corner of 1st and B, outside the House Office

Building, talking to a cop, is a bookmaker’s runner. That’s his

station. That’s where typists, messengers and other help in the House

of Representatives lay it on the line.

Many have fallen into debt because of the convenience with which

they can place bets all day. Hundreds are in the clutches of the

loan-sharks in Maryland and the shylocks, who work their trade right

in the government office buildings, exacting 100 percent interest for

a one-month loan. Many are in arrears on their income taxes for this

reason; those who owe more than what is withheld. This has posed a

serious problem for the collecting authorities, who are balked by a

quirk in the law which forbids them to garnishee tax delinquents among

federal employes.

The indifference to rules that apply in private employment results in a

sort of Alice in Wonderland atmosphere throughout the unwieldy federal

domain.

Humorist George Dixon’s story about the two crews hard at work in the

Pentagon sums it up:

One crew puts up partitions. The other crew takes them down. The paths

of the two crews seldom cross, though there have been embarrassing

occasions when they arrived at the same office simultaneously on

conflicting missions. But that was the fault of “inefficiency” higher

up, not of the putters-up and the takers-down.

Retired brass which had come roaring back to the Pentagon found itself

assigned to broom-closets because many mere swivel-chair warmers had

commandeered enough office space for a bowling alley.

That’s why the Pentagon has two crews, working independently, day and

night. One makes offices bigger for new brass, the other makes them

smaller for the old.

The confusion is proving hard on fixed Pentagon employes. They suffer

severely from wet paint.

PART TWO

THE PEOPLE (_Confidential!_)

11. THERE’S NOTHING LIKE A DAME

Women are the same everywhere, except in Washington, where they not

only are different, but there are more of them.

Females generally fall into two categories, good and bad--the good

being so because they can’t get the necessary masculine cooperation to

be bad.

We have seen them all, all over the world, but nowhere else are they

like they are in Washington. This town has 100,000 more nubile women

than men. Forty-five percent of all its females earn their own livings.

Most of them are government employes, and thus have better security

than is provided by a husband. Many support husbands, or assist toward

the expenses of the mutual establishment. Being self-supporting, they

are, on the average, better dressed than you’ll find them anywhere

else. That is on the “average.” There is little “high-fashion” except

in diplomatic and social circles, because government salaries are

average, not high.

Most Washington men are only fair wage earners, too, and that limits

the loot. It is not so easy to promote a mink coat in Washington as it

is in New York, though there are more minks per corpus in Washington

than are won, wangled or plain bought in Philadelphia, Chicago or

Boston.

Our capital is a femmocracy, a community in which the women not only

outdo the men in numbers, but in importance. Males hold more exalted

positions, but such work as is accomplished could not go on without

the efficient, well-trained and permanent secretarial corps, almost all

female.

Everything in Washington is slanted toward dames. The accent in the

stores is on things women do or buy for themselves, instead of on

home-furnishing and children’s clothes, which are the bedrocks of

department store trade in other cities.

Elsewhere, femmes are divided into specific classes. They are wives,

whores, glamor girls, home girls and office workers. Here none matches

her opposite number as you know her. The females in the capital defy

classification by other standards, and lap over into categories not

laid out by economic divisions or natural vicissitudes of physical

appeal. Prim, bespectacled bachelor-girl secretaries enlist as $10

call girls after hours or on Saturdays and Sundays--not for the money,

but for adventure, substitution for romance. A friend of ours had to

entertain visitors. He phoned for three call girls. When they arrived

he saw to his horror one was his secretary.

Washington’s biggest she-group is made up of G-girls, government girls,

who will be taken apart in later paragraphs. Running a close second

are O-girls, those who work for organizations, such as unions, charity

groups, scientific societies, trade and mercantile bodies, and those

who do the paper work for lobbies which maintain permanent offices here.

Washington proves that the emancipation of women is baloney. See what

happens here. They have jobs and make as much as most men. They have

the freedom to live alone and like it, but they don’t. They have

the opportunity to do vital work, to carve out careers in the civil

service, as some do. But all, including most of the married ones, are

desperately unhappy. They are caught in the unreality of this huge

farce. It can’t be a home, it can’t be a place to live in and love,

it’s just a rat race running the same course every day.

Tens of thousands of young and ambitious girls flock into Washington

from every state, territory and dependency, and from foreign nations.

There are even two from Samoa, pretty Laida and Marion Kreuz, whose

brother, Peter Coleman, is a policeman in the House Office Bldg., and a

night law student. The mass migration is similar in number, but not in

purpose, to that which occurs in New York and Hollywood and to a lesser

degree in Chicago and San Francisco.

The girls that come from the farms, the inland cities and the tributary

towns to the other great metropolises come with stardust in their

eyes. Having discovered that what they have is too good for the local

cow-manicurists, soda jerks and grease station monkeys, they assume it

can be used to start them on the road to fame and fortune in the big

city. Most fail to find the golden pot at the end of the rainbow or

even get anywhere near it in New York and Hollywood. The disappointed

fall by the wayside or return home and marry the mailman.

The psychological urge which uproots girls from their native

environments to come to Washington is the same, but its manifestations

are different. The youngster who pulls strings to get a government job

may be, and quite often is, prettier than her neighbor who hitch-hiked

to Broadway. But apparently she hasn’t the same confidence in her

charms as her brasher sister, so she goes to Washington instead.

The young ones who come to the capital to work for Uncle Sam are

on the whole better educated than kids who want to make careers in

show business. Most of them must have graduated from high school and

business school to get a government job. There are some among the

chorines who stuck a toe in a college, but all they need for success

is to know the difference between the right and left leg, and remember

when not to cross them.

Not all girls who come to Washington come to work for the

government. Not all are high school graduates. Washington draws more

street-walkers, who are strictly out for business, than any other town.

They set out from the nearby hills of West Virginia, Maryland and the

Carolinas, and they are purposeful as to their objectives. Many aren’t

bad-looking. So the question again arises, why didn’t they go to New

York or Hollywood and try for bigger stakes where flexible morals pay

off better and the field for a killing is bigger?

The answer again is--no confidence. They don’t feel important enough to

make good in the big league. They are afraid of the megapolis on the

Hudson. Washington has small-town ways and the whores are small-town

girls. Street-walking requires no influential connections, deals,

financial backlogs, tests, skills. They step off a bus and can be in

business before they pass a crossing.

The general belief is that when girls leave home they dream of going on

the stage. Washington proves that many leave home just to get away from

Home.

They have one commodity they can sell. And they don’t have to carry

samples in a briefcase. And they must go on the road for customers--too

many complications where they are well known, have families, church

connections, lovers or husbands.

12. G-GIRLS

_A. Government Girls_

About 200,000 women work five days a week for Uncle Sam. They come

from every corner of the nation. And no matter how long they remain

here, few of them ever really live here. They sleep in various kinds of

barracks, rooming-houses, rundown hotels, board with retired married

ones, and in all constitute a class so large and so displaced that the

city cannot absorb them as it does working-women in other communities.

They are not all physically repellant, nor do they behave generally

like spinsters are supposed to. The deadly monotony of their routine

tasks and their lonesome lives wears out their charm before it destroys

their looks. They are a hard, efficient lot, doing men’s work, thinking

like men and sometimes driven to take the place of men--in the

proscribed zones of desperate flings at love and sex. Lesbianism is

scandalously rampant, frequently an acquired dislocation rather than a

pathological aberration.

The existence of the average G-girl revolves between routine grind and

physical frustration. She leaves her job at five. If she goes home, it

is to her tiny room or apartment to heat her dinner out of tin cans and

ponder whether to wash her panties or write letters home, or get drunk.

It isn’t all wrapped up in the fact of the female overflow. Left-over

women can learn to do with half their share of men. But strangely,

where every guy ostensibly could take his pick and date alternately,

it doesn’t work that way. The Washington male clerks and middle-class

bureau employes largely avoid their opposite numbers. They, too, are

hall-room habitués, and they fraternize by some unwritten rule with

other men, usually normal men. Propinquity does not work its magic

here as the dominant factor in the mingling of the sexes.

Thousands of visitors and thousands of servicemen from nearby

installations, most of them dame-hungry, don’t have to hunt; they are

hunted. Not only that, but often they are paid, and seldom are they

allowed to pick up checks without a struggle.

One of the sights of Washington is the outpouring of the janes at five

o’clock. Many of them dash for cocktail bars, where they compete with

the harlots, who violently resent them and call them “scabs.”

A favorite after-work guzzle-and-grab spot is the Cafe of All Nations,

in the Mayfair House, at 13th and F. Wise men in the mood are there

awaiting the stampede--not only for pleasure, but for the gigolo’s

mite. Men and women are paid the same for equal work. Therefore the

income is high for females and low for males as such things are usually

adjusted. We gave the place a play at the right time and sat at a table

with a third man who had come with us. A waitress shuffled up to us,

and in voice and manner characteristic of an old-timer doing a familiar

task, said, “The young ladies at the next table would like to buy you a

drink.” We nodded, the potables were delivered, our hosts raised their

glasses, and soon they joined us. We had another round, and when we

insisted on taking the tab, not only for our drinks but theirs, too,

they left us; they knew we weren’t “regular.”

A T-man in the course of a check turned up one instance where 12

G-girls had banded together and were keeping one man, in an apartment

on Q Street.

Of course, among hundreds of thousands there are thousands not so

situated. Many are beautiful, their intelligence is beyond the average,

and even humdrum government work cannot make eunuchs of all men.

Desirable girls quickly find that they get preferential receptions and

promotions even in civil service examinations. There is a middle-aged

woman with a superior position in the General Accounting Office, who

has risen because she functions as the procurement officer for members

of Congress and other dignitaries. The G-gals hear about her specialty,

get in touch with her, and if they have appeal they find fun and get

ahead. Outstanding ones are sometimes invited to entertain legation

attachés or visiting celebrities.

Second-class lobbyists, who cannot finance dazzlers in the top

echelons, have lists of typists and file-clerks and secretaries who

are happy to be taken out, or taken in, and are not prissy over how an

evening winds up.

Beyond these escapes from a circumscribed daily existence, there is

nothing else. A couple of gals will walk the Mall on Sunday, hoping to

get picked up; or they join a church, or go to one of the countless

dances held during the winter season by state societies, where they

find everyone else as desolate as they are; or they scrimp and save all

week for a thrilling breakfast-lunch on Sunday at the Statler, where

they find to their dismay everyone else in the room is a government

girl, too, and stranded for company.

Many secretaries of Senators, Congressmen and executives are their

office wives. All Congressmen’s offices contain sofas paid for by the

Treasury.

These females, when they arrive, usually have accents, idiosyncrasies

and dress foibles peculiar to their regions of origin. They quickly

fall into the common mold. This is not surprising to your authors, who

for years have been writing about Broadway showgirls. Within six months

after one leaves the farm to join the chorus, she has acquired a new

veneer which covers all she brought with her. You can’t, in any one

chorus-line, classify the girls, except by their current hair shades.

They are as uniform as if they wore uniforms.

The government is like a chorus; instead of 20 girls there are 200,000,

and they all talk the same--mainly about favoritism shown to another

by the immediate superior whom they accuse of sleeping with her. They

dress the same--usually in suits. They eat the same--salads and dainty

desserts. They live the same--in spick and span tiny rooms, with

intimate wash hung on the line in the bathroom, which does triple duty

as a kitchenette. They drink the same--martinis.

Their sex-lives are remarkably alike, too. Some are afraid they will.

Others are afraid they won’t. And it all boils down to the same

sustained jitters, but in different wrappers.

The G-girl is in an unnatural vacuum. She has no time-limits; her

sentence is for life, usually. She isn’t home and she isn’t away. Her

marriage outlook is bleak. No family ties console her. She is more

often wooed by women than by men.

She makes a mockery of the theory that a woman’s first instinct is for

security.

_B. Girls with Glamor_

Let it not be surmised that government-girls are all the girls. There

are wives and fiancées, college co-eds, a sprinkling of debutantes and

other daughters of the rare society clans, smart saleswomen, even a few

presentable sob-sisters.

But the true glamorette, as she is known on Broadway and Fifth Avenue,

Vine Street and Sunset Boulevard, and even in such remote oases of joy

as Galveston, Texas, is virtually non-existent.

Chorines are but a memory of leg and lavender for the old inhabitants.

Except for a rare transitory line in a night club, there is no such

thing. Occasionally an imported single or sister-act plays the

vaudeville house. Some of the painted peelers who work in the suburban

dives sleep in Washington hotels. A movie celeb popping in for

publicity, to attend a birthday ball or be photographed smiling down on

Truman from the top of a piano, is an event. If there are any gorgeous,

dangerous, slinky spies, we didn’t find them. Judy Coplon, by the men

who specialize in the field, was called exceptionally lush for that

trade. So we stopped looking.

The indigenous flora shape up about as they do in Brooklyn, except that

they are better dressed and have less sooty complexions. They do not

come downtown in slacks. Sloppy galoshes are de trop. Most girls at 16

appear and behave grown up.

But few can enter the accepted avenues where beauty may command a

respectable commercial return. In any ranking hierarchy of glamor the

model comes first, having long since passed the chorus girl, because of

the more stable rewards and higher standards brought about by the great

advertising demands. Washington has little need for animated manikins.

Some of the choicer shops employ them to demonstrate clothes. There is

no extensive advertising field.

The most lucrative and the steadiest calls for models come from sources

not seeking those who might be employed in industrial cities for

modeling. They hook on as hostesses, guides, ushers, and to decorate

the booths and exhibits at conventions and trade shows, which are

numerous. Those who are engaged sporadically earn a minimum of five

dollars an hour, plus indeterminate tips. Their morals vary with the

personal equation. The models who are willing to pose in the nude

at stag-parties get fifty dollars an evening. These register with

surreptitious characters of the middle-world between flesh-market

procurers and shady promoters.

Among the better-known models’ agencies are Models Bureau, in the

Chastleton Hotel; Ralston, 711 14th Street, NW, and Phyllis Bell, 306

13th Street NW.

The girl who sets out to be a model in Washington is usually one of

those rare creatures--the native. An out-of-towner with such ambitions

would naturally head to New York.

(_Note_: Most model agencies are schools instead of employment

agencies. They seek to sign job-seekers to contract to learn how to

walk, instead of sending them out to work. Some, billing themselves as

agencies, provide girls--but not for modeling.)

Another reason for the shortage of really high class cheesecake is that

there is almost always a displacement movement in effect.

The trains and planes to Hollywood are loaded with lookers, sent there

with entree obtained for them by such influential VIP’s as cabinet

officers, four-star generals, bureau heads, etc. When a prominent daddy

gets fed up with his dame, he can’t just brush her off; she might make

trouble, and that might get into print.

So the procedure is to phone Hollywood, where a liaison contact is

instructed to obtain a job at a studio for the chick. The big film

companies employ scores of so-called “contract” gals at $150 a week or

so, who do nothing but pose for publicity stills, date chosen visitors,

like out-of-town exhibitors, and otherwise make themselves useful and

amiable around the lots. One in a thousand rises and may become a star.

The movie industry is always skating on such thin ice, what with

anti-trust laws, etc., that a request from Washington is a command. So

it’s a happy out all around. Mr. Big gets rid of his discarded girl,

she goes willingly because no girl can turn down a film contract, and

Hollywood stores up a favor for the next time it needs one.

Many girls with talent originated here but they scrammed as soon as

they were old enough to know better. Among them were Helen Hayes, Kate

Smith and Mary Eaton, all members of the St. Patrick’s Players.

Washington has no clubs or theatres with lines of girls. The best a

babe with light feet can do is get in as a teacher at a dance studio,

quite a business in Washington. The local classified phone directory

has four pages of listings of dance instructors. That’s because dancing

schools are a swell way for lonesome people to meet each other, and

that’s what Washington has plenty of. The local Arthur Murray licensee,

across the street from the Mayflower Hotel, is the largest Arthur

Murray studio in the world. At least 2,000 girls find full or part-time

employment working as instructors in the dozens of studios. Many of

these girls are little more than taxi-dancers.

Pretty, personable ones can make up to $100 a week with tips. Those who

take dates after hours do even better.

The real Washington glamor girl is the kept woman. You’d be surprised

how many there are. All the bigger hotels and the glossier apartment

houses around Dupont Circle and out Connecticut Avenue are loaded with

them. They are the ones you most often see in mink coats, in expensive

beauty parlors and fine shops. They are maintained mainly by important

government officials, Senators, sports and millionaires from all

over the country who make their headquarters in Washington. Many an

executive who commutes to the capital keeps a cutie there full time.

All Washington giggled when it heard the story of the tall, stately

blonde whose bills were paid by a Cuban sugar millionaire, and who fell

in love with an assistant manager of the Shoreham Hotel, where she was

living in high style. Her Latin lover found her in flagrante delicto

with the hotel employe. The men squared off for a fist fight, but

first locked the babe in a clothes closet. They blacked each other’s

eyes--but she fractured her ankle trying to kick the door down.

To add to the embarrassment of the unhappy Cuban, his wife had been

spying on him and his love through high-powered binoculars from Rock

Creek Park, across the street. She sued him for divorce in New York.

A genuine glamor-gal does pop up now and then. One was Evelyn Knight,

the radio and record star, who warbled for $75 a week in Washington

hotels until a couple of years ago, then clicked in Manhattan and is

now dragging down thousands.

Bette Woodruff, another home-grown dish, seems to be on the upgrade. A

dress model, Bette had a yen to sing. One day, on a dare, she phoned

maestro Dick Williams to tell him she was available. He didn’t know

her from Eve, took her name to shut her up. Next day his vocalist got

sick. He phoned Bette in a hurry. That was less than a year ago. Now

she’s thrushing regularly, and well.

But Jan Du Mond, a five-foot-three night club canary, pianist and

composer, drives a cab by day.

“My little coupe broke down,” she told a reporter. “I couldn’t afford

a new car. Becoming a taxi-driver provided me with transportation at

night to get to my engagement--the company lets me take the car home.”

Besides, she meets the most interesting people!

Sometimes a government gal switches to a glamor gal. One was Sandra

Stahl, “Miss Washington,” in last fall’s Atlantic City beauty contest.

Sandra was a secretary for Air Force Intelligence, but she has a face,

a figure, a noodle and a voice. She was the dark horse when she sang

before 3,000 people in Rock Creek Park, but 14 judges, including the

Treasurer of the United States, sent her to Atlantic City.

Sandra comes from Long Beach, California. In our “New York,

Confidential,” we noted that many of Gotham’s orchids on display come

from Southern California. Maybe Sandra got on the wrong train.

13. COMPANY GIRLS

This is a specialty known only to Washington.

With the procuring situation as it is, the business of getting girls

for fun, friendship, or what have you in mind is so commercialized,

it’s incredible.

In our excursions into life in New York and Chicago, we found that

girls you pay for an evening can be divided into two classes:

party-girls and call-girls.

You summon the former, but they are not necessarily whores. You whistle

for the others only when there’s to be a party.

If this seems contradictory, it’s because the dividing line is so

tenuous, it usually isn’t there. But for our purposes, we shall group

them together and call both “C-girls,” which stands for company girls,

which is just what the womanless men who call them want them to be.

There are as many kinds of C-girls as there are kinds of women. They

range from the lowest, who will come to your room for $5 for a quickie,

to the most ultra, who expects $100, plus expenses, as a fee for her

company for an evening, and nothing guaranteed. If it happens, it must

be romanced or financed with honorarium.

The C-girls include the cheapest cocottes and some of the smartest,

prettiest New York models. The only thing they have in common is you

can phone them or someone who acts as an agent to make a deal, sight

unseen, for their presence. The more they get the less they give. The

true party-pretty undertakes only to appear for the evening, maybe

entertain an important customer or that Congressman who’s going to

investigate you or that general who places the orders. The call-dames

are cheaper and more reliable.

They are available from all hotel bell-boys. A friend who lives

in Washington said they weren’t necessary, for you can find a

street-walker on any avenue or a hustler at almost any bar. We asked

how about the transient, who doesn’t know that, so doesn’t know

where to look, or is afraid. The bell-captain, who can get anything,

including booze after hours, is the functionary out-of-towners over the

age of puberty call. Using his services also means no raid from the

hotel dick, who is an ally.

Lobbyists have lists of company-girls whose services they utilize as

required. They exchange names with each other, so most of them have

a master-list. In addition, there are agents, quite often apparently

respectable, middle-aged women, who run “secretarial bureaus” that

supply company-girls, often do contract businesses with large users,

whom they bill by the year.

The secretarial bureau is important in the blind date business in

Washington. Without much trouble, you can get the kind of girl you want

by calling almost any of them. The procedure is this: You phone for

a stenographer to be sent to your hotel room. She, however, is never

the “date.” After giving her a nominal amount of dictation, you remark

you are alone and friendless. She tells you one of her girl friends is

lonesome, too, and would consider a date. You wait in. She arrives.

A problem for those who must entertain men of class is the low quality

of the female commodity obtainable except from specializing agencies.

Government gals, many of whom are on call, are superior intellectually,

have better manners, though the professional predators run prettier.

With the short supply of charmers, those who maintain a superior

standard import them. Many big lobbyists and others who entertain

frequently have lists of New York models and showgirls who will come

down to Washington for fun, expense money, and maybe a mink.

There is a middle-aged woman in New York, who gives her name as Mrs.

Hansen, who makes regular monthly trips to such Eastern cities as

Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington, where she meets prominent

businessmen and offers to introduce them, at a fee of $10 each, to

any of a hundred Powers and Conover models whose photos she has in

a scrapbook and whose names she has on a typewritten sheet. She

guarantees to produce any girl thereon in Washington within 24 hours,

the girls to receive $100 and expenses for each day’s company.

But that is still run-of-the-mill. A babe named Teddie, with an

apartment in the building on the southwest corner of 16th Street, in

the 1600 block, handles knockouts, some married, for as much as $250 a

night.

Virginia Wall, who lives at 2500 Q Street (phone Hudson 8783) at this

writing, was chosen by those who know her as--“the most promising

younger company-girl in Washington.” She knows many other company girls.

Florence Bowers, a Southerner who lives at 1716 Newton St., phone

Hobart 5634, is a well-known company girl who will get others when

needed.

Elizabeth Morley, 2124 P St., phone Hobart 7421, will get company-girls.

Mary Lou Vane, 1205 Clifton St., NW, is a superior company girl.

Washington has its corned beef and cabbage, but don’t say we don’t

bring out its caviar.

14. FOR IMMORAL PURPOSES

It may startle you, though not necessarily stop you, to know what very

few know--it is a felony to transport a female one step up or down or

sideways in the District of Columbia with what grandma used to call

“dishonorable intentions.”

The Mann Act was invented by a Chicago blue-nosed representative named

Mann, after a hophead parlor-whore in melodramatic mood threw a note

out of the window of the late Harry Guzik’s cathouse on which she had

written “I am a white slave.” A milkman found it and turned it in at

the 22nd Street police station. A puritanical young prosecutor named

Clifford Roe, instead of laughing, made it so scandalous that the

term “white slave” became the common synonym for a prostitute. Mona

Marshall, the girl, was no slave at all, and when she came out of her

fog she proved it. Her case history showed that she had been seduced

in Wisconsin and brought to Chicago and placed in the house, quite

willingly, by a traveling man who thought it was wasteful to give it

away.

That came out in testimony and Congressman Mann fathered the law making

interstate transportation a penitentiary offense. Too many jokes about

crossing state lines have gone into the legend since then for anyone

not to understand the possible consequences of taking ’em in one state

and making ’em in another. But what has been very sparsely advertised

is a phrase in the Mann Act which states, “or on federal territory.”

Washington is federal territory.

So, if you meet one in the lobby and take her up in the elevator,

you’re a candidate for Atlanta.

This clause has been enforced with ultimate results. But for many

years, by unwritten policy, the Department of Justice stopped paying

attention to private, non-commercial infractions. But in no way has the

letter been ameliorated, and at any time this statute could be applied,

as the income tax evasion law was used to convict murderous gangsters,

if an Attorney General so instructs. It can be used without even the

technical provisions required to substantiate an attempted rape. The

language states, “for immoral purposes.” Such purposes need not be

successful. There is a mistaken notion that paying a female’s fare has

something to do with it. It has not, except as evidence of the intent,

which is the res gestae.

Let it not be assumed that this is a major deterrent for the Washington

wolf, before whom is spread a field alabaster with white lambs

generously interlarded with black sheep. Yet the fine art of subtle,

sophisticated flirtation, with skill, poise and aplomb, which has

illuminated the finest works of the masters through the ages in every

form of expression, seems extinct here.

Those in residence are boors; the transients are in a hurry; and the

distaff defense being negligible, no true swordsman deigns to fence

when he can hit a broad on the head with the handle.

Chief among Washington ladies’ men is handsome Warren Magnuson,

bachelor Senator from the state of Washington, where some of his I.W.W.

constituents would probably kick over the traces if they saw the

highfalutin’ fillies he runs with in Washington. The Senator is a man

among men, with the reputation of seldom wooing one girl at a time. He

often entertains several in one evening in his Shoreham apartment. We

know. They talk.

Not all wolves are single. We will not divulge names, or tell how

they cover up. Your imagination will picture how easy it is in a town

where so many are seeking favors, to get a stooge to come along as the

cutie’s alleged “date,” while the principal apparently came along only

for the ride.

Not all wolves, of course, are Senators or such with official immunity.

A simple way to get acquainted is to watch the papers for announcements

of State Society dances. Most lonesome G-gals belong to these

societies, composed of expatriates from their home states. Once every

week, throughout the year, one of these groups throws a party or a

dance. Admission is open to all. The Officers’ Service Club dances are

swell, too.

At this writing there are no public ballrooms of the type of Roseland

in New York or the Aragon in Chicago, not because they’re illegal,

but because they have been unprofitable. In the summer this lack is

filled by moonlight cruises of the Wilson Steamship Line on the river.

The boats leave from the 7th Street wharf nightly, at 8:30, and the

charge, including dancing, is one buck. Plenty of unattached women go.

The Potomac is mighty important to wolves. Practically the last of the

night-boats in the country plies from Washington to Old Point Comfort

and Norfolk, Virginia, summer and winter.

In years gone by, the fabled Albany and Fall River boats to Boston

could have told such stories.

Steamers of the Old Bay Line charge $4.67 each way, with staterooms at

from $1.50 to $5.50.

Last fall, a couple of evangelists chartered a Wilson liner for an

evening prayer service on the Potomac. Many pious people showed up, but

so did a swarm of scarlet sisters.

With all the game flying low you’d scarcely think it worth while for

entrepreneurs to promote stag-parties. Yet many hotel ballrooms are

engaged for shows at which talent, imported from Baltimore, is seen and

appropriately appreciated. These nude nymphs perform also at Waldrops

on Rhode Island Avenue, across the Maryland line.

Lots of smooth, mysterious guys in Washington, not pimps, make livings

introducing lonesome men to pretty babes. One, named Al Walters, ran

a series of dances called the “UN Victory Girls.” He was investigated

by the Washington vice-squad, which found nothing illegal, though it

did determine that his net income from promoting these get-togethers

was $325 a week. Walters is still around town, always surrounded by

eight or ten pretty bimbos, usually blonde, and he can get to the right

people because he is a great introducer.

Young love gets a break in Washington, too, because the burg with its

environs is small-town in construction, with front and back porches,

lawns and alleys, and plenty of dark streets and nearby country nooks

to drive to. Chief among the lovers’ lanes are Hains Point and the

Anacostia Flats, along the Anacostia River, where the Bonus Army of

’32 made camp. Not all who court Eros in these secluded spots are

juveniles. Many adults take their occasionals there, especially white

men afraid or ashamed to check into free-for-all assignation houses.

We got the following story from a cop who worked the case. A

blonde waitress at the Copacabana restaurant, a rendezvous for

Latin-Americans, went with a stranger in his car to the Anacostia

Flats. A woman’s screams tore the night air. Startled householders in

the vicinity, rape-conscious because of the front-page sex murder of

a girl the day before, phoned police. The squad car cops sped to a

surprised girl and an embarrassed gent. “I always scream at a time like

that,” she elucidated, with indignation.

WISDOM OF A WASHINGTON WOLF

When you see someone waiting for a bus or streetcar, it’s considered

polite to offer a lift in your car. Washington gallants are very

polite, especially if the hitch-hiker is cute.

* * *

We noticed Washington wolves seldom ply their dates with flowers. This

may be because the girls are so anxious they’d give the guy orchids. Or

maybe because Washington is an Eastern city, and in the East--New York

especially--few well-dressed women wear corsages.

* * *

Most G-gals start work early in the morning. The wise Washington lupo

learns to date them for cocktails at five in the afternoon.

* * *

Some characters tap the female college alumnae lists for recent

graduates resident in Washington, then pick names at random and phone

with an invitation to a Yale or Princeton hop which never seems to come

off.

* * *

HOTELS FOR WOMEN ONLY: Hattie M. Strong Hall, (YWCA) phone ME 2100,

Meridian Hill, CO 1000; All States (cooperatively owned) NA 2483. (If

the gal you’re phoning isn’t home, ask the switchboard operator if

anyone else wants a date. She could know one.)

* * *

The abortion racket is wide open in Washington, with illegal

practitioners protected from high-up. Prices run from $35 to $500 a

job, depending on your color and your bank-book. The lowest charge is

for Negroes. Unmarried G-gals can get by for $75. Married women with

husbands who work are charged $100. Single ones in a jam who have rich

or important paramours are nailed for as much as $500. (In New York

$1,000 isn’t unusual.)

15. GARDEN OF PANSIES

If you’re wondering where your wandering semi-boy is tonight, he’s

probably in Washington.

The good people shook their heads in disbelief with the revelation that

more than 90 twisted twerps in trousers had been swished out of the

State Department. Fly commentators seized on it for gags about fags,

whimsy with overtones of Kinsey and the odor of lavender. We pursued

the subject and we found that there are at least 6,000 homosexuals on

the government payroll, most of them known, and these comprise only a

fraction of the total of their kind in the city.

The only way to get authoritative data on fairies is from other

fairies. They recognize each other by a fifth sense immediately,

and they are intensely gregarious. One cannot snoop at every desk

and count people who appear queer. Some are deceptive to the

uninitiated. But they all know one another and they have a grapevine

of intercommunication as swift and sure as that in a girls’ boarding

school. Since they have no use for women in the main, and are uneasy

with masculine men, they have a fierce urge, even beyond the call of

the physical, for each other’s society. They have their own hangouts,

visit one another, and cling together in a tight union of interests and

behavior.

Not all are ashamed of the trick that nature played on them. They have

their leaders, unabashed, who are proud queens and who revel in their

realm. Your reporters, after years around show business, are familiar

with those of their breed, unembarrassed in their presence. But, with

the exception of crude male prostitutes whom they have encountered

in police courts and on the sidewalks of New York’s Lexington Avenue

and in Harlem, they still had a whisper of an illusion left: they got

the idea, because they had met so many with marked talent, that by a

pathological compensation many of them possessed artistic traits.

In Washington they found this false. The exceptional ones do drift to

Broadway and to Hollywood. But they are no more representative of

their numbers than are the gifted men and women who find their places

in the arts of the great mass of people from whom they become detached

to follow the livelier professions.

Now we have found out where the dull, dumb deviates go. We had assumed

that, as they grew up in small communities where they soon became

obvious and odious, they took flight for the stage, the screen,

interior decorating, exotic literature and other fields centered in the

metropolitan market-places. That is not true. Only a few can and do

enter the avenues where their talents make them equal, often superior.

So, what becomes of the marked twilight-sex, unwelcome at home, pariahs

afar? We might ask what becomes of the club-footed or pock-marked girl

similarly situated. She is in a panic about the present, still more

so about the future, and she searches for security. Where can that be

captured? Nowhere else as surely as in the civil service. There, in the

mediocrity and virtual anonymity of commonplace tasks, the sexes--all

four of them--are equal in the robot requirements and qualifications.

There is no color line, no social selectivity; not even citizenship

is always a prerequisite. Once the precious appointment is filed in a

machine which knows no discrimination, there it stays for life.

Like immigrants from foreign lands, for these people are aliens in

their own, they attract--more often send for and finance--those who

speak their language and live their kind of lives. Congressman A. L.

Miller, of Nebraska, a physician, author of the District’s new bill

to regulate the homos, enunciated with an oratorical flourish the

deathless statement that, “birds of a feather flock together.” William

Jennings Bryan came from Nebraska, too.

The 6,000 who made the perennial payroll drew many more thousands who

flunked it. Like pug-nosed, freckle-faced girls of no distinction, who

become waitresses and car-hops, these inverts who are washed in with

the tide and beached in the mud become clerks in shops, hairdressers,

waiters, bartenders, most often in the places habitually patronized by

those of their own stripe.

The Washington vice squad had listed 5,200 known deviates. Dr. Ben

Karpen, psychiatrist at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital, believes they are in

the tens of thousands.

Their chief meeting place is in leafy Lafayette Square, across

Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House. They make love under the

equestrian statue of rugged Andrew Jackson, who must be whirling on his

heavenly horse every time he sees what is going on around his monument.

Lafayette Square is no bohemian section, like Washington Square in

New York. The three sides not surrounded by the White House have such

buildings as the Cosmos Club, formerly the home of Dolly Madison; the

national headquarters of the League for Political Education of the

American Federation of Labor; the Hay-Adams House, one of Washington’s

finer hotels, and other dignified structures.

How the fairies happened to pick this place for their rendezvous, and

how the cops let them get away with it, no one can trace.

The police keep making arrests, but it does not deter the homos from

hanging out around the square. They make pick-ups there and quite often

engage in immoral acts practically under the eyes of the sparrow cops.

They also foregather in Franklin Park, a few blocks away, in the center

of the business district.

There is no geographic section where degenerates generally live. That

is part of the general picture, everything, everywhere, in Washington.

Many rich fairies and lesbians live in expensive remodeled Georgetown

homes, the nearest thing to a left-bank neighborhood. This is also a

left-wing center.

Some parties which take place in Washington pervert sets are orgies

beyond description and imagination. Every invention of Sacher-Masoch

and the Marquis de Sade has been added to and improved upon, and is in

daily use. Weekends find the pansies and lady-lovers on broad, baronial

estates of wealthy perverts in nearby Virginia and Maryland. Many of

the third sex journey regularly to New York, where they have friends in

esoteric circles.

Washington has its transvestites, who get their thrills from appearing

in the clothes of the opposite sex. Some of the ritzier dress shops on

Connecticut Avenue couldn’t exist if it weren’t for the fairies who buy

French imports. Many dress in drag on Thanksgiving Day and mingle in

the holiday crowds with the costumed young folk.

While these lines were being typed, a member of the staff of Democratic

Senator Edwin C. Johnson, of Colorado, who recently made front pages

when he attacked the morals of the movie industry, was arrested

by two vice squad officers in the men’s room in Lafayette Square

and charged with committing indecent acts. Booked in $500 bail, he

pleaded not guilty. He and Senator Johnson, who appeared with him in

the preliminary hearing before the United States Attorney, made no

statements. He was later acquitted by a jury.

The same day, Assistant U. S. Attorney Warren Wilson asked for the

night closing of public comfort stations, calling them breeding places

of perversion. Commenting on the increase of such cases, Wilson said,

“90 percent of these offenses are committed in men’s rooms operated by

the Federal government.”

Wilson mentioned Lafayette Square, Stanton Park, Dupont Circle and

Franklin Park. He recommended that all these comfort stations be closed

as soon after 4 P.M. as policemen on the 4–12 shift could do so, and be

kept closed until 8 A.M.

“These stations were constructed when there were no other facilities

in downtown Washington,” Wilson said. “Today, hundreds of restaurants

are required to have toilet facilities by law. Many hotels have been

constructed since the comfort stations.

“Public places are becoming cesspools of perversion.”

Many cocktail lounges and restaurants cater to irregulars. Most of them

are near the Mayflower Hotel. The most popular resort is the Jewel Box,

near 16th and L, NW, formerly known as the Maystat. It is a cocktail

lounge with entertainment by a piano-player, who sings semi-risqué

lyrics.

The waiters are obviously fairies. Most customers seem to fit into the

pattern. The night we went there, a police car, with siren screaming,

pulled up. We figured it was a pinch. After the cop threw out two

customers, a waiter told us everything was o.k.

“Those boys got fresh,” he said. “They tried to flirt with those two

women sitting there. We don’t tolerate flirting--anyway not with women.”

Then he minced off, hand on hip.

Fags also like a restaurant known as Mickey’s, behind the Mayflower.

They patronize the second floor of a place in the 1700 block of H

Street. One night two Congressmen, a couple of army officers, and two

young servicemen were mixing beer and gin there, and kissing each

other. They also swish around the Sand Bar in Thomas Circle.

A favorite meeting-place for keeping appointments is the lobby of the

Franklin Park Hotel. The Riggs Turkish Bath, the only one in town,

under Keith’s Theatre, was closed up because these undesirables took it

over. Its license has since been restored.

Black Washington has its share of deviates, too.

There is free crossing of racial lines among fairies and lesbians. We

have seen aristocratic Southerners, on the bias, hunt down Negro men

for dalliance. We bumped into a gal in show business, who we know is

queer, sitting with two mannish-looking women at the Jewel Box. She

invited us to a party in Black Town, an inter-racial, inter-middle-sex

mélange, with long-haired, made-up Negro and white boys simpering while

females of both races mingled in unmistakable exaltation.

During the summer, groups of colored fairies make up “yachting” parties

and cruise the Potomac on the steamer Robert E. Lee. One Saturday

night, last summer, over 100 cops were dispatched to the docks when the

“Society of Female Impersonators” was to have a midnight sail. They

found 1,700 Negro men, all dressed as women, on the boat, and as many

more trying to get on. A riot was in the making, but the cops busted it

up and kept it quiet when they hauled away two wagon-loads. The ship

finally got off at 2 A.M.

Two weeks later, in another melee on the same boat, a colored man was

fatally shot by a police detective after he jumped into the water.

Another Negro, who pleaded guilty to having started the riot, was fined

$200 for having endangered the lives of 600 persons. Some months later,

Washingtonians were mystified by an ad in a daily paper which read as

follows: “S.S. Mt. Vernon--moonlight cruise--8:30 P.M.--beer--stag or

drag.”

No one knows how many lesbians there are, because the female--or is it

male--of the pervert species is seldom spoken about and is much less

obvious. Psychiatrists and sociologists who have made a study of the

problem in Washington think there are at least twice as many Sapphic

lovers as fairies. A large incidence of lesbianism is concomitant with

the shortage of men, where women work together, live together, play

together, so love together.

Some display themselves, strut around in fairy joints; all queers are

in rapport with all others. You will see them also in some of the late

bottle-clubs, on the make for the same girls the he-wolves are chasing.

The mannish women used to hang out at the Show Boat Bar, H and 13th,

until the management drove them out. Now in David’s Grill, formerly the

Horseshoe, in back of the Mayflower Hotel, they outnumber the pansies

who haunted the place. Many lesbians frequent Kavakos’ Grill, in the SE

section, though this is not any joint so specializing. The club, owned

by Bill Kavakos, a rich Greek who likes to gamble, is near the Navy

Yard. It caters to sailors and slummers.

A breakdown of occupations in one group of 543 perverts who were

arrested showed some interesting sidelights. Among them was only one

actor, but 92 students. There were 58 army personnel and 28 from the

navy. Even the rugged Marines appeared. Among the deviates were one

bartender, one barber and one baker. There were four attorneys, only

two doctors and only one embalmer. This is the record:

Accountant 7

Actor 1

Airport employee 3

Army:

Commissioned 9

Noncommissioned 49

Attorney 4

Baker 1

Barber 1

Bartender 1

Businessman 7

Butcher 1

Cab driver 2

Clerk 48

Diplomat 1

Doctor 2

Embalmer 1

Embassy personnel 1

Government employee 57

Guard 9

Historian 1

Horse breeder 1

Interior decorator 3

Jeweler 1

Laundryman 6

Librarian 3

Marines, U. S. 2

Minister 3

Musician 5

Navy:

Commissioned 1

Noncommissioned 27

Page boy 1

Pharmacist 4

Porter 6

Radio personnel 3

Realtor 2

Reporter 2

Restaurant personnel 27

Salesman 10

Sculptor 2

Servant 10

Service-station operator 2

Skilled laborer 17

Stenographer and secretary 4

Student 92

Teacher and Professor 12

Technician 3

Unemployed 50

Unskilled laborer 31

Writer 2

---

Total 543

With more than 6,000 fairies in government offices, you may be

concerned about the security of the country. Fairies are no more

disloyal than the normal. But homosexuals are vulnerable, they can

be blackmailed or influenced by sex more deeply than conventional

citizens; they are far more intense about their love-life.

Foreign chancelleries long ago learned that homos were of value in

espionage work. The German Roehm, and later Goering, established

divisions of such in the Foreign Office. That was aped by Soviet

Russia, which has a flourishing desk now in Moscow. According to

Congressman Miller, who made a comprehensive study of the subject,

young students are indoctrinated and given a course in homosexuality,

then taught to infiltrate in perverted circles in other countries.

Congressman Miller said:

“These espionage agents have found it rather easy to send their

homosexuals here and contact their kind in sensitive departments of our

Government. Blackmail and many other schemes are used to gather secret

information.

“The homosexual is often a man of considerable intellect and ability.

It is found that the cycle of these individuals’ homosexual desires

follows the cycle closely patterned to the menstrual period of women.

There may be three or four days in each month that the homosexual’s

instincts break down and drive the individual into abnormal fields of

sexual practice. Under large doses of sedatives during this sensitive

cycle, he may escape such acts.

“The problems of sexual maladjustments are urgent and still far from a

solution. In the Army, several thousand were discharged. When caught in

the act, they were generally discharged without honor, which means loss

of citizenship. Many failed to survive rigors of warfare and intimate

association with men. The majority were unable to conceal their

tendencies and were eventually eliminated with disgrace.

“Never is the bond which unites two friends such that the acquisition

of a new friend by one is regarded angrily by the other; but quite

otherwise is the life among homosexuals. Here jealousy reigns supreme.

Male homosexuals will not share their fairy with anybody.

“The sexual attraction exercised by a male on another may be apparent

in many ways. The homosexual will become excited by the mere presence

of some man in a public place. They often approach that man, though he

is a stranger. A taxi-driver finds fares making indiscreet advances.

The homosexual has no sensation in the presence of the most beautiful

and seductive female. Her amorous advances may be repulsive.”

Until the recent purges in the State Department, there was a gag around

Washington you had to speak with a British accent, wear a homburg hat,

or have a queer quirk if you wanted to get by the guards at the door.

One high State Department official was a notorious homo who preferred

young Negro boys. He was detected in a Pullman car of the Southern

Railroad--on the funeral train to bury Speaker Bankhead, father of

Tallulah--making immoral advances to a porter. The story reached

newspaper offices, but before it could be printed the State Department

sent out an urgent appeal to editors to “kill,” because it might

imperil the war effort. When this official’s misdeeds were placed

before President Roosevelt, it was said he refused to replace him

because they both “wore the same school tie.” After resigning from the

government, this official almost died of exposure when a Negro farm

hand, jealous because of his attention to another, slugged him.

Aware of the seriousness of the problem, the State Department has a

highly hush-hush Homosexual Bureau, manned by trained investigators and

former counter-espionage agents, whose duties are to ferret out pansies

in Foggy Bottom.

But the department cannot free itself of boondoggling tendencies, for

at the same time it retains a personable and intelligent young lady to

prepare a treatise on homosexualism, the purpose being to see if it’s

possible to cure or contain the deviates who remain on the roles. Her

assignment requires her to visit faggot dives, observe the queers in

action and ask them how they got that way.

The following will be denied, but whenever possible the YMCA is vetoing

the use of its facilities, especially the swimming pool, to all State

Department employees, just to be on the safe side.

A man of almost cabinet rank in the Defense Department is also a

pervert, with bivalent tendencies, a two-way performer.

These are no isolated incidents. The government is honeycombed in high

places with people you wouldn’t let in your garbage-wagons.

David K. Eichler, a brilliant 37-year-old Harvard post-graduate who

was a top policy-maker in the State Department as Deputy Secretary

General of the Far Eastern Commission until a couple of months ago,

was arrested by Park Police on the Ellipse, charged with committing an

unspeakable act with a Negro man. He put up $25 “forfeit,” a Washington

variation of bail cash, about which more in another chapter. The next

day, at the hearing, the colored man pleaded guilty, but when Eichler

didn’t appear the judge told the prisoner he might change his plea,

inasmuch as his co-defendant wasn’t there.

The black fairy said, “Never mind, judge. I had a good time.”

Shortly after his arrest, Eichler went on a vacation trip to the South.

After learning about the pinch, security officials instituted a search

for him and summoned him back to Washington. Eichler admitted nothing,

but resigned his $9,000-a-year job. He wasn’t asked to stay.

On the other hand, the Grand Jury voted a no-bill when Eugene

Desvernine, 34, acting officer-in-charge of Caribbean affairs in the

State Department, was arrested for an alleged sex offense against a

13-year-old boy. Desvernine, suspended from the department after his

arrest in East Potomac Park, has been restored to duty.

The original charges against fairies in the State Department listed

only 91, but considerably more than a hundred have been discharged from

it since. More are asked to withdraw. And there are believed to be

hundreds not yet shown up.

Republicans who tried to get a special “pervert squad” formed were

voted down on straight party lines by Democrats, who found themselves

having to protect strange bed-fellows. When you read of a fag being

fired or quitting, don’t think Washington’s homosexual population

is reduced that much. It isn’t. Odds are the discharged degenerate

is shifted up on some other government payroll. At least eight were

transferred from the State Department to Agriculture. Hundreds of

others driven from one department minced into others.

At the end of 1950, State said they were all gone. But on the first

day of 1951, the Washington papers carried this brief item under the

heading: “Two Men Face Sex Charges.”

“Alan A. Wakefield, 26, State Department employe, was released under

$300 bond pending a hearing on a disorderly conduct charge. Vice Squad

detectives arrested him in the men’s room of a downtown hotel.” He was

since convicted of disorderly conduct.

Dr. Kinsey wasn’t appalled by the 6,000 fags in government jobs.

According to his calculations, 56,787 Federal workers are congenital

homosexuals. He includes 21 Congressmen and says 192 others are bad

behavior risks.

We still favor the two-party system.

16. THE LITTLE RED HERRINGS

The district headquarters of the Communist Party--the local setup, not

the Washington nest of the national outfit--is only a block away from

the doorway of the F.B.I., on 9th near F Street. So close is the line

of battle drawn.

This Union Square of the District of Columbia is, appropriately, on

Skid Row. It is the apparatus that recruits government employes. And

sometimes 9th Street is more active and important than 16th Street--the

White House. The District chairman is Roy H. Wood.

This book does not bandy the right or wrong of Communism. It accepts

and proclaims it all wrong. But it will stay within its limitations of

discussing Washington, the city. So it will conduct you mostly through

the muck where crawl the punks in the ranks.

The State Department boys call foreign Reds “Agrarian reformers.” We

call them cobras. The real story of the extent of their infiltration

into the government will never be told. Hundreds of files have been

impounded or destroyed, and their subjects cleared.

The following tale is no exception. It is, rather, the rule. One

night a mysterious informant called on Constantine Brown, brilliant

and patriotic foreign news analyst of the _Washington Star_, with a

photostatic copy of an order from a Deputy Chief of Staff, directing

the Army to destroy the records on several thousand subversives.

Brown hurried to the home of Senator Styles Bridges with the evidence.

By 9 A.M., Bridges had called the Military Affairs Committee together.

An hour later it met and phoned the offices of the Secretary of War

with an ultimatum not to destroy any orders. When the officer who had

issued the order met with the committee, Bridges looked coldly at him

and said, “I can forgive an officer who makes a mistake or loses a

battle, but an officer who betrays the security of his country ought to

be shot.”

Meanwhile, a similar order was given the Navy, but was not caught in

time to head off the destruction of the records. F.D.R. was President

at the time.

We are hopeful these things will come to an end, but do not expect

too much. That is because we know the C.I.A.--Central Intelligence

Agency--is loaded with Commies at the lower level, with some seeping

right up into the upper brackets.

A bright spot, however, is the advancement to the position of ranking

minority member of the House Un-American Activities Committee of Harold

Velde, young ex-F.B.I. agent, now representing Abraham Lincoln’s old

Illinois district in Congress. Velde, at 40, has been a G-man, a county

judge, and is in his second term in the House. His training under

J. Edgar Hoover sets him up as a canny spy-catcher; his hatred of

subversives, left or right, will make him a brake on Commie-coddling.

His predecessor on the committee was California’s new Senator Nixon,

who nailed Alger Hiss, and in Congress, Senator Dirksen, who beat Scott

Lucas. The Senate’s own Red probing committee is also good news.

Your authors delved into how the rank-and-file protectors and

comforters of Communists in Washington got that way. We know about the

over-educated Harvard prodigies, recommended to key spots by Felix

Frankfurter, but how does a $3,000-a-year file clerk in State, or

Defense, meet Reds in the first place? By what means is he wooed and

won to betray his country? Jim Walters of the _Times-Herald_ exposed a

lot. Here is more:

Red spies came here as soon as Lenin and Trotsky pulled their

successful November coup in 1917. But not until the late Roosevelt

handed diplomatic recognition to the enemies of civilization in 1933,

did a sizeable apparatus begin to build openly in Washington. In the

early years of the New Deal it became fashionable to be “liberal,” to

love all radicals, including revolutionaries.

The government was overloaded with Reds, pinks, fellow-travelers,

social planners, do-gooders, proletarians, boondogglers and Socialists.

The federal establishment is still up to its neck in conspirators and

collaborationists, despite a few publicized firings.

Let’s take the case of this humble clerk who is seduced by Reds.

Seduced is just that. We covered the modus operandi used by the Pervert

Sections of foreign chancelleries in the previous chapter. But not

all government employes are homos or susceptible. The normal must be

romanced with natural methods. Sex-starved government gals are enticed

by smooth, suave, good-looking men. Meek male clerks, in soporific jobs

at standardized sustenance-pay, are awakened with a sudden whiff of the

esoteric when fast-working, trained good-lookers make a play for them.

These happenings are not cribbed from E. Phillips Oppenheim novels.

They are planned that way and they come off.

Wealthy left-wingers with mansions in Georgetown cooperate avidly.

Humble government employes are invited to exotic, erotic parties. This

sudden entrance into a world of wealth, taste, refinement, liquor and

libido is irresistible to hoi polloi.

Smart Red undercover agents try to get a hold of some kind on their

victims, something insidious. Soviet agents press a systematic campaign

to bring women employes of the State Department under their control by

enticing them into acts of adultery and abnormality. Parties are staged

in rich surroundings with pornographic exhibitions, unlimited liquor

and every form of dope--and a hidden, talking moving picture camera

recording it all.

As many as 65 or 70 attend these aphrodisiac get-togethers, where many

wear rich Oriental costumes and Arabian Nights music completes the

intoxication of all the senses. Not only potential friends are thus

won and hooked, but dangerous foes are silenced. One gossip writer, a

feared crusader, has within the last couple of years become a virtual

transmission belt for the Communist line. He was called into a secret

projection room and shown a devastating film of his behavior at a

drunken, depraved orgy. We have seen “stills” from it.

This use of sex as a means of recruiting is a basic tactic. It has

been developed to such an extent by the Reds, they now seek to

convert children thereby. Herbert J. Benjamin, long a key figure in

the Communist Party in the United States, was arrested recently by

vice squad men for selling lewd pictures and literature to Washington

children, and convicted of violation of the D.C. code.

Benjamin, a former secretary of the International Workers Order, long

a contributor to party magazines and periodicals, was mentioned in a

memo by Earl Browder, November 27, 1939, as an alternate to the tenth

convention of a national Communist Party committee. Later he was the

organization’s national press director and was in charge of the St.

Louis office of a Communist political association. He and his wife

lived in the Trenton Terrace apartments, on Mississippi Ave., SE, where

other tenants were Rob Hall, Washington correspondent for the _Daily

Worker_, and Joseph Forer, a veteran attorney for Reds. Benjamin’s wife

was manager of the apartment house.

The pinks are still working strenuously to grab off and bring up new

followers from the incubator stage. As these lines were written,

three names listed by the District Board of Education as speakers for

its in-service-training program were found to be also in the House

Committee on Un-American Activities’ files as left-wingers--Dr. Paul B.

Cornely, Freedmen’s Hospital medical director; Dr. Alice V. Keliher,

of New York University; and Dr. Dora B. Smith, of the University of

Minnesota. Superintendent of Schools Corning said, “The names were

identical with names in the House Un-American Committee records.” Since

then Red and Socialist-slanted text books have been found to be in use

in Washington’s schools.

Until two years ago, there was considerable radical financial

interest in radio station WQQW. The stock has since been placed in a

voting-trust with a good American as trustee. For years this station

refused to sign off with “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

The Dupont Theatre specializes in interracial and foreign films, most

of them slanted left. Danny Weitzman, owner of the building, was active

in the Wallace presidential campaign.

The Reds and bleeding hearts play up their “love” for Negroes at every

opportunity. This often pays off big dividends because so many colored

people are employed in government offices. A few Negroes are dumb

enough to be misled by the Reds’ baloney about the brotherhood of man.

But to their eternal glory, the great mass of Negroes are among the

most patriotic citizens in the country. A few malcontents, who have

been taken in by the crocodile tears of the Eleanor Roosevelt brand of

reformer, occasionally indirectly render aid and comfort to the enemy.

To show how much they love the Negro, the white Communist brethren

hold their District powwows at Shilo Baptist Church, a Negro house of

worship in the NW section.

It is a Communist strategy to line Negroes into the party through white

gals who, to show their complete compliance and condition of servitude,

are urged to give themselves to colored men. Into this specialized

service they seem to wade with more than token application.

Mrs. Louise Branston Berman, millionaire radical who declines to

state if she’s a Communist on grounds of self-incrimination, spends

much of her time in Washington. She uses her great wealth to help

the enrollment of left-wing recruits through social contacts. Louts

who never dined above a cafeteria before are invited to sumptuous

banquets in her homes in various parts of the country. Visiting Negro

dignitaries who can’t get accommodations in hotels are her house

guests. Mrs. Branston will learn for the first time here that when she

put up the Negro singer, Paul Robeson, government agents had “bugs”

in every room of her house from the parlor to the boudoir--she ought

to hear the recordings. We did. They’re neither intellectual nor

musical--but they are illuminating.

A principal Communist apparatus and recruiting ground for new Reds on

the lower levels was the late but unlamented UNRRA.

The organization was rotten with traitors during the time Mayor

LaGuardia was its director. Either he didn’t know what was going on,

because he attended meetings only a few times, or he didn’t care.

When UNRRA was disbanded, its Red membership was moved almost en

masse to the payroll of the United Nations secretariat. Many are now

stationed in New York, where they are sabotaging U.N. work as far as

they can. Others are attached to U.N. field offices in Washington.

If anyone doubts it was the policy of UNRRA to aid Communism and

that this had the approval of the present administration, which is

bent on fighting Communism, let him read the following excerpts from

a memo which we filched from the UNRRA files. It is an inter-office

communication, written in 1947, and addressed to Col. Katzin, a South

African, then an important UNRRA man and now top aide to Trygve Lie.

It follows: (The italics are ours.)

“It should be made clear that _the administration, in pushing for

distribution to Communist areas_ and in requesting Edgerton to report

on such distribution, has in mind _actual shipments into Communist

areas_ and not merely movements out of Shanghai with the expressed

intention of making such shipments.”

Another paragraph reads, “In reference to Shanghai 6404, it is

interesting to note the U.K. position that _the program should be cut

proportionately if the (Chinese) Nationalist government does not meet

its obligations for Communist area distribution_.”

In other words, we strengthened the Chinese Reds so they could kill our

boys three years later.

Another batch of Communists and Communist-lovers came into the U.N.

through its International Child Fund. This department is loaded

with ex-State Department employes fired on suspicion of subversive

activities.

That is a common habit. If all the homos, spies and other undesirables

fired for cause were traced, hundreds would be found snugly ensconced

in other bureaus, ostensibly screened, actually given screens of

protection and falsification by the radicals in high places.

We are not indicting Eleanor Roosevelt or Supreme Court Justice

Frankfurter as Communists. Yet it is impossible to study the set-up of

the District of Columbia white collar Communist underground without

finding tie-lines from them to members of this group.

The man of mystery in Washington is wealthy, brilliant, daring Max

Lowenthal. He wrote the unwieldy book purporting to pulverize the

F.B.I. which sold only 6,000 copies. Almost as many were given away.

Yet no one knows much about him. He is a shadowy figure who thrives

on obscurity, though he has filled public posts of importance. Until

Congressman Dondero, of Michigan, investigated him, his name was

obscure in Washington. Today not ten people in the government know

more about him than the fact that he is frequently more powerful than

the President and the Congress of the United States. This is some

of what Congressman Dondero charged on the floor of the House of

Representatives about Mr. Lowenthal whom he referred to as sinister and

surreptitious:

Like the Communist Party, whose cause he has served so well, he

operates on two levels. One is seemingly respectable; the other

completely underground. He is native-born. His name does not appear in

Who’s Who. To secure even a sketch of his biography has been a task.

Born in Minneapolis in 1888, like many other parlor pinks,

fellow-travelers, Communists and convicted perjurers, he attended

Harvard Law School. In those days he came under the influence of

another man who through the years has manipulated Charlie McCarthys in

Government office. There is a striking kinship between the master,

Justice Felix Frankfurter, and the pupil, Max Lowenthal.

He served as a secretary to Judge Julian M. Mack in New York, then

infiltrated the respectable law firm of Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft.

After a few years he founded his own firm, Lowenthal, Szold & Brandwen.

Later he secured an appointment as Assistant Secretary of the

President’s Mediation Board in 1917; in 1918 he was in the War

Department; in 1920 he was an Assistant Secretary to the President’s

Industrial Conference. He became executive secretary for the Wickersham

Commission on Law Enforcement, but when he found he could not run it

he resigned. He became research director of the Banking and Currency

Commission, was on the staff of the Senate Committee on Interstate

Commerce, also affiliated with the Board of Economic Welfare.

In Germany, known as general counsel to General Clay, he had as an

assistant George Shaw Wheeler, the American traitor, Communist and

renegade who shocked all America when he denounced the land of his

birth and asked Communist-controlled Czechoslovakia for asylum.

Evidence of his unswerving loyalty to Soviet Russia is clear and

unequivocal. There is an interesting sidelight. The California

authorities raided the office of the Russian-American Industrial Corp.,

whose head, the late Sidney Hillman, had turned on Communism, but his

general counsel still follows the party line.

He was a member of the left-wing National Lawyers Guild, a member of

the National Committee of the International Juridical Association with

Lee Pressman.

Carol Weiss King, who represented more Communists than any other

lawyer, was a law clerk in Lowenthal’s office.

Lowenthal, living in New York, spent much of his time in Washington;

his influence is a menace to the best interests of America--so said

Congressman Dondero.

Don’t kid yourself. The Reds are not on the run in Washington. No

Communist control law means anything if the administration doesn’t want

it enforced. The anemic Security Board appointed by the President to

apply the McCarran Act, loaded down as it is with left-wing apologists,

is the tip-off.

One day after Senator Tydings, who became an ex because he

“white-washed” Owen Lattimore, returned to private life he joined the

law firm of his father-in-law, Joseph E. “Mission to Moscow” Davies. A

senior partner in that firm is Seth Richardson, appointed by Truman to

head the Security Board.

Meanwhile, the rapid expansion of Federal employment has forced the

government to forego the usual pre-job loyalty checks of tens of

thousands of new workers--hundreds of Communists are going on the

payroll and will be there for months, possibly years, until their

backgrounds are delved into.

With a green light, the F.B.I. could break the back of the Communists’

underground. But J. Edgar Hoover cannot make policies. He is just a cop

who has to follow orders. At this writing the orders have not come. The

traitors in Washington are safe. On the other hand, those who testify

against Reds are frequently harassed by Justice Department lawyers.

If this weren’t so ghastly serious, some phases of the great Communist

spy-hunt would be laughable. For instance, there’s the story of

the prominent woman lawyer from New York, retained to represent a

left-winger about to be questioned by a Congressional committee. This

Communist kept his full status well hidden. He couldn’t afford to

hire a lawyer who handled Communist cases. So this portly Portia was

retained. She had no known Red connections.

On her way to Washington she stopped in Baltimore, to confer with

a well-known Communist counsel there, to be briefed. It began as a

business confab. They arranged a follow-up rendezvous in Washington.

The Baltimore attorney’s wife suspected him, followed him to Washington

and caught him in the act with the lady lawyer from New York.

The wife sued for divorce. The co-respondent testified, admitted

intercourse but denied adultery.

“I was raped,” she cried.

Cross-examination:

Q.--Did you have intimate relations with the defendant?

A.--Yes.

Q.--Did you consent?

A.--Yes.

Q.--Then how do you make that out rape?

A.--I found out since that he is a damned Communist!

17. KICKING THE GONG AROUND

It may be news that widespread addiction to narcotics is a

comparatively recent American manifestation. Long after the turn of

the century, a few trickles supplied pig-tailed Chinamen, despondent

prostitutes, ex-cons who had picked up the habit in stir and a few

rich fools who would try anything for a bang. Juvenile use was unheard

of. Marijuana was unknown outside pad-parties in the Harlem jungles

and among a thin fringe of Mexicans. The Harrison Narcotics Law, first

federal recognition of the existence of such an evil, is only 35 years

old.

We are solemnly convinced that the great growth of this plague in the

past 20 years has been parallel to the spread of Communism in our

country. And it has not been confined to our country.

Estimates by the Narcotic Control Section of the United Nations, that

one of every ten people on earth uses habit-forming drugs in some

manner or form, are borne out in this country, where the evil is

prevalent in all sections. It is the greatest tangible menace facing

us. And dope addiction, on the rise, can be traced definitely to Soviet

Russia.

It has long been a tactic of nations bound on enslaving others to

deaden the ambitions and energies of their victims with dope.

Examples of this stretch back to the dawn of written history. In the

last century, British imperialists introduced the habit into China to

control that nation. Nazi Germany flooded Poland and Czechoslovakia.

Japan built huge narcotics factories in Manchuria to weaken the

Chinese opposition. Russia is doing more of it now. Raw stuff pours

in from Mediterranean ports. It originates in lands behind the

Iron Curtain. Its importation into the United States serves Russia

twofold--prostrates a prospective enemy and gets its hands on needed

American exchange to be used for propaganda purposes and payment of

undercover agents here. International bank drafts could be traced.

One courier can carry $1,000,000 worth of uncut dope on his person.

There are many points of community interest between the Reds and that

other great international conspiracy, the Mafia, which controls the

sale of drugs in America. The Commies will team up with anyone who will

promote civil disorder or do their dirty work. The Mafia is interested

in making a dishonest dollar and will work with any partner.

The center of the narcotics industry in the United States is in the

district of former left-wing Congressman Vito Marcantonio, in East

Harlem. During the days of his ascendancy, American Labor Party

district leaders were able to supply police protection through

alliances with both Tammany Hall and anti-Tammany Mayor LaGuardia.

Generally untrumpeted was the fact that when the infamous Charles

“Lucky” Luciano was ordered deported from Cuba, the titular head of the

Cuban Communist Party offered him sanctuary and appeared as his counsel.

A study of the Congressional Record will show that most of the bills

and measures designed to weaken the enforcement of the Narcotics Act

have been introduced by left-wingers and fellow-travelers. Many pink

lawyers represent the underworld combine.

One of the most startling tieups was seen in the recent flooding

of this country with cocaine. The Bureau of Narcotics had all but

eliminated this devastating drug. There had been none here for 20

years. Cocaine for American consumption comes from Peru, where the

coca leaves grow. A couple of years ago an Agrarian Communist group

called the Apristas took over that country briefly. Seventeen cocaine

factories were constructed in Lima, eleven licensed by the local Red

government, and the others ran with the knowledge and connivance of

the authorities. Their entire produce was routed to the United States.

Coincident with saturation of this country with cocaine, which sank in

price to as low as $1.50 a capsule, America went through its greatest

crime wave.

When Commissioner Harry J. Anslinger traced the source of the deadly

narcotic to Peru, the New Deal State Department refused to intervene,

as it was required to do by the international treaties which outlawed

the traffic. The reason for this failure, amounting to criminal

negligence, was that we could not interfere in Latin American affairs.

The cash for the cocaine was being used to foster Communism in South

America.

Last year the Reds were kicked out of Peru by what Washington pinkos

still refer to as “the oligarchy,” who immediately thereafter closed

the coke factories. Since then, this traffic has almost dried up in the

United States.

Likewise the administration has failed to inform the American public

that the Permanent Central Opium Board in Geneva, Switzerland, has

branded Soviet Russia and several Iron Curtain countries as palpable

violators of international treaties and UN conventions regarding the

control of narcotics.

You will probably learn here for the first time that the following

governments, in addition to Russia, were named as treaty-violators for

failure to meet their obligations: Red China, Czechoslovakia and Poland.

Among others who failed to cooperate were Nepal, Saudi Arabia, Oman and

Liberia, the African Negro republic in which Negro slavery is still

practiced.

Narcotic conditions in the capital are shameful. This is no fault

of the U.S. Bureau of Narcotics, whose fighting chief, Commissioner

Anslinger, is handcuffed by red tape, apathy and a penurious budget.

The Bureau has a personnel of less than 180 for office and field work

throughout the world. Its annual budget is less than $2,000,000. This

is a drip in an ocean, yet Anslinger must cope with the deadliest evil

known to man, backed by a huge and wealthy underworld organization

controlling tens of thousands of peddlers, sluggers and killers, and

owning billions of dollars.

That the unsung agents of this Treasury bureau have done as well as

they have is a miracle. They could do better, especially in Washington,

if they had the cooperation of the judiciary. They haven’t.

You can buy reefers on any corner in Black Town or in front of any

high school in the District. You can purchase hard stuff at dozens of

corners, of which we can name many and will note some. This disgrace

indicts judges in the courts of the District of Columbia. All are

federal, not elected, but appointed by the President. This goes for

the Municipal Court bench, which sits for six years, as well as the

District Court, appointed for life.

Every judge appointed in the last 18 years was put on the bench during

a Democratic administration. More than 95 per cent are Democrats. Few

are Washingtonians. With few exceptions, these judges are divided

into two classes: Those representing the big-city bosses and gangs,

and radicals named to appease bigger and redder radicals. The former,

obviously, are expected to be lenient to law-breakers protected by the

organized underworld. The latter, mostly fuzzy-minded intellectuals, do

not believe in punishment, especially when the evildoer is a Negro or

of any minority race. They can’t find wrong in any man. They believe

criminals are mishandled wards of society.

The Washington field office of the Bureau of Narcotics--with only three

or four agents--arrests dope peddlers as fast as they can be found and

turns up enough evidence to secure convictions. But the courts almost

uniformly issue suspended sentences or small fines.

The stench was so bad, dope peddlers were selling the contraband across

the street from the White House, at the eastern end of Lafayette

Square. The great brains regarded the venomous situation without

qualms. What’s a little dope among dopes?

In desperation, Anslinger removed every agent--including one of his

best men, former agent-in-charge Roy Morrison--from the city of

Washington. He felt it was needless to risk his men’s lives to get

evidence against junk peddlers who were sure to keep out of jail

because of a fix or muddle-headedness. Thereafter, for a short time,

no effort was made to enforce the narcotics laws in the District.

Conditions got so bad, even the judges knew they must cooperate to

avoid a national blow-up. After Anslinger restored the agents, the

judges began meting out stiff sentences. But the heat soon came off and

they are back at their old habits.

An example of what often happens when a dope peddler is arrested in the

District is the case of William Potts, indicted on 14 counts arising

from the sale and possession of heroin. On the day set for trial, an

essential witness of the government could not be found. The court was

so informed. The judge turned to the counsel for defense and asked if

he was ready for the trial. Defense counsel was, but the U.S. Attorney

said he was not, because of the witness’s absence. Thereupon the court

asked if the defendant would waive a jury trial. He did. Immediately

and without the pretense of trial, the court ruled. “I find the

defendant not guilty.”

William P. Estoffery came into court with a record of ten specific

narcotics convictions, but the United States District Court gave him

eight months to three years, which meant he could be back on the street

in three months. One of his previous convictions was for possession of

counterfeit prescription blanks.

Here is another sample of the judicial road-blocks erected against

enforcement officers who arrest dope peddlers in the capital:

Constitutional rights to privacy also give a defendant protection from

illegal police raids on homes other than his own, the U.S. Court of

Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled recently.

The court made the ruling in reversing the conviction of Jesse W.

Jeffers, Jr., on narcotics dealing charges.

Jeffers, 27, Negro, was found guilty in Judge Alexander Holtzoff’s

court on testimony that police, without a search warrant, raided a room

at the Dunbar Hotel and found 19 bottles of cocaine he allegedly had

hidden there.

Jeffers lived elsewhere in the hotel, but the room was rented by

relatives of his.

Setting a rare principle of law, the Appeals Court held evidence of

the cocaine cache should have been excluded from the case because the

police raid was illegal. It pointed out the Constitution’s Fourth

Amendment specifically bans illegal searches of a defendant’s home,

and said the principle should be enlarged to cover illegal raids on

“premises that were not his.”

Judge E. Barrett Prettyman, in a dissent from the majority opinion,

said “I do not see how an individual’s rights can be invaded by

Government seizure of ... unstamped narcotics, not on the individual’s

person or premises.”

He emphasized the case “is important in the enforcement of the

narcotics laws.”

The curious part of the whole affair is that the defendant admitted the

untaxed, unstamped dope was his. In fact, he demanded its return from

the government.

In another of its feats of legal legerdemain, beyond the poor reasoning

of a couple of reporters who didn’t graduate from Harvard Law, the

august court said to the defendant in effect: “Possession of dope is

illegal, so you can’t have it back, though you didn’t commit any crime

when you had it before.”

Try and figure that one out.

Shortly thereafter the Appeals Court again overruled the same judge in

another narcotics case and ordered a new trial for Clarence Butler on

the grounds that Holtzoff’s “facial expressions” were prejudicial.

An official memorandum of the United States Treasury Department sets

out facts as follows:

Since early in 1946, the Bureau has experienced repeated delay in

obtaining prosecution of its cases in the District of Columbia. In

numerous trials where out-of-town agents were witnesses the Bureau

had to bear the expense of bringing them to Washington for testimony.

Repeatedly, after the agents arrived, the hearings were continued. The

Bureau could not stand this gaff and had to “stop narcotic enforcement

in the District of Columbia.”

Dope cannot be manufactured locally. The Washington wholesalers must

get their supplies from the international monopoly. The general

practice in other cities is for the organization to deliver the

wholesale lots to localities where they are to be consumed, but in the

case of Washington the wholesale jobbers go to the distribution depots

in other cities and pick up carload lots.

All narcotics in the United States are controlled at the top by a tight

ring of evil men who, in turn, issue state and territorial rights to

middlemen. Washington merchants are ordered to make their purchases in

New York, Philadelphia and Baltimore, but mainly in New York.

Marijuana is brought up directly from Mexico, but much inferior quality

reefer seed is planted on farms between Washington and Baltimore and in

Virginia.

The local dope set-up is largely controlled by Negroes, though Chinese

also are active in the trade and have become more so since the

Communists took over China. The two tongs frequently import their own.

At this writing Red China has 500 tons of opium for sale abroad. This

is equal to the world requirements for medical and scientific needs

for more than a year. Chiang Kai-shek prohibited the production in

China in 1934. The Communists have revived Jehol and Manchurian opium

cultivation, and are reopening Tientsin dens. The tongs have not been

adhering of late to the agreement which limited them to noncompetitive

sales. Both are selling _pin yen_ (opium) and _bok for_ (heroin).

Police believe the recent but short-lived tong wars on the West Coast

were attributable to breaches of the basic compromise, plus efforts of

Chinese Communists to take over the tong dope distribution machinery.

Occasionally, when sources of supply are temporarily cut off, or when

the Italians are able to offer a more favorable price, the Chinese

Syndicates send a man to buy directly from the Mafia. This dope is

stored in a warehouse near 108th Street and 2nd Avenue, New York City,

in Marcantonio’s bailiwick.

Another difficulty in narcotics enforcement, not even whispered about

in Washington, is the leakage from diplomatic sources. It is politic

for the Bureau to deny this is so, because nothing can be done about

it. But huge amounts of concentrated dope come in envoys’ sealed

pouches. There is, as everyone in Washington knows, a lively racket

in the diplomatic corps in black market money. No easier method of

acquiring dollars is possible than through sale of dope. Some of this

contraband is used by members of the embassy staffs, themselves. In

some Near Eastern and Oriental countries, a daily intake of narcotics

is considered as normal as our use of coffee and tobacco. Many Latin

Americans are slaves to marijuana, especially in the eating form, not

otherwise available in the States. Some of this, which doesn’t find its

way into the channels of trade, is presented by the diplomats to their

American friends.

This will be denied, too, but ranking members of the diplomatic corps

who are narcotic addicts and who can’t get the stuff from other sources

have it provided for them by the protocol boys in the State Department,

who withdraw it from official government sources.

We were offered reefers by peddlers in the alleys along 4th Street, SW;

also at the corner of 7th and T and 7th and O, NW.

In an all-night diner at Vermont and L, frequented by musicians and hep

kids, we were offered reefers also.

Hard stuff is obtainable with no trouble from street salesmen in Thomas

Circle. In this neighborhood, which is bossed by Attilio Acalotti, you

can place a bet on a horse, buy a numbers ticket or get a call girl.

The service is performed for you by sidewalk newsboys and pimps on the

steps of the National Christian Church.

In recent years, rich white racketeers have gone in for opium smoking

themselves. They get it in Chinatown, where a few poppy parlors are in

operation. As noted, members of the On Leong Tong deal mostly in opium

and the members of Hip Sing in heroin.

Heroin is sold openly on the corner of 5th and H, in the Hip Sing

section of Chinatown. To prove this, we became accessories to a

violation of the law.

This is how simple the whole transaction was: We were steered to a

broken-down wreck named Joe, a well-known dope addict. Despite his

habit, Joe is an expert locksmith, a genius at his trade. He can’t

work steadily, but so talented is he, the police and other local law

enforcement bodies and private detective agencies frequently hire him

to pick locks. That’s how he gets the money to support his habit. We

gave Joe $6 to buy a deck of heroin and left him on the corner while we

drove twenty feet up the block as Joe waited for his contact, across

the street from the Gospel Mission.

We walked back and passed Joe as he handed the $6 to a young Chinese,

who had appeared out of an area way. Joe said the Chinaman’s name

was Benny Wong. This is one of the commonest Chinese names, there

may be 500 with it in Washington. While Benny went to get the stuff,

Joe sat down on a stoop and fell asleep. He had been loading himself

with secanol, a synthetic, to keep his nerve steady until he got the

heroin, and he was in a pitiable condition. While Joe slumbered, two

metropolitan cops walked by. They thought he was drunk. One went to get

the wagon while we talked the other out of pinching our decoy. A few

minutes after the cops left, Benny returned with the heroin. That’s all

there was to it.

The “hooked” addict’s cost of supporting his “yen” runs from $35 a

week up, though if one “has a monkey on his back,” meaning the urge is

desperate and irresistible, he will be soaked from $50 to $100 a week.

Those who can afford the best stuff or who no longer get a bang out of

cheap grades are bled for as much as $500 a week.

When Hyman I. Fischbach, brilliant counsel of the Congressional

committee investigating crime and law enforcement in the District

of Columbia, queried Assistant Commissioner Harney of the Narcotics

Bureau, some startling facts about narcotic addiction were brought out,

yet missed by the press and the public. These hitherto unpublished

excerpts make interesting reading.

MR. HARNEY. That also depends too on the cost of the drug and the

amount of his income. Addicts can get along--during the war we had lots

of them who had needle habits. Their intake was probably one-fourth

grain or half a grain a day of actual narcotic. The addict might

develop until he gets as high as 20, 30, or 40 grains a day, considered

a lethal dose for a non-initiated person. They build up resistance

power. They get hoggish.

CONGRESSMAN DAVIS. What is that term?

MR. HARNEY. Use a lot of the drug. In days when drugs were freely

available that was one reason for institution of cocaine. A man would

stupefy himself with narcotics and with cocaine he would get an extra

thrill and get out of it and brighten up and keep from going to sleep.

The addict may spend $5 or $10 a day in addition to other expenses, and

not being able, or disposed to work, usually becomes a thief. He can

be a prowler or he might be a pickpocket. Some addicts are very good

burglars. He might be a stick-up-man, not often.

A woman will be a prostitute or shoplifter. A man might be a panderer.

Many addicts buy in decks, 8 ounces or 2 or 3 ounces. The preaddict

would use a few grains. It differs in different localities.

MR. DAVIS. Does the price differ?

MR. HARNEY. Expressed in terms of actual narcotic content for the

preaddict it may be $2 or $3 a grain.

MR. FISCHBACH. Mr. Harney, is it your point that an individual

otherwise law abiding necessarily turns to petty crime in order to

support the addiction?

MR. HARNEY. I would not say necessarily, but it is often apparent.

I want to emphasize that addiction, particularly in the past, has

been much among the criminal element. A man was down in a dangerous

environment before he became addicted; he had to get in that sort of

association in contrast to the casual person who might become an addict

from medical reasons, but the ordinary addict becomes so by association.

MR. FISCHBACH. Then your point is there is an epidemic effect to it?

MR. HARNEY. We have a rather unusual and alarming situation which

developed since the war. It does not quite follow the pattern I set

out. My theory used to be that most addicts were old enough to be

associated with criminals and get into the underworld with addicts

before they themselves became addicts. Today, in certain localities,

we have young people, some minors, and the pattern seems to be

experimentation in marijuana first. That loses its thrill and those

persons become addicts to heroin. Sometimes cocaine comes into the

picture.

MR. DAVIS. Is marijuana used as a starter and later other narcotics are

used?

MR. HARNEY. I would not say always, but frequently. Young people get

into the marijuana atmosphere and you have a field for the cocaine and

heroin addicts.

MR. DAVIS. Are they induced to begin with marijuana by purveyors of

heroin, cocaine, morphine, and other drugs, to lead them into addiction?

MR. HARNEY. That pattern follows. Later dealers sell all three

commodities. Youngsters come into the marijuana smoking atmosphere and

soon there is no kick in it, and someone will tell them, “Try this.”

MR. FISCHBACH. Now who is that person?

MR. HARNEY. The peddler, or a cocaine addict, or a heroin addict.

MR. FISCHBACH. I would like to direct the attention of the committee to

the case of Charles M. Roberts, alias Jim Yellow, and ask if that case

presents some problems which your Bureau experienced in the District

with regard to the enforcement of the narcotics law. Present the facts

in the case of Jim Roberts, what kind of a person he was, how he lived,

what quantity of drugs he had when taken into custody.

MR. HARNEY. Jim Roberts had two convictions for violation of the

Federal narcotics laws. He had convictions for other crimes, including

charges of assault. We used an agent in an undercover capacity. Roberts

lived in a luxuriously furnished apartment. Some of these figures I

cite are on his own statement and probably you will allow for bragging,

but he had a beautifully carved television set which he claimed cost

him a couple thousand dollars, and he drove a new Cadillac. While

the officers were in his presence money was handed to him in a paper

grocery bag. Roberts referred to a hatchet and said he was waiting to

christen it in blood. When the car was seized the hatchet was under the

seat of the car. Roberts’ style of living represents big-shot narcotic

dealers. It makes a tremendous impression on others who might think of

entering the racket.

* * *

In addition to users of standard narcotics, many in Washington go in

for esoteric kicks. A growing fad in the Negro district is to inhale

incense with marijuana added.

Barbiturates are sold without prescription, because the D.C. law has

no teeth in it. Some become habituated to these drugs and, instead of

being put to sleep by them, get all the wallop out of them that others

get from opium. Many drug stores sell nembutals over the counter for

25 cents each. Nembutals are the prostitutes’ favorite. Among initiates

they are known as goof balls, or nemies. They grew popular during World

War II, when there was a scarcity of narcotics. Most who prefer goof

balls to marijuana usually end up on morphine, heroin or cocaine.

Evelyn Walsh McLean’s daughter, who was married to Senator Reynolds,

died from an overdose of goof balls.

As elsewhere, reefers are the real menace. This product of the hemp

plant is easily available, can be grown anywhere, is cheap, and in some

circles is in good repute. There is no such thing as an innocent reefer

smoker. Sooner or later, anyone on “muggles” must become a law-breaker

to some degree. Peddlers put their heads together, know how badly any

customer is hooked. Then they jack up prices to beyond what most people

can pay honestly.

All weed-heads are cop-haters. Even in reasonably normal condition they

carry a fierce resentment against conventional forces of society.

Reefer smoking is not habitual in the sense that the addict suffers

“withdrawal” symptoms, as when he is taken off other stuff. But neither

is cocaine habit-forming in that sense. Both work on the emotions.

Their use causes a physiological change in the brain. The reefer smoker

who gives the stuff up does not turn violently ill. But he doesn’t give

it up. He likes its effect and needs its lift to give him courage.

Sooner or later, all reefer smokers go on to cocaine, because the

effect is the same as from reefers, a hundredfold. When the bang of the

hemp wears off, cocaine is the only thing that can take its place. And

because cocaine is so expensive, one must become a criminal to afford

its use. And the cocaine gives one the courage to be a criminal.

The subject of tea-hounds brings us quite naturally to our next

chapter, juvenile delinquency, in which stimulants are a large factor.

18. THE YOUNG IN HEART

Juvenile delinquency as a topic has become a bromide. You’d think

there was little left to add. But here we found not only more of it,

but conditions behind it were frequently the exact opposite of those

obtaining in other populous cities.

It is generally accepted as beyond dispute that youngsters go wrong

because of poverty, congestion, lack of play-space, exposure to

the tenement atmosphere, the saloon and miserable home life. But

Washington, with its top average of prosperity, nothing that could

rightfully be called slums, no tenements and no out-and-out saloons,

has a more alarming per capita of teen-age law-breakers than New York,

Chicago, Detroit or Kansas City.

Remarkable, moreover, is the discovery that white youth is more

delinquent proportionately to the total of all criminals of their race

than Negro youth. Over all, however, more colored children break laws

than whites. A study of records, talks with social workers and personal

prying into many cases make it evident that more young people go wrong

because of overprivilege than underprivilege.

Most kids who get into trouble are well fed, over the height and weight

scientifically charted for their age, are well dressed, and have

superior intelligence quotients. We checked on one, 15 years old, five

feet nine inches tall, weighing 140 pounds, the son of a government

official who earns $12,000 a year. He confessed to more than 100

larcenies, burglaries and purse-snatches, and he had escaped from two

postal inspectors who arrested him for looting mail-boxes, searching

for government checks on which he intended to forge endorsements. He

and a 12-year-old accomplice had broken into 37 houses in the NW area

in 20 months and had robbed scores of cars. He said:

“Everybody here is on the make. We want money, too.”

Of 2,412 arrests of white males for Part 1 offenses, serious crimes

including homicide, rape, robbery, burglary, larceny, auto-theft and

aggravated assault, 564, almost 25 per cent, were committed by boys 15

and under; 1,897 of the 2,412, or 75 per cent, were committed by boys

20 or under.

The figures for Negroes are the reverse. There adults are in the

preponderant majority. During the time when white males of all ages

committed the 2,412 specific offenses for which they were arrested,

7,729 Negroes were apprehended. Of this large number, only 1,702 of the

crimes were committed by Negro boys 15 and under; of these the number

charged to males 20 years and under was 3,477, considerably less than

half, whereas white juveniles rolled up 75 per cent of the total for

their race.

Also a departure from the usual big-town findings is the sex

proportion. Juvenile delinquency is almost a complete male monopoly,

about the only one in the female-heavy District. Harlem and

Bronzeville, Hell’s Kitchen and the dregs of Brooklyn have their

“debs,” the feminine auxiliaries of the boys’ gangs of muggers,

street-fighters and thieves. The girls constitute a good one-third

of the problem children, engaged in picking pockets, shoplifting and

prostitution. But in Washington, in the period when the 2,412 serious

crimes were charged to white males, only 309 were committed by females,

and of these only 19 were under the age of 15; 96 were 20 and under.

Negro females of all ages were arrested for 1,091 Part 1 crimes, of

which only 38 were girls up to 15 and only 161 were 20 and under.

One reason for the huge incidence of juvenile delinquency, but by no

means the decisive one, was an idiosyncrasy of the population trend

here, topsy-turvy to every other in the country during the last 10

years. While the mean age of Americans was growing to such an extent

that it appeared we were becoming a nation of old people, Washington’s

population increased 26 per cent--but its child population, as of birth

records, increased more than 60 per cent. Nobody seems to know why.

If this has anything to do with the high influx of Negroes, the figures

above quoted challenge it as a delinquency cause. Our observations

led us to the conclusion that the principal influence is a system and

habit of coddling found nowhere else. By Act of Congress, none but

the Juvenile Court can take jurisdiction over offenders before they

are 15; defendants under 18 must be transferred to it on the court’s

demand. This branch is dominated by fat matrons and skinny old maids

who make a profession or a vocation of “child welfare.” To them that

means no punishment; everybody is innocent. In time the judges, New

Deal appointees all, many from crackpot groups with socialistic and

other distorted tendencies, have been conditioned to contempt of the

law and slant toward paternalistic lectures and acquittals. The result

is an enormous rate of recidivists, and the figures represent multiple

arrests of such repeaters rather than of so many individuals.

In the rare instances when the punks are sentenced to confinement, they

go to federal reformatories, where they get short terms and de luxe

treatment.

Statistics are cold; many people skip them or disbelieve them. But cops

are practical. And so appalling has moppet misbehavior become that an

extra detail of 30 officers has been assigned on duty around the clock

to watch and buzz the teensters, in an unprecedented campaign to ease

Washington’s biggest growing pain.

The vacuum in which federally appointed judges and officials

responsible only to Congress can place a community is well illustrated

by the juvenile delinquency procedure.

Judge Edith H. Cockrill, of the Juvenile Court, adjudicated in a star

chamber, concealed from the public. Nothing came out of her court but

rumors. One lawyer said her court is “a social worker’s dream and a

lawyer’s nightmare.” He said children and their parents are treated as

“patients,” none as offenders. The result is that about three-fourths

of the kids processed through Washington Juvenile Court grow up to be

adult criminals. Public pressure forced her to issue her first report

last month, after more than two years on the bench.

Judge Cockrill is a typical Fair Deal beneficiary. She graduated from

the University of Tennessee in 1939, then got her legal experience with

the OPA. Figure out how that qualifies her to sit as a juvenile judge.

Before her appointment, a couple of years ago, by President Truman, she

had never tried a case in juvenile court. Her present calendar calls

for about 60 cases a day, including bastardy, nonsupport and parental

responsibility.

The previous incumbent on the bench was Faye L. Bentley, who

voluntarily committed herself to St. Elizabeth’s Hospital--for Mental

Disorders--for treatment in 1948. This is a course we recommend to some

other judges.

Convicted juvenile delinquents are sent to the National Training School

for Boys, the National Training School for Girls, and the Industrial

Home School.

The Department of Justice estimates three of every four graduates

of these reformatories become adult criminals. And this though the

Training School for Boys, known as “The Hill,” goes in for all modern

techniques and dodads, such as plastic surgery, psychotherapy and

psychology. There are church facilities, athletics, television, radio

and musical instruments. The boys are taught shoemaking, cooking,

farming and other trades. The school specializes in group therapy,

which has its advantages and its absurdities. Sometimes an entire group

can be spoiled by one or two tough young kids who become ringleaders.

Except in the Negro sections, Washington has been spared the scourge

of kid gangs. There are no major foreign-born settlements in town.

Therefore the white kids seldom organize into mobs. Juvenile

delinquency in other cities is often blamed on Italian, Irish, Jewish,

Mexican and Puerto Rican under-age gangs.

But organization seems to be coming into fashion. While these lines

were being typed, three local men were attacked and brutally beaten by

a gang of 12 teensters in the 700 block, 6th Street, NW, apparently

for the fun of it. The victims said the boys shouted insults at them

from the sidewalk as they drove past. The three stopped and got out

of the car. The gang then swarmed on them, beat them with bottles,

belt-buckles, brass knuckles and improvised blackjacks.

Wherever young white criminals work together they are more often

prone to choose school or college mates, or members of the same

boys’ clubs as buddies. For instance, police broke up the exclusive

“Weekend Burglars” gang, whose activities had stirred up residents

of an exclusive NW residential section when they discovered that the

criminals were home on leave on weekend passes from a military academy

in Maryland. The three boys, the oldest 17, all came from wealthy

families. Their method of “cracking” a home was this:

They would ring a doorbell; if no one answered, they cut through the

screen and smashed the glass in the door. Inside the house, they

ransacked it for three articles, taking nothing else. Playfully they

would toss furniture helter-skelter and break china. The money they

spent. The whiskey they drank. The stolen guns they showed off with.

Kids of all ages and both sexes and races are smoking reefers in

prodigious quantities. These are easily obtainable from peddlers who

work outside the schools, and inside some schools, from students,

themselves. The current price for the weeds to school-children is 50

cents each, sometimes three for a dollar.

The young dope-fiends are not confined to any neighborhood of the

city or to any economic class. One high school in the area, attended

by children whose parents are in the upper brackets, is reported to

have 95 per cent addiction. A major kid crime element is marijuana.

Youngsters go on from it to more potent narcotics, then commit petty

crimes to obtain the funds to buy the drugs. Reefers and other dope

sharply bring out latent lawlessness.

High school athletic events have become a scandal. Bootleggers purvey

liquor openly in the stands. Hundreds of stinking-drunk youngsters are

swept out of the stadiums after every game.

Professional gamblers attend these games and make book without any

pretense, taking bets from the kids of from 25 cents up and giving

tickets in return.

Neighborhood stores adjacent to schools also purvey bootleg liquor and

take bets from the juveniles, not only for their own school games, but

on the horses and numbers.

Juvenile delinquency is almost as bad in the suburbs. There kids have

cars, and “hot rod” races are common.

Youngsters ape their elders when they see the callousness of parents

to the processes of law. Laxity, favoritism, New Deal “liberalism,” a

general spirit of contempt for law enforcement are reflected in the

growing generation. The solid virtues are “old hat.” Youth is on a

rampage.

Washington has no monopoly on young criminals, but it has more of them

per capita than any other city in the nation.

Lame-brains like to point out that only colored people are confined to

“slums” in Washington; that no whites live in ghettos in the capital.

If so, how come that juvenile delinquency among the whites is as

startling as among the blacks, more so, in fact? As reported elsewhere

in this book, Washington’s crime rate leads the nation. It is all the

more startling to discover how many of these crimes are committed by

children.

19. BOOZE AND BOTTLES

Washingtonians imbibe three times as much as you do, friend voter.

Except for a few silly restrictions, no place in the country offers

as many inducements to the potential alcoholic. The answer is, 14,151

drunks last year created a jail “housing crisis.” The number more than

doubled in the last five years. Liquor consumption of the District

is three times the U. S. average. Every resident, including new-born

infants, soaked up almost four gallons of hooch last year.

Even allowing for thirsty tourists, conventioners, and Virginia and

Maryland commuters, Washington drinks more than any other U. S. city,

including dissolute New York and debauched Chicago.

This is the place where price control was invented, yet the District

has no peacetime minimum price law on bottled goods. You can buy

standard brands for a dollar less than anywhere else. Many unnamed

whiskeys and gins are cheap; it doesn’t pay to cook your own. Whiskey

costs less than $2.50 a fifth, and gin can be bought for $1.75. Yet the

bootleg business is a major industry. Millions of gallons sold in the

District, on which no tax was paid, swell the known figures.

The liquor control situation is an anomaly. Like the District of

Columbia, itself, the liquor laws were born of compromise, this between

Congressmen from the wet and bone-dry states.

You can drink hard liquor in restaurants and cocktail lounges, but only

when sitting at a table. Beer and wines may be dispensed over the bar,

but not to standees. You’ve got to find a stool. Some genius figured

you can’t get plastered sitting down, forgetting that many who drink

and sit can’t stand up again.

Hard liquor may not be sold on Sundays, though beer and wine can be.

Bars can remain open until 2 A.M. every night except Saturday and

Sunday, when they must shutter promptly at 12. You can’t line drinks

on your table; anything in your possession at the closing hour will

be swept out of your hand. Most places issue the last call 15 minutes

before the limit and in that final quarter-hour there are wild

drinking scenes as customers try to get drunk all at once.

Liquor for off-premise consumption is sold in bottle stores, of which

there are about 350. They close at nine on weekdays and at midnight

on Saturdays and all day Sundays. A package store license costs $815

a year, but it will cost you $50,000 to buy one, as the ABC Board has

frozen the rolls.

Those who can’t get a bun on by closing time have no trouble locating

an oasis after the curfew. At this writing there are 613 so-called

bottle-clubs running in the District, in addition to hundreds of gin

flats in Black Town, where almost any cab driver will steer you.

Bootleggers work certain street corners, where you can buy bottle goods

after hours.

The legal age minimum is 18 for beer and 21 for hard stuff, but this

law, like almost all other rules and regulations, is breached more

often than honored.

Citizens and Congressmen seek sporadically to rationalize local liquor

laws, in hope of cutting down violations. But the dry bloc buries the

bills in committees. Everyone was surprised when the House District

Affairs Committee managed to bring up a bill permitting sale until two

on Saturday nights. This turned out to be a piece of parliamentary

jockeying in the fight against the President’s FEPC Bill, of all

things. That law, obnoxious to Southerners, would have come up for a

vote unless one with legislative priority could be sent in ahead. And

that bill, according to the calendar, was a proposed law to liberalize

drinking habits in the District. So the Southerners brought it up,

side-tracked the FEPC, and, a couple of weeks later, when it came time

to vote on the booze act, roundly routed it.

The thirsty visitor finds it easy to find a bottle-club and become a

full-fledged drinking member on the spot. The names, locations and

owners of these after-hour spots vary from day to day. Occasionally,

after clean-ups, all or most close for a couple of weeks or a couple of

months. As these words were written the District was recovering from

its most painful drought, brought on by revelations before the District

Crime Investigating Committee, headed by Attorney Fischbach.

The front-page stories forced the cops and U. S. Attorney Fay to close

some joints. Others lay low awhile. A murder in the Hideaway Club

didn’t help, either.

We made an intensive study of bottle-clubs. Of the score or more

we visited, we found only one apparently operating legitimately and

according to law. That was the Lyre’s Club, about which more later. Of

the 600-plus such clubs in Washington, it is possible that a few adhere

to the book, but we didn’t hear of them.

On paper, bottle-clubs are supposed to be membership organizations,

incorporated for social and benevolent purposes. Members bring their

own liquor, which is held for them, their names on the labels. The

clubs sell setups and food.

Charlie Ford, a Washington attorney to whom we will have occasion to

tip our hats in much more detail later, is the lawyer for a number of

clubs. He officiated at their births.

Here’s how most of them really work. Regular patrons, i.e., “members,”

are supposed to pay annual dues of about $10, depending on the club,

but most regulars pay nothing. Transients, i.e., guests, are charged a

door-fee of one or two dollars, depending on the club.

Setups are sold, to those who bring their own liquor, at a nominal

price of 35 cents and up. If you haven’t your stuff parked or with you,

most clubs will sell it to you under the counter or advise you it can

be had from a guy seated in front of the entrance in a car.

These clubs are incorporated as non-profit private enterprises, not

required to pay Federal amusement taxes even when they provide floor

shows and dancing. Nor need they have ABC liquor licenses, because they

are supposed not to be selling.

Many of them operate as follows: The prospective owner or owners and

a couple of their friends or employes incorporate as a social or

benevolent organization. The real owner then rents and furnishes the

premises, which he in turn sublets to the so-called social club at a

rent which will approximate all the “take” from membership and door

charges. The “club” thereupon turns over the kitchen, the sale of

setups and the hat-checking and cigaret stand to the real proprietor,

as a concession, in return for a token payment, which in turn goes back

to the proprietor with the rent.

In clubs that sell liquor illegally or provide gambling, records of

such activities are not kept. The proceeds go directly into the owner’s

pocket. If raided or threatened by cleanup drives, the clubs disband.

The owner organizes a new club under the same terms and repeats the

process.

A new twist is being added since the Fischbach exposé. Some club

proprietors are making deals with units of legitimate bodies, such as

veteran groups, labor unions, etc., whereby the clubs share some of

the profits. One, the Amvets, closed after the Hideaway shooting, its

Charter lifted by the national organization.

Bottle-clubs find customers in a variety of ways. Some employes of

licensed night clubs and restaurants hand out guest-membership cards

to patrons who inquire where they can go after two. These steerers

write their names on the cards and draw a kickback for every customer,

usually a dollar a head.

Many cab drivers shill for the bottle-clubs, as well as for gin flats.

Cab drivers’ pay varies with the size of the party. They sometimes

get as much as $5 a haul. They are the chief source of prospective

patronage for the colored bottle-clubs. More than 500 after-hour spots

in Washington are operated by Negroes or in the Negro district. All

cater to blacks and whites. The twenty to thirty white bottle-clubs

running are segregated as to Negro musicians and actors. In one club

we saw three pretty blonde girls with two Negro men. They were all

reefer-smokers, palpably.

Cabbies who hustle for the bottle-clubs not only do so in front of

hotels and licensed cabarets and restaurants, but try to pirate

customers away from opposition clubs. When they see a prospect waiting

for the peephole to open, they tout him away “to a better place, where

you won’t have any trouble.” The Hideaway, in Georgetown, depended

almost entirely on such maneuvers, as it is far out and off the beaten

track.

The pirates were acting so brazenly, police stepped in to curb the

practice by giving tickets to drivers parked at strategic spots. The

law requires cabs to cruise at all times, except in posted hack-stands,

which are only outside major hotels.

Food, dancing, entertainment, and often dames are for sale at the

clubs. Sometimes waitresses are available, but they work until 6 in the

morning, by which time the average rounder has forgotten all about it.

The price for a $10 girl picked up in a club is $20.

Some provide craps, stud poker and other games. The night we were

there, a crap game ran on the top floor of the Atlas Club, on

Pennsylvania Avenue, two blocks from the White House, and at the

Stage-crafters Club, another hangout of General Harry Vaughan. The

Atlas applied for a private club liquor license, which would permit

legal sales, but the application was held up by the ABC Board until

the club president, Sidney Brown, who was abroad, could return for a

personal appearance. It happened that Mr. Brown, the sponsor of this

after-hour spot, was abroad because he is an employe of the State

Department. Some months previously, gambler Gary Quinn said he was the

president of the Atlas. The license was denied, so it is still running

as a bottle-club.

Among the after-hour clubs operating at this writing are the Top Side,

501 12th Street, NW; the Guess Who, 811 L Street, NW; the Acropolis,

719 9th Street, NW (patronized by Greeks); the Culinary Arts, 307

M Street, NE, and the Yamasee, 1214 U Street, NW. The last two are

colored clubs.

The most notorious of the after-hour-spots speaks, the Gold Key, was

closed by Committee revelations. It has since reorganized as the

Downtown Club, with some of the same characters. Most of the others

are patronized by unimportant transients or night workers, such as

musicians, waiters and bartenders.

The Gold Key got the cream and they’re back again. Among its regular

patrons were local sports, including playboy Senators and officials.

Waitresses there made as much as $150 a week in tips, whereas they are

lucky to knock down $50 in other places. When lawyer Charlie Ford drew

up the papers for the Gold Key, its original organizers were Albert

Glickfield, alias Al Brown, Patsy Meserole, and Harry Conners, his

brother-in-law. Meserole is a former New York gangster, one of the last

surviving members of the late Legs Diamond mob. Glickfield is a gambler

and associate of Frank Erickson. The accountant for this after-hour

club was Henry W. Davis, a division head in the Accounting Division

of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, an agency of the U. S.

Government.

Meserole left the Gold Key to open the Stagecrafters, 433 3rd Street,

NW, and took a lot of the top political and theatrical business with

him. His partner is Dominic Ferone, another ex-New York mobster.

General Vaughan is a patron. It sells liquor openly and provides

gambling, and waitresses will get women for them as wants ’em. Meserole

testified under oath that many Congressmen and Senators were customers.

When Congressional investigations indicated the club was operated

illegally, it was shuttered until the heat was off. But so heavy was

the influence of its owners, through business ties with members of the

New York Syndicate and the exalted position of its patrons, that as

soon as the investigation shut down, the club reopened, not quietly,

but brazenly.

We have before us an ad in a Washington daily which reads:

NOTICE....

Members and Their Guests

STAGECRAFTERS CLUB

NOW REOPENED

Same Place....

Same Policy....

Same Committees....

Same Benefits....

Membership Drive Now On

Help Get New Members!

EDWARD P. MESEROLE, Secretary

The Stagecrafters is the haunt of unsavory “introducers” who make

contacts with wealthy chumps there, offering girls and gambling. Police

recently arrested a lout, who, they charged, had become acquainted

with William H. Engelmann, a photo-lithographer from Baltimore, out

for a fling with friends in the Stagecrafters. The prisoner suggested

a blackjack game and took him to a room in the Ambassador Hotel, which

is owned by Gwen Cafritz’s husband. Engelmann was soon a $1,500 loser,

and asked his host to cash a check. He said he would, at the hotel

cashier’s booth, and left with Engelmann’s check. Engelmann became

suspicious when the man didn’t return after an hour. He found the man

had checked out. When the fellow was caught, police said, they found on

him a deck of marked cards.

Another bottle-club that opened after the adjournment of the

Congressional investigation is on the site of the Palm Grill, at 14th

and Q, under a new name, the Sunrise.

The shuttered Turf-and-Grid was reborn as the aforementioned Amvets.

The Turf’s owner, Richard O’Connell, has been employed by the

government since the beginning of the New Deal, in such agencies as the

original NRA, the Department of the Interior (under “Honest Harold”

Ickes) and more recently in the Red-infested Wages and Hours Division

of the Department of Labor.

Another club that operates on and off is the United Nations Social

Club. When we visited it, its chief social activity was a crap game.

Another is the Crystal Cavern.

When George P. Harding, a 39-year-old gunman and underworld fingerman,

was shot to death by Joe Nesline, notorious Prohibition era bootlegger,

in the Hideaway--an aftermath of last year’s conquest of Washington by

the Mafia--Washington’s bottle-clubs took another shellacking.

Congressmen beat their breasts, newspapers shrilled, the DA promised

action and the cops vowed to close all the joints. For a few days a

couple of clubs went easy; at this writing most were again in action.

The Hideaway, scene of the crime, was reported “closed for good” by the

precinct captain, but Joseph Horowitz, an owner, announced “business as

usual” while the cops were telling everyone the premises were empty. At

press time, the present and future status of the club was in doubt.

Legitimate clubs are a necessity until the District authorities amend

the outmoded liquor laws. One which we liked is the Lyre’s. Most

members of this club are night-workers whose hours are such that they

could never get a drink or relax if they had no place to go after

2 A.M. Among them are musicians of the big hotels and night clubs,

waiters, waitresses, hatcheck gals, government swing-shift people and

visiting entertainers. We spent considerable time at the Lyre’s and

noted everything was on the square. No patrons were permitted to enter

who weren’t members or their guests, and no drinks were served except

out of members’ bottles.

The Lyre’s is chummy. There’s a mainfloor bar and lounge and a basement

dining-room and dance floor. Most of the musicians in town hang out

there and put on jam sessions all night long. Its hosts are Vince and

Mildred Carr, former Baltimore and Philadelphia night club operators.

They have many friends in show business. The Carrs won’t tolerate

hookers and drunks, allow no soliciting, gambling or hoodlums. But

unfortunately the Lyre’s is unique.

Not all who want to drink late can afford to or can get into or know

about bottle-clubs. Those who spend an evening in a licensed cabaret

and find themselves still sober or out for fun at two, or at midnight

on Saturday, are up against it. Licensed clubs and cocktail lounges

can’t sell for off-premises consumption. If you tip your waiter

liberally he will dig up an empty Coca-Cola bottle and let you fill it

with the remaining liquor at your table.

Some people who run dry at midnight Saturdays drive to Maryland, where

bars and package-stores close at 2 A.M.

Washington is loaded with bootleggers and blind tigers. We have already

referred to the gin-flats in Black Town, where home-made gin--raw

ethyl alcohol flavored with juniper and sometimes diluted with apple

cider--is sold. Prices are reasonable, as low as 50 cents a drink

and $3 a bottle. The flats, usually five- or six-room affairs, have

juke-boxes. Parlor floors are cleared for dancing. Beds are handy. If

cops come, it’s a private party. But cops don’t come.

We pulled up in our cab to the NE corner of Popner and U Streets, and

waited five minutes. A colored man came over and asked us what we

wanted. He had gin, Scotch and corn. We bought gin, trade-marked, $2.50

for a pint.

David Douglas Davenport, self-styled “Union Station bootlegger,” has

been selling booze in the railroad terminal for years. He charges $5

for a pint of whiskey, which he keeps stashed in an automatic coin

locker. Davenport has a record for court appearances, 115 in one year.

He lost to the law once, and did two years in the District jail. The

day he got out of the can he was in business in Union Station again and

still was at this writing, though arrested again and out on bail.

Many after-hour bootleggers sell legitimate stuff, which they buy at

Washington’s low prices, and retail at 100 or 200 per cent profit.

Hundreds of other bootleggers, especially Negroes, dispense moonshine.

Most of this is acquired from mob sources in Brooklyn and New Jersey,

where the Mafia operates gigantic stills capable of producing thousands

of gallons a day. According to Carroll Mealy, capable and efficient

head of the Alcoholic Tax Unit, the rum-runners take this stuff to

Washington in 1940 Fords, with Cadillac or racing motors in place of

original power. This model is preferred for its carrying capacity,

maneuverability and inconspicuous appearance. The souped-up motors can

hit 120 miles an hour against pursuit.

Much moonshine is made in Washington, though none of the raided stills

was found with a large capacity. The stuff is cooked at 2nd and G

Streets, NW. But legitimate Washington sources supply liquor to be run

into nearby dry and semi-dry states and counties.

Not all who buy from bootleggers get drunk. Some get robbed.

“The tough part about it was that I never got the whiskey,” Army Sgt.

Filmore M. Broom, 41, moaned to police.

He said a Negro offered to sell him a bottle, but when the sergeant

pulled out his wallet, containing $190, to pay, the Negro snatched it

and ran--with the whiskey, too. This happened at 5th and Neal Streets,

NW, and police are looking for a Negro with red suspenders and a white

straw hat. No winter description available.

20. CAFE AU CORN

Foreigners who have never seen the United States dream of beholding

its wonders, of which the first two are New York and Washington. They

envision not the monuments or the Government Printing Office, but a

glittering world capital swirling with diplomats in colorful costumes,

officers in dress uniforms, and pageantry punctuated with dazzling

dames of the haute monde and the demi-monde. For this is the capital

of capitals, and it must have everything, including what none of the

others has--dough.

If there is any spectacular life in Washington, that is not for the

eye of the uninitiated stranger. The days are vapid and the nights are

stupid. Washington is dominated by elected and appointed functionaries

who are schooled to believe they must never be caught having fun.

Therefore, after dark it is more like Paducah than like Paris.

There are many hotel grills and lounges, which are night clubs after a

fashion, and some cafes; but their chief patronage depends on visitors

and government dependents. Both classes are drawn largely from farms

and villages, with only a minor proportion from centers of laughter and

light. Washington’s night life is a dull, dismal and dreary reflection

of our Main Streets, hard cider and juke-box roistering.

The few local sports and the free-fingered lobbyists seek their

pleasure at private parties and behind closed doors of hotel suites,

or fly northward to nearby New York with its El Morocco and the Stork

Club.

The two principal night clubs in Washington are operated by Chinese,

with American shows and dance bands. They are the Lotus and the Casino

Royal.

Both are built for the mass-consumption trade, with popular prices

and acres of dance floors. Hicks and tourists are dance-bugs. Dick

Lam, host at the Lotus, is one of the town’s best-known and best-liked

showmen. He was one of the original founders of the China Doll, in New

York, and has uptown manners and know-how.

The Blue Mirror, around the corner, specializes in hot jive. Kavakos,

as mentioned, features nudes, as does the Players, opposite the Center

Market.

Not only can and do some Washington cabarets get away with stuff that

would land their owners in the clink in New York, but there seems to be

no police control or regulation of acts.

For instance, Billie Holiday, the Negro singer who has served time on

narcotics and prostitution falls, is barred from New York night clubs

through the ukase of the Police License Bureau, which fingerprints all

entertainers and thumbs those with records out of town. But while this

was being written, Miss Holiday was starring in Washington’s Brown

Derby.

Washington caters to visiting theatrical celebrities. Hollywood stars,

to whom the capital spells spotlight, are flattered by attentions of

politicians who, in return for free shows and broadcasts, flatter them.

This racket was invented by President Roosevelt, and, ever since,

theatrical headliners have been welcome luncheon and dinner guests

at the White House. In Washington they generally stay at one of the

five leading hotels and may be found dining or drinking in the lounges

and restaurants of the Mayflower, Carlton, Statler, Shoreham and

Wardman Park. Autograph collecting is not a highly developed hobby in

Washington; but some juvenile half-wits plant themselves outside the

hotels when such celebs are in town.

There is nothing the equivalent of Morocco, 21, Colony, Stork, or Toots

Shor’s. The Mayflower lounge, nicknamed “The Snake Pit,” is that--the

mad gathering-place at cocktail time for the local celebs: the

Senators, lobbyists, army brass and blondest cuties.

Most Washington night-life is as flat as those who patronize it. The

headwaiters are off the beam. The major-domo of the Wardman Park’s

Caribar, typical of most of the town’s, is so provincial he doesn’t

know he could get rich trying to cater to the few spenders that stumble

in. We watched him a whole evening and didn’t see him snare a buck.

Patrons of Washington supper-clubs are lousy tippers. Most smalltown

Americans adhere to a strict ten percent. When they think they can get

away with it, they stiff even that. Captains, headwaiters, cigaret gals

and retiring-room attendants they ignore. Southerners are worse.

We were twitting one Senator from a border state about the free

haircuts the tax-payers provide for the members of the upper house in

their private barber shop. This Senator replied, in all seriousness,

“It’s almost cheaper to go outside. When you get it for nothing, you

gotta tip the barber.”

The best palm-warmers are South American diplomats, who apparently have

no regard for American money. Lobbyists, who like to flash big bills,

especially when they are entertaining impressionable legislators, run

for place.

Few Washington waiters deserve much. The service they give is as

terrible as the tips they don’t get.

Dance floors are crowded with jitterbugs. Rumbas never flowered in

Washington. When a band plays one, flabbergasted hoofers try to jive to

it.

Few clubs or rooms have rules against parties of unescorted women or

stag men. If they did, they’d starve. It is not unusual to see half

the tables in any room surrounded by all males or all females. The

larger popular-priced clubs have signs on the tables reading, “Dancing

permitted with your escort only.” This is a dead letter, or there

wouldn’t be any dancers.

Prices are cheap compared with Gotham’s. A few hotels impose cover

charges when they book expensive name acts.

No room has more than one band, which plays both for the show and

the dancing. During intermissions, the silence is broken by noisy

drunks. Like all towns with early closing, people get loaded early. In

Washington serious guzzling begins at cocktail time. Many of those who

drink are oafs who don’t know how to hold their hooch.

Most Washington saloon-goers are ill-mannered. On Saturday nights, when

the last round is announced at 11:45, many arise as one and walk out,

even in the middle of an act.

Washington has no cafe society. Its gathering places are

utilitarian--for foods and drinks. No warm camaraderie, no light good

fellowship, no wit, no animation. Corny commoners in stereotyped

surroundings. Peoria on the Potomac.

21. CALL ME MADAM

This is a brief brush-off of the social parvenus who scrambled up as

Society scrammed out--through death and Democratic administration.

Faded and forgotten are the days and nights when Washington was ablaze

with social brilliance and the gossip behind the fans reflected the

sturdy foibles and feuds and infidelities of a class in superior strata

of lineage, wealth and those graces which cannot be acquired with

sudden fortune.

Society is always the shadow of one luminous, scintillant, predominant

woman, such as Mrs. Potter Palmer was in Chicago and the dowager

Vanderbilt remained until senility denatured her in New York. In

Washington that woman, even though she seldom entertains or permits

herself to be entertained, must be the wife of the President. She

need not be a Dolly Madison. She can be a recluse, a Quaker like Mrs.

Herbert Hoover; a New England villager, like Grace Coolidge; a grande

dame like Mrs. Benjamin Harrison or an Ohio hick like Mrs. Warren

Harding. But she is the undisputed ex officio queen bee of the social

life of the capital. She sets its tempo, she elevates with a nod and

she extirpates with a frown.

Few Presidents’ wives would have won social preference had their

husbands not squirmed through the labyrinthian catacombs with that

miraculous luck which makes one man what they say any American boy can

become. But once he takes that oath, his lady assumes a crown. Whether

she chooses to wear it or not, she can and must exercise its power over

her realm, Society.

And Society withstood the hostesses of gentlemen, soldiers,

backwoodsmen, a sheriff, a tailor, a school-teacher, a rail-splitter

and a Buchanan. But it could not survive Eleanor Roosevelt.

Here came a woman of blood and millions, married to an equally

high-bred, landed manor squire, perhaps the most charming and dynamic

and handsome of all our Presidents. And the first tap of her flat heels

across the White House threshold led off the funeral march of Society

in the capital.

It is unnecessary to review her attitude and behavior; no First Lady

was ever so unendingly publicized. That she became invested with

certain homely and all-wooly virtues by the worship of millions is

precisely why she choked the last breath out of social tradition with

her Negro friends, her boondoggling, sweaty indigents, her professional

Socialists, her dedicated slum-house guardians of gutter garbage, and

her antics as the militant apostle of democracy and equality. The

bedrock of Society is inequality, the existence and recognition of an

aristocracy.

Whether it is good or not for fundamental Americanism, it was as lethal

to the remnants of a baronial stratum in Washington as the Emancipation

Proclamation was below the Mason and Dixon line.

No female in American history had ever been so despised in the

drawing-rooms and so venerated in the kitchens and furnished rooms. But

that hatred within the walls of the elegant was not enough to sustain

even a social underground. A few dauntless matrons held out. They tried

to continue executing the motions from memory, but they perished on the

inglorious field of futility. They were the last. There were no wounded

and no prisoners taken. A dynasty that had flourished for 150 years had

been wiped out as were the Romanoffs.

And, surely, Bess Truman was not sent from above for the Restoration.

From the founding of the city until the recent demise of Evelyn Walsh

McLean, who owned the Hope Diamond, Washington was celebrated for its

intrigue, romance and scandal in high Society.

Eleanor “Cissie” Patterson and Mrs. McLean were the last of the city’s

great hostesses. Mrs. Patterson retired from the tea-table wars when

she became active in newspaper work. With her death, and that of Mrs.

McLean, the Washington Society pages were taken over by the climbers.

One needs no long memory to remember when social leaders from

everywhere converged on this city. Dupont Circle was Fifth Avenue

refined and rarefied, the cream of established snobbery, wealth,

officialdom and diplomacy.

Ambitious minglers from the Middle West, such as the Pullmans, the

Leiters and others, bypassed New York’s fatuous 400 and came directly

to Washington.

Social history there begins with beauteous Elizabeth Patterson, of

Baltimore, who wed Napoleon’s younger brother. Its first tasty scandal

was whispered in Jefferson’s time, about the French Ambassador who was

reputed to have married his jailer’s daughter, who had saved him from

the guillotine.

Early Washington Society was titillated by duels among high personages.

The duel on the Hudson shore in which Alexander Hamilton was killed

by Aaron Burr, in 1804, was talked about for years, until 1820, when

a new gory sensation arose to take its place: the mortal wounding of

Commodore Stephen Decatur in an arranged meeting of gentlemen across

the District line in Maryland.

After a hundred years, Washington still talks about Peggy Eaton and

President Jackson’s Kitchen Cabinet. But, today’s mundane morsels will

make no interesting reading, leave no spice for the raconteur.

Society is on the wane everywhere. Taxes, Communist and New Deal

propaganda, the high cost of living, make it virtually impossible to

keep up huge menages. Now only rich labor leaders, black marketeers,

gangsters and grafters can afford the expense.

There are a handful of rich dowagers like Mrs. Jay Borden Harriman and

Mrs. Gifford Pinchot, but they are out of the running.

Cornelia Pinchot only entertains the “intellectuals,” and they are

legion in Washington. Where you find an intellectual in the District

you will probably find a Red. Mrs. Pinchot does not know it, but the

Commies have taken the elderly hostess over and are making hay with her

name.

She lives in a Gay Nineties mansion on Scott Circle, where she often

throws parties for the National Association for the Advancement of

Colored People, attended by white and colored college professors,

pansies and political economists. Mrs. Pinchot looks her age, though

her hair is dyed the most amazing shade of carrot-red.

Mrs. Robert Low Bacon, the hostess of the Republican intellectuals,

rarely hits the gossip columns. Even Evie Robert and her mother, Mrs.

Helen Walker, have been dormant for years. Evie, the wife of “Chip”

Robert, a brilliant political wire-puller, does not and never did

give parties for social advantage. They were to advance the political

prospects of her husband.

Today’s Washington Society has no class levels. All you need is dough

and the urge and the energy to spend it on freeloaders. If you can snag

more important political people to your parties in any one calendar

season, from October to May, than your neighbor, you are Number 1

social leader, regardless of whether you wore shoes before you were

twenty.

Perle Mesta, a determined hostess who was lucky enough to have been

gracious to Harry Truman when he was a secondary Senator from Missouri,

is living proof of the potency of the Washington cocktail party. Her

reward was the appointment as Minister to Luxembourg.

But Mrs. Mesta is by no means the only social climber in Washington,

though she is and was the most publicized.

We would like to tell you about Mrs. Gussie (Gushie) Goodwin, formerly

a Chicagoan. She is the wife of Federal Judge Clarence Norton Goodwin,

who sentenced Harry Bridges in the Communist leader’s first round

before the courts. They were friends of the Woodrow Wilsons, which gave

them some kind of claim to social standing. Meanwhile, Judge Goodwin

started to go deaf, which handicapped him as a social figure. Gussie’s

star was setting.

Then came a turn to her fortunes. She met a charming Latin gentleman,

Ramon Ramos, at a cocktail melee. He was a professor of Spanish. Gussie

got an inspiration. She was going to cement Latin-American relations

and her own social relations. She started a private class. Her little

study group met once a week at her home. During the first year, there

were eight women in it, each of whom chipped in a buck towards the

professor’s fee.

Gussie began calling the wives of the more important officials and

Senators, and invited them to join her group. She was very careful to

see that it was equally divided between Republicans and Democrats.

One of the ladies who gladly became a member was the wife of Senator

Harry Truman. After the Trumans succeeded to the White House, the

Secret Service wouldn’t allow Mrs. Truman to go to the lessons at

Gussie’s house, so all the meetings were moved to the White House,

though Gussie continued to be its leading spirit. Mrs. Goodwin was very

offish. When Dean Acheson resigned as Undersecretary of State, his wife

was not asked back.

Meanwhile, Professor Ramos showed he had hidden talents. His hobby

is cooking. The ladies were charmed. So an extra feature was added.

Each week the program was expanded to include a luncheon, held at a

different woman’s house. The Professor masterminded the menu, while the

ladies did the cooking and waited on the others. Mrs. Truman came to

these parties and pitched in with the work. The luncheons were run on a

Dutch treat basis, and each woman continued to pay her dollar fee per

lesson.

By this time there were sixty or seventy ladies in the group, including

good Queen Bess. Some took private Spanish lessons on the side. Mrs.

Truman was one of the few who was really serious and wanted to learn

the language. Most of the others apparently came to the meetings

because the Professor had the personality to hold “menopause Minnies.”

Among the students were a few who thought they should come along for

the ride without paying for lessons or the luncheon, because of their

social position. One was Mrs. Robert Patterson, wife of the then

Secretary of War. Mrs. Truman always paid.

When the Professor began to get too much publicity, Gussie busted it

up. After all, the whole purpose was to make Gussie a figure, not the

Professor. Gussie even went so far as to ask newspaper society writers

to use her name instead of his, saying Mrs. Truman had complained about

the Professor’s publicity, which was not accurate.

Anyway, no one learned much, but that wasn’t the Prof’s fault.

In the absence of Madame Mesta, Gwendolyn Cafritz is ballyhooed as

Washington’s leading hostess. She is a social climber who invites only

those in office or who she thinks are due to be in. She sadly misjudged

the 1948 elections. She excommunicated the Democrats. So she had a

hell of a time recouping her position. She still has her eye on the

Republicans in 1952.

Compared to Madame Mesta, Mrs. Cafritz is a good-looking woman, in

early middle age. She may have been a raving beauty when she was a

slim, black-haired girl.

Her husband, Morris Cafritz, is a millionaire Washington real estate

owner. His office, in the Ambassador Hotel, which he owns, is next

door to the hotel’s High Hat cocktail lounge, which is favored by the

pick-up gals as a hunting preserve. Gwen drives her husband slightly

nuts with her parties. He would prefer to play poker, at which he is

adept. A lot of hogwash has been written about the Cafritzes since they

zoomed into political and social prominence. Gwen was born in central

Europe and may or may not have been the daughter of a college professor

or a nobleman, as the stories go.

Cafritz’s father ran a grocery store in Washington. The son’s early

days were spent in a bowling alley which he owned and operated. Then he

turned to real estate in boomtime and found the Midas touch.

Gwen’s enemies spread catty stories about her. One says she was a

Broadway chorus-girl before she met her husband. If she was, she

must’ve been a beaut. The other is that she was employed in Cafritz’s

bowling alley. The researcher finds it difficult to separate the truth

from the chaff. There are no clippings about her early days in the

Washington newspaper morgues. Cissie Patterson was her close friend. It

is reported she destroyed the clippings in her own library and asked

the publishers of Washington’s other papers to do likewise.

Meanwhile, Mmes. Mesta and Cafritz had better look to their laurels,

because a new assault is being made on Washington’s social citadel,

this time by a bullet-proof princess--Tawhida Halim, a cousin of King

Farouk of Egypt, and immensely rich. She and Frank Rediker, a denizen

of Gotham’s cafe society set, were recently wed, repeat engagements for

both.

The princess then acquired a mansion at 2339 Massachusetts Avenue, in

which she and her bridegroom began to give lavish parties, designed to

outdo any of the Cafritz woman’s, with the elan that goes only to those

born to the purple.

(_INSIDE STUFF_: The Redikers’ social campaign is being managed by

Leonard McBain, elegant publicist and society arbiter of New York’s

plush El Morocco, where the snootiest people on earth gather. Leonard

has steered royalty before. He could do marvels for Tawhida.)

Since the old aristocrats died or went into hiding, it is easier to get

into Washington’s society columns, if you care to horn in with inferior

white trash.

Almost anyone, including justices of the United States Supreme Court,

will go to any party to which they are invited. Many who aren’t invited

will also show up. The trick nowadays is to entertain lavishly and

often, and sooner or later the papers will have to write about you,

because there is nothing else to write about.

Ambitious hostesses buy the “Social List of Washington, D.C.,” and

invite names from it at random. The odds are 90 percent will show up,

but the odds are as high that 95 percent of the 90 per cent aren’t

social. This list competes with the standard “Social Register.” It

contains most of the names in the latter, plus an amplification

consisting of prominent politicians and diplomats. It is published by

Carolyn Hagner Shaw. Mrs. Shaw told us a “board” selects the candidates

for entry in the book. The board, however, is highly secret. One

Washington newspaper insists it is as mythical as the balanced budget.

Mrs. Shaw claims no one ever tells her why a name is added or dropped.

If you thought Maj. Gen. Harry Vaughan was part of the _crème de la

crème_ of the Washington social whirl, you’d better change your mind.

He isn’t any more. Not if you take the word of Mrs. Shaw. She omits the

military aide to the President from her fancy green directory of the

socially prominent. Mrs. Shaw doesn’t know why General Vaughan isn’t

socially correct any more. She blamed it on the anonymous board.

About 200 who sought to make the list were turned down. Again no

reasons given. Many bought copies at 12 bucks, hoping to see their

names in. They didn’t.

However, Guy George Gabrielson and William Marshall Boyle, respective

chairmen of the Republican and Democratic National Committees, were

among the new names added this year. The book also has the _dernier

cri_ on what to do about cards. They should not be left at Blair House,

but given to the guard at the northwest gate of the White House.

“A courtesy call should be made on the President and his family once a

year. This is a mark of respect that should not be neglected.” (This

was before two Puerto Rican enthusiasts tried it.)

Mrs. Shaw reminds her readers “During World War II, formal observance

of the conventional days set aside for leaving cards on various

officials was canceled. A return to formal recognition of these

traditional days has yet to take place, and it is doubtful that it will

ever again become obligatory to leave cards on certain days.”

As to protocol, it notes: “It is well to remember personal friendships

do not count. The rank of one’s guest must be the deciding factor.”

If you are not sure of the comparative ranking of any guest, it is

better not to invite him. Many of the biggest social wars were caused

by such things. Still remembered is the feud between Alice Roosevelt

Longworth, then wife of the Speaker of the House, and Dolly Gann,

sister and hostess of Vice-President Curtis, over their respective

precedence.

Officials and embassies receive advice on protocol matter from the

State Department, but non-official hostesses are on their own. Mrs.

Shaw supplies a service which gives assistance in seating.

An important fixture in Washington is the debutante party. These

have almost disappeared in New York, where each year’s crop of young

hopefuls is introduced in a mass get-together. In Washington, the

girl who doesn’t get a dinner-dance on her own is a social slob.

Washington’s Elsa Maxwell for these parties is Mrs. Curt Hetzel, who

succeeded Mrs. Merriam. Mr. Hetzel is a pianist in a restaurant--Ted

Lewis’. Mary Stuart Price, a young woman, handles some debby parties as

a sideline.

Club life is another sacred institution. Many important political

decisions are reached at such places as the Burning Tree Club, the

Chevy Chase Club, and the Sulgrave, famous for the McCarthy-Pearson

battle of the century--more maybe than in the Senate and the House

cloakrooms. The 1925 F Street Club, where ranking members of the

Senate give parties, was once the exclusive home of Mrs. Laura Curtis

Gross, who lent her house for parties. It is now a sanctuary for the

whipped-cream of Washington society. Its dining-room seats about 60 and

the club’s membership is strictly limited.

Washington’s newest aristocracy is evidenced by stone piles. The wife

of the man who can build the biggest and plushiest office building is

the reigning social leader.

Those currently with the highest batting average are Morris Cafritz, of

course, Gus Ring, Garfield Cass and Preston Wire, all with gleaming new

structures named after themselves. Much of the money of the real estate

_nouveau riche_ came from wise investments in Black Belt housing, or

from refugee sources.

Until very recent years the august justices of the United States

Supreme Court remained aloof from social functions, but during the

days of the New Deal and Fair Deal, when the court was packed with

soft-shirted politicians, the custom changed. Judges like Douglas are

avid party-goers. The late Frank Murphy was a mixer with true CIO

deportment, a hoofer and Saturday night sport. The result is that the

opening of the fall season is now coincident with the convening of

the Supreme Court. Then the jurists can meet the typists and clink

cocktails with mobsters’ mouthpieces.

The easiest way to get into what is called “society” is to be elected

or appointed into it. Every ex-cow-puncher, dirt-farmer, smalltown

lawyer and big-city ward-heeler who now has an “Honorable” in front of

his name is as social as those who were born into it, bought their way

in, or got in through a diplomatic passport.

All 96 Senators and 435 Representatives, nine cabinet officers,

countless under-secretaries, assistant secretaries, judges, department

heads and military brass are social, with a listing in the directory,

though some never wore ties or socks until they got to Washington.

These ex-officio lions became the life of the party in 1933.

Washington once thrived on dirt in high places. Grover Cleveland’s

bastard child didn’t interfere with his electoral or social standing.

Nor was Woodrow Wilson ruined when a certain lady was booted out of

Washington by the Secret Service. President Harding’s house on K Street

is still remembered. There’s nothing like it now. And his village

sweetie and her baby have vanished. President Truman’s poker games are

penny-ante, not the lusty ones of yore.

The late Roosevelt administration is credited with more snappy spice

than any other in history. Out-of-school tales were told about most of

his children. The President and his wife were not spared by gossipers.

But President Truman’s personal life is treated as dull and austere.

His advisers are farmers or aging professors. They were pirates in the

first Roosevelt decade. The sports, drinkers and rounders who held high

cabinet and military rank then are either gone or too old. Now most

official vice is grubby stuff, with call-girls supplied by a protected

vice-ring, about which nothing is ever heard, and which no Congressman

or Senator will admit he knows.

President Truman’s pal, General Harry Vaughan, is comparatively quiet

now, held to mama’s apron-strings. There’s gambling for him and the

President in the White House. There’s no liquor shortage, either. The

President likes his bourbon. He never smokes. He will not countenance

whoring in his official family, though he doesn’t put detectives on

official tails.

Probably the only real sport in town is Senator Warren Magnuson.

The others save their skylarking for New York. When they do it in

Washington, they are as frightened as schoolboys at it, and often as

unimaginative.

What a change from the Roosevelt days, when sex was the prerogative

of all government officials, and usually paid for by the grateful

tax-payers! Uncle Sam even had to help Harry Hopkins do it. A

monkey-gland doctor grafted sex virility on Hopkins and two other

aging administration stalwarts, one of whom recently resigned from a

little-cabinet post.

The doctor billed the wealthiest of the three $3,000 for each

treatment. He charged the other two $1,000. Hopkins had already stiffed

the medico for three operations when he asked for the fourth, in view

of his pending marriage to a young woman. The doctor’s verdict was no

money, no honeymoon. But Hopkins had a way out. He suggested the doctor

needed a vacation anyway, so he offered to get him an appointment to

make an inspection trip to army medical bases in the West Indies,

with all expenses paid for self and wife, plus $35 a day fee until

the $3,000 was paid. The doctor took the trip and Hopkins took the

honeymoon.

High military brass is quiet today compared to the lusty generals and

admirals of the ’20s and ’30s. Washington is still talking about how

General Pershing, then chief of staff, ordered young General Douglas

MacArthur to the Philippines after MacArthur married Mrs. Louise

Cromwell Brooks, of the Philadelphia Stotesbury clan. Mrs. Brooks,

after her divorce from her first husband, met “Black Jack” Pershing

abroad. When she returned to America, she became his official hostess

in Washington. She was 25 to his 60. Two months after their wedding,

in 1922, the MacArthurs were shipped to the Philippines. Washington

cats said Pershing sent his successful young rival into exile to get

even. He had also exiled the captain of the Army polo team, who was

attentive to the rich, beautiful Louise. She is now Mrs. Alf Heiberg,

the proud owner of Washington’s only private atom-bomb shelter, which

she constructed under her Georgetown Mansion.

The late General of the Armies, a widower, was quite a man with the

women. He kept a Roumanian babe and her mother at the Shoreham Hotel

for 20 years.

“Thirty” was written to Washington Society when a local paper fired its

social editor because she refused to print the names of Negro hostesses!

22. STRIPED PANTS

Elsewhere, men who wear them bury the dead; here, most of those who

wear them are dead but not buried.

The decadence of the diplomats ran parallel with the fadeout of

society, though not for the same causes. Continental and cosmopolitan

life on Embassy Row was a war casualty.

The democratization and bolshevization of Europe turned their

extra-territorial domains here into tawdry outhouses reflecting

monarchies and empires riddled into busted republics and dictatorships,

either scrabbling for the necessities of life or committed to the

political policy of shabby proletarianism.

The kings are no longer king. The courts of Vienna, Berlin, Moscow,

Madrid, Rome, and of the giddy little Balkan states are now the

headquarters of Labor Parties and worse. The crowned heads of England,

The Netherlands and the Scandinavian kingdoms are kept figureheads.

Diplomatic display is a sin against poverty and the world rash for

unilateral social and economic status.

There is not an embassy in Washington which does not cost far more than

it did 20 years ago. That is because they have become workhouses where

the press of international business is sordid and tremendous. Gone are

the Thursday and Friday open-house hospitalities and grand balls in

Technicolor, animated by gowns and costumes and uniforms of galaxies of

all nations.

“These are difficult and different days,” the deans of diplomacy sigh.

The old spirit has vanished not only from the governments, but from

their representatives, who are living close to the vest, hoarding

precious American dollars against revolution or overturn by popular

vote of their countries. Ambassadors and Ministers are salting away

what they can skim off in Black Belt real estate, farms and U. S.

securities. Some go much further. They are actual dealers in American

goods which they can procure and can send home free of import duty to

their countries. At the same time they blackmarket merchandise here,

where they can buy liquor, cigarettes, cosmetics and other excised

products free of internal revenue tax. For the best whiskey and

champagne they pay $13 a case.

During Prohibition, a small Central American legation was actively in

the rum-running business, importing huge quantities under diplomatic

immunity, then reselling to Jack Cunningham, a local bootlegger. One

day rival gangsters caught up with Cunningham in an alley in I Street,

and there he was knocked off. The killing was hushed up. It would have

involved too many untouchables.

These business opportunities and the degree of austerity which is still

light as compared with most of the globe--all of it except Canada and

South America--have made Washington the choice diplomatic plum, in

place of London and its Court of St. James’.

The diplomats here are timid, precise and industrious. They are fearful

of a false step which might mean recall, for here they are saving

against eventual retirement. But their caution cannot withstand their

greed and some smuggle dope in via their sealed and search-proof

official pouches. They have discovered the glories of the American

installment plan and buy not only land and houses, but cars and

mechanical gadgets unobtainable at home. If they are transferred they

rent out their properties here, which, in the only currency still

reasonably dependable, makes them rich wherever they go, even into

exile.

Another factor which helps reduce the gaiety and glamor of Washington

diplomatic life is the competing diplomatic corps accredited to the

United Nations, in New York. It is gradually getting the ace publicity

breaks.

The question of sex looms big on the agenda of every ambassador. He

prefers all his aides married, with wives in residence, so they will

create no scandal. Many of the younger members of the various staffs,

with modest jobs and salaries, are bachelors. These men are usually

forbidden, under pain of being sent home, to fool around with women in

Washington. Their chiefs, from time to time, order them to go to New

York “to have a party.”

If the press of business is too great to allow for long weekends, when

the ambassador notes that the young men on his staff are getting hot

britches he sends them to Baltimore, where they are unknown and nothing

is barred.

Ambassadors, themselves, and senior diplomats with roving eyes, are

taken care of by the Protocol Division of the State Department, which

also handles the sex problems of visiting foreign brass. That’s a

job for specialists. There are so few girls in Washington glamorous

enough to satisfy VIPs. Sometimes it is not politic to have them

associate with local talent anyway, because of its tieups. So the State

Department has compiled a list of amiable New York models, willing to

come to Washington to spend a night with a foreign dignitary. They

get $200 a night and expenses, from “contingent funds” coming out

of the pockets of the American tax-payers. They are provided on an

ancient reciprocity custom, in exchange for girls supplied to American

junketeers who flit abroad.

This privilege is avidly utilized by American Senators, Congressmen and

other officials, and is one reason why so many find it necessary so

often to fly to Europe, Asia and South America at government expense.

One prominent Republican solon, who never cheats in Washington, was

shown such a good time by a French babe supplied by the Quai d’Orsay,

he ended up in a Paris hospital for five days and has been a sick man

ever since.

When the State Department procures women for foreign dignitaries,

they are given security and VD tests. It is easy to see how delicate

diplomatic relations might be ruptured by a microcosmic thunderclap.

Many embassies have their own “company- and party-girl” lists. They

do not always want the State Department to know what they are doing.

There’s a girl named Mary Karrica, 1471 M Street, NW, who furnishes

them to the diplomatic corps.

One of the major problems of such dialectics for the State Department’s

bright boys arises when a visiting notable plans to tour the country

and doesn’t plan to sleep alone. Protocol then makes contacts through

local police departments, which are expected to know the best

call-house madames in their own towns.

When the young Shah of Persia visited America a couple of years ago,

the State Department had no trouble furnishing desirable girls for him

in Hollywood and Chicago; but in New York, where he wanted a blonde

that night, they had to get him a Powers model. Apparently his majesty

liked it, because the next day he gave her an emerald worth $20,000.

The guy from the State Department who told us about this sighed, “But

the bitch still took our $200!”

Years ago, when Italo Balbo made his triumphal tour of the country, he

turned his nose up at showgals and screen stars. The Italian air ace

insisted on one from the Social Register. The Navy was in charge of

entertaining him. Some of its younger attachés dug up a semi-society

babe from Chicago, who was willing to take a fling with the Italian

aviator. The Navy had no dough for the purpose, so the young officers

chipped in $300 to buy her a watch, and told her it was from Balbo. Now

a graying middle-aged woman, she still prizes the watch “given to her

by the dashing Italian.”

Most foreigners are discreet. Little rough stuff seeps out of the

embassies. The Washington newspapers cover Embassy Row--there are

two--16th Street and Massachusetts Avenue--but usually give their

readers stories about cocktail parties, dances and weddings, instead of

snappy copy.

Being confidential reporters we did not go through the front doors.

What we know is mostly backstairs buzz, out of the kitchens and garages

of the following embassies:

ARGENTINA--The Embassy, at 1815 Q Street, provided Washington with

one of its liveliest tidbits. The real lowdown has not been divulged

before. We got this out of confidential Congressional files, where the

information was testified to under oath.

Nina Lund, niece of ex-Senator White, of Maine, was one of Washington’s

loveliest and most popular dishes. Her husband, Nathaniel Lautrelle, a

local department store executive, suspected her frequent absences from

home were not to go to the beauty parlor, so he and three men, whom he

engaged, followed her to 3030 O Street, NW. Those with Lautrelle were

Lt. Joseph Shimon, wire-tap expert of the Metropolitan Police who was

recently under Congressional investigation; Joseph Mercurio, a dope

addict and locksmith, and James Karas, former Pinkerton agent, who

now operates the flower-shop in the Mayflower Hotel. Mercurio sprung

the lock on Apartment 2 and the four entered. They found Nina and an

Argentine Ambassador naked.

Shimon got five grand for his service. Lautrelle and Nina got a

divorce. The Ambassador, sent here originally because Eva Peron fancied

him, went back to Argentina for consultation.

But they have something else to occupy their minds these days. Many

employes and upper attachés of the Argentine Embassy are feathering

their futures by shipping electric refrigerators home, packed as

personal household furniture.

This is simple, as it is not unusual for diplomats to buy enough

personal furniture in the country of their station to furnish their

homes. Hundreds of refrigerators can be packed into such cases, and

each so smuggled brings a premium of $100 in American currency, worth

ten times that in Argentine currency black markets.

BRAZIL--Hospitality in the Embassy, at 3000 Massachusetts Avenue, is in

the best old-fashioned tradition. The Ambassador, Mauricio Nabuco, is a

bachelor. His hostess is his sister, Carolina.

The Ambassador is one of Washington’s best hosts. He constantly

entertains at large formal affairs and at intimate gatherings to which

statesmen, musicians and poets are invited. No scandal attaches to the

Ambassador, but he likes to have pretty women around him. Maybe that’s

why he entertains so much. One 18-year old cutie told us, “Oh, the old

guy is harmless.”

CHINA--There’s little gaiety as we write, in the Embassy at 3225

Woodley Road. But things were not always so. As witness:

Congressman Hale, of Maine (Rep.), is a short, white-haired, pompous

gent, heavy with dignity. Not long ago he attended a formal affair at

the Chinese Embassy.

Suddenly a woman came up behind him and “goosed” him. The legislator’s

dignity exploded with a scream. He turned around to confront his

tormentor. The embarrassed lady apologized. “Oh--I’m sorry--I thought

you were someone else!”

A good-looking, well-knit young man, employed by one of the government

agencies, was showering in the bathroom of the YMCA, where he lived,

some years ago.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw another man in the room, but

thought nothing of it, as the bathroom is public.

When he came out of the shower the other was fixedly staring at him.

Our friend grew embarrassed, and was not especially put at ease by the

other’s appearance. He was an elderly Oriental.

Our friend inquired what was doing. The Oriental, in a singsong voice,

replied:

“You like go bed with rich Chinee lady?”

The chap was going to bop the guy, but first he tried to find out what

it was all about It developed that a high-placed woman in the Embassy

liked American boys, sent her servant to recruit them in places like

the Y, after having them looked over. What a switch on the oldie about

“Is it true what they say about Chinese women?”

The son of a famous Protestant clergyman worked for the Maritime

Commission, where he became friendly with the commercial attachés of

many countries. He found some would take loot. This troubled him. He

discussed it with an older man who had a desk in the same office.

This older fellow used to run errands for Lepke and Gurrah and their

famed Murder, Inc. After Bill O’Dwyer destroyed the ring, he got a job

with Uncle Sam.

He advised the young fellow to grab what he could while the grabbing

was good. So the minister’s son became the bagman for several embassies.

About this time the Chinese bought some gunboats and let out word they

were in the market for repairs in American shipyards. The yards were in

a post-war depression, needed business. Immediately, representatives

called at the Chinese embassy. An official there, who spoke better

English than most of us, mumbled in pidgin and routed all inquiries to

“the young man in the Maritime Commission, in whom we have implicit

faith.”

The young fellow collected more than half a million in cash as the

go-between, then beat it with the loot.

DENMARK--Ambassador Henrick de Kauffman and his family are so proper it

hurts. The Embassy, at 2839 Woodland Drive, is like a morgue.

EGYPT--They are still laughing at this at 2301 Massachusetts Avenue. An

Egyptian officer came to Washington recently on a buying mission. His

embassy bespoke the American authorities to give him the A-1 treatment,

the best. The Navy boys took him to Charleston to see the ships and set

him up in style. The visitor wanted a blonde. But he was black, and

Charleston is down South. This posed a problem. They finally found a

woman, but had to take her in through the back door.

The Egyptian was insulted. He returned home without buying.

FRANCE--No Parisian spice about the Henri Bonnets; however, there is

no doubt the wife of a very exalted member of the staff is a Communist

drop and transmission belt.

Mme. Bonnet has family connections interested in the sale of Lanson

champagne. Important friends and guests pose with her, popping a bottle

of the labeled bubble-water.

Latest to fall for the publicity gag were Averell Harriman and his

wife, photographed with Mme. Bonnet while opening a bottle of the

champagne. It got into all the papers.

GREAT BRITAIN--The embassy, at 3100 Massachusetts Avenue, under the

Right Honorable Sir Oliver Shewell Franks, Knight Commander of the

Bath, C.B.E., and Lady Franks is as dull and austere as England itself.

But a former British Ambassador had as his lover his Russian valet.

ICELAND--Plenty of problems at the Icelandic legation. Lovely Margret

Thors, debutante daughter of Minister Thor Thors, got too friendly with

thrice-divorced Blaine Clark, Washington playboy, so Ma and Pa packed

her off to Iceland, where Clark couldn’t follow without a visa, which

the old man wouldn’t give. Margret promised to be a good girl and was

permitted to return, but has to behave.

IRAQ--As we write, Abdullah Ibraham Bakar, Iraqui minister, has a

headache. That’s because Cham Chum Sesi was arrested for murder in

his basement room of the Iraq Chancellory, 2205 Massachusetts Avenue.

Muhmud Rodani, chief janitor, had been stabbed in the neck with a

kitchen knife. Sesi told police he killed the janitor because he had

made repeated improper advances to him. The diplomatic set talked about

a lovers’ quarrel there when a new homo came from Iraq.

NORWAY--The dean of the Washington Diplomatic Corps is Ambassador

Wilhelm Munthe de Morgenstierne. The Norwegian Embassy, 3401

Massachusetts Avenue, generates no gossip.

SAUDI ARABIA--This country is orthodox Mohammedan, goes in big for

polygamy. The Ambassador, Sheikh Asad Al-Faquih, had no desire to

insult America by bringing extra wives with him, was afraid to affront

his wives by choosing one and leaving the others at home. The result

is there are no women in the Embassy at 2800 Woodland Drive, or in the

homes of any of the attachés. When they want parties, they go to New

York, or to the State Department, where Protocol provides.

SPAIN--America and Spain long exchanged no ambassadors. Don Eduardo

Propper de Callejon, Spanish Minister, was nominally in charge of the

Embassy. The wily Spaniards got around having no ambassador here by

sending Don Jose de Lequerica, former Foreign Minister, as “Inspector

General of all Spanish Embassies in the Western Hemisphere.” However,

the farthest he got from Washington since 1947 was Cuba.

Lequerica is a personality kid and a lobby genius. He entertains

lavishly. His conniving paid off with the Spanish loan, and in time

with full recognition. Ambassador Lequerica had cultivated the law firm

of Sullivan, Cromwell and Dulles, until the 1948 election returns were

in and Dulles was out--as potential Secretary of State. He switched to

Max Truitt, son-in-law of Vice President Barkley. Smart guy.

Minister Propper de Callejon is married to an English Rothschild and is

as proper as his name.

SWEDEN--Ambassador and Mrs. Erik Boehman are no exception to the rule

that all Scandinavian embassies are tame and respectable. Theirs, at

3900 Nebraska Avenue, is.

TURKEY--The Turkish Ambassador, Feridun Cemal Erkin, insists on decorum

in his Embassy at 1606 23rd Street. Turks there put on gloves and

are fully clothed when they go to bed with their wives, an Orthodox

Mohammedan custom.

UNION OF SOVIET SOCIALIST REPUBLICS--The Russians used to be the big

spenders. Parties in the great white Embassy at 1125 16th Street were

Washington’s most brilliant affairs. Invitations were eagerly sought

after. The Russian government paid all expenses of the Ambassador and

his staff, even bridge losses. The Russkies were terrific gamblers and

few locals could go along in games with them. Once when a Washington

businessman was asked to play bridge at 25 cents a point he pleaded,

“I’m only a capitalist, not a proletarian.”

There was always plenty of food and liquor in the Red retreat. All

members of the local press corps were remembered with presents,

especially beluga caviar. But now the Russians don’t go out except to

official functions, and that goes for their satellites, too. And they

travel only in pairs, one to spy on the other.

The Russians and their slave states bring their own females from

abroad, because they’re afraid to trust American women, Communist ones

included, any more. In the good old days, the consecrated American

left-wingers used to go to the Soviet Embassy, where they proved their

party loyalty by getting in the hay with the men from Moscow. After

many frightened American Reds got religion and betrayed the cause,

Soviet diplomats were forbidden to Ostermoor with American women. This

did not cause too much hardship, because most American Communist women

are no dream-girls; even the Russians shrank from them.

Almost every member of the embassy set has a wife or a concubine posing

as a wife with him. In Russian Naval Headquarters, a few handsome young

orderlies are being used. There are said to be few homosexuals in

Russia, where perversion is strictly punished, except for “Kremlin and

world revolution.”

As one humorist remarked, “There are no fags in Russia, because they

like goats; but where can they find goats in Washington?”

As a further check on their own people, members of the Soviet Embassy

staff are not permitted to live alone. Even couples must share

apartments with others.

The Russians have been getting special kid-gloving in Washington since

1933, when the Embassy became the fashionable place to go. At Teheran,

Stalin asked President Roosevelt for permission to set up a shortwave

radio transmitter in the U. S. to enable his boys to contact Moscow

directly. Roosevelt sent a memo to General Marshall, instructing him

to cooperate. Marshall wrote back that the law absolutely forbade any

foreign government to maintain a transmitter in this country. F. D. R.

penciled across it, “Do it anyway.”

Consequently, an entire wing of the Pentagon was turned over to the

Commies, where they sent over a million words a week. The President

ordered Military Intelligence not to try to break the Russian code, but

some officers took their oath to defend the Constitution literally,

and overrode the President without his knowledge. As these words are

being written, thugs of the NKVD are sitting 24 hours a day with

ear-phones and transmitters in Russian Naval and Military headquarters

at Massachusetts Avenue and Kalorama Road.

* * *

When an embassy wife isn’t worrying about a change in government at

home, which may mean the recall of her husband, she’s worrying about

getting her daughter properly married. A lot of the debutantes of

the embassy set are beginning to get American ideas after attending

American schools. The foreign aristocrats don’t like it.

Embassy wives have rarely been known to fool around. On the whole,

embassy children behave themselves. When they don’t, they get packed

off to schools in their own countries.

With the exception of the Iron Curtain diplomatic slums, there is

considerable camaraderie among attachés of the various embassies,

though usually on equal strata. They go dancing in the hotels, visit

at each other’s homes, ride and play golf together. Some time ago, an

attempt was made to start a United Nations Club at R and 19th Streets,

by Meredith Howard, who is the twin sister of Mrs. Teddy Hays. Hays, a

big Democrat and White House intimate, is assistant to Federal Security

Administrator Oscar Ewing, the socialized-medicine man. The idea was to

get younger members of the embassies together, but it blew up when Miss

Howard left town with no public explanation.

When it comes to con games, the diplomats and foreign missions could

show Yellow Kid Weil something.

Washington and New York are constantly being dazzled by members of

foreign missions who come here talking about purchases in hundreds of

millions (the dough to be put up by Uncle Sam).

Salesmen, sure-thing boys and big executives turn on every tap to

entertain the foreigners and grab their business.

Girls are provided, expensive gifts are passed, and plenty of money

changes hands. Then, suddenly, the mission packs up, leaves without

buying, says it can’t find what it wants.

Cooks and butlers in every Washington embassy get kickbacks from the

merchants. Groceries, meats and other household goods are overpriced on

a regular scale for the embassies, with a rebate going monthly to the

aforementioned functionaries.

Lower-echelon foreigners have their wild parties in the Washington

field offices of the United Nations. There is no central installation

of the international body in the capital, but offices are spread out

around the town.

One of the principal places for after-work revelry is in the U.N.

offices in the Longfellow Building, on Connecticut Avenue, where booze

and babes are available every day after five.

Employes of the embassies, foreign missions and the U.N. and such carry

special cards which exempt them from the payment of all U.S. taxes such

as DC sales, Federal amusement tax, etc. They are, of course, exempt

from income tax, too.

It’s a racket in Washington to borrow a friend’s card when making any

expensive purchase like a mink coat, where the sales and luxury tax

swindle comes to 22 per cent by this means.

A racket begun in UNRRA and now going on in other foreign aid

organizations is engaged in by top administration figures and important

diplomats:

Most of the durable goods aid sent abroad goes with the proviso that it

must be resold in the currency of the country to which it is consigned,

and the money must be used to provide local home relief, such as food,

clothes, etc.

So the way it works is this: The embassy wangles a shipment of, shall

we say, locomotives. They arrive in the country of destination. They

are then duly and dutifully resold in the currency of the country. But

the law doesn’t say for how much.

Some locomotives were sold in Greece for 10 drachmas each. The drachma

runs about 1,000 to the dollar. The local poor get the ten drachmas.

The local political bosses, gangsters and crooked diplomats split the

resale profits with their opposite numbers in America.

That’s big racketeering. A couple of Washington sisters have a petty,

but profitable one. They operate a so-called Embassy social list and

charge chumps to get on it, dangling invites to diplomatic balls as the

bait, which they obtain from legation employes for a “cut.”

Some fall for it. Our confidential advice is, don’t pay. You can crash

almost any Embassy party--but who wants to?

23. THE RIGHT TO PETITION

“_Congress shall make no law abridging the right of the people

peaceably to assemble and to petition the government for a

redress of grievances_”--First Amendment to the Constitution.

* * *

Don’t you believe it. Congress hamstrung lobbying by requiring

practitioners to register. Then it appointed a committee to investigate

them. Neither gesture got far. Lobbyists are among the most delightful

people in Washington. They are the friends of everybody, including the

Congressmen who are “probing” them.

Lobbying is like the Indian rope trick. Everyone talks about it, but no

one has ever seen it done. It’s one subject all Congressmen shy from,

regardless of party. That’s because there are lobbyists on both sides.

You can hardly expect a Congressman to insult a supporter.

Many ex-Congressmen, who can’t bear the thought of returning

home after their defeat, remain in Washington as lobbyists. They

enjoy an advantage, because, forever after, all ex-Senators and

ex-Representatives have the privileges of the floor and the

cloak-rooms. They can collar the ones they need while the legislators

are in action. Thus, members, who are always aware of the possibility

of being lame ducks themselves, keep these pleasant prospects of

earning a generous living after retirement open and in good working

order.

When you read about lobbying being a $100,000,000 business, don’t

believe that, either. Maybe they soak their clients that much, but most

of it goes on padded expense accounts. Lobbyists are their own best

press-agents. They are more responsible for the hue and cry against

lobbying than are the reformers. By making it look more difficult, they

can load their take.

Lobbying is as old as Magna Charta, which first granted people the

right to petition their sovereign. Ever since, those who wanted

something have hired someone to speak up for them. Washington is full

of these hucksters. They are about the brightest spot on the glum

scene. They spend, entertain, throw wild parties with pretty gals as

souvenirs, tip lavishly and keep the hotel and liquor industries going.

They are the only cream here in a welter of skimmed milk.

An Act of Congress, of doubtful legality, requires lobbyists to

register and divulge the amount and source of their income. Some do,

many more don’t. Those who comply are the technical lobbyists--in other

words, they are errand boys who merely transmit messages and appeals

from their clients to the Congress. Many have no physical contact with

Congressmen at all, reaching them through mimeographed propaganda

mailed from a Washington office.

But most of those we consider lobbyists are the ones who feel they

are not required to register. When we mention anyone in this chapter,

we are not inferring that if he is not a registered lobbyist he is

breaking the law. We group together for purposes of posing a picture,

every Washington lobbyist, fixer, five-percenter, hot-shot lawyer,

industrial press agent, and man from Missouri. They are a multitude,

especially men from Missouri.

When a really big fix is made, it usually is not handled in Washington

at all. The deal is consummated back home, as a quid pro quo for a

large campaign donation, after which the county or state chairman sends

word through channels to his men in Washington that the matter should

be okayed.

Lobbying can be a delightful and well-paid occupation. The mouthpieces

of the industrial petitioners are usually charming gentlemen who

know how to entertain. Buying an uninstructed Congressman C.O.D. is

obsolete. Giving him a high time will do it, and the lobbyist can

pocket the money earmarked for bribing and tell his client he passed on

the boodle.

Most solons are lonely uprooted rustics. Usually their wives are away,

holy frights they are glad to leave back home. These men want to talk

and drink with someone. You don’t even have to get them girls, just

invite them to a hotel and spend an evening with them. They’ll be so

thankful, they’ll do anything you want.

The average big lobbyist doesn’t bother with run-of-the-mill Senators

and Representatives, who are in the bag without much trouble. He sets

his sights on the key characters like committee chairmen and floor

leaders, and even they can be snared at little cost, though naturally

to corral a chairman means an even heftier bill to the employer. The

procedure used in the case of VIPs is simple and cheap. Each lobbyist

is on friendly terms with some local hostess, for whom he does favors

or to whom he gives gifts. When he has an especially important deal

on, he asks her to invite his prospect to a party. During most of

the evening he keeps away from the man he wants to meet, until by a

fortuitous accident he is placed next to him at the table. Even then

the conversation is kept chatty and frothy. A couple of days later,

the lobbyist phones his erstwhile table companion and invites him to a

rubber of bridge or a game of golf, and from then on he’s on his own.

Administrative heads and assistants are much more sought after than

Senators. They are the ones who receive the deep freezes and their

wives, the expensive gifts. In the final analysis, the best contact

is a clerk, not a division head. The clerks do the work and make the

decisions while their bosses drink cocktails.

Much of the big-time fixing is done by law firms. Many New York outfits

maintain offices in Washington. These firms usually have partners

belonging to both parties, so they are prepared for any political

eventuality.

We would like to introduce you to some of the boys in Washington who

can get things done:

First comes to mind an attorney, Charles Patrick Clark. Mr. Clark is a

wonder-worker. When others can’t score, Clark is called in. Even Max

Truitt, the Vice President’s son-in-law, had trouble getting Franco’s

loan, so Clark hit in the pinch and Congress voted it. It may be a

coincidence, but Clark was a counsel for the Senatorial Committee

Investigating War Frauds when Harry Truman was its chairman.

Part of Clark’s success can be ascribed to the majestic manner in which

he entertains. He used to project his parties in Georgetown, but now

hosts it in a palatial four-story building near the Mayflower Hotel.

It set him back a hundred grand to furnish its interior. The yard was

landscaped at a cost of $25,000 more. Clark can muster more pretty

girls than anyone else in Washington. You will always find enough of

them at his parties. He has two stunners in his office, a blonde and a

brunette, who frequently are escorted by his clients and his contacts.

Congressman Buchanan, Pennsylvania Democrat, chairman of the committee

investigating lobbying, fell for Clark’s charm. He and his wife visited

Clark’s play-place.

Clark is hot-tempered. He recently had a fist fight in the lobby of the

Mayflower Hotel with Charlie Rogers, handsome former counsel of the

committee that nailed John Maragon.

Dan Hanlon, a former law-partner of Democratic National Chairman Bill

Boyle, has an office at 1727 Massachusetts Ave., where he handles

internal revenue cases with much success. Hanlon is from Missouri. But

as Boyle seems to be on the way out so is Hanlon.

The business is intensively departmentalized. Different lawyers

have ins in different branches of the government. Persuasion on the

Department of Justice is handled by Laughlin Currie, a former Truman

appointee, through Tommy “The Cork” Corcoran, a Roosevelt favorite.

Treasury Department matters go through Joe Nunan, former Commissioner

of Internal Revenue, who does not practice personally before the

Treasury yet, because the law requires ex-employes to wait two years

before they may represent clients in bureaus to which they were

attached. But his associates are not so hobbled.

Former Senator Burton K. Wheeler is the man to see if you have any

trouble with the Interstate Commerce Commission. Wheeler can have

anything he wants in Washington. President Truman passed the word

along. It was Wheeler who advised Truman not to resign from the Senate

at the time of the Pendergast scandal. Harry has been eternally

grateful ever since.

The law firm of Thurman Arnold, Abe Fortas and Paul A. Porter has

practically everything for its field. All three are prominent

ex-New Dealers. Porter’s contact is with the Federal Communications

Commission. Arnold, once a trust-buster, now defends trusts. Fortas,

onetime stooge of Harold Ickes, is the boy to see for anything in the

Department of the Interior. Among the clients of this firm is the

Western Union Telegraph Company, for which they are the registered

lobbyists. During their plugging for the telegraph monopoly it was

brought out under oath that at least one block of 17 percent of its

stock was owned by underworld figures. Since then, Western Union was

indicted twice in New Jersey for engaging illegally in transmission of

racing information, which the Grand Jury investigation indicated was

the company’s main source of profit.

The Arnold firm secured $200,000,000 for the Puerto Rican government.

It also defended Owen Lattimore against Senator McCarthy’s charges. The

boys netted $600,000 last year. Drew Pearson’s daughter is married to

Arnold’s son.

Arnold is the playboy of the firm, congenial and convivial.

When Dean Acheson’s law firm swung the $90,000,000 Polish loan, its

fee from behind the Iron Curtain was $1,000,000, plus an equal sum for

expenses.

Leon Henderson, the social planner who admits he won World War II

single-handed, deserves an important place in this chapter. As one of

the brain-trust of the “progressive” Americans for Democratic Action,

brother Henderson throws the weight of that organization’s supposed

voting strength around Washington for the benefit of his private

clients. That is, when he is not too busy making a fool of himself with

some young blonde on a New York dance floor.

The A.D.A. pipeline into the White House is David Garrison Lloyd,

assistant general counsel to the President.

Robert Nathan, the CIO economist, who comes up with fantastic

suggestions such as that the cost of labor has nothing to do with the

final price of the commodity, helps support himself by “economizing”

for capitalistic clients trying to borrow dough from the RFC. If they

hire him, they usually get it.

Those who shed tears for Louis D. Johnson when he was fired as

Secretary of Defense need have no worries about how Louis is going to

make a living in the future. He is a partner in the firm of Stepto and

Johnson, and he has high connections.

Louis, who put the stigma on five-percenters, is one of the biggest

operators on government contracts in town. Incidentally, there’s

nothing illegal about five-percenting and the fee is now seven and a

half percent--Truman inflation.

Though out of the administration, Johnson is so potent and powerful

that failure to retain him is a death warrant on some deals. He

specializes in alien property work.

Once again, as during World War II, the lobbyists and five-percenters’

password is “Are You Protected?”

That goes for a lot of things. It means are you protected against the

law, against competition? But, mainly, are you protected from your

clients?

Too many fixers found themselves double-crossed. After they had

delivered, they couldn’t collect.

Now the smart ones won’t unbutton a button until the cash is put up

in escrow. Fancy deals are worked out on paper to cover up the shady

nature of the real transaction.

One contact man whom it was a pleasure to have lobby you was Howard

Hughes’ fat errand boy, Johnny Meyer. Johnny is a prodigal entertainer

and check-picker-upper. During the Senatorial investigation into how

come Hughes got some government contracts, it was testified that Johnny

supplied gifts and gals lavishly. He introduced Brigadier General

Elliott Roosevelt to his former wife, Faye Emerson, and picked up the

tab for the wedding expenses.

Elliott screamed at the hearing, “You are persecuting me because

my name happens to be Roosevelt.” The Republicans who conducted it

immediately got cold feet.

Their temerity in hounding Elliott and Johnny was not forgotten. Three

years later, the radical lame duck Senator, Claude Pepper, conducted an

investigation to try to prove that former committee chairman Brewster

had tapped Johnny Meyer’s wires.

If he did, he must have had a good time. We know. We were with

Johnny in his Statler suite, and he was with us in ours. His “in” is

former Washington Governor Mon Wallgren, who is an old drinking and

poker-playing crony of the President. Wallgren has entree at all times

to the White House and now holds a Government hand-out job so he can

keep his lines and connections in order.

While on the subject of lame ducks, we mustn’t forget Scott Lucas,

former Senate Majority leader. He is now ready, willing and able to

handle such Washington legal and contact matters as may be brought to

the attention of himself and partner, Charles A. Thomas.

Many of the lawyers, lobbyists, fixers, five-percenters, etc., with

wires into high places, do not actually practice in Washington,

preferring to do their work through correspondents or connections.

One of these is Jake Arvey, the Illinois Democratic boss and associate

of Mafia hoodlums, who operates through the Washington office of Louis

Johnson. Arvey is the kingpin of the wire-pullers.

Often the extent of a fixer’s ability is overrated. An intermediary

needs only to be seen with a big politician to have the word get out

that he’s “in.” Then, after spending thousands, a client sometimes

gets the idea he’s got to hire another lawyer to do the actual work.

Sometimes the fixers themselves turn the actual leg work over to

capable attorneys, sit back, and take the credit.

There are many of these bread-and-butter lawyers who accomplish

what all the politicians and five-percenters can’t, because they

really know the law. For instance, one prominent politico told us

that while few tax cases are “fixed” at the Washington level, many a

fearful and repentant chiseler has been fleeced by smart operators

who told him they were wonder-workers. For results, he recommended

two relatively unknown but very successful practitioners, Bert B.

Rand, Washington-wise attorney, and Nathan Wechsler, hard-hitting,

astute C.P.A., because they had the staff and experience to meet the

government on an equal basis.

Similarly, in the field of constitutional law and the intricacies of

corporation procedure, and claim work, they look up Loring Black, a

former Congressman from Brooklyn, who retired from the House in 1934.

One young fellow who can do more for you in Washington with less

fanfare doesn’t make it his business. He is Hal Korda, onetime

newspaperman, who has many powerful friends on both sides. When the

Dems found out he knew Republicans, and vice versa, they began to

use him as a channel to square things they didn’t want to talk about

directly to each other, and he secured campaign contributions for both.

Many members of Congress lobby, legitimately, for their own

communities, or the industries thereof, or for public organizations in

which they have a deep interest.

For instance, Joseph Rider Farrington, the delegate from the Territory

of Hawaii, who holds a seat in the House but no vote there, has been

foremost in the fight to secure statehood for the Islands. Farrington

has labored mightily in that cause, and could show the professionals a

thing or two. If Hawaii ever achieves statehood, Farrington can take

the bow.

Incidental to that great libertarian campaign, Farrington also plugs

the produce and products of the Territory and is its chief booster for

tourism. His office in the Old House Building resembles a cross between

a steamship agency and a Chamber of Commerce.

On the other hand, Henry Latham, one of the three Republicans in the

House from the City of New York--if you count Javits a Republican--is

a strong and sincere booster for the Navy. Were it not for his

“lobbying” in committee, we would have no Marine Corps today.

Latham, a Navy officer in World War II, did not know he had been run

for Congress or elected until his ship went into a South Pacific

coaling station two months after the 1944 elections. He has been

reelected ever since.

He spotted the joker which would have wiped out the Marine Corps in

the administration Defense reorganization measure and tied the bill up

until the Devil Dogs were assured of being more than a mere “police

force.”

Acey Caraway, finance director of the Democratic National Committee and

longtime pillar of that body, is opening an office for “consultation”

in the LaSalle Building. Acey, often referred to as the “junior Jim

Farley,” probably knows more Democratic rank-and-filers than anyone

else in the party.

Among the law firms which have had the most success in lucrative

immigration matters is the New York one in which Rep. Franklin D.

Roosevelt, Jr., is a partner.

Thomas Shoemaker, a former Commissioner of Immigration, also shows

remarkable results in such cases.

New York’s left-wing New Deal Republican Congressman Jacob K. Javits

is a partner in Javits and Javits, 1025 Connecticut Avenue. Several

immigration matters have been settled successfully by them.

Wholly apart from such legal practices, the current price for

bringing in a rich refugee who can’t make the quota or other entry

requirements is $75,000. This is split between three Senators and/or

Representatives, to sponsor so-called “private” bills.

These bills are always passed, because the three interested members

buttonhole other Congressmen, who themselves need support to pass their

own private bills. That is called “Congressional courtesy.”

An embarrassing incident happened recently when President Truman vetoed

one such bill, after the 75 Gs had been passed and spent.

The Vice President’s son-in-law, Max Truitt, lobbies for American

flag steamship lines, and has had conspicuous success in obtaining

government handouts. He is effective also for the Kansas City wheat

pit, a favorite whipping boy of the administration he’s married into.

Lobbying before the Maritime Administration is dream business. It had

17 billion dollars’ worth of ships to sell after the war.

Much of this government property found its way into the hands of the

right people, who floated their purchases, if not their ships, by

borrowing from the government, then immediately reselling at double or

triple to corporations they organized.

In addition, these purchasers charged off hundreds of thousands against

their income taxes for expenses, on transactions which they frequently

went into with no more than a few thousand dollars to start with.

Truitt is the most active in the ship field and is registered as a ship

lobbyist with Congress.

The firm of the late Secretary of State Stettinius also dabbled in

Maritime Administration work. His associate was handsome ex-Congressman

Joe Casey, of Massachusetts.

One of the most up-and-coming of the lawyers with “inside” connections

is Margaret Truman’s “date,” Marvin Braverman. It is doubtful whether

he has much influence, but people are beginning to credit him with it,

and he is no chump. He is taking advantage of the publicity.

Braverman is related to Harry Hershfield, the radio wit and cartoonist.

And if his small talk is anything like Harry’s, we don’t blame Margaret

for liking him. Because Harry is the funniest man alive.

Former Housing Administrator Wilson Wyatt, a roaring Fair Dealer, is

lobbying for big interests to repeal war-time taxes as well as for the

Dominican Republic dictatorship.

Clark Clifford, the President’s former legal adviser and ghost-writer,

is not starving in private practice, either.

Clifford says he “doesn’t need law books.” He uses the Mayflower Hotel

menu instead.

Another law firm with great influence is Fulton, Walter and Halley,

with offices over the Occidental Restaurant. Hugh Fulton was chief

counsel for the Truman Committee. Rudolph Halley was on the staff. The

firm has done handily representing Howard Hughes, owner of TWA. As

special counsel for the Hudson and Manhattan Railroad, between New York

City and suburban New Jersey, they secured a 50-percent fare increase

from the ICC. In our book _Chicago Confidential_, we said that the

underworld had large blocks of stock in the Hudson and Manhattan. Since

then Halley, who was the counsel of the road, confirmed our statement,

reluctantly, and we have affidavits to prove it.

A law degree is not always necessary to a successful contact man.

Some of the most prosperous in Washington bill themselves as press

agents. There is, for instance, a little man from Missouri, Victor

Messall, who dresses like a race-track follower and has his walls

plastered with pictures of the President. Messall was a beaver on the

President’s Senatorial campaigns. Later he was on his secretarial staff

in the Senate. He has testified under oath that he has so many clients

he can’t remember them all. A witness charged before the Kefauver

Committee he had given Messall $1500 to help him to get sugar-points

illegally from the OPA during the war. The chairman of the committee

was a Democrat. The counsel was the aforementioned lawyer for the

Truman committee, Rudolph Halley. The subject was suddenly dropped.

Another who bills himself as a press agent and is blossoming into a

power which some call sinister because of his connections, is a former

newspaperman, Dave Charnay, who runs a publicity firm in New York and

Washington, Allied Syndicate. Charnay is a long-time friend of Frank

Costello, reputed king of the underworld, and has done public relations

for Rep. F. D. Roosevelt, Jr., and Manhattan Borough President Robert

F. Wagner, Jr., son of the author of the Labor Act.

During the administration of Mayor LaGuardia, when gangsters were

ordered out of New York night clubs, Charnay, then still employed as a

reporter for the New York _News_, was made “president” of the famous

Copacabana at a salary of $500 a week. Charnay was known as Costello’s

press agent.

Among other clients, his publicity firm represents John L. Lewis’

United Mine Workers, at a reputed annual fee of $175,000. Those who

may seem mystified at his range of clients, may be surprised to learn

that Lewis, though he doesn’t know it, is a prisoner of the Mafia. It

started many years ago, when the United Mine Workers imported Sicilian

sluggers from the big cities. With this “in,” the mob bosses began to

cast greedy eyes on the colossal fortune owned by the mine union. The

Mafia’s policy is never to replace present management if it can take

over a flourishing concern. The infiltration went on under Lewis’ nose,

yet the beetle-browed egomaniac does not know he no longer is the boss

of the United Mine Workers. The boys let him think he is. Last year,

the Mine Workers tried to take over New York’s taxi industry, with an

abortive strike in which Mafia associates took a part. Charnay’s firm

handled the strikers’ publicity.

Charnay now has a pipeline directly to the White House, through the

close personal friendship between John L. Lewis and Dr. John Steelman,

assistant to the President. Some months ago, on his retirement as

Secretary of the Navy, John L. Sullivan joined Charnay’s firm as

chairman of the board, but he resigned to practice law. Paul H.

Griffith, assistant Secretary of Defense until he was replaced by Anna

Rosenberg a few months ago, is now a vice-president of the company.

Charnay had a pleasant luncheon tête-à-tête with Kefauver counsel

Halley, before the crime committee began its hearings, and offered to

work for it without pay.

Another interesting lobbyist is Samuel Haines, whose contract with the

hotel and cafe industry to try to get a reduction in the 20 percent

amusement-tax was on a sliding scale, his fee to be determined by

the degree of eventual tax reduction. The tax wasn’t cut, but he got

$46,000. Haines entertained Senators and Representatives in a playroom

at his home, where he had slot-machines, reverse-rigged so the players

always won.

A mysterious man about town is Dave Gordon, always seen with beautiful

dames. Gordon is a close friend of Nate Lichtauer. Lichtauer is a

shadowy enigma. Little is known about him. But this is to tell you

he engineers the juiciest deals. (“Juice” is the capital slang for

political pull.) Lichtauer is a collector for the Democratic National

Committee. He makes the arrangements. When the contributions come

through, he passes the word to Dave Niles, in the White House, who

pulls the proper strings.

One of Lichtauer’s closest associates is Milton Kronheim, another

mystery man. He used to be in the bail-bond business in Washington and

went surety for gamblers. He is now the city’s biggest and richest

wholesale liquor dealer. He is in on everything. He once peeled off 250

bills--$1,000 bills--to pay an OPA assessment, then put the balance of

the still impressive roll back in his pocket.

He is close to General Vaughan and John Maragon, and thick with

Jake Arvey, Chicago Democratic boss, friend and apologist for Al

Capone’s cousin, Charlie Fischetti, king of the Chicago underworld.

Kronheim’s son was recently made a Municipal Court judge in Washington.

Truman nominated Kronheim’s lawyer, “Jiggs” Donahue to be District

Commissioner. And Kronheim supplies the White House liquor.

One to watch as a power is a Boston lawyer, Paul T. Smith. He got

that way because he and Dave Niles ran a forum in Boston called

Ford’s Lyceum, a sort of left-wing Chatauqua in which Frankfurter had

a powerful say. When Police Chief Barrett was under Congressional

pressure, Niles and Smith interceded.

It was through the connections he made with dreamers and schemers like

Harry Hopkins, who used to lecture for him, that Niles moved himself

into the White House under Roosevelt and has remained under Truman,

the only man Harry dared not fire. Niles, whose hand turns up in

everything, may be the real ruler of the country.

Anyway, when attorney Smith gets a case with a Washington angle, he

phones the White House. He usually gets what he wants.

Niles still operates Ford’s, spends every weekend, from Thursday to

Monday, in Boston. Niles’ hatchet man is Donald Dawson, of Missouri,

formerly with the RFC, now White House Liaison Officer in charge

of personnel. He is the last word on all federal nominations and

appointments, but his word is Niles’.

A couple of weeks before this went to press we saw Dawson lunching at

the Statler with General Vaughan and Johnny Maragon.

If the impression was conveyed that after Maragon’s conviction and

denial on appeal that the pet five-percenter was out of action, you

were so wrong. Up to this writing, Maragon has never served a day

in jail, and he probably never will. News about Maragon is a scarce

commodity in Washington, and bum steers are handed newspapermen. It was

publicly reported that Maragon was ill and in the hospital of a Federal

prison. The White House intimate had not spent one minute in jail.

Maragon, the crooked fixer, is still in business and still has entree

to the White House. The wise guys know that if he is ever punished, it

will be perfunctory, because Maragon took the rap for a lot of way-ups

and what he could tell would rock America. He is still being taken care

of so he will never need to shine shoes again. If he isn’t pardoned by

the time this comes out, it’s in the works.

From time to time, socialites and even foreign noblemen who need the

jack lobby for it. A successful contact man is Baron Constantine von

Stackelburg, once with the World Bank. He and his beautiful wife host

lavish at-homes for the benefit of such interests as the Florida citrus

fruit industry.

Clients of lobbyists are divided into four groups. You may disregard

the inspired baloney that they all represent the capitalists. Only a

small fraction do.

The others who employ lobbyists are (1) Labor unions, farm federations

and left-wing pressure groups; (2) nonprofit and nonpolitical

organizations such as the Red Cross, American Legion, Elks, Knights of

Columbus, etc., and (3) government bureaus.

The most powerful lobby in history was for the Anti-Saloon League.

By far the mightiest since then, at least until Senator Taft’s

overwhelming victory, were lobbies of the labor unions. By tradition

and shaded reporting the representatives of the money barons are

villains; but the labor boys are more vicious and intolerable. And they

don’t spend or entertain, which is even more heinous. The money charged

against the unions for legislative purposes goes mostly to supply dames

and hootch for visiting union chiefs.

The American Federation of Labor crowd hangs out at the Hamilton Hotel,

where all the choice ringside tables in the supper club are reserved

nightly for them. A stable of fillies is available to send up to the

rooms of the dignitaries who dilute their champagne with the tears they

spill for the sans-culottes.

The United Mine Workers frequent the Carlton.

The CIO also played at the Carlton until a Negro delegate was barred.

Most of the boys quit in a huff, and moved across 16th St. to the

equally tony Hay-Adams, where Negroes are also barred.

Many labor unions are represented by female lobbyists, and some of

these will turn a trick in the hay if that helps the sacred cause. The

labor broads still don’t run as homely as some of the Congressmen’s

wives. For unions and other such pressure cookers do not usually offer

money, call-girls or liquor. They threaten to withhold votes back at

home.

As soon as a freshman Congressman checks in, the union harpies make

a grab for him. One whom we know, a Republican elected to fill an

unexpired seat in a Democratic district, received a visit from a

couple of union goons the first day he moved into his office. They gave

him orders how to vote on a pending measure. Congressman John Saylor,

who is six feet four, grabbed them by the necks and walked them to the

wall, where he showed them his certificate of election.

“I thought I read my name here, not yours,” he said. Then he threw them

out.

One of the most indefatigable female lobbyists is the daughter of

former Senator Burt Wheeler. Though her father cleans up representing

robber barons, her client is the left-wing United Electrical Workers

Union. Congressmen report she’s a pest who coaxes with a smile, and if

that doesn’t work, she threatens.

Old-timers in Congress will tell you about the dame lobbyist who

represented some milk producers. She was a handsome woman, so

voluptuously built that they referred to her as “Elsie the Cow.” Her

lobbying career ended in 1937, when she was caught in a hotel room with

a Congressman.

For all practical purposes, lobbyists representing unions and minority

groups do not often buttonhole Congressmen directly. Dave Niles handles

all labor and left-wing angles, and arranges for the votes and rewards

or punishments.

Anna Rosenberg, friend of Niles, former New Dealer, practiced

industrial relations successfully until her appointment as Assistant

Secretary of Defense.

Lobbyists for government bureaus often double as unpaid fixers for

pressure groups, using government funds. Entertainments of Congressmen

by State Department officials at cocktail parties are referred to as

“smokers.”

Sometimes pressure group lobbyists receive government favors and

privileges denied the less favored. An intensive lobby was conducted

against the Mundt-Ferguson anti-Communist bill by a former senatorial

employe who was not registered as a lobbyist.

He is Palmer Webber, who was staff director in 1943 for Sen. Pepper (D)

of Florida, and chief economic adviser in 1944 to Sen. Kilgore (D) of

West Virginia. Webber bore down on his Senate contacts from a rent-free

office in the Library of Congress. How he got it free nobody knows.

For two years Webber held a job as “legislative correspondent” on

Capitol Hill for the Federation for World Government. Records in the

office of the secretary of the Senate show Webber was not registered as

a lobbyist for the federation and the organization is not registered

to conduct a lobby. In addition to his arduous efforts to defeat the

anti-Communist measure and his work for the federation, Webber was a

demon, worked for votes for passage of the fair employment practices

bill.

Webber was transferred by the World Government Federation from

Washington to New York “to do research.” The shift was for “political

reasons.”

He is an errand boy for the Lawyers Guild, which the House Un-American

Activities Committee cited as a “front” organization. It has also

been active in another “cause” sponsored by Webber--the drive for an

investigation of the F.B.I.

In 1947, Webber, a Ph.D., conducted a class in political philosophy

at the King Smith school, where the democratic form of government was

smeared to GI and other students.

A reporter attended Webber’s class on May 27, 1947, when Senator

Pepper was a guest. A woman student referred to J. Edgar Hoover as the

American Gestapo head and declared the Catholic church was leading a

crusade for war.

A woman in the audience, a secretary to a Republican Senator from the

Midwest, jumped up and shouted, “Thank God for the F.B.I.”

Webber was arrested in Charlottesville, Va., for distributing Communist

Party literature. Police records show he paid a forfeit rather than

fight the case.

He was at one time a research director for the CIO Political Action

Committee in Washington and in 1948 was a paid director in charge of

activities of the leftist Progressive party in 11 southern states.

Another who lobbies against anti-Communist bills, and is openly so

registered, is former Democratic Congressman Jerry J. O’Connell, of

Montana.

Utilizing his privileges of the floor, as an ex-Representative,

O’Connell strides into the House and Senate while they are in session,

and delivers advice, orders and inspiration to left-wing Congressmen,

and threats to others.

When the Senate was debating the Communist control bill in an all night

session last September, O’Connell took up a station at the Senate door

with a reporter from the Daily Worker, and without any pretense of

disguise, dictated the unsuccessful opposition’s floor strategy.

But listen to the hue and cry when a manufacturer’s lobbyist buys a

Coca Cola for a Congressman.

Being a government lobbyist can produce desirable advantages,

especially for a Marshall Plan press agent.

A survey reveals that the Economic Cooperation Administration

information office has been giving several of its employes free

visits to Europe and the Middle East. Robert Mullen, director of ECA

information, toured Europe. He mapped a $7,500 ’round-the-world trip,

but postponed a visit to the Orient when the bullets began to fly.

Mullen sent an heiress to the J. P. Morgan banking fortune to London

for a convention of clubwomen--to get new propaganda material on the

Marshall plan to influence American clubwomen. He sent an inexperienced

youth, hired as a “picture expert,” to Paris and London, to see the

sights and get new pictures for propaganda purposes here.

Though ECA has 73 American press employes in Paris alone, and 56 in

16 other Marshall Plan missions in Europe, plus 222 Europeans on

these staffs, ECA sent a former woman reporter to Paris to get “human

interest” stories for a clubwoman propaganda pamphlet.

The ECA press information office in Paris has a chief who gets about

$20,000 a year in salary and expense money, has highly paid former

reporters on his staff, but the ECA here sent a man from Washington to

show a group of editors about Europe. Several others went to Europe on

similar assignments.

Mullen has 48 on his Washington staff, drawing a total of $280,000

a year. Among these are the Morgan heiress, an ex-bullfighter, the

daughter of a symphony conductor and a score of graduates from defunct

war agencies. He separated a noted Negro Air Force pilot, who achieved

some success as an author, from his Washington staff and dispatched him

to Formosa at $15,000 a year to direct Marshall plan press information

there.

The American press agents for ECA will draw $673,000 in salaries this

year.

Congress gets around sporadically to investigating the lobbying “evil.”

The latest “crusade” was conducted by leftish Congressman Frank

Buchanan, who muddled the issue so much, no one knows what happened,

except that the National Association of Manufacturers emerged the

villain. Congressmen don’t hanker to expose lobbies, even if they’re on

the other side. When the investigation was first voted by the House,

Buchanan wanted to give the appropriation back, an unprecedented

departure where committee chairmen always yell for more. Buchanan tried

to handcuff the lawyers engaged to conduct the investigation, though

both were good Democrats and good Fair Dealers. But they were also

honest. Lou Little, of Pittsburgh, a co-counsel, quit broken-hearted.

Counsel Benedict Fitzgerald, of Greenfield, Mass., a whiz of a prober,

was not even allowed to write the report. Buchanan refused to swear

in some witnesses; if they lied it would not constitute perjury. When

counsel called attention to that, he angrily shut them up.

The real brains of the investigation into lobbying was Lucien Hilmer,

committee staff director. He is regarded as a left-wing lawyer. When

George Shaw Wheeler was fired from the government for consorting with

Communists, Hilmer appeared as his lawyer and beat the case. Two years

later, as an economist with the U. S. Army in Czechoslovakia, Wheeler

vindicated the Civil Service Commission when he moved in on Berlin Red

headquarters. He announced he was a Communist and always had been one.

Hilmer shares a law office with John F. Davis, who represented Alger

Hiss before the House Un-American Activities Committee. Hilmer had

worked under Max Lowenthal on the old Wheeler Committee.

And did we remember to tell you that the Kansas City Chamber of

Commerce has an office on 16th St., across the road from the Russian

Embassy? Both pressure groups have displayed amazing influence in

Washington.

_INSIDE STUFF_: The law requiring lobbyists to register is used as a

racket by some. They advertise in trade papers: “Lobbyist, registered

with the Congress of the United States,” then sell prospective chumps

the idea they are “licensed” to lobby. Anybody may file his name and

set up his own “cause.”

24. RACKETS BY REMOTE CONTROL

Our newspaper confreres, in the main, were willing to be hospitable and

helpful when we galloped in and made no secret of our aims. We don’t

expect them to write our books. But they often give us tips, which

saves work.

The first question we asked was, “Who is the Washington Mafia boss?”

The invariable answer was that the local underworld was unaffiliated

with the national setup, free and independent, self-contained.

All our experience made us reject that picture. We had traced and

charted organized crime through the gang wars of Prohibition to this

day. We had charged and it was being substantiated that no city of

importance was left out of the clutches of the Mafia, with its brains

in New York and its powerhouse in Chicago. It was inconceivable that

a rich, large center on the Atlantic seaboard, almost a suburb of

Manhattan, could be bypassed. So we found out for ourselves. This is

the situation in Washington:

The National Syndicate, for reasons of prudence, has avoided first-hand

operations in the District. You find few important Sicilian names in

the police files. Vice, crime, gambling, narcotics and, to a smaller

extent, contraband liquor, are farmed out by franchise to a cohesive

local mob which deals with and pays tribute to national headquarters.

Despite tremendous influence, legal advice and guidance and the

constitutional immunity against self-incrimination, the Mafia has

an almost superstitious fear of Congressional committees. A city

administration can be bought or scared or rigged. But nobody can

capture 96 Senators and 435 Representatives. And any one of these is

one of the immediate bosses of Washington; and any one of these can

arise any day and demand a probe of anything. On the rare occasions

when important racketeers were dragged to Washington on subpena, with

all the assurances they got from many members beholden to them and

the shocking obeisance paid them openly, they wet their pants in the

witness chair.

Yet, these greedy gluttons can’t find it in their miserly souls to

declare it an open town, any more than they can force themselves to

pay honest income taxes, though they awaken in their silk pajamas

screaming, from nightmare dreams about Al Capone and Alcatraz.

District of Columbia is and was dominated by Emmitt Warring, Gary

Quinn, Sam Beard, the Sussman brothers and Attilio Acalotti. The chief

operation of these men is gambling, which will be traced in more detail

later. They staked out locations in Washington, worked together in

harmony, well aware that the capital would not go for Chicago-style

assassinations.

But the national Syndicate did not hesitate to work openly in the

adjoining Maryland suburbs, where the late Jimmy La Fontaine, who died

in bed at the age of 81 in 1949, was the local front man. Fontaine’s

rococo gambling casino, across the street from the District line, was

as far as the Mafia cared to go openly. His chief lieutenants were

Snags Lewis, Pete Gianaris and Mike Meyers. Snags has pleaded guilty to

a mild rap on a bargain which will take the heat off others.

We have described the dope setup in the District, where local

wholesalers send to New York for supplies, so that the Mafia does

not have to deliver them in the capital. By a similar procedure,

the gamblers and other racketeers procure their wire service from

representatives of the big mob, across the border in Maryland. Snags

Lewis was the local wire service man.

When it came to such things as numbers, whoring, illicit liquor and

after-hour spots in the District, the local boys tried to hold on to as

much as they could. They didn’t want to divvy up with the Syndicate.

The big mob didn’t like that.

When the Mafia moves in, it gears its method to local situations. For

instance, Dallas, one of the last hold-outs, is being taken over at

this writing by strong-arm work and gunplay.

But when the beach-front bookmaking syndicate in Miami held out, it

was cut off from its wire service, then local cops did the gangsters’

work by raiding the recalcitrants, to make way for the Syndicate’s own

operators.

It was clear to Frank Costello in New York and Charlie Fischetti in

Chicago, the operating heads of the underworld, that gat-work would not

be tolerated in Washington. They knew the Metropolitan Police couldn’t

be counted on to cooperate, with J. Edgar Hoover on the grounds.

Few understand why the F.B.I. has not acted against the Mafia. Its

jurisdiction is circumscribed by Congress, and the black-handers have

been smart enough to keep out of fields in which Hoover may act.

The outside mobsters adopted a third procedure to tighten their hold on

the local underworld, one that had worked with great success in other

towns. It came through with flying colors in Washington. Last year

there was an epidemic of robberies of local underworld figures, and not

by accident or coincidence.

One victim was Emmitt Warring. Three men forced their way into his

home, at 3900 Macomb Street, and robbed it at gun-point. Insiders

say the amount of cash lifted from Warring’s safe was about $100,000.

Warring told newspapermen it was only $20,000. He refused to cooperate

with the police and would not admit or deny that the holdup had taken

place. In the same week, the same thugs held up Johnny Williams, a

numbers racket boss. Robert “Ryebread” Schulman and Theodore “Little

Joe” Scheve also were held up. Williams’ father-in-law is Dick Austin,

a numbers king in Atlantic City and Washington.

Chief of Police Barrett said, “I am alarmed by the crimes. We can’t

have this sort of thing going on here. Pretty soon somebody’s going to

get shot.” That was Scheve. But nobody got arrested. Then Washington

racketeers saw a great light. They made peace with the Big Mob, which

established its regency over the District, leaving the former operators

in as partners with nominal control.

George P. Harding, victim of the recent slaying in the Hideaway Club,

engineered the Warring robbery for the Mafia. Harding was born in Italy

and had a long and bloody career as a gunman and killer, before being

slain by his friend and associate, Joseph Nesline.

Nesline, who admitted the shooting, is a four-time loser. He told

police it was either “Harding or me.” His story was Harding had accused

him of running out with his share of the gravy in a gangster-operated

oil well deal in Texas, where Frank Costello and his boys are buying

heavily into leases and royalties. The dead man had been sitting with

George A. Clainos, white-slaver and member of the local Syndicate, who

passed him a gun.

The actual cause of the killing, which we are telling you confidential,

is that it was ordered from Mafia headquarters in Brooklyn, because

Harding, who knew too much, was an intemperate drinker and was talking

too much.

Harding had been warned “to be good or else” several months ago,

through word transmitted by Tony Ricci, alias Tony Goebels, who is the

message-center for the Unione Siciliano.

The formula of permitting local operators to retain management was

followed last year when the mob moved into Tampa and Jacksonville,

Florida, and was used also with much success in Newark, New Jersey,

where the non-Italian mob of Abner “Longy” Zwillman was absorbed into

the Mafia. The Cleveland branch, run chiefly by Jews and Irish, was

given the same modus operandi and absorbed.

The chain of command and remittance from the District to top

headquarters is through Prince Georges County, Maryland, where Gianaris

handles the numbers intake from the District and Lewis superintends

payments for horse wire service--which is utilized also as a clearing

house to transmit receipts from all other illegal activities, entered

on the books as payments for the services or as losses on bets.

La Fontaine’s organization is kept together by Lewis and Meyers.

Charlie Ford, Washington lawyer, who appears frequently in this book as

counsel for gamblers, vice-hucksters and bottle-clubs, is the trustee

of La Fontaine’s fabulous estate. In this connection some complicated

bookkeeping is required.

It develops La Fontaine was only a front man. Eighty percent of his

holdings belonged to the Big Mob. His death brought intricate mixups,

and what was his and what was the Mob’s had not been identified in full

detail. The situation is similar to that which followed the slaying

of Edward J. O’Hare, Chicago mobster, who operated race tracks for

the Capone syndicate. The stock of Sportsman’s Park, Chicago, and the

Miami Beach Kennel Club was in his name. He left it to his heirs and

associates. It took years for the accounts to be straightened out, and

when they were, some money was paid over in the form of a “loan” to

Paul “The Waiter” Ricca, a close associate of the late Capone, who is

one of the ruling heads of the secret Grand Council of the Mafia.

The La Fontaine payoff to the top was made through Nig Rosen of

Philadelphia to Meyer Lansky of New York. Lansky is a tributary of

Frank Costello and a gambling partner of Joe Adonis. Nig Rosen is a

friend of Washington Police Chief Barrett.

La Fontaine was one of the most colorful men Washington ever saw. His

legendary career as a gentleman gambler spanned half a century. This

last of the gas-lit era gamblers was one of five children of a poultry

dealer. He was apprenticed to his father’s trade and might have carved

for himself a similar career, except for a fatal flaw in his make-up:

he could not bear to kill a chicken, nor could he stand the thought

of others killing chickens he had raised. He hid his favorites in his

father’s attic.

A three-cent strike Jimmy made on the old St. Louis lottery netted

him $12. With this he set up shop across the Potomac in Virginia. He

then went to work for the Heath brothers, old-time gambling combine. He

soon had his own card table and he prospered. Subsequently he opened

the Mohican Club, near Glen Echo, Maryland. Expanding, he purchased a

large tract in Prince Georges County and established “Jimmy’s Place.”

Around it he built a high green fence and within it men won and lost

fortunes. Women never got past the door and no man who couldn’t afford

to lose was ever admitted again. It was staffed by more than a hundred

carefully chosen attendants, all covered by social security. They made

regular contributions to a retirement fund.

The house limit was $200 on craps, $500 a card on blackjack, and $10 on

numbers, with no-limit games in private rooms for certain customers who

could stand a tough tap. “Jimmy’s” catered to as many as 2,000 gamblers

a night.

Oddly, La Fontaine never got out of the poultry business. His passion

was cock-fighting and he maintained a stable of 100 birds. Seeing

them killed in action did not affront him. He also made horse book

and traveled from track to track. La Fontaine bankrolled Tex Rickard,

the fabulous fight promoter, in his early days. After Rickard’s death

he formed a silent partnership with Herman Taylor, Philadelphia fight

promoter.

Jimmy served a jail term for income tax evasion and paid a fine of more

than $200,000. The Big Mob had long cast covetous eyes on La Fontaine,

who by now not only had his own profitable gambling enterprise on which

he himself admitted paying off $100,000 a year for local protection,

but he controlled also the entire underworld in the lush Maryland

counties adjoining the District. About 20 years ago, emissaries from

Philadelphia came down to muscle him out. One representative of Nig

Rosen, a gunman named Milsie Henry, was mysteriously murdered, for

which La Fontaine was loudly but not officially mentioned. The case

is still unsolved. Shortly thereafter, La Fontaine was kidnaped by

hoodlums from New York and Philadelphia. Before he was returned his

family had to come up with $40,000 “expense money.” And the Mafia was

declared in on his enterprises.

Most naïve Washingtonians believe the appointment of attorney Charlie

Ford as the trustee of his estate was a logical sequence, as Ford is

a gamblers’ lawyer. He testified before a house committee that he

represented many gamblers, some of whom were such powers that they

were unknown to the police or public as gamblers. He refused to divulge

their identities. One is a liquor dealer and another, a local jeweler.

Ford has legal contacts with the topmost figures of the Mafia. When the

wife of Charlie Fischetti, one of the most powerful men in the national

underworld, the most powerful in Chicago, was subpoenaed before the

Kefauver Committee, Ford flew to Chicago to represent her, though the

Fischetti-Guzik gang has staffs of legal sharks who specialize in

outwitting the authorities.

Quite often there is legal jockeying following the death of important

gangsters like La Fontaine.

After Bugsy Siegel was slain in Beverly Hills, Morris Rosen showed up

from New York at Siegel’s ornate Flamingo and took over all of the

murdered man’s assets before his body was cold. They had never belonged

to him at all. They were Syndicate property. So was 80 per cent of La

Fontaine’s.

25. WHO’S WHO IN MOBOCRACY

For two books and for the hundreds of newspaper stories we have done on

American gangsters and their maze of intertwining organization we got

enough to be publicly proclaimed America’s top experts in the field.

We have been offered lectures and speaking engagements before bodies

of bankers, merchants, criminologists, police conventions and on radio

programs. But we have saved some new names and some newly-discovered

secrets for this book, because a “confidential” without that factor

would be regarded as a gold brick; and because our publisher knows us

and trusts us and hasn’t the rabbit in him that the owners of other

media display, when they say:

“But you just can’t publish that kind of stuff. You’ll get us all

killed!”

One magazine which paid for the rights to do a digest of _Chicago

Confidential_ weakened and, instead, did a piece speculating on our

chances of surviving our tenure on the bestseller lists!

We have our own ways of getting this material, which so many think is

so dangerous. It comes from many sources, all confidential. Some of it

is right from the racketeers, themselves, for they have vendettas and

jealousies and hatreds on which they don’t dare to act in the open. The

widow of a murdered hoodlum drove hundreds of miles and met us in a car

in Central Park and gave us the tale of who rubbed him out and why.

This was a woman who had told the cops and the prosecutors that she

knew nothing, had no idea how her husband made a living, had never met

any one who was even “shady.”

Here and there a person who has been shaken down or shaken out, and

thus knows a small angle which may be valuable as a tip-off on one or

two people and authentic tactics gets to us and spills.

We don’t believe all we hear. But facts mesh up and patterns form and

truths evolve.

We have sketched for you the process whereby the pennies, dimes and

dollars of the numbers-players, horse-bettors, hookers and junkies

are harvested in Washington and funneled to the satraps who live in

penthouses and mansions in New York, Chicago, Beverly Hills and Rome.

They are big industry, our biggest. And while the principals hide in

their drawing-rooms even if they pass through Washington, to or from

Florida, they must maintain here high-powered lawyers, tax experts

who study and report every decision of the Treasury, lobbyists, press

agents and spies. Many of the vast legal businesses into which they

channel their cash have branch stores and offices here. The Syndicate

is an international conspiracy, as potent as that other international

conspiracy, Communism, and as dirty and dangerous, with its great

wealth and the same policy--to conquer everything and take over

everything, with no scruples as to how.

This gigantic money trust has assets of billions, exceeding the

combined wealth of Morgan, Rockefeller and all the Wall Street

freebooters of old.

It owns, through legitimate sources of trade, incalculable commercial,

residential, hotel and investment real estate, surpassing the holdings

of insurance companies. Through its purchase of stocks and bonds

it controls some and is attempting to control other transportation

companies, as well as railroads, hotel chains, distilleries and

breweries, department stores and chain stores, clothing and dress

manufacturers, steel and iron works, franchised automobile

distributors, trans-Atlantic steamship lines, a movie producer, a

radio chain, a big-league ball team, phonograph recording companies,

insurance corporations, banks, theatres, night clubs, laundries,

oil wells; it has been buying into even newspapers. This is only a

condensed catalog of its dishonest interests in once-honest enterprises.

A thief is always a thief. These modern pirates could not go straight.

As soon as they dip their sticky hands into something legitimate, it

goes crooked.

One of their favorite tactics is to buy in the open market enough stock

of a company, to create a nuisance value. They organize a minority

stockholders’ committee and dig up proxies. They have no real intention

of trying to get control, but some time before the stockholders’

meeting, they approach the management and offer to sell at a premium,

usually three or four times above the market listing. This is cold

blackmail.

Another tactic, employed when they secure control of a transportation

company, is to use their political connections to get a fare raise.

That enhances the stock on the market, then they unload.

They buy into some companies to get enough stock to rig the price,

a felony. In at least one instance with which we are familiar, the

underworld put a representative in as an officer of a transportation

company. He then sold company stock short on the securities exchanges.

This is a violation of SEC law. When a complaint was made by other

stockholders to the SEC, the man they talked to shrugged his shoulders

and said, “Forget it. They have a fix.”

Operators with such tremendous financial interests know their way

around Washington. One of their chief sources of contact is through

Democratic county, state and national committeemen, who are beholden

for campaign contributions. Sometimes cash is handed over to sweeten

the kitty. The committeemen and political bosses pass the orders along

through their Congressmen in Washington, or, when the fix is important

enough, directly to a specialist at such affairs right in the White

House.

The Tammany and Flynn interests in New York and Jake Arvey’s tight

Chicago combine are powers. The Rhode Island organization of Senator

Pastore and Attorney General McGrath, the crooked Connecticut machine

that made Senator Brien McMahon, and the Maryland organization, about

which more later, get whatever they want. Senator Herbert O’Conor

is the godfather of the Maryland outfit, and he is a member of the

Kefauver Committee.

The Colorado machine handles the loot for the Mountain States. The

errand-boy for the West Coast gamblers, dope runners and procurers

is the California Democratic organization, of which at this writing,

Jimmy Roosevelt is the chairman, but the mobsters don’t stick long with

losers.

In _Chicago Confidential_ we gave an outline of the organization and

chain of command of the international underworld Syndicate.

The Mafia, an age-old institution, has existed in Sicily since before

the beginning of written history. Sicily always has been, and to this

day is, subject territory. It was owned by ancient Phoenicians, Greeks,

Carthaginians, Romans, Imperial France, Italy and even Britain. The

Sicilian peasants always worked for absentee owners.

In prehistoric times, the Mafia began as a patriotic terrorist society,

somewhat like the Irish Republican Army. Venal leaders sold out,

offered protection to some estates while they sacked others. They

anticipated the protection racket by centuries.

The Mafia and the dread Black Hand are the same thing. The black hand

was the sign over which the Mafia’s threats were delivered. During

several thousand years it came about that almost every native of Sicily

had to have some tie or connection with the Mafia. Some were members,

others were relatives of members, or partners, hired killers and

spies. Others did business with it; still others were the terrorized

unattached who dared not refuse its bidding.

Sicilians vie with Cantonese as the most migrating people in the world.

Sicily, like Canton, is overpopulated and poverty-ridden. Another, more

important factor, appears to be that at every change of government,

Mafistas were forced into flight and exile in droves. They settled and

colonized all over the earth. There are huge Sicilian colonies spread

around Europe, in England, South America, North Africa, the Orient and

the United States.

Every Sicilian colony had a hard core of black-handers, who set up an

invisible government and preyed first on the other colonizers. The

various groups were in correspondence with each other, cooperated in

business deals, provided places for other fugitives and expatriates.

The first great influx arrived in this country exactly a hundred years

ago, about the time Napoleon 3rd extended his influence to Sicily.

Thereafter, every ten or twenty years found other large groups on

their way here, especially after such periods of uncertainty as the

unification of Italy, World War I, the Mussolini ascendancy, and after

World War II. From time to time the Italian government tried to wipe

out the Mafia, and after each attempt thousands more came to wink and

leer at the Statue of Liberty.

Though the Italian government never could exterminate the Mafia, it did

wipe out similar terroristic societies on the mainland, such as the

Camorra, of Naples. The members of these other secret societies who

could escape fled to Sicily, where they were welcomed and integrated as

brothers by the Mafistas.

Their overseas affiliates were absorbed by local Mafia units. This

process took place also among outlawed Greek secret societies, and the

dread Black Hand of Serbia, which was akin in purpose to Sicily’s Black

Hand. Meanwhile, as Mafia bosses got fat and rich, they smuggled in new

killers, many from Cuba and Puerto Rico.

The American Black Hand was content to operate exclusively in Italian

circles for years. All Italians had to pay tribute, a tithe of their

earnings, from the dollar-a-week of the corner bootblack to five

thousand a night of Enrico Caruso. Failure to pay meant the Black

Hand letter, and continued failure, death. Now the Mafia is smoother.

It “owns” acts on a ten-per cent business deal. Frank Sinatra was

discovered by Willie Moretti and is the pet of the Fischettis. He gave

a gold cigarette case to Charlie Luciano, inscribed “To my friend.”

Recent developments in New York again demonstrate how this works.

A $4,000-a-year city fireman, an Italian who had changed his name,

testified he was operating a $200,000 talent agency, which, in

theatrical parlance, “stole” acts from other agencies. Two were

“thefted” from agent Lou Perry: Alan Dale, another Italian who is the

hottest crooning find of the year, and Toni Arden. The fireman, whose

name is Gerry Purcell, booked these two and another, Terri Stevens,

into the Copacabana, where all three “clicked” and started their climbs

to fame.

In _Chicago Confidential_, we described how Big Jim Colosimo, then

the local Mafia leader, set up the organization which under Al Capone

and Johnny Torrio, was able to drive out of Chicago all the competing

non-Italian and sectional mobs. Prohibition made them fabulously rich

and potent.

The same thing happened in New York. While Colosimo was the head of the

Chicago chapter, Lupo “the Wolf” Saietta headed the New York branch.

After he went to prison, Joe “The Boss” Masseria took over, after a lot

of mayhem.

They began to call the Mafia the Unione Siciliano then. At times it

tried to pretend it was a respectable Italian-American benevolent

society. Joe “The Boss” reigned at the top of the Unione for nine

years, until he was murdered in 1931. His chief lieutenants were

“Lucky” Luciano and Frank Costello. When Masseria was killed they moved

in.

The Irish and Jewish mobs were being driven to the wall. The same

thing happened in every important city. By the middle 1930s, the

Unione Siciliano was dominant in every racket. Wherever there were

non-Italians left, the only way they could do business was to accept

the overlordship of the Mafia. If they were good boys they were allowed

to come in and get rich. If they tried any monkey-business, they were

assassinated, like Bugsy Siegel, or turned over to the law, like Lepke

and Gurrah.

No one knows whether the top Italian hoodlums like Capone, Luciano and

Costello took over the Mafia, or whether the Mafia took them over. That

is an academic conjecture, as they are now one and the same thing, with

the worldwide facilities of the Unione Siciliano the nucleus on which

all organized vice, crime and corruption, not only in the United States

but all over the world, has been built.

In _Chicago Confidential_, we stated in passing that since the exile

of Luciano in Italy the American “president” or executive head of the

Unione Siciliano is Frank Costello, and the vice-president is Capone’s

cousin, Charles Fischetti, in Chicago.

The worldwide Mafia is composed of a supreme head in Palermo, Sicily,

a Grand Council consisting of high-ranking executives, subordinate

officers, and a global membership.

Luciano, following his deportation in 1947, has been installed as the

Supreme Head of the International Mafia. Members are divided into two

distinct groups, inner circle and outer circle. The latter includes

members of ordinary rank and standards. The former consists of those

who command wealth, influence or proven underworld power. Membership in

this group is kept at a minimum, since it derives a major portion of

all proceeds from its general diverse illegal enterprises.

Members of the elite few are almost invariably, through ancestry

or direct birth, from Palermo and its adjoining areas. A very few

non-Italians have been taken into the ruling circle. According to the

U.S. Bureau of Narcotics, American members of the Mafia are necessarily

members of the over-all group, which therefore has continued to

include former American gangsters who left the U.S. by deportation or

voluntary flight. Prominently mentioned among these are John Schillochi

(International List 298); Dominic Petrelli (International List 259);

and Nicola Gentile (International List 133), all of whom were in Italy

when last heard of, though informants tell us they have since been seen

around New York again.

Other important members of the Mafia, such as Francisco Paolo Coppola

and Sylvestro Carrolla, found their way to Mexico, where they took over

the local Mafia. Other lesser figures represent the fearsome fraternity

in Canada, Argentina, Brazil, France, and England.

The Bureau of Narcotics has compiled what is believed to be the

only master list of the inner circle of the Mafia. It is based on

documentary evidence in the form of address books, papers, interstate

telephone calls, police records, screened informants, etc. During the

recent Kefauver Committee hearings, Commissioner Anslinger supplied

the document under oath to the committee. Extracts from this list are

printed in the back of the book.

Even before the Mafia had organized the entire American underworld, it

had strong communication lines into Washington. These were first built

up during Prohibition, when the boys passed money back to the capital

for their own protection. They also made liberal contributions to the

campaign funds of dry Congressmen, without whose votes, for whatever

cause, the racket was worthless. During the insane days of Prohibition,

the underworld began the process of undermining the honesty and probity

of federal officials, which has since been carried to an extreme.

Until the 18th Amendment, law-breakers feared Uncle Whiskers. There

were few federal criminal laws. Most criminals didn’t want to tangle

with Washington. Only nuts got themselves mixed up with the postal

inspectors or the Secret Service. After the wholesale bribery and

corruption of the 1920s, all respect for national law enforcement had

gone into the ashcan.

Now, due largely to the example of the F.B.I., the Bureau of Narcotics

and the Treasury Intelligence, the public’s faith in federal

law-enforcement and investigative agencies has been revived, but

the prosecuting and judicial ends have never come back. Most felons

would rather be arrested by federal than state or city cops, because

they know they can make a better deal with the prosecutors, and if

everything fails, federal sentences are light and the prisons are soft.

Before the underworld was completely organized, Washington was a

“neutral” city, where mob meetings and conventions were held. In such

cities the delegates must not pack guns. Rough stuff is out by common

consent. Other such open cities are Saratoga, Hot Springs, Las Vegas,

Atlantic City and Miami. These were and are important resort centers,

and are kept neutral because machine-gunning might scare tourists away.

Washington was no-man’s-land for obvious reasons; they knew tommy-guns

wouldn’t be tolerated in the Capitol’s shadow.

Commissioner Anslinger recalls such a gangster convention in the

Shoreham Hotel, two decades ago. The Commissioner dropped into the

Blue Room for dinner and saw Luciano, “Machine Gun” Jack McGurn, Frank

Nitti, “the Enforcer” of the Chicago mob, Izzie Bernstein of Detroit’s

Purple Gang, and three other hoods, each with a bejeweled blonde. They

were registered at the Shoreham under assumed names and spent a week

there holding meetings.

When Anslinger lamped the boys, he went to the lobby and had Lucky

called out. Luciano was offended, beefed about the interruption of his

party. He said, “You can’t do anything to me. We got Constitutional

rights. We’re only sight-seeing.”

Anslinger said, “That’s all you’d better do,” then glancing at the

blondes, he added, “remember the Mann Act.”

A few weeks later, Jack McGurn was knocked off. It developed that this

meeting was called for his trial. He had been getting out of line. So

he was summoned from Chicago to meet his peers from the other cities.

The organized underworld’s influence in official Washington is

incalculable. Its direct ties, even to the top, are so firm that

in many instances even a political revolution will not dislodge

them. They succeeded in doing that which the Communists failed to

do; they infiltrated and took over the government. They are the true

subversives, though that never comes out in Congress.

The Mafia’s power is built around these factors:

1) The underworld’s ownership of and contributions to local political

machines. The mob has no politics or ideology. It pays liberally to

both sides, so it will have a friend in court no matter who wins. Even

the former American Labor Party Congressman, Vito Marcantonio, was on

intimate terms with Mafia hoodlums, accepted campaign contributions

from them, associated with and fronted for their racketeers in New York

and in Washington, and welcomed them into his American Labor Party. He

appointed the son of the infamous “Three Finger Brown” Luchese to West

Point in 1946. Luchese was and is his contact in Tammany Hall.

2) The Mafia’s huge cache of currency, hidden in private safe deposit

vaults and in banks throughout the world. Its earnings from illicit

sources are so great, and come in so fast, the boys cannot invest it

fast enough. They must hide most of the money because they failed to

pay income tax on the major portion of it. It is no exaggeration to say

they have billions of dollars in U.S. bills. With this bankroll they

can bribe at will, elect many officials, and swing public opinion to

incredible degrees.

3) The Syndicate’s interests in countless large legitimate businesses

and industries give it a responsible, respectable voice in Washington

through trade associations, lobbyists, law firms, banks, Congressmen

who would do a favor for a local businessman but would not be seen dead

with a gangster, and a considerable segment of the press, daily and

periodical, and the radio.

4) The hoodlums’ tie-up with some labor, which came about when

unions needed sluggers, or when tough guys muscled in to grab union

treasurers, or used them as part of their extortion rackets. Lobbyists

representing the unions are feared and toadied to.

5) The Italian voting bloc now controls some of the largest cities in

the country. It is the largest single unit in New York, where all three

candidates for mayor in 1950 were Italians. Too many of their men in

office have ties to the Mafia. They can count on the votes of their

countrymen in nominations and elections. The mass votes of Italians

are bartered back and forth and usually can be delivered, by Black

Hand threats in Italian neighborhoods, by appeal to blood relationship

and national pride, or through the pages of powerful Italian language

newspapers.

During his recent campaign, New York’s Mayor Impellitteri charged that

Gene Pope, publisher of Il Progresso Italiano-Americano, the biggest

Italian daily in the country, was an intimate of Frank Costello. We

have seen them dining together on intimate terms.

No book could comprehensively cover the mob’s facets in Washington, but

here are a few, at random:

The President’s military aide and poker pal, Major General Harry

Vaughan, has associated with Frank Costello. They were brought together

through his stooge, the convict John Maragon, who was a pal of the late

Bill Helis, Greek millionaire and partner in Costello’s New York and

Louisiana enterprises--as well as in a Scotch distillery.

Joe Adonis, New York mobster and lieutenant of Costello, had financial

dealings with Harold F. Ambrose, former special assistant to the

Postmaster General. Ambrose pleaded guilty to charges of operating a

$600,000 fraudulent stamp-selling scheme. Adonis was questioned by the

D.C. grand jury, but refused to talk, after which the United States

had amnesia about his connection with the case. Ambrose is related to

Democratic Senator O’Mahoney. His failure to go to trial protected his

underworld associates.

Attorney General McGrath, who may be a U.S. Supreme Court Justice

before this appears in print, was a Senator from Rhode Island and an

important member of Rhode Island’s Democratic machine. That outfit has

tight ties with the underworld. Within days after McGrath was pushed

upstairs to the Attorney Generalship, to make way for Bill Boyle as

Democratic National Chairman, McGrath made a trip to New York City.

There he or his double had dinner at the Copacabana night club with

Joe Nunan, former Commissioner of Internal Revenue, and Julie Podell,

manager of the cafe. It has been frequently charged in New York

that Costello has an interest in the corporation. The late Mayor La

Guardia ordered police to cancel the club’s license if Podell, long an

associate of Costello, was ever found on its premises again. Podell,

while giddy, told one of your reporters that Costello had advanced

$50,000 to open the club.

At the time of the dinner party there, the Copa was a possible

defendant in a tax-action growing out of an investigation into the

charges that it was owned by Costello. Since then, Podell was in Hot

Springs with Costello and several other mobsters from all parts of the

country, in an annual convention. McGrath has since stated there is no

organized crime or vice in the country.

Former Attorney General Tom Clark, now a Justice of the United States

Supreme Court, was closely associated with attorneys who represented

underworld figures. There were no major underworld prosecutions

during his term of office. A Congressional investigation elicited the

startling information that Clark’s boyhood pal, Maury Hughes, a Dallas

attorney, was retained by five members of the old Capone mob, who had

been convicted of extorting millions from the movie industry, to induce

the federal authorities to nol-pros outstanding indictments against

them and secure premature paroles.

Hughes, with other lawyers close to the administration, worked this

feat of legal legerdemain. While these pages were being written,

the same Maury Hughes secretly succeeded in keeping Alan Smiley, a

notorious West Coast gangster who had been ordered deported, in the

country. Smiley was Bugsy Siegel’s buddy, and was seated next to him on

a love-seat in Virginia Hill’s Beverly Hills mansion when Siegel was

ambushed and assassinated, in the only spot in the room visible to the

torpedoes hidden outside, in bushes.

Until recently, Smiley had been passing himself off as an oil broker

and real estate man in Houston, Texas, where he lived with his wife, a

former movie starlet, in Glen McCarthy’s swank Shamrock Hotel. Smiley

took up with a Texas oilman, Lenoire Josey, who liked to gamble. Smiley

said he liked that, too. He knew some good places.

He and Josey went to Sam Maceo’s ornate casino, the Balinese Room, in

Galveston. Then they went to the Mounds Club, in Cleveland. After that

they went to the Flamingo, in Las Vegas. A trip to Phil Kastel’s (and

Costello’s) beautiful Beverly, outside New Orleans, followed. When

Josey counted up he had lost $500,000. Smiley “admitted to being a big

loser, too.” If so, he got some back, because he owns a bit of stock in

the Flamingo.

While these lines were being written, the California Crime Commission,

headed by Admiral William H. Standley, Retired, castigated government

aides for their ties with criminals. He said the relationship between

the underworld elements and certain officials “must of necessity make

it embarrassing for Federal officials to undertake prosecutions.”

A specific example was Sam Termini, described as a godson of the late

Charlie Binaggio, who would have had to earn $900,000 income last year

to be able to afford the cash payments made on his mansion in San Mateo

County. He paid income tax on no such sum.

It cited the case of Dorothy A. McCreedy as a specific example of

tieups between criminals and government officials, stating:

“The McCreedy woman is a convicted madame, a major figure in the

prostitution racket in California for years and operator of two large

whore-houses in Honolulu.”

She was reported to the Income Tax Bureau as a suspected evader, but

“she is also a partner in a business called Safety Step Sales Co., and

one of her partners is Ernest M. Schino, chief field deputy in the

Office of the Collector of Internal Revenue.”

They tell a spicy story about Dorothy, whom we know well--personally,

not professionally. When F. D. Roosevelt made his first trip to Hawaii,

the Secret Service failed to send ahead a black open touring-car

of expensive make, familiar and standard for the President on open

display. Honolulu was winnowed. Only one such car was found in the

Territory. It was owned by Dorothy, who used to drive her gals through

town, to show them off, for promotion.

Dorothy pridefully lent the car. Everyone in Honolulu recognized it

on sight, but the President didn’t know that. He flashed his historic

grin, waved his hat, but couldn’t understand why the cheers were

accompanied by an obbligato of guffaws.

It was charged, and never refuted in the 1950 campaign, by both

Governor Dewey and Mayor Impellitteri that Ed Flynn, New York political

boss and intimate of the late President Roosevelt, is Frank Costello’s

contact in New York State. Flynn, who has, and retained after the

debacle, the national patronage in the state, used it frequently to

procure appointments in high places, including the federal district

bench, the New York State Supreme Court and some prosecutors, of men

known to be friendly to associates of Costello. His defeated choice for

governor of New York, former Congressman Walter J. Lynch, of the Bronx,

had, while he was in Congress, introduced a “sleeper” which would have

permitted the underworld kings, notorious for such frauds, to evade

prison sentences for tax delinquency.

A report, in the possession of the Los Angeles Police Department, which

we have seen, states that Flynn or someone who looked remarkably like

him--with Frank Costello, Phil Kastel and others--was in Mexico City in

December, 1948. Costello was in conferences that contemplated taking

over the Mexican National Lottery. The group was partied by A. C.

Blumenthal, expatriate New York showman.

Lynch, like his boss Ed Flynn, was a never-deviating New Deal-Fair Deal

Democrat. He never voted against an administration measure. In the last

Congress there was a mighty affinity between New Dealers and crooked

dealers. For instance, former Senator Lucas, of Illinois, the majority

leader, was beholden to the Nash-Kelly-Arvey machine. Appointments of

shady figures to federal positions in Illinois cleared through him, the

senior Senator, as all must.

Left-wing Democratic Senator Hubert Humphrey, of Minnesota, is a pal

of ex-convict Charles Ward, millionaire calendar printer. Ward has

many ties with the underworld all over the country, and was one of

the financial backers of Anna Roosevelt’s attempt to start a daily

newspaper in Phoenix, Arizona. This was once he was outsmarted in

a money deal. As is not unknown in the Roosevelt tradition, he got

one cent on the dollar back. Bill O’Dwyer said he found a direct tie

between Ward and Brooklyn’s Murder, Inc.

Under such auspices, the underworld is establishing a firm grip on

Minnesota. Its attempt to take over the Minneapolis and St. Paul

traction systems is a part of the general picture across the land

and was exposed by Lait last summer in his _Daily Mirror_ column. It

resulted in the indictment of one of the mobsters, Kid Cann, so called

because of his many incarcerations.

The New Dealers have been kind to the underworld ever since their

victorious election in 1932, after Costello and Jimmy Hines, with

Ed Kelly, had successfully managed the convention fight in Chicago.

While Frank Murphy was Attorney-General he saw to it that prosecuting

attorneys laid off the boys. Internal Revenue agents prepared a tax

case against Costello and Frank Erickson, but the U.S. Attorney was

ordered to pigeonhole it.

Following Frank Erickson’s conviction in New York on gambling charges,

District Attorney’s investigators seized his books and papers. Among

them was a memo reading, “Phone Daddy Long Legs.”

The sleuths jumped on this. They figured it was a code or nickname for

one of the mob aces. That is one of the toughest problems encountered

by racket-busters, i.e., breaking down the aliases used by the kings of

the underworld on their books and in their records.

The gumshoes rushed over to the Island and interviewed Erickson in his

cell.

“Who is Daddy Long Legs?” they asked. “And what did you want to call

him for?”

Erickson laughed uproariously. “Why shouldn’t I phone him?” he

inquired. “After all, I’m related to him by marriage and he’s the Vice

President.”

After the investigators had recovered from their shocks, this is what

Erickson told them:

“An in-law of mine is an in-law of Barkley’s. Barkley visited me in my

Long Island home. My grand-kids are crazy about him. They nicknamed him

‘Daddy Long Legs.’”

The story of the Binaggio killing in Kansas City, anticipated in

_Chicago Confidential_, is recent, but the full background of the case

has never been aired before.

President Truman is and was a loyal member of his county Democratic

organization. And as such--a party man who never split his ticket--he

was forced to go along, though unwillingly, when the Chicago hoodlums

put Binaggio in as the leader.

When the President first went into politics, the Mafia was just one of

the mobs. It had not organized the country. In the 1920s, most of the

big city machines were owned by Irish bosses, who were tied up with the

local Irish underworld gangs. Each city was independent of all other

cities.

On the surface, the conviction of Tom Pendergast by U.S. Attorney

Maurice Milligan was a smashing victory for law and order. But it was,

at the same time, a greater victory for the Capone and Costello mob.

There are high government cops--not friends of the administration,

either--who have the wild idea that the only effect of Pendergast’s

conviction was to permit Charley Fischetti’s ambassador to Kansas

City, Tony Gizzo, to put in his own man, Binaggio, as county leader.

Milligan’s brother Tuck was counsel for Joe de Luca, a Mafia boss and

convicted dope smuggler, during and after his brother’s term as United

States attorney. Milligan prosecuted few Sicilian hoodlums. T-men

demanded 20 years for De Luca. Milligan’s office asked for only 3 for

his brother’s client; he was sprung shortly thereafter and the stool

pigeon who convicted him was murdered. We looked up the official record

and that is so.

As new Democratic leader of the President’s home county, Binaggio had

great influence. Naturally, the President wanted to carry his own state

in local and federal elections, so he had to work through his home

organization. The presence in it of people like Binaggio and Gizzo may

have turned his stomach, but that was politics.

We have explained that the Big Mob does not operate directly in

Washington on the street and sewer levels, such enterprises being

franchised out to locals. The Syndicate does do business in the

District in connection with its legitimate affairs and some of

its larger sub-rosa undertakings. In the latter category are

black-marketing, the sale and resale of government surplus, padding

of war contracts, etc. The boys had an office in the Thomas Circle

Building during World War II, in which they dished out war contracts.

One day a man was killed there, but so great was their influence that

no record was made on the police blotter. The newspapers still know

nothing about it.

A couple of hotels in Washington are owned by interests known to be

backed by underworld coin. Many chain stores owned by mob money have

branches there. Money of “Lepke” Buchalter, executed head of Murder,

Inc., is in Jarwood’s men’s clothing store, across the street from the

Department of Justice. The history of this chain makes a human interest

story.

When Lepke surrendered, to be turned over to J. Edgar Hoover, he

understood the boys put in a “fix” so he would be tried on federal

charges and not turned over to Brooklyn’s crusading District Attorney,

Bill O’Dwyer, on the Murder, Inc., rap, which meant the chair in Sing

Sing.

But Hoover would have nothing to do with such a deal, and gave him up

to New York State. Lepke was convicted of first-degree murder. He knew

he had been railroaded by the Mafia, which had wanted to get rid of

its Jewish partner. He threatened to blow the whistle, and was promised

leniency if he would talk. His wife, an attractive brunette, went to

see him in his cell and told him her life had been threatened, she

would be croaked if he spilled. That was not so. Lepke loved her, so he

went to the hot seat with his lips sealed to protect her.

Most of his illegal profits had been stashed away in secret safe

deposit vaults. He told her where they were. While Lepke was in

the death-chamber, his wife was often seen with Arthur Jawitz, a

slick-looking young guy, who had attracted the attention of the Feds

when they were looking for Lepke, whose bed he was keeping warm.

Shortly after Lepke’s electrocution, his widow married the black-haired

young man, and set him up in the men’s clothing business. They changed

their name to Jarwood. The underworld says Lepke left her $20,000,000

in U.S. currency. A former wife of Jawitz showed up, charged he had

married Betty Buchalter bigamously. She said Betty was “keeping” Jawitz

while her gangster husband was still alive.

After the Kefauver Committee quizzed Lou Wolfson, head of the Capital

Transit Company, which owns the street-cars and buses in Washington,

seeking gangster-ties, it went no further. There was no evidence.

Wolfson, who lives in Jacksonville, Florida, says he is a legitimate

businessman. We have no knowledge to the contrary. But it was developed

under oath at a Senatorial hearing that Wolfson and one William B.

Johnston had, between them, raised a fund of half-a-million dollars for

the campaign of Florida’s governor, Fuller Warren. Wolfson and Johnston

each put $154,000 into this private, special campaign kitty, and were

intimately associated during the campaign. Johnston is president

of Sportsman’s Park racetrack in Chicago, and several dog-tracks

in Florida, which were owned by the late Al Capone. Johnston makes

frequent payments to Capone associates as “loans.” He admitted he had

been associated with mob-owned enterprises.

Another witness, Leo J. Carroll, testified that it was general

knowledge in 1948, that with the election of Governor Warren, one-third

of whose campaign Wolfson financed, “the Mob would take over Florida.”

It did.

A few months after Wolfson secured control of the Washington transit

system, he was permitted to raise the fare to 15 cents a ride, on the

plea of extreme poverty. Right after that, the company doubled its

quarterly dividends from 50 cents to $1 a share. Company stock scored

a sensational advance, reaching $39. When Wolfson landed control he

bought 109,000 shares at $20.

Wolfson’s campaign to buy the local transit system was authorized by

the ICC and the Securities Exchange after an adverse recommendation

of the examiner and over opposition of minority stockholders. In less

than ten months, the Wolfson group succeeded in dominating the board of

directors and placing its own men in strategic executive spots, one of

whom is Frank E. Weakly, president of the Wardman Park Hotel.

Now the SEC has granted Wolfson permission to sell some of his stock

at the inflated price, which gives him the company and his money back.

At this writing, he is negotiating to buy the Washington Redskins from

George Marshall.

You can feel the presence of the mob in Washington. You can see

evidence in many directions that it is there. John L. Laskey,

immediate past president of the District Bar Association, resigned

the chairmanship of its law enforcement committee because he

had represented three witnesses called before the Senate Crime

Investigating Committee in connection with Florida gambling. He was a

former U.S. attorney.

When Frank Costello testified briefly last year before the Senate

Interstate Commerce Committee investigating the transportation of

slot-machines across state lines, the photo of a Senate attache calling

a cab for him while Capitol policemen pushed nosy spectators away,

was widely published. But what hasn’t been printed is that a table

was reserved for him in advance in the Senators’ private dining-room

in the Capitol, and while the great Costello dined with his staff of

lawyers, a couple of U.S. Senators humbly waited for seats. The Senate

dining-room is operated on a concession basis by the son-in-law of a

Chicago vending-machine manufacturer.

It could be some of the Senators are on Costello’s payroll. The law

firms of at least 40 Senators and Congressmen regularly represent the

wire service and local gamblers in their home towns.

Now let’s gander the Kefauver Committee.

26. TERROR FROM TENNESSEE

The House and the Senate have unlimited power and initiative in one

function only--they can investigate anything.

No President can veto a resolution for an investigation or by law curb

its activities or its scope. Theoretically, the purpose is to acquire

facts on which to base future legislation. Some of the mightiest of

our historical moves have sprung from such inquiries. Giants have

risen in the course of them. Harry Truman would probably have remained

an obscure little nonentity were it not that he became chairman of a

comparatively inconsequential Senate body which got to asking questions.

One of the surest ways to grab public attention is for a legislator to

propose a resolution for a special investigation. If it passes it is

not submitted to a standing committee, but its author is by established

custom chosen as its chairman.

This is the story of a special Senatorial investigating committee.

In many ways it is typical of such things under the Fair Deal, where

politics can strangle this last independent prerogative of Congress.

The central character of this tale is Estes Kefauver, who sprung a

Senate motion to investigate crime. Your authors have a personal

property right in this venture. For Senator Kefauver had read _Chicago

Confidential_, and what he found there made his hair stand on end. This

is no conjecture. His resolution was prompted by what we had discovered

and published.

He was sincere, impulsive and ambitious--if you can call a yen to be

Vice-President an ambition. He is our friend, and as such we wish

him well and, as Americans who know a little more than most of their

fellow-citizens about what is going on, we cheered the possibilities of

an untrammeled turning of the turf that would show up officially any

important portion of the staggering facts for which we risked our lives.

Kefauver began bravely. He realized that he had lightning bolts in both

hands; that he not only could become one of the foremost men of his

time, but that he could accomplish priceless service to his country.

With the infinite power that was his, he could expose and perhaps

destroy the Syndicate and the Mafia which rules it, and save us from

the creeping, leaping conspiracy of criminals which already in many

elements of our life has superseded constituted government.

But he wants to be Vice-President.

At this writing, he is 47; Barkley is 73. Political wisdom would

dictate that the second man on the next national Democratic ticket

should come from a border state. Kefauver is from Tennessee. He became

a headliner when he licked boss Ed Crump. He is of Dutch-American stock

and a Protestant.

He has four years more on his Senate term and could be re-elected. But

for a national nomination one needs a majority of the delegates at a

convention. Delegates are party men, designated by the party.

He had no more than taken his first bold steps when the party went to

work on him. No Democrat can fight the Mafia and get anything from most

Democrats except obstruction. They are so intimately and intricately

interwoven with the underworld plunderworld through all political

strata that they must protect it.

Kefauver was too naive to foresee this. He comes from one of the few

states where there is no gangsterism except in picayune city and county

affairs, and in those the Republicans share the chicken-feed rewards.

Kefauver campaigned in a coonskin cap and unhorsed the Memphis machine,

which had no great state-wide strength from within and no tie-ups to

bring it help from without. But the explosion that followed when his

bill passed rocked the whole national party.

Kefauver, in his innocence, had read our book of disclosures, but

like thousands of others, he failed to grasp the significance of the

political forces which have become integrated with the system, without

which it could not have spread, and to which it has contributed and

does contribute incalculable money, leadership and votes. It was

inconceivable to him that mayors and governors he knew and many of the

statesmanlike Senators with whom he mingled, could be beholden to, not

to say slaves of, swarthy, sinister men, many of them ex-convicts, who

traffic in bodies of women, making and supplying dope-fiends, dealing

in extortion, smuggling, bootlegging, hijacking, bribing and murdering

in the principal cities and states of the union; that these hyenas were

a controlling influence in nominations and elections; that they owned

vast commercial and industrial enterprises, labor unions, even some

newspapers, and that their pirate hands gripped the steering wheels of

enormous financial fleets.

He read it. But he couldn’t believe it. And what he did believe of it

he couldn’t digest.

Now he finds himself in the middle of a giant whitewash. He is the

chump whose good name is used to shield the key figures of the Mafia

and obfuscate their tie-up with the big city Democratic machines. He

does not admit it publicly but he is heartbroken.

Senate Republicans, seeking an issue, jumped in to support the proposed

investigation. Kefauver’s bill at once became a hot potato the

Democrats couldn’t drop.

Dave Niles, Bill Boyle, J. Howard McGrath, and Scott Lucas huddled.

They found it was too late to sidetrack the proposed investigation;

it had to go on, but with “sensible” safeguards. Suggestions that

the probe be transferred to other committees were waved aside as

impractical; it was necessary to have a front for this and Kefauver

was perfect for the job. He is a man of personal honesty, with no

embarrassing machine or underworld connections.

The committee was voted, but with the surprising proviso that the

Vice President should name the minority party members. This was

unprecedented. Minority leaders always choose their own committee

members. The purpose of this tactic was to deal Michigan Senator Homer

Ferguson, the Republican’s top investigator, out. Membership was

limited to five, three Democrats and two Republicans. Thereupon Vice

President Barkley followed orders, named two GOPers, one harmless.

Both were in the middle of violent primary campaigns, fighting for

political survival. It was known they could not spend much time with

the committee. Wiley, a good man, is a ranking minority member of

the Foreign Relations Committee. He was kept close to that post by

the Korean mess. Julius Cahn, Wiley’s intelligent aide, was rendered

impotent. And Tobey is more a New Dealer than most Democrats. He got

campaign support from the administration, and in payment gratuitously

but muddle-headedly blamed gambling in New York on Dewey.

The motor of a Senatorial investigating committee is its counsel and

the staff. The members have other duties, must attend other committee

meetings, must be on the floor for roll-calls. And they are not

usually professional prosecutors. They are at the mercy of their staffs.

That’s when the shenanigans began. Kefauver had no experience with such

shenanigans. He didn’t know whom to retain. Tom Murphy, Alger Hiss’

nemesis and later Police Commissioner of New York, was recommended. But

Murphy was persona non grata in Washington because he had guts enough

not to throw the Hiss prosecution, after he had learned that would

please the Attorney General’s office.

Dave Niles told Kefauver to ask Ferdinand Pecora for advice. Pecora,

then a Justice of the New York State Supreme Court, was getting by on

the reputation of having exposed the money barons of Wall Street in the

early 1930’s. Pecora is a thoroughgoing New Dealer and Kefauver is one

of the faithful. They failed to tell the man from Tennessee that Pecora

is Bronx boss Ed Flynn’s man. Flynn is head of the machine in which

Frank Costello is a power. Pecora attended Costello’s celebrated party

at the Copacabana nightclub, with half the local bench, a number of

jurists who owed their robes to Costello.

Pecora recommended his protégé, Rudolph Halley, of the law firm of

Fulton, Walter and Halley, for counsel and Felix Frankfurter phoned

to confirm it. Halley had been on the staff of the Truman Committee

when Fulton was its chief counsel, so he looked good to Estes as an

experienced prober. But Halley had been an attorney for the Hudson &

Manhattan Railroad, in which it was alleged underworld characters owned

stock. Kefauver told your reporters he had heard a rumor Halley might

have represented them, and had asked him about it before hiring him.

Kefauver looked us in the eyes and stated, “Halley said it wasn’t so.

Naturally, I took his word for it.”

After the Kefauver Committee had been functioning some months, Halley

admitted to your reporters before witnesses, that he knew there were

large underworld holdings in that company, which had been his client.

We have a sworn affidavit which reads as follows:

“Mr. Halley stated that the statement in the book _Chicago

Confidential_, to the effect that the underworld syndicate has bundles

of stock in the Hudson & Manhattan tubes, was substantially correct;

that it was his own personal knowledge, as former counsel for the

Hudson & Manhattan Railroad, that the underworld owned large blocks of

stock in that company.”

After a change in management, Halley was dismissed from the H & M,

and went to work for the Kefauver Committee at $120 a week. The new

management of the railroad said it had virtually eliminated suspicious

stockholders and emasculated shady directors who could not be fired.

Among the investigators hired by the committee were ex-cops,

disappointed lawyers and the usual Washington hanger-on-ers,

recommended for jobs by influential friends.

Kefauver’s principal source of information about the underworld was

what he had read in _Chicago Confidential_, He knew no more. He asked

Mortimer to take a leave of absence from his newspaper and act as paid

adviser to the committee. Mortimer accepted, but said that he would

take no compensation. Over the weekend, Kefauver withdrew his offer in

a telegram in which he blamed other Senators. He said they feared other

newspapermen would be offended. That was an alibi, quickly arranged

when influential Democrats vetoed the idea. But he took advice from Nat

Perlow, editor of the Police Gazette!

At the first open hearing of the committee, subpenaed gamblers

were represented by Morris Shenker, St. Louis lawyer, formerly on

the Missouri Democratic committee. As a result of his good work in

obtaining campaign donations, Shenker was named by Bill Boyle to the

Democratic finance committee. He hastily resigned after the deal was

exposed in Lait’s column.

Every effort was made to keep Kefauver concentrated on gambling.

Syndicate heads know the nation is not shocked over bookmaking.

Whenever witnesses or informers got hot on narcotics, the spine of the

Syndicate system, or began to talk about the huge investments of the

underworld in legitimate business, they were brushed off. There were

rumors of fixes, payoffs and other such skulduggery, though Kefauver

was absolutely in the clear. But whenever he was warned such things

were happening, Kefauver, a softie at heart, who believes evil of no

one, said it was impossible.

Though he promised your reporters his committee would hold open

hearings in New York and Chicago before election, at which no punches

would be pulled, he folded up like a frightened puppy. After one day in

New York, at which no one of importance was questioned, the committee

adjourned until after the election, with the statement that Joe Adonis,

who had been allegedly sought for 90 days, was unavailable. Your

reporters saw Adonis every night at the corner of 50th Street and

Broadway while committee investigators were supposed to be searching

for him. While the great man-hunt was supposed to be on, Adonis

voluntarily surrendered himself to New Jersey authorities who wanted to

prosecute him for gambling.

When asked why Costello hadn’t been called before election, a committee

spokesman stated “We have nothing to ask Mr. Costello.”

Similar wariness was shown in Chicago. When former police captain Dan

Gilbert, who was Jake Arvey’s hand-picked candidate for sheriff of

Cook County, was on the stand at a secret hearing, he was questioned

about his wealth. Your authors had exposed him as the richest cop in

the world, a millionaire. Gilbert’s salary had never topped $9,000

a year, yet he admitted at the closed hearing he owned more than

$350,000--which he said he had acquired through “speculation.” The

committee dropped it then. Senator Kefauver, in an interview, said,

“Captain Gilbert was a forthright witness.” When the _Chicago Sun

Times_, a Democratic New Deal newspaper, got hold of the minutes of

the secret hearing and splashed the text on Page 1 a few days before

election, Kefauver threatened to hold someone in contempt for the

leak. Yet the committee did not explain why this information of public

interest had been bottled up before election, and why Gilbert’s bank

accounts and securities had not been scrutinized.

Later, Kefauver imperiously “directed” Eugene C. Pulliam, publisher

of the _Indianapolis Star_ and _News_, “to discontinue” publication

of a series exposing gambling as revealed by previous committee

investigations, under penalty of a contempt citation.

While Estes was threatening other newspapermen with jail, columnist

Drew Pearson, his fervent supporter, was permitted to obtain access

to secret committee records, including highly confidential income tax

returns.

Wherever the committee held hearings, its staff tried to pick on the

little guys, fingered as the goats. The procedure in Miami was to put

six local Jewish bookmakers out of business. The Mafia was muscling in

on them anyway. The dispossessed were scheduled to be closed up so the

Chicago Sicilian mob would have clear sailing in Miami as soon as the

hullabaloo about the crime investigation blew over next year.

Only half-hearted efforts were made to locate important figures.

Where, at any time, any were questioned or threatened with contempt, it

was because the situation was so wide open that no cover-up could be

attempted without bringing the newspapers down.

At this writing, Harry Russell, Chicago hoodlum, is the only

recalcitrant witness brought to trial. He’s a small potato, a Jew

taking the rap for the Mafia.

The position of the Committee has been that witnesses could refuse to

incriminate themselves only on federal offenses, but that if it was

state prosecution they feared, they had no immunity--tenuous reasoning

any way you look at it, though many lawyers say it’s legal.

But Kefauver has been letting his enthusiasm get the better of him, and

recently stated at an open hearing, “Don’t think we’re going to let

you get away with this. We are working closely with local prosecutors

and will turn our records over, particularly where anyone defies this

committee.”

Though no comment appeared in the papers, the mob lawyers knew he

had played into their hands. He might have made the contempt stick

before; now, however, since he himself has stated he’s acting as an

agent for the states--though unofficial--it’s a million to one not one

recalcitrant witness will be convicted.

The only state in which the committee got tough before election was

Pennsylvania, where the municipal machines are Republican. In New York,

boss Flynn and Tammany were unmolested, and the onus was put on Dewey

for having tolerated gambling in Saratoga. There was no mention that

when Lehman, F.D.R.’s “good right arm,” was governor, gambling was just

as wide open there, and more so.

One of your reporters remembers seeing a limousine with New York State

license Number 1 parked under the portico of Piping Rock, a notorious

and expensive Saratoga gambling joint run by Luciano. That was Governor

Lehman’s car. It is possible his chauffeur was inside playing dominoes.

But the strategy of the Democratic brain-trust miscarried. People in

New York knew Costello was running the town and trying to get control

of the state, even when the Senate committee, with all its power

and money, fiddled and twiddled. Chicagoans knew the Fischettis and

Capones, Boss Arvey, Dan Gilbert and Senator Scott Lucas were political

bedfellows, which charge was aired daily in the papers during the 1950

campaign.

Wherever the committee gave the Democrats a clean bill, the people

rebelled and kicked them out, most frequently on just that issue. But,

where the committee had tried to show the underworld is tied up with

Republicans, as in Pennsylvania, the GOP scored a great victory.

The two Democratic members of the committee, in addition to Kefauver,

are Lester Hunt, of Wyoming, and Herbert O’Conor of Maryland. Where

Hunt comes from, “crime” means cattle-rustling and claim-jumping.

O’Conor, however, is the Democratic leader of the Maryland

organization, which is in cahoots with one of the tightest and biggest

Mafia concentrations in the country. Not only were no hearings held in

Maryland before election, but Kefauver refused to send investigators

into Prince Georges County, described heretofore as one of the most

vicious crime spots of the country, even when citizens implored him to.

Instead of cracking down on murderers, procurers and dope-peddlers, the

committee wasted time, money and effort on an investigation of comics.

An effort was made to label the strips as the chief cause of America’s

crimes.

The Senate investigating committee has, through ignorance or by design,

been playing directly into the hands of the Mafia. Most Syndicate

key figures no longer have anything personally to do with gambling,

except as bankers and protectors. Gambling is a seasonal business and

investigations and clean-ups are discounted in advance, like rain in

baseball economy and warm weather in Sun Valley. These catastrophes are

averaged off over a long period. The computations contemplate temporary

droughts at the street level. Except for a few who will go to the can

for a few months and be paid for their time, nothing is disturbed.

Bookmakers still take bets right outside the Senate committee room.

If no gambling casinos run in Miami this winter they will next winter.

Meanwhile, those who want to gamble will fly to Havana, where the same

mob operates the wheels and crap games. Anyway, you can still bet on

the nags in Miami, clean-up or no. At this writing, at least two fully

equipped casinos are operating in the area.

But while the committee was grabbing front pages with its gambling

exposures, the big boys were immune in the affairs that really matter

to them, like manipulation of the stock market, black marketing,

smuggling, counterfeiting, dope and other forms of profitable

deviltry, the proceeds of which they invest in real estate and

securities, so that as of now, the crime cartel is more potent in the

money marts of the world than all the highbinders so long hissed at,

the “international bankers.”

After Col. George White, Commr. Anslinger’s ace investigator, on loan

to the Committee, was withdrawn, Scott Lucas high-pressured Truman

to penalize White. White had turned up evidence that beat Lucas in

Illinois.

Purposely or not, Halley even helped the giggling gangsters get rid

of the few rivals who remained. Few Sicilians got a going-over; but

the heat was turned on the handful of Jewish and Irish cheaters who

survived.

Personally, Kefauver is a delightful and appealing personage, tall,

a former football-player with the charm of an F.D.R. and the fine,

delicate features of a Woodrow Wilson. He may well be your next Vice

President. After that--well, any American boy with no such start could

be. His friends kid him and accuse him of saying “Good morning, Mr.

President” every morning when he looks in the mirror as he shaves.

Kefauver frowns at this. He says, “The Chief in the White House will

get sore.”

Kefauver’s main weakness is that he is a Don Quixote for “causes”

(except FEPC), has too much energy and tries to do too many things. He

is on almost every regular and special committee it is possible for a

Senator to make, so hasn’t time to do justice to any. He is in modest

circumstances, cannot be bought or bribed, though he could have had

millions to throw the investigation--as it is being thrown anyway. Many

believe some of that money went elsewhere, without his knowledge.

An employe of the committee, whose name will not be divulged by us,

disgusted by what went on, unburdened himself. He said “a fix was

made in Miami” to relieve a certain wanted hoodlum from testifying;

and that another deal was put over in Chicago to protect some of the

most important Mafistas. A fund was raised in Hollywood to choke off

disclosures.

One investigator had as a chief recommendation, other than brief

service with the F.B.I., that he had been a cop in a mid-Western city.

With this background he was sent in to “bust” the mob in New York, a

job that many District Attorneys couldn’t do. He knew so little of New

York that he had to ask how to get to Times Square.

This investigator, “unable” to find Joe Adonis during a 90-day search,

was very diligent when it came to finding himself a new, high-paying

job. During the course of an investigation into mob control of

legitimate business, it was testified that one Bill Giglio, now under

indictment on a tax rap, had “muscled” into a sugar and candy company

during the last war, and that as a result of such activities he now

owned a research and development laboratory, the entire output of which

was being sold to a large and respected chemical corporation.

While going over Giglio’s books the Kefauver man naturally had occasion

to call on the large corporation, and he ingratiated himself with its

officers, who were not called to testify in Washington. The result was

that, right smack in the middle of the Kefauver investigations, this

dick quit to head up the plant-security set-up of the big corporation,

which now has a lot of war contracts.

But the payoff is that, a couple of years ago, before the Kefauver

Committee was thought of, the same fellow was in charge of security at

a Long Island plant making restricted military products. There it was

discovered that the future Kefauver agent was protecting the bookmakers

in the plant, and he was booted out after the F.B.I. was tipped off.

The book at this plant was operated by Joe Adonis. Kefauver was so

informed, but did not fire his agent.

Federal and state enforcement agencies are squawking that the mob is

getting access to confidential files through leaks in the committee.

But if the committee had wanted to probe, the goods were in reach.

Individuals all over the country sought to put facts in its hands.

Whenever possible, those who managed the investigations looked the

other way.

Bill Drury, the honest Chicago ex-police captain, who was slain by

gunmen last September, might have been alive now were it not for this

committee. We were in constant communication with Drury, in fact Jack

Lait received a letter from him in New York the morning after he was

assassinated. Almost his last act was mailing it. When the committee

first got under way, your authors suggested to Kefauver that he hire

Drury and his partner, Captain Tom Connelly, as investigators. These

men knew more first-hand about the underworld than almost anyone alive.

Counsel Halley interposed. He told us the men were not “reliable,”

because they had been fired from the Chicago police force. That was

their chief recommendation to us. They had been rooked out of the

crookedest force in the country because they were fearless, honest and

untouchable.

We told Kefauver the only way he could convince us his investigation

was on the up-and-up was to hire these men. He promised us he would.

That was in July, 1950.

Meanwhile, Drury and Connelly sought to contact Kefauver, failing which

they tried to get in touch with Halley and the chief investigator of

the committee. They hated the mob so hotly, they offered to work for

nothing, though they were poor men. Had Drury been retained as an

investigator, he’d still be living. No cop has ever been killed except

in actual combat. The underworld never murders a policeman who is going

about his business. But an ex-cop--yoho.

A lot of misinformation has been published about what preceded the

actual assassination, last September 25. After his death, committee

employes realized they would have to explain Drury’s frequent phone

calls. A story was dreamed up in Chicago to the effect that Drury

was seeking “protection” and that Halley, after a couple of weeks’

consideration, had agreed to arrange for it. That runs for the end

book. Drury never asked anyone for protection. He was the bravest man

we ever knew. He often traveled without a gun, but the mobsters feared

his fists more than bullets. We spoke to him a few days before he died.

He was not frightened. He was angry. He told us he had been trying to

contact committee investigators for weeks to give them information. He

said that ever since he had outlined to them what he was prepared to

prove he got brushed off when he called again.

The Democratic _Chicago Sun-Times_ charged categorically that Drury

was rubbed out because someone on the Kefauver Committee “leaked”

to the mobsters what Drury said he had the goods on. He told us his

investigations implicated someone on the committee’s staff.

A few days after the murder, Kefauver phoned us long distance to

tell us to get all our records and correspondence concerning Drury

together as he was going to subpena us at once, in an effort to solve

the cowardly crime. That was October 1, 1950. As these words were

being typed in February, 1951, the subpena remained unserved and the

assassination unpunished.

On the other hand, Lait and Mortimer were under considerable pressure

from important personages, Republicans as well as Democrats, “to lay

off Halley,” and place the blame for the miscarriage of the Kefauver

committee on the chairman instead of on his staff. We refused to be

bought, bribed, threatened or intimidated.

By resolution, the original life of the committee was until February

28, but it is probable that additional hearings will be authorized for

March.

The plan, as this went to press, was to save all the fireworks for

a final blow-out in New York, at which the glamor pusses of the

underworld, such as Virginia Hill, dubbed by us “Mafia Rose,” would

be called for the publicity value. Virginia was served with much

hullabaloo in September, but was saved six months to hypo the last act.

Frank Costello was also slated to be called if he “cared to talk.”

The big boys have brazenly stood on their “constitutional rights”

on the advice of high-priced counsel who assured them their chances

against conviction on contempt, which is a misdemeanor punishable by a

year in a Federal “country club,” were about a hundred to one.

It was decided by the Mafia Grand Council that if things got too hot,

Costello would have to be the goat. He has been getting too much

publicity for the conservative rulers of the Unione, who still live in

cold-water tenements with fat old-country wives.

They resent the airs put on by the glamor-boy hoods, who, they feel,

and with some justification, are putting the finger of the law on the

syndicate.

One Mafia faction is for going further. In the event the spotlight hits

Costello his number is up. He has so been told by Tony Ricci, alias

Goebels, who manages many such things.

We have not seen it, nor have we any confidential information about the

contents of the committee’s final report, but we are willing to bet it

will be along these lines:

1) There is crime.

2) No political party has the monopoly on it.

3) There seems to be a Mafia.

4) Gamblers should pay their income tax.

5) Kids should go to Sunday school.

6) Communities should appoint Crime Prevention Societies.

7) Because of the international situation, let’s forget it and call

the whole thing off.

The plight of honest Senator Kefauver is not unique. Wherever possible,

the underworld uses such characters to do their dirty work. They fall

for it, probably because dreamers and social planners are gullible,

not practical like their more conservative brethren. That’s why

political bosses frequently back them and surprise semi-suspicious

suckers who think they know things.

For instance, when the late Boss Kelly of Chicago, one of the most

ruthless thieves who ever lived, thought he saw the handwriting on the

wall, he nominated good men to run for Governor and Senator. At no time

after Adlai Stevenson went to Springfield and Professor Paul Douglas

got to Washington did these Utopians ever open their mouths or do

anything, or even complain about the iniquities in Chicago, though we

told plenty and a lot of other dirt wasn’t confidential.

He hand-picked as his successor Martin Kennelly, a mild old bachelor

who didn’t know when it was Wednesday. This was a “businessmen’s

candidate.” The mob and their Democratic sidekicks gave him the

business.

Kefauver even has a soft spot for accused Commies. He was one of the

seven Senators to vote against the McCarran Bill, which Marcantonio

opposed in the House. Douglas, who didn’t have guts enough to vote no,

because that would have imperiled Lucas’ chance in Illinois, did hop in

to uphold the President’s veto.

The only Senator running for reelection who opposed the McCarran Bill

all the way was Lehman, a ticket-mate of mob-backed Pecora and Lynch,

an old codger of eminent respectability and Wall Street millions, who

is and always was “safe”--he’s too wrapped up in Park Avenue dignity

and too flattered by public honors to see or understand that with

his silk-gloved hands he pulls hot chestnuts out of the oven for the

dirtiest crooks, traitors and political plotters in the land.

27. LUCKY NUMBERS

The first thing a Congressional investigating committee gets, the sine

qua non, is an appropriation. The next is a sheaf of time-tables. Then

comes the joyful junketing-time to remote places--remote from the

capital and remote from the subject.

The Kefauver committee made the grand tour--California and Florida,

Chicago and New York, about everything but Yellowstone Park. Its golden

fleece was gambling. They could have cleaned up their quest for about

$1.60 on a taxi meter.

All the evidence, all the interstate involvements and local conditions

which are the particular province of Congress, they could find in

Washington. We did. All gambling in the capital is interstate because

it is inseparable from its lines into and out of Maryland and Virginia.

We outlined the setup of the nationwide underworld Syndicate. We

brought it to the District line. At that point the on-the-spot gamblers

take over.

They have been mentioned as Emmitt Warring, king of Georgetown; Attilio

Acalotti, “mayor” of Dupont Circle; Sam Beard and his partner Gary

Quinn, and the Sussman brothers. Of money gouged from suckers, 90 per

cent clears through them, and “Black Jack” Kelleher, Frank Erickson’s

local observer.

A curious situation here is that “policy” or “numbers” gets a bigger

play than bookmaking. The reverse is true almost everywhere else. The

reason ascribed by the cognoscenti is that while everyone earns a

fairly good living, few have enough surplus cash for important horse

betting. But numbers tickets can be bought for from one cent up. That

game is far more profitable for the operators, too. Bookmakers can’t do

much better than putting a ceiling on track odds. They must follow the

mutuels, though they stop at a 20-to-1 payoff. Bookies who can’t lay

off enough often lose on a day.

The winning numbers pay only 600 to 1, whereas 999 numbers are drawn,

and the draw can be fixed.

In most towns, the numbers play is predominantly by Negroes. In

Washington it is general, with white government employes in the

majority. The policy slips are usually sold by colored runners, often

messengers and elevator boys in government buildings. The salesman

withholds 25 per cent of the gross. Average booking is $50 a day.

The take from the numbers, in pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters, is

deposited in the branch of the Hamilton Bank at 20th and Pennsylvania

Avenue, in the Foggy Bottom section. The Congressional committee

investigating local crime ascertained that this bank did not report the

large deposits of small coins. The deposits are withdrawn each day and

transferred to Maryland, where local representatives of the Syndicate

divide the receipts and send its cut to the Mafia in New York.

The sale of numbers is so widespread, the police can make only token

arrests. Invariably, when the peddler, usually a Negro, is locked up, a

representative of a bonding outfit appears at once and posts bail. Next

day a member of the Charlie Ford law firm appears in court. Several

defendants testified the lawyers paid their fines. The operation will

be described in detail later.

Numbers sellers are picked up all over the town, and they are not coy.

For instance, police got a squeal that two men were selling policy

slips from an auto parked in the 1200 block of 7th Street, NW. Cops

questioned them and numbers slips “just rolled out of a paper bag on

the car floor.” The prisoners were very “surprised,” the more so when

200 numbers books were found in the car’s trunk.

Vice squad dicks stopped in to get a shine at 209 K Street NW. They saw

numbers lying on a chair next to two men. When they searched them they

found many more in their possession.

Policy is a lottery. Under federal law, that is a felony. But the only

way to cut in on the racket is to get tough. Twenty-five-dollar fines,

paid by lawyers reimbursed by the bosses, are no deterrent. But Judge

Thomas D. Quinn handcuffed the police even on that. He served notice

on the U. S. Attorney’s office that he “will not tolerate” prosecutors

delaying court action on gambling cases until they can get grand jury

indictments.

According to the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, the government

is within its rights requesting these continuances, but Curtis P.

Mitchell, an attorney for some arrested as gamblers, alleged the civil

rights of numbers suspects were being disregarded.

Judge Edward M. Curran spiked the government’s case when it attempted

to clean up gambling in Thomas Circle. Though one defendant pleaded

guilty to operation of a lottery, Judge Curran ruled police did not

have enough “probable cause” to arrest the others, who were admittedly

in possession of numbers slips.

Washington judges openly acknowledge the fact that the fines they

impose are paid by the bosses.

Judge Henry A. Schweinhaut, of the United States District Court,

frivolously presented a numbers operator named “Lemon” a chance to

prove there is honor in Washington’s gaming fraternity.

He asked him to come forward and provide the $300 fine for an aged

Negro who was convicted before him of taking numbers bets.

“Lemon put up bond for the defendant. Maybe Lemon will pay the fine,”

said the District Solomon. “I’ll give him a chance to prove his loyalty

to an old employe.”

Defense Attorney Mitchell, who has figured in these pages before,

quickly disillusioned His Honor. “As a practical matter, a numbers

backer wouldn’t be apt to pay a $300 fine for a man who only had a

three-dollar-a-day numbers book,” he explained.

But the judge winked and said, “If Lemon doesn’t pay, it might get

around that he will let one of his men stay in jail. It might reduce

his prestige in the fraternity.”

Did we hear someone talking about legalized and licensed gambling? This

is it, with a bow from the U. S. District Court.

In recent years the top rulers of the netherworld have disassociated

themselves as much as possible from street-level vice and crime,

preferring to remain on the sidelines, where their take comes in clean.

The situation in Washington is a pattern and example for the rest of

the country, because, for obvious reasons, the tygoons have preferred

to have no direct dealings with law-breaking in the nation’s capital.

The method whereby the take from policy, Washington’s chief form

of gambling, goes upstairs is unique and ingenious, the product of

brilliant legal scheming.

First of all, each local numbers bank is, for the records, completely

independent. Its operator, who employs the runners who actually sell

the lottery tickets, is supposed to be completely unaffiliated, and

it would take a smarter guy than any government lawyer to prove him

otherwise.

In the beginning, most of the local banks were really unaffiliated.

Since then, on occasion, some have tried to remain that way. This is

what happens when they do: The Big Mob sends in “customers” to bet a

certain number; then, through its ability to control the daily winning

number, that number comes up and the banker goes broke.

But if he wants to play ball, they sell him an “insurance policy” which

guarantees him from undue loss--which is prevented by the control of

the winning number. His daily premium is the payoff money.

The funniest one happened when a policy salesman asked police to lock

him up because one of his clients had a $60 hit which the runner

couldn’t pay off--having lost the money playing the numbers. It came

about when a cop admonished Lawrence Fields, obviously drunk, to quiet

down. Fields begged to be arrested on the numbers charge. The cop asked

Fields whether he realized the seriousness of what he was saying.

Fields replied, “Nothing will happen. My boss pays protection.”

The boss was identified in court as Sam Beard. Beard claims he is in

the pickle business, but he once served 53 months in jail for gambling

and 13 months for tax evasion. Fields got 90 days. His client is

waiting outside the District jail.

But don’t think bookmaking is a peanut industry either. Local

authorities estimate the take of bookmakers within the District at

$100,000,000 a year--not gross business, but net profits.

Horse money goes to Prince Georges, Maryland, as already described.

Snags Lewis, the wire service representative, transmits the payoff and

profits to New York and New Jersey.

Though Bernice Franklin, former sweetheart of Attilio Acalotti,

testified in federal court that at least three members of the

Metropolitan Police were paid off by gamblers in her presence,

Washington authorities never show any enthusiasm toward investigating

charges of corruption against cops.

When District Commissioner John Russell Young testified recently before

a special grand jury probing Washington gambling, he was not asked

about the possibility of bribes being paid by the gamblers. Assistant

U. S. Attorney John W. Fihelly, conducting the inquiry, left it flat

and started on “several weeks vacation.”

You can freely make a bet on a horse in almost any place in Washington

except a church--with elevator boys in government buildings, at corner

cigar and drug stores, lunch stands and bellboys. If you still can’t

find a place, the ingenuity of the Washington bookmaker will solve your

problem. For instance, the police said they broke the biggest gambling

brokerage ever operated in Washington with the arrest of two men in a

“doctor’s office,” on California Avenue, N.W. Police said one of the

men they arrested was a physician. He told them he could make more

money with betting slips than with prescriptions.

“There wasn’t even a band-aid in the place.” But there were the

following items:

Betting slips; a looseleaf notebook which appeared to be a gambling

broker’s record, containing $75,000 in IOU’s from all over the country;

two promissory notes totaling $35,000; $134 in cash, an expensive

radio, and a clock with a sweep second-hand. While police went through

the place the phone rang. A voice on the other end “started to give me

hell for a bum steer, saying the odds had dropped to 8 to 5,” Sergt.

James Roche said.

Police Lt. David McCutcheon told the District license board that a

gambler paid the proprietors of Filo’s restaurant, 1700-A 9th Street,

NW, $200 a month for the concession to take bets there. At this writing

Filo’s is still in business.

During the seasons, Washington gamblers make book on baseball,

football, basketball and hockey. Walter Lephfew and Skylar Wilson

were arrested this year in what is described as a $2,000,000 football

lottery.

We placed bets with bookies who hang out in the G & W Lunch Room, 17th

and L.

Much of the local gambling is controlled by Greeks who operate in

restaurants and private clubs.

We saw gambling going on openly on the second floor of a building on

the northwest corner of 9th and H; also in the Greek restaurant on the

second floor of 9th and G.

A dice and horse room was being operated over the Bazaar restaurant, at

17th and L. Say that Steve Akaris sent you. That’s how we got in.

You can find roulette in a place at 5th and G., also over a restaurant

in the 100 block of Vermont Avenue.

Don’t think gambling doesn’t account for plenty of violence in the

District.

On recommendation of the District license board, the commissioners

turned down a police request that they revoke a billiard hall license

of William G. Heflin. Earlier in the year, Joseph H. “Big Joe” Scheve,

a convicted gambler, was fatally shot there. Before that, James T.

Skeens shot Edward Ryan in the leg there. Police charged the billiard

hall was frequented by criminals. We saw bookmakers taking bets there.

A 25-year-old fireman with twenty pairs of crooked dice in his pocket

was found stabbed to death in an alley as an aftermath of a crap

game in which 15 persons participated. Every die was without 1, 3 and

5, making it impossible to toss a 7. The dice were of all sizes and

colors, “suitable for almost any occasion.”

One-armed bandits are banned by District and by the new Federal law.

However, $100 federal stamps have been purchased for 50 such machines,

operating at this writing in the city of Washington. Those in officers’

service clubs have since been removed, but many operated brazenly in

places open to the public.

Pinball machines, illegal in most big cities, especially in New York,

and not permitted in the Virginia counties across the Potomac, are a

popular indoor sport in Washington. They are found in restaurants,

drugstores, bottle clubs and playlands. Many are used as gambling

devices. The federal tax of $10 on each has been paid for 1263.

Federal records show 15,000 one-armed bandits and gambling devices

registered for Maryland, of which 5,000 are in the District suburbs.

Most slot machines are manufactured in Chicago. Those destined

for areas in D.C. or nearby, where they are against the law, were

shipped to wholesalers in Danville, Va., then distributed sub rosa to

Washington and Baltimore.

Payoffs are pretty lousy.

The new Federal slot machine law is a laugh. It was dreamed up in an

effort to stave off Kefauver’s investigation.

The only Senator who really fought it came from Nevada, where the

one-armed bandits are legal, and into which, under the new Federal law,

they can be imported freely. Nevada had nothing to lose and everything

to gain.

The same Senator fought contempt citations against recalcitrant

Kefauver witnesses, proving, to Estes’ surprise, what we had told him

about Democratic-underworld alliances.

The joker in any statute forbidding the interstate transportation

of slot machines is they are manufactured from standard and

interchangeable parts which can be assembled anywhere by any competent

mechanic. Instead of shipping the finished device, the Costello

interests will merely send the parts to local distributors who will put

them together--and save freight costs.

The underworld’s Washington representatives actually lobbied for the

passage of the bill, figuring that its adoption would look like a

solid accomplishment to the public, and take the “heat” off other

monkey business.

Attorney General McGrath and the New Deal liberals who plugged for the

measure had another reason. They hoped it would put the F.B.I. on the

spot. Its enforcement being impossible, Hoover and his G-men would take

the blame--either that or the F.B.I. would have to hire thousands of

fly-cops and become a new, super Prohibition unit, exposed to wholesale

graft and bribery, which would please the Reds and the crooks.

We don’t think gambling will ever be eliminated. We don’t think the

public wants it to be. It is a human appetite, like sex and liquor, and

no sumptuary legislation can wipe it out. But gambling corrupts law

enforcement officers. While wagering is illegal and undercover, this is

inevitable. When cops take bribes from bookmakers they feel they do no

essential harm. But it’s a start and soon they will sell out to anyone.

As to the cure, no two agree. Even your authors have divided opinions.

One believes in legalizing gambling, the other points out Nevada, where

it is legal, as the horrible example. There the same mobsters control

it and law enforcement officers are bought up as usual.

28. IT’S A CRIME

No thanks is due United States Attorney George Morris Fay for the fact

that figures and information regarding the local wave of crime are

still available.

Shortly after he took office, in 1946, Fay rewrote the Constitution

and closed off the court files from inspection by the press on felony

cases. Not satisfied, last year he tightened up in Municipal Court,

introducing a form of censorship for newsmen trying to check facts.

But we finagled some figures:

Per capita computations show Washington recorded one murder for every

25,555 persons in 1949. But Chicago, generally conceded the gunmen’s

playground, had one murder for every 26,902. Washington jumped to one

for every 11,000 in 1950.

On the basis of population, Washington led 16 cities of 500,000 or

more in aggravated (felonious) assaults during the first six months of

1950; and it was second only to Chicago in the _total_ number of such

cases. Washington had 1,911, exceeded only by Chicago’s 2,184, and

Chicago is five times as large as Washington!

Though crime in Washington decreased slightly in 1950, as compared to

1949, the District is high among the leaders, per capita and in total

number of offenses, in every major classification.

Crime has always been a popular pastime here. It increased so

alarmingly during the first years of the New Deal that a group of

public-spirited citizens formed the Washington Criminal Justice

Association in 1936 to help combat it.

The Attorney General in that year called Washington “the crime capital

of the world.” The backers hoped for a virile, hard-hitting body,

similar to the Chicago Crime Commission, which under Virgil Peterson,

its executive director, has done so much to spotlight the workings of

the underworld there, or like Danny Sullivan’s Greater Miami Commission.

The original organizers of the Washington association included a number

of do-gooders, such as Eugene Meyer, who bars the identification of

Negroes in his paper. The body soon found itself struggling without

sufficient funds. It is now supported by the United Community Services,

which allots it only enough to pay for a director, an assistant and

a secretary. The able director, Edward J. Flynn, is a competent,

imaginative individual, handcuffed by lack of funds and public

disinterest. He can do little more than keep a record of crimes as they

occur, compile statistics and offer recommendations. They are good, but

no one wants them.

The situation has gotten worse rather than better since the Attorney

General castigated the city. In 1936 there were only about 7,000

serious crimes. The number dropped to about 4,000 in 1944. But by last

year it had skyrocketed to 13,000. It is now slightly lower.

Washington is still the crime capital.

In other chapters we touch briefly on the so-called “organized”

crimes--prostitution, gambling, and narcotics. This chapter deals

mainly with offenses of violence and those against property, which are

usually regarded as unorganized.

But director Flynn agrees with your authors that, with the exception

of private crimes of passion, occasional robberies by hungry men and

juvenile delinquency, all crime is now organized to a degree. Flynn

said:

“Highly organized criminal groups, carrying out skillfully planned

operations, exist in Washington.”

The police disagree with him, naturally. But the record is clear for

any observer who follows the entire procedure through, from commission

to arrest, bail-bonding and arraignment. The combine appears in the

fencing of the loot. Burglars in Washington have a union to which they

contribute a percentage of their take in return for bail when arrested,

legal representation and fixes where possible. No professional burglars

operate until they make arrangements in advance for disposition of

their stolen goods, and, thereafter, the other services. Non-members of

the union cannot secure bail at any price and are denied the services

of the top criminal lawyers.

Why has the nation’s capital more crime than other cities? Flynn says

it is indicative of community lethargy. He thinks that is not unique in

the District, but is equally true in every city. If that is so, there

must be a special reason why Washington is more lawless.

Others blame it on the lack of home rule and local government. Yet

every investigation and survey elsewhere shows that corrupt municipal

city hall gangs are the protectors of vice and crime. The high rates

in Washington cannot be blamed on the foreign-born, because only six

percent of the population is non-native. As we showed earlier, Negroes

commit most of the crime. But there are Negro criminals in other large

cities, especially in New York and Chicago, where they do likewise. Why

then are Washington’s Negroes even more felonious?

There is no doubt that Washington is a cesspool of iniquity and a

Utopia for criminals. The setup of the local government and the calibre

of the men who enforce its laws and sit on its benches are partly

responsible. Archaic and often ridiculous laws and regulations are a

contributing factor.

For instance, guns are easy to buy in second-hand stores. There is no

law requiring a license to keep a gun in a home. That forbidding the

carrying of one in a car is a dead letter. It is a felony to carry a

concealed weapon on the person without a license, but there are few

arrests and fewer convictions for this, because the District courts and

prosecutor feel it is no offense to carry an unloaded weapon, even if a

clip of cartridges is in the same pocket. An expert could load the gun

without removing it from his pocket.

The fantastic interpretation of laws by the U. S. Attorney and the

federal courts has handcuffed the cops in their efforts to clean the

town.

Not long ago a Negro was arrested for kicking and assaulting another

man in a bus station. Though police found an unlicensed pistol on the

prisoner’s person, and bullets in another pocket, the U. S. Attorney

refused to prosecute for either the assault or concealed weapon. When

queried, a representative of his office said it was obvious the colored

man was a nice guy, because he didn’t load his gun and shoot his

victim, who lay helpless on the floor. The prisoner had a record. When

asked at a later date whether, in view of all the circumstances since

developed, the D.A.’s office would prosecute, the spokesman said, “No.

No judge will convict a colored man here for a minor offense like that.”

The federal judges are lenient because they are federal judges. Of

the 308 with life appointments throughout the United States, 224

are Democrats. During the first 17 years of the Roosevelt-Truman

administrations, 289 judges were given such appointments, of whom

272 were Democrats. The same ratio shows up in the District of

Columbia. The Democratic judges are the choices and flunkies of

corrupt city machines or of unions, left-wingers and fellow-travelers’

organizations. The city bosses’ men are lenient to law-breakers because

their masters order them to be so. The radicals’ nominees seldom throw

the book at a defendant, because Commies, pinkos and phony progressives

hate cops, refer to them as cossacks.

A captain of the Metropolitan Police told us that even honest

Washington coppers seldom make arrests any more, because they know

what will happen when they get in court. The judge will harass,

bullyrag and humiliate them. It is not unusual for a District jurist to

castigate the policemen, call them liars and framers, then discharge

the prisoners without hearing defense evidence. When the defendant is a

Negro, the cops know they are going to get a going-over from the bench.

In 1937, after four years of Democratic administration, 90 percent

of all major crimes went unpunished. Since then, largely through

the efforts of Flynn’s Washington Criminal Justice Association, and

more recently of counsel Fischbach’s revelations, about which more

later, judges have been afraid to be too raw, and are giving stiffer

sentences and holding prisoners in higher bail.

However, out of 811 of those indicted for major offenses in the last

report period who did not enter pleas of guilty, only 281, about one

third, were found guilty. Of those found guilty, the largest number

received light sentences, far less than the maximum authorized by

law. Even among those who pleaded guilty, more than 20 percent were

permitted to assume lesser offenses.

An example of the penalties meted out for serious offenses is seen in

those convicted of first- and second-degree murder: of 22, only three

got sentences of 15 years to life; one drew 80 months to 20 years; all

the 18 others got less than 20 years, with terms tapering down to one

of three-to-nine on a first-degree murder, and one of one-to-four on a

second-degree murder. None got the chair.

Disposition records on cleaning up major crimes are made to look good

through an ingenious invention known as “Willie Pye” arrests. Whenever

anyone is pinched in Washington and decides to take a plea, the cops

induce him to admit every other unsolved crime of the same nature which

is still open on the books. If the accused agrees to take the rap for

these unsolved felonies, thus getting the police off the hook, they do

not present further evidence to the grand jury, and the felon is not

tried for the other offenses. Thus many complaints are charged off and

police take official credit for solving crimes where no solution has

eventuated.

The practice grew to such an extent about a decade ago that a public

stench arose. After a conference between law enforcement officials and

prosecutors, it was agreed to end it. But it goes right on and the

evidence of it appears every year in tabulations of “cleared by other

means.” There were 667 so disposed of in 1949.

It is believed the term “Willie Pye arrest” first came into police

parlance in Washington when a man so named lived there, about 50 years

ago. His business was crime. Willie was indicted on two housebreakings

and confessed to many more, which were then written off as closed.

An unnamed desk sergeant immortalized Willie by using his name for the

practice of shutting numerous open cases by getting multiple pleas and

choosing to proceed on only the last.

The blowup came when Leroy Mason, who was doing a stretch in Occuquan

Work House for three robberies, was still being charged for crimes

going on on the outside. A nameless Washington newspaperman composed a

deathless ditty, as offensive to grammar as the sentiment is to decency:

_Willie Pye was a regular guy,

He took the rap for you and I._

Though the F.B.I. reported a six percent drop of crime in Washington

this year, the local jail population reached a new high. The courts

sent 21,062 to District jail in 1950, an all-time record. Meanwhile,

the police had closed less than 60 percent of all cases involving

serious felony, which by the way, was an improvement.

Arrests for the more serious crimes by race were as follows:

_Offense_ _Total_ _White_ _Colored_

Arson 34 13 21

Aggravated Assault 2956 342 2614

Embezzlement and Fraud 201 146 55

Forgery and Counterfeiting 100 72 28

Grand Larceny 1099 326 773

Housebreaking 2878 634 2244

Homicides 55 10 45

Incest 5 1 4

Rape and Carnal Knowledge 191 39 152

Receiving Stolen Property 59 31 28

Robbery 1033 230 803

---- ---- ----

TOTAL 8611 1844 6767

The high incidence of Negro and juvenile crime was dealt with in detail

in previous chapters. One reason there are so many colored law-breakers

in Washington is that many judges in nearby Southern communities order

Negro defendants to get out of town, instead of holding them for trial,

and these gravitate to Washington.

Tough guys of both races hang around on the streets and insult

passers-by with impunity, snatch purses, stick up pedestrians and mug

and yoke.

Most crimes in Washington are committed from Friday through Sunday.

Almost everyone has a two-day weekend, and the drinking and celebrating

begins Friday night.

The First, Second, Third and Thirteenth Police precincts account for 57

percent of all serious crimes. The First is “downtown,” with tourists,

transients and night life. The others are predominantly Negro.

Among the more profitable of the organized crimes are these:

Housebreaking, comparatively easy because of the large number of

private homes and two- and three-story detached apartment buildings.

The stolen goods are fenced in East Baltimore Street, Baltimore.

Auto thefts, growing more serious.

Bank robberies, not uncommon.

Pickpockets and cold-finger men find easy loot at the countless

cocktail parties and other functions constantly given by lobbyists,

conventioneers and diplomats. It is a cinch to crash these.

Jewel-thieves have rich pastures. Social climbers and ambassadors’

women are loaded with rocks and constantly display them. A big gem haul

is sent to Holland for recutting, via reverse channels used by the

Mafia to smuggle dope. The reset ice is smuggled back.

Because of the ease with which fixes are maneuvered, the lenient

sentences, the failure of local courts to extra-penalize repeaters,

Washington is indeed a picnic-pasture for crooks from all over the

country. When other places get too hot to hold them, they hop a rattler

for the capital.

The pickings are easy. The payoff is high. The risks are minimal. The

burg is a pushover.

Sex is a crime, too; a statutory felony. The incidence of such offenses

in the Nation’s capital is so great as to be startling. The nature of

them nauseated even a couple of hardboiled reporters like us.

The figures are public property, compiled by the F.B.I., the local cops

and the Davis committee. Howard Whitman, who has been doing a series

of articles based largely on newspaper morgue material, printed the

computations in _Collier’s_, later put them into a book on prurient

misdemeanors.

Whitman slanted his findings to _Collier’s_ special-pleading formula

and found that “crime is a slum-connected characteristic.”

That is a laugh. Washington is freer of depressed living areas than any

city in the country.

“And Negroes are ghettoized in these slums,” adds Whitman gratuitously.

Whitman quotes with approval the Committee for Racial Democracy

which urged that “training in minority group problems be instituted

immediately as a part of the regular in-service training of all

policemen,” the non-sequitur supposition being that the colored folk

out-rape, out-maim, out-steal and out-mugg whites eight to one because

the coppers haven’t been trained in minority group relations.

Nor are sex-criminals, white or colored, permanently taken off the

streets after once being caught. Washington is a recidivists’ paradise

because of its ridiculous so-called “collateral rule” which takes the

place of posting a bond.

A defendant could, and still can, despite a promise of the courts to

tighten up, post a $25 collateral instead of a bond with a police

captain. Thereupon if he does not appear in a court he is automatically

found guilty and the collateral is forfeited as a fine. And that closes

the case instead of the judge issuing a bench warrant as in other

jurisdictions.

In the case of violent sex cases, the maximum collateral is $500

forfeit in the same way. A new judicial rule says all aggravated sex

cases must be taken to court, but they are not.

Abortions are cheap and easy to obtain. Police are able to arrest

only a few of the operators, and then only when complications arise.

Even then, few are convicted. This racket is highly protected by an

interstate ring allied with the Mafia. A ten million a year branch was

uncovered in San Francisco, built around a prominent female Chinese

physician, not publicly involved because of her high political and

social connections. She is a close friend of Virginia Hill, gal friend

of the late Bugsy Siegel.

Curiously, Washington is the nation-wide headquarters for the mail

order sale of dirty pictures and post cards. Why this should be so is

puzzling, though those who operate the business here face no tougher

penalty than elsewhere because it is a Federal offense anyway.

29. THE LAW

We mean the poor underpaid bulls, who enforce it--or, anyway, are

supposed to.

Last year the Attorney General of the United States held a conference

of mayors and other local law enforcement officers to try to figure out

the causes of crime. When it was over, we button-holed a mayor of a

Western city and asked him the following question:

“How come no one mentioned that hardly a crime or a vice violation is

possible without the connivance of or the knowledge of local officials?”

The mayor replied, “That’s an easy one to answer. We are all local

officials.”

We do not charge that the really terrible conditions in Washington

are the fault of the Metropolitan Police. Most of the cops on that

overworked force are honest. If given the opportunity they would love

to do their duty. Most policemen all over the country are honest, too.

They are slaves of a setup with the establishment of which they had

nothing to do and which they are powerless to correct. Big payoffs

are not made to men in the ranks. The orders go out from up above.

Patrolmen follow orders. When they see others getting, they often ask

what’s the use of being honest themselves? Why make pinches when the

prisoners are always sprung from up above?

For many years strenuous efforts have been made to sell the idea that

the federal government and everything connected with it is straight and

efficient. The Metropolitan Police force is an agency of the United

States government. Only Gilbert and Sullivan could do justice to it, as

a comic opera. But the laughs are costly.

The boss of the force carries the complicated title of Major and

Superintendent. His name is Robert J. Barrett and he got the job

because he was related to the former chief.

A fantastic story made the front pages last year, then was hushed

and forgotten. Police Captain Anthony Richitt charged under oath,

before a Congressional investigating committee, that he had been

ordered by Police Inspector Jeffreys to turn in a false report on a

gambling complaint. He also swore that the District crime investigating

sub-committee was worrying the police chief, who, he said, was on

intimate terms with gambler Emmitt Warring; and further, that Warring

delivered messages from the chief to precinct captains.

Such charges elsewhere would have popped up a seething scandal, at

least a grand jury to-do, with the probability of new brass in the

police department. It took a long time, but even in Chicago the

police commissioner, the county chairman and the millionaire chief

investigator for the State’s Attorney quit after publication of

_Chicago Confidential_.

You think anything like that happened in Washington? In this home of

laissez faire the grand jury wasn’t interested even to the extent of

whitewashing the mud.

The incident was treated as a private feud. It was officially settled

on the records when Richitt apologized to his boss, in a public

apology, six words long:

“I regret the incident ever occurred.”

No explanation, no retraction, no withdrawal of the charges.

Barrett’s reply was nearly as short:

“Richitt has complied with the orders of the department as far as I am

concerned.”

Thus was departmental satisfaction restored. But there was no

satisfaction for the public. No determination was ever made as to

whether the chief had ordered his subordinate to falsify arrest

records. It was decided by all concerned that this was of no interest

to the tax-payers, the grand jury included.

Barrett had forgotten he had told the press he had what he called

“evidence tending to show perjury” on the subject of Captain Richitt.

Chairman Davis of the House District Sub-Committee, before which the

stink started, got into the act and announced he, too, had closed the

book on the affair.

The terms of the deal apparently were such that neither Barrett nor

Richitt are ever again to question the other’s activities. Some months

before, evidence was brought forth that Richitt had bought seven autos

in addition to the one he was driving during 27 post-war months, when

civilians could get cars only in the black market. No explanation was

volunteered by anyone, though Richitt had sold most of the cars as soon

as he bought them.

Your authors know this is a common practice in police departments all

over the country.

A sergeant of the Bridgeport, Connecticut, force was fired for similar

activities. Many cops used their emergency priorities to order cars

which they then transferred to dealers, without ever taking possession.

The cops rarely handled the money. The dealer went with them to accept

delivery and paid the purchase price, the cops chiseling from $500 to

$1,000 on each transaction.

When we arrived in Washington to dig for this book, we asked: “Who

makes the fixes?”

In other cities, contacts are closed with precinct, ward and district

leaders of the political party in office. If you want to retail

women, make book, land pickpocketing privileges or get a summons or a

violation squared, you go to see this local boss.

If money is to be passed it goes through him. Many favors are granted

in return for party loyalty, votes or campaign contributions. He takes

care of those, too. The leader passes the word along to city hall,

where it is relayed to the local police station. In some towns, Chicago

for example, the channels are short-circuited in advance, so the leader

can go direct to his police captain.

But what happens in Washington, where there are no voters, so there are

no district leaders? How do you fix the cops? Who is the collector?

Some naive Washingtonians said there is no such thing. There is no

collecting. There is no graft.

That is cockeyed. The payoff is through the local police captain, who

acts as the collector for anyone in the District Government who is to

be fixed. The captain retains his own percentage of the boodle, plus

anything he can steal, then passes the balance up above, through the

regularly established channels.

Such a system plays hell with the poor cops on the street. The guy who

pays the captain for protection knows he doesn’t have to take care of

underlings. The most the uniformed patrolman is good for is a meal, a

cigar and an occasional five-spot. Vice squad men and detectives can

sometimes do a little modest shaking, but not enough to get rich on.

A police captain told us this story: Two Chicago detectives came to

Washington to pick up a wanted prisoner. It is the custom among all

police departments to entertain cops visiting on business. Washington

has no fund for such purposes. Its men are so poorly paid, they can’t

treat. But the two assigned to keep the visitors happy had worked the

bright-light belt, so they knew where they could cuff a few small night

clubs. During the evening, one Chicago detective asked the Washington

cop, “What is your job worth?”

The reply was, “I get $3,300 a year?”

“No, I don’t mean your salary; what’s it worth?”

The Washingtonian looked puzzled. The policemen from the Windy City

said, “You can talk freely. We’re friends. No wise cop in Chicago would

take the job unless he could pick up at least $10,000 a year on the

side.”

Washington policemen who can average $20 a week extra consider

themselves lucky. Not so many higher officers.

Internal Revenue agents, who never allow themselves to be quoted, told

us some officers have safe deposit-vaults choked with big bills. But

many others are honest, like chumps. They have to go along with the

crooks to hold their jobs. They can’t squawk without implicating too

many important higher-ups.

Salaries of Washington policemen range from a take-home pay of only

$200 a month for the lowest-grade patrolman to about $10,000 a year

gross for the chief. Military ranks are used. Private, sixth grade, the

highest non-officer rank, pays $3,750 a year. A corporal gets $4,025, a

sergeant $4,228, a lieutenant $4,600, and a captain $5,300. That’s the

salary on which Captain Richitt bought eight cars in 27 months.

If the fix you’re after is of a nature which the local precinct

captain can’t handle, you go through a certain District Commission

employe who is the bagman for one of the three District Commissioners.

The Commission is the immediate boss of the police department. Any

commissioner can issue orders to the chief.

There are occasions, however, when a really strong in is needed.

Washington is federal territory and is ruled nominally by the national

administration. In such an instance, the guy who wants to call the cops

off has to try other doors. The odds are, even if he is in business in

Washington, he has his roots elsewhere. Many Washingtonians maintain

voting addresses in the states from which they originally came. Others

have friends, partners and relatives in various states.

The procedure is to make the connection through a Democratic county

committeeman back home or through a member of Congress in the home

state. Congress is the ruler of the District, and almost every

Congressman is as busy as a Chicago alderman fixing everything from

parking tags to felony warrants.

It is similar when a cop needs influence to square a rap or get an

appointment or a promotion. Elsewhere we know that being a paid-up

member of the local political club never hurt the career of a

policeman. Here there are no political clubs, and most cops are not

even Washingtonians. Their jobs are not confined to locals, but are

open to all American citizens, regardless of residence. You can take a

civil service test back home in Oskaloosa, then arrive in Washington a

full-fledged policeman.

Most Washingtonians don’t even want to get on the force at the

penny-ante salary. But $3,000 a year looks good to a cotton-picker in

Mississippi, where the annual per capita income is $600. When he gets

to Washington he finds the $600 back home goes further than $3,000 here.

So, what does a cop do when he needs help? He follows the procedure

outlined above. If he comes from out of town he corresponds with his

local ward-heeler or goes directly to his Congressman on Capitol Hill.

We asked one cop, “What do you do if you’re a native of Washington and

have no vote?”

He replied, “You’re just out of luck.”

That is, unless you’re a Negro.

The Washington force had some fine colored cops and detectives,

native-born men who decided to make a career of police work in the

days before Washington was flooded with the displaced from the

plantations in the Deep South. In those days Negroes got no special

privileges in Washington. Now almost all of the 300 colored policemen

are political appointees. The white applicant undergoes a rigid and

rigorous investigation; Negroes are forced on the force even over the

disapproval of the department’s intelligence squad.

Many colored policemen have rackets on the side, are gamblers, operate

whore-houses or do a little pimping.

The frequency with which the following happens is too great to set it

aside as a mere isolated example: White cops tell you colored ones

often stop pretty white women drivers, bawl them out and threaten them

with arrests until they cry, then offer to square it for some petting.

Testimony under oath, reported in a previous chapter, in which a

former sweetheart of gambler Attilio Acalotti charged she had seen

hush-money slipped to three cops, was not pursued by police brass, the

District Attorney or the grand jury. Several defendants were convicted

for trying to influence her to change her testimony, though Acalotti,

“Snags” Lewis and Frank Billeci were granted new trials on the gambling

charges.

Our indictment is not against Washington’s police. As we said, most of

them are honest, conscientious, decent citizens, thwarted by something

above their reach.

The culprit is the system. That is responsible for the childish,

irresponsible atmosphere of everything in this dizziest of American

cities.

Don’t think, despite the annual yaps for more assistance, the

Washington police force is radically undermanned. Compared to numbers

in other cities, it is not. The Metropolitan Police have the second

highest manpower per capita of any large outfit in the country. It is

not up to authorized strength, but that goes for most cities. That

doesn’t tell the story, because, as we indicated, there are at least

five other police forces operating in the city, with several hundred

more cops on tap. Generally speaking, the jurisdiction of each force is

limited to the particular area for which it was created. All Washington

policemen have the right to make arrests for crimes committed in their

presence in any part of the District. For purposes of convenience,

deals are made between various forces, so sometimes one patrols a

district which really belongs to another. For instance, if a small

square or park is situated miles away from the next nearest park, the

city police often relieve the National Park Police of the necessity of

sending squad-cars far off their regular beats.

There is a reverse, too. The Metropolitan force has about 1,800 men for

its 14 precincts and one harbor station, but men are continually called

for and assigned to guard visiting diplomats and dignitaries, and for

special duty at the White House, government establishments, and even as

ushers at tea-parties. With days off, sick leaves and men on special

assignments, the force is lucky when it can put 300 cops on the streets

on any shift.

The police are used for many duties delegated to others in

well-regulated cities. For instance, policemen must act as collection

agents for wives with delinquent husbands. Any Congressman can call and

ask for police protection, which means he may want a cop in front of

his house as a parking attendant for his private parties.

Any time the President or an important official drives through

Washington, special cops are strung along the route to clear traffic.

Wives of Congressmen and expectant mothers with a drag rate a police

escort to a hospital. Even the circus can call for a special detail of

22 men.

It is almost impossible to keep any foot patrolmen on the streets.

The force is all-motorized, that being the only way it can get around

the sprawling District. Meanwhile, there are no harness-bulls on

beats to keep toughs and thugs in line. So serious is the shortage of

personnel that the black marias attached to each of the 14 precincts

roll the streets 24 hours a day instead of being in their garages. The

patrol-wagons are equipped with two-way radios and respond to calls the

same as do squad cars. This is a help for spot work, one up on most

towns.

One chief trouble with the police department is that so few of its men

are natives. They have no local civic pride. Another factor is the

constant turnover in personnel, because of the lousy salaries and lean

pickings down below. There is no adequate pension system. In New York

they can retire on a minimum of half pay after 20 years, regardless of

age, which means a man who goes on the force at 21 can get off at 41

with a life pension. But in Washington you cannot apply for retirement

before age 55, with 25 years’ service. And even then there is no

guarantee you will be allowed to quit, as retirement is not automatic,

but at the pleasure of the board. Usually only one-third of those who

apply are permitted to quit.

On the other hand, Washington cops work an eight-hour day on an

authorized five-day week, and are not restrained from holding jobs on

the outside which don’t conflict with their assigned duties. Many own

or work in stores. Several are chauffeurs. Embassies hire them for

body-guards. Some drive cabs. A few owned fleets of them, but this was

forbidden when it was found they were using their police pull to get

their drivers off for traffic violations.

One policeman, Private John U. Carroll, managed a chile parlor in

the 700 block, 11th Street, SE. There was nothing wrong with that,

according to regulations, but the police trial board nabbed him

when he failed to report that he had been in a fist fight with some

customers in his place. According to testimony, Danny Petro, a former

professional pug, walked into the “parlor” and slugged Carroll’s pal.

That brought on a four-man melee in which the cop was injured. The

trial board fined him $75. After being restored to duty he retired,

claiming a veteran’s disability.

Though the department lowered standards because of the difficulty

of recruiting men, its record for solving crimes is still good. But

convictions and sentences are far under the American averages. The

present laws and regulations so hamper the police that even if all were

honest and intelligent, which they aren’t, serious inroads into the

crime situation would be impossible.

One of the most serious roadblocks is the fact that after they make an

arrest and hold a prisoner for the magistrate, they cannot make their

complaints to the court direct, or tell the judge what it is all about.

Washington rules require policemen to go to the U.S. Attorney and

plead with him to book a case. The prosecutor thus sits as practically

a committing magistrate, as the defendant and his lawyers are heard

at the same time, and they can bargain with him for a nolle pros or a

lesser charge.

If the U.S. Attorney decides not to handle a case, the police are sunk.

They cannot ask the municipal judge to hold or commit. In many other

jurisdictions, New York for instance, the arresting officer acts for

the state at the preliminary hearing, before a magistrate, and not only

tells his story to the judge, but can question the prisoner.

The U.S. Attorney is usually reluctant to prosecute. Even if he decides

to, the cops are due for a browbeating from the judge. This story is

no isolated incident--it is typical of what constantly goes on in the

local, politically appointed courts:

Many policemen told us the courts work against them. When they make

arrests they have to go to trial on their own time and are usually

kept sitting there all day at the pleasure of the defendant and his

lawyer. The defendant may wander around, but the policeman is required

to remain in the court until the case is called. He is not even

permitted to go to the washroom. If he does, the eagle-eyed shysters

call the case immediately, with court consent, and the defendant is

discharged--for lack of prosecution!

Several policemen who went to the toilet were threatened with contempt

citations.

From the time a policeman makes an arrest, until the final disposition

of the case, the entire atmosphere of the District enforcement

machinery is mined against him. The District Attorney’s office is

skeptical of anything he says, and is inclined to side with the

accused. The courts, frequently presided over by gangster-appointed

judges or left-wingers whose constituents are rebels against the

accepted code, bend backward. They make defendants of the cops instead

of the prisoners. So most policemen shrug and forget about it. For

instance, in the Black Belt, not one of every three known crimes is

reported. The experienced cops take it easy, go to the ball games and

dances.

The most absurd straitjacket in which the Washington police are

confined is the law which forbids them to serve warrants. They may be

served only by deputy U.S. marshals.

This completely screws up the orderly procedure, because District

judges, who are hot hell to protect the civil rights of murderers,

pimps, dope-peddlers and gamblers, refuse to hold a prisoner in most

cases unless he is arrested on a warrant. And they never uphold a John

Doe warrant.

For instance, on one occasion, two cops assigned to the vice squad at

night, working undercover on prostitution, got into a house and nabbed

several bottles of whiskey there. They called for a police car. When it

arrived, further search turned up narcotics. Twenty-six were arrested

without a warrant. The police knew the courts would not hold them for

even disorderly conduct, because arresting officers could not specify

which offense each and every one had committed. So the prisoners

were not photographed or fingerprinted. All were allowed to post $5

collateral, which was, of course, forfeited.

A cop can arrest a man whom he sees in the process of house-breaking on

burglary, but if he then fans him and finds a gun he cannot charge him

with a concealed-weapon violation, because he had no warrant for the

search. When police have information that a crime is being committed on

a premise, they must first get in touch with the U.S. Commissioner or a

judge, then locate a deputy marshal to come and serve the warrant.

But don’t you assume you can get away with anything in Washington. The

cops are death on jay-walkers. If you cross against the light you’ll

be jugged. That in Washington is more serious and more culpable than

murder!

30. HOW TO STAY OUT OF JAIL

These are the steps:

First you break the law.

Then you get pinched.

Then you hire Charlie Ford.

Who is he? Charles E. Ford is the “Fifth Street Cicero.”

Ford, a behemoth of 220 pounds, is 52. He has been practicing law in

Washington for 28 years. His father, a New Jersey Democrat, was the

public printer of the United States in 1913. Since then a lot has been

printed about his son in the public records.

As noted, Ford was the late Jimmy La Fontaine’s lawyer and is a

trustee of his estate. He appeared in Chicago to convince the Kefauver

committee it couldn’t force Anna Fischetti to testify against her

husband, Charles, the notorious Capone gangster. And he convinced it.

But not all Ford’s work is so aristocratic. He and his associates take

them as they come. Hardly a day passes without defendants in criminal

court being aided and comforted by Ford or someone from his office.

He is the darling of the gambling and prostitution fraternity. His

clients seldom go to jail. The police don’t feel so bad when they lose

to Ford as they do when other lawyers oppose them. For Ford is a great

friend of the cops. Whenever a policeman gets in trouble, Ford takes

his case, usually without fee.

Charlie is one of those big, brash, bluff guys everyone loves,

especially the newspapermen. He feeds them plenty of copy--and

liquor--and never hesitates to give them a lift when they need

background material on gangsters and criminals, without violating his

fiduciary ethics. He is a social guy who likes to entertain and who

loves to eat. One of his clients was the late Tom O’Donnell, and under

the terms of his will Charlie operates the two celebrated O’Donnell

restaurants and patronizes them freely.

Whenever his waist gets out of bounds, he goes to Hot Springs,

Arkansas, for the reducing baths and a few days of friendship and

cheer with Owney “The Killer” Madden, retired gang chieftain, now Hot

Springs’ most eminent elder statesman.

None of Charlie’s clients has ever gone to the electric chair.

One was sentenced to death for murder, but saved Charlie’s record

by considerately hanging himself in jail. So he is one up on Sam

Leibowitz, whose lone mistake waited for the ministrations of the

public executioner. But Ford is that kind of a guy. Everyone loves him.

No one would embarrass him.

We have sworn testimony before us which shows the operations of Ford’s

jail-thwarting apparatus. It usually works this way: The prisoner, who

may be a numbers peddler, a bookmaker’s runner, or a street-walker,

is booked at the police station. He or she puts in a phone call to

a certain designated unofficial party. Thereupon one of a half-dozen

bail-bond brokers gets a call, and within minutes a runner for the

bondsman appears at the police station and puts up surety for the

prisoner.

Among bailers-out utilized by the organization are James H. Conroy,

Isaac P. Jones, William P. Ryan, and Leonard, Louis, Max and Meyer

Weinstein.

The legal fee for a $500 bail bond in the District is $75. The

foregoing bondsmen charge the combine only $37.50, half-price, for

springing a protected person. The rules regarding their surety are

sketchy. They may register a $25,000 piece of property, then lay a

hundred or a thousand $25,000 bonds against it.

On release, the defendant may visit the law offices of Ford, on 5th

Street, where he is interviewed by Ford or his associate, Clifford

Allder since the resignation of James K. Hughes. But sometimes the

defendant does not speak to his counsel until the case is actually

called in court, when his lawyer--Ford or an associate--whom he has

never seen before, stands up for him at arraignment. If the defendant

has no previous convictions, Ford’s office often pleads him guilty;

whereupon the judge imposes a fine of usually not more than $25. We

have proof that the fines for many of these defendants are paid on the

spot from the lawyer’s pocket.

The system is keenly organized. Not one in a hundred people arrested

pays his own bail-bond fee or knows who contacted the bondsman or

paid him. Records of the bondsmen are kept so cryptically that in the

rare instances when they are queried under oath they can say all they

remember is they got a call from someone who only gave his first name,

to put up bail, and they have no record to show who paid them. The

rules are being changed. They must obtain a full name--but not for

public record. And they won’t ask for birth certificates, either.

The Ford office has been able to pass the buck between its members.

They cannot remember who retained them, who paid the retainer, or who

put up the money to pay the fines, if “they actually did it,” which

they “doubt.”

Ford successfully defied a Congressional committee which tried to

make him divulge the names of his clients, though he admitted Emmitt

Warring was one. The others, he said, were known to the public only as

respectable businessmen. They were “more powerful” than Warring or even

the late Jimmy La Fontaine, who were only peanut-peddlers compared to

them, he said.

When pressed, Ford remembered a man by the name of Bettis whom he

represented; and Earl MacDonald and Attilio Acalotti. He said he

thought he had represented another defendant, named “Washington--I

think it was George Washington, and that’s all I can remember now.”

Ford’s business is not confined to the gambling and hustling

fraternity. You see his name bob up in court on almost every kind of

criminal case. One of his recent ones was the arrest of two men on

charges of violating the alcohol tax laws.

“Did you have a warrant?” Ford thundered at the ATU agent. When he

conceded he had not, Ford asked, “How did you know this is alcohol?

Don’t you know it is illegal to arrest people without a warrant?”

“I smelled the alcohol,” declared Agent Sweeney. “I’ve been in

this business for 17 years and I’ve developed a keen sense of

smell--especially for alcohol.”

Ford’s clients were accused of unloading a truck with 127 gallons of

moonshine whiskey.

Ford’s office has practically a monopoly on the setting up of and

organizing after-hour bottle-clubs. He is generally given credit by the

local legal fraternity for being the genius who figured out the way to

sidestep the 2 o’clock closing ordinance. His associate is defending

the confessed killer in the recent Hideaway shooting; Ford himself

secured the Hideaway’s after-hours charter.

Ford’s operations are not confined to the District, but lap over into

nearby Maryland, where, as trustee for the multi-million-dollar estate

of gambler La Fontaine, he finds plenty of activity. Many of the

gamblers and other shady citizens whom he represents operate across

state lines. The boundaries often come to the aid of his clients. For

many offenses, especially most of those before the District Municipal

Court, there is no method whereby authorities can extradite defendants

from Maryland or Virginia, and vice versa. It is very much as if a

law-breaker could take refuge in Brooklyn when wanted in Manhattan,

both boroughs of New York City. There is no more physical difference

between Prince Georges, Maryland, and the District than that.

This all-service Ford is chairman of the Criminal Law Committee of the

District Bar Association.

Another lawyer who frequently appears in court for arrested hustlers is

Ed Buckley.

Fifth Street, between Indiana and D, is called “The Fifth Street

Lawyers’ Association,” because so many bondsmen, shysters and good

lawyers have offices there.

We asked a friend to name the real sure shot mouthpiece who could

spring you if you were arrested for murder and knew you were guilty.

He said William Leahy was the best trial lawyer in town and one of the

most respected. James Laughlin, who himself was once arrested but not

prosecuted after a reversal, is another successful practitioner.

Others who do considerable criminal defense work are Denny Hughes, Sol

Littenberg and Milton Ehrlich.

Another interesting criminal lawyer is Robert I. Miller, who shot and

killed a St. Elizabeth’s Hospital psychiatrist whom he suspected of

playing with Mrs. Miller. The shooting took place at about noon one

day, in the heart of the shopping section at 11th and G Streets. He

was represented by H. Mason Welch, who sob-storied the jury into an

acquittal on the “unwritten law.”

Miller is not the smartest lawyer in town, but he does a tremendous

business defending Negroes and other superstitious criminals who engage

him sometimes just to sit at the trial table for good luck, because

he beat his own case. Miller, an ostentatious person, often wipes his

glasses with a $100 bill while addressing a jury. He claimed close

friendship to Roosevelt and Garner and decorates his office with photos

of them. He ran a Republicans-for-Roosevelt club.

Some lawyers win their cases through merit, others through a fix. Still

others, who weren’t envied by their colleagues, had to do it the hard

way when a certain former bachelor-lady judge, who shall be nameless,

rendered her verdicts in favor of clients of the mouthpieces whose

persuasion grew between covers not on law books. She was an awful

tomato, and many attorneys preferred to lose their cases.

Judge Hitz, the humorist of the local bench, got off a dilly when he

discovered the plaintiff in a matrimonial action was still living with

her husband, the whole divorce proceedings being a sham to swindle

creditors. Said the judge, in dismissing the action, “You can’t

litigate by day and fornicate by night.”

31. THE BOSSES

The last orthodox political boss of Washington was Alexander Robey

Shepherd. When he finished with the city treasury, Congress voted to

end home rule and took back the government.

From the time of its incorporation as a city, in 1802, Washington was

run by elected mayors and aldermen. In 1871, in President Grant’s

administration, it was turned into a territory, similar to Alaska or

Hawaii, with delegates in Congress and a large measure of home rule.

Shepherd was a pal of General Grant, who had numerous smelly friends.

Shepherd’s stewardship was modern in every respect. He went in for a

New Deal on a big scale. The town was torn up while Shepherd paved

streets, installed sewers--sometimes two sets to one avenue--went

in for slum clearance, built squares, parks, circles, gas-mains and

sidewalks. Shepherd began life as a plumber, and showed partiality for

anything with pipes.

Shepherd had built up a small Tammany to keep his boys in power. Votes

were bartered, crimes were fixed, laws were perverted. When the end

came, Shepherd skipped and hid out until the statute of limitations ran

out. When he returned they greeted him with a brass band, like New York

did Jimmy Walker, and built him a statue.

The Congress was more interested in the welfare of the District of

Columbia 75 years ago than it is now. Unable to stomach the stench, it

decided to exercise its Constitutional right to govern the District,

and substituted the present commission-form of government in place of

home rule and local suffrage.

Under the present setup, the executive is a three-man commission,

appointed by the President for a three-year term. One must be from the

Corps of Engineers of the Army. On the law books, these commissioners

have no more power than a New York City Borough President They can

do practically nothing without approval from Congress. But by virtue

of the apathy that prevails in Washington, these men have become

little czars. Congress, by statute, has empowered the commissioners

to make building and plumbing regulations and to create and enforce

all reasonable police and other city rules. But they do not levy taxes

or make appropriations. That is done by Congress. And that’s the

District’s chief squawk.

Every buck collected in Washington goes into the general funds of the

U.S. Treasury; not earmarked for the District. All payments come out

of the same general fund. The result is that, while Congress pays up

to ten percent of the cost of local government, the citizens bear the

other 90 percent. But 52 percent of all the property is tax-exempt. The

government owns more than 40 percent, the rest belongs to embassies,

tax-free organizations like the Red Cross, etc. So the residents

complain that the rich U.S. government is riding along on a free pass,

leaving local property to bear the cost of supporting the huge Federal

establishment.

The present commissioners are John Russell Young, president of the

Board; Guy Mason, and Brigadier General Gordon R. Young, the engineer

commissioner. Mason’s term expired in February, 1951, but he is

permitted to serve until another is appointed or he be reappointed.

Under them, the commissioners have a large staff of special assistants,

private secretaries, administrative assistants and others who have

access to their offices. We are just telling you this in case you are

thinking of making a fix, for one of these persons is the guy to see.

One of the three commissioners is noted for his ability to bollix

everything up after a big, bad night--which is almost every night.

Even his enemies consider inebriation a valid excuse for his befuddled

condition. A Congressman investigating the Commission said, “After all,

the poor guy always has a hangover. You can’t blame him for what he

does when he feels awful.”

Under the commissioners are such usual municipal executive officers

as assessors, auditors, tax collectors, license commissioners and

bureaus of public welfare, recreation, traffic, police, fire, health,

corrections; and--oh, yes--the corporation counsel.

The observer who takes a gander at the judicial branch of the District

government sometimes wonders if he followed Lewis Carroll’s Alice down

into the rabbit hole.

The judicial powers are exercised by the District courts, which sit not

only for federal cases, but for felonious breaches of the local law,

too; and by municipal courts, judges of which are appointed for six

years. They have jurisdiction over minor suits and unimportant law and

ordinance violations.

Members of the federal judiciary for the District of Columbia need not

be local residents. They may be appointed from anywhere in the country.

Usually these plums go to deserving Democrats from elsewhere. At this

writing there are 12 District judges and 10 municipal court judges,

in addition to justices of the United States Court of Appeals for the

District of Columbia, the Municipal Court of Appeals, and the Juvenile

Court.

The District courts serve a two-fold function. They act both as federal

courts and as superior state courts, handling civil and criminal

matters. No judges of either court are elected by the local citizens or

by their representatives. They have no interest in the community. They

do not partake of a legacy of local common law and custom.

If any courts should be impartial, those of the District might be. But

they are not. Some of the judges are venal, inefficient party hacks or

militant propagandists for left-wing philosophies.

The U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia has the most overworked

office in the land. He not only functions as a local district attorney

and as United States attorney, but triples in brass with a job

corresponding to a state attorney general. But his budget and the

number of assistants allotted him are on a per capita population basis,

as though he had to prosecute only federal cases in any city the size

of Washington.

In the prosecution of some minor cases in municipal court alone has

he any assistance. The city Corporation Counsel’s office handles

those. To demonstrate again what can happen when a bureaucracy turns

dictator--the criminal division of his office has no law library. It

does not have a secretary.

If he or his assistants want to check a law or a decision they have to

buy their own books. He is given no fund to keep records, so no records

are kept. It is almost impossible for him to find out the disposition

of cases. He has only five low-paid assistants assigned to municipal

criminal courts, and these are so overworked, sometimes they have

to prosecute cases on an average of one every three minutes. Under

District law, defendants are permitted jury trials in all cases where

the penalty is in excess of ninety days or a $300 fine. It is no wonder

the Corporation Counsel is usually willing to take a plea of disorderly

conduct, instead. The maximum penalty for that is $25, no jail.

Persons accused of serious crimes under federal law must be booked

immediately before a United States Commissioner, as all crimes in the

District, even those like assault, robbery, drunken driving, gambling,

homicide, and rape, which elsewhere belong exclusively to the state,

are federal matters here.

We gave you a rough idea of the volume of such criminal activities

in the District. If those defendants had been arrested for the same

offenses in states, they would be booked before a magistrate, a police

court or a justice of the peace. There are none such in Washington

other than the judges. The chief committing magistrate is the United

States Commissioner, and he has no assistants. He not only performs the

federal duties that U.S. Commissioners in other towns assume, but he

also acts as a committing magistrate on all local felony charges in the

District.

A U.S. Commissioner is not a judge. He is chosen by the local Federal

bench. He serves without salary on a fee basis, but is limited by

statute to a maximum of $9,400 a year, out of which he is required

to pay office rent and stenographic expenses. The law permits a

U.S. Commissioner to practice law on the side, and many in other

jurisdictions do, but, because the D.C. office is the busiest in the

country, he has no time to handle outside cases. The Commissioner is

on duty 24 hours a day. There is no night court. He is it. Police

awaken him at any hour of the night when they make important arrests

or require warrants, and he is busy at hearings, setting bail, and

presiding at arraignments all day.

When you get into the U.S. Attorney’s office you really see how things

are loused up here. The rich Federal government apparently has dough to

toss away everywhere else, but not in its own home. Of course, there

are no faithful voters to be placated here. District Attorney Fay has

only 34 men on his staff; his office is required to do more work than

the entire Second Judicial Circuit, which includes the entire states of

Vermont, Connecticut and the four districts of New York. His budget is

so limited, most of his assistants receive only about $4,000 a year,

and so the turnover is terrific; young men just out of law school go

to work for him for a couple of years, then go out to make a living.

His office is so understaffed, there are not enough employes around to

handle all complaints. It is possible to walk in and rifle the files

at will. Many shyster lawyers often do that, killing the cases against

their clients.

With such a small, unseasoned staff, it is no wonder the complaint

desk in the U.S. Attorney’s office has been compared to “a bargain

grocery counter.” It looks very much like one. It’s a long wooden

shelf behind which a deputy district attorney stands and does business

with plaintiffs, defendants, cops and lawyers across it. We noted that

police may not enter their own complaints. They must bring them to the

complaint bureau of the U.S. Attorney, before the hearing in court. It

is then up to the U.S. Attorney’s office alone to determine whether the

complaint will be made.

What happens is that, every day, thousands of people mill around in

this complaint room. An onlooker can’t tell who are cops, lawyers or

prisoners. When the arresting officer speaks to the deputy D.A., he

does so in this cut-rate counter atmosphere, before the defendant and

his lawyer. There is no privacy. The cop has to spill his case to the

opposition. The defense lawyer then sets up an argument for dropping

the case or reducing the charge. The officials are so harassed, they

try to dispense with as much work as possible, which accounts for a

hefty proportion of pinches that never get past this bureau.

Sometimes a youngster just out of law school is the “grocery clerk.”

He makes such grave rulings as deciding not to prosecute a homicide

charge. These law clerks arrogate to themselves the rights and

prerogatives of the courts. When the D.A. decides to go before the

grand jury, he usually asks for an indictment for only one offense,

even if the accused has been charged with twenty. Elsewhere the custom

is to indict on each count and try on one or two, leaving the others

hanging over the defendant. That does not happen in Washington. After a

prisoner is discharged and commits a crime in some other jurisdiction

there is no record for probation officers there of other outstanding

charges against him. That’s another reason why the professionals like

to practice their trades in Washington.

There’s another booby-trap for the law. The prosecuting and corrective

branches of the government don’t take the cops into their confidence

when a prisoner is paroled. Elsewhere the police are notified when

a parolee is back on the streets, so they can keep an eye on him.

In Washington this is considered an invasion of the convict’s

Constitutional rights.

If the defendant cannot make a deal before the complaint bureau, his

lawyer is entitled on demand to get possession of the file on his case.

The place is so understaffed, with not enough stenographers, that the

only notes in these files are brief pencilled memoranda jotted down

by the Deputy District Attorney. There is never a complete record.

It is simple for defense lawyers to sneak some of the notes out of a

file; they’ll never be missed, because no carbon copies are made. The

overworked deputies can seldom remember what they wrote.

When the trial is scheduled, the deputy prosecutor seldom has an

opportunity to read the files, even if there were complete data.

Felony cases are often ground out in District Court at the rate of one

an hour, including time out for picking juries. When a U.S. Attorney

finishes with one case, the clerk hands him a folder on the next.

That is the first time he ever saw it. Add to this the fact that the

prosecutors do not work with the police in preparing a case, and you

can see what “confusion twice confounded” means.

One of the most unusual features in the setup of the District

government is the office of the Coroner. Until recently, this

functionary, who need not be a physician, had no laboratory. What

he has now is incomplete. He has no medical examiner and only a few

low-paid researchers.

But he has a swell job, with a ten-year tenure and a courtroom better

than the U.S. Commissioner’s. The present Coroner has virtually set

himself up as a judge, with no authority in law, and is said by his

critics to work with a gavel instead of a scalpel. He is one of the

town’s most powerful functionaries.

Among the many strange quirks of local law is one which requires the

Coroner at times to serve as a constable and to make levies. When

the Coroner acts as a coroner, he holds court like a judge. And he

thinks he is one, too. He has frequently discharged from custody

persons accused of homicide, who had been held without bail by a U.S.

Commissioner. He often sets bail and discharges defendants on bail,

though there are no statutes authorizing such procedure, and he has so

admitted under oath.

There have been instances when the Coroner has ruled a death was

justifiable homicide and released the prisoner. Though this is no bar

to subsequent indictment, prisoners often flee the jurisdiction before

the prosecuting attorney knows what has happened. The law does not

permit the coroner to discharge any person.

Coroner’s juries are impaneled by that official to meet his own

preconceived ideas and prejudices. There is no requirement that a

coroner’s juror must even be able to read or write. The salary is $7 a

day, and the Coroner has his favorites. Some men served as many as 31

times last year.

The Coroner frequently discharges the accused prisoners on grounds of

justifiable homicide, despite evidence that they had committed other

crimes at the same time, such as carrying concealed weapons or selling

narcotics. The coroner then shrugs his shoulders and says those things

are none of his business.

There have been known instances of jury fixing. Through the proper

channels, a charge of a death caused by reckless driving has been

reduced to an innocuous misdemeanor or dismissed completely. One of

the coroner’s deputies was a notorious abortionist who performed the

autopsies on his own victims.

Too bad Boss Shepherd isn’t around today. He could appreciate what the

backroom boys have done to the District government.

32. MONARCHS OF THE METROPOLIS

Since wood-cuts added to the native press the element of pictorial

illustration, cartoonists have caricatured the American alderman.

His heavy foot is on the bottom rung of the legislative ladder. The

“gray wolves” of Chicago were known around the globe for venality,

degradation and cold-blooded chicanery. The Tammany members of the

board, the San Francisco, Kansas City, Philadelphia, New Orleans,

Boston, Albany and St. Louis “city fathers” were in their most

nefarious days gangsters, brothel-keepers and police court shysters,

overlaid with a refined sprinkling of saloon-keepers.

That mixture does not reflect the complexion of our Congress. But

when, twice a month, they sit as the Board of Aldermen of the city of

Washington, they are about as dignified and statesmanlike as the city

council of Peoria.

The Constitution says, “The Congress shall have power to exercise

exclusive legislation over such District.”

The actual detail of city government is delegated on the committee

system and for all practical purposes the rulers of everything within

the Columbia confines are 13 Senators and 25 Representatives on the

District committees. In an extremity they can be overruled by their

chambers and the President could veto any of their acts, but no one

remembers when such a thing happened.

There is a certain local prestige about being a D.C. committeeman. He

probably could with impunity drive through a red light or spit on the

sidewalk, or even jaywalk, which no unprivileged person this side of

an ambassador may dare without at least a stiff bawling out. But the

members of Congress assigned to weighty national and world problems

shun the task of managing the municipality.

Of the 38 who are completely responsible for every law, appropriation

and tax measure in this city of almost a million, only two in the

81st Congress came from communities as large as or larger. They were

Congressmen Arthur G. Klein, of New York City, and John F. Kennedy,

of Boston. Only three others in the last Congress came from cities

with a population in excess of 100,000--Senator Estes Kefauver, of

Chattanooga, Tenn., 130,000; Senator Harry Darby, of Kansas City,

Kans., 130,000; and Congressman John J. Allan, of Oakland, Calif.,

380,000. Darby is not in the 82nd Congress.

In other words, 33 of the 38 Senators and Representatives who ruled

this metropolis in the 81st Congress were from farms, villages, and

rural towns, that include Fairmont, W. Va.; Lander, Wyo.; Bristol,

R.I.; Middleboro, Del.; Madison, S.D.; Skowhegan, Maine; Burley, Ida.;

Florence, S.C.; Okolona, Miss.; College Station, Tex.; Scottsboro,

Ala.; Stone Mountain, Ga.; Cedar City, Utah; Hammond, La.; Kennett,

Mo.; Carrollton, Ill.; Frostburg, Md.; Glencoe, Minn.; Decorah, Ia.;

Rosemont, Pa.; and Farrell, Pa. Even those who were sincere did not and

could not understand the problems of a giant city.

In the current Congress there are a few more city slickers on the

committee: Senators Butler, of Baltimore; Bennet of Salt Lake, and

Pastore of Providence.

From time to time, about once every ten years, Congress gets appalled

at its own reflection and decides to investigate its own municipal

creation. After such probes a few anemic recommendations are submitted

to the Congress, a few minor corrective bills are passed. Then the

speakeasies and gambling houses reopen, the dope peddlers and murderers

come out again, and once more life goes on, as Washington life goes.

The last time Congress got in a mood of righteous selfexamination

was in 1950, when a sub-committee of five was appointed by the House

District of Columbia Committee to investigate crime and law-enforcement

in the capital. The sub-committee chairman was James C. Davis, of

Georgia, a sober and sincere lawyer with a distinguished record as a

crusading superior court judge and member of Congress. The Congress

originally voted the handsome sum of $10,000 to this committee, with

which it was expected to dig up the dirt on a billion-dollar-a-year

vice establishment.

Davis determined not to get a political hack as counsel. If he had

not chosen a dynamic attorney, this committee would have been as

innocuous as most others. As it was, it uncovered plenty that should

have rocked the nation and shocked the Congress. It was no fault of

Davis or Hyman I. Fischbach, committee counsel, that it did not. But

Congress, as expected, ignored the report and skipped the record.

Davis and Fischbach came up with suggestions--some far-reaching--for

a reorganization of the District police, court system and method of

prosecution. But to guarantee that nothing would be done about it

the Democratic leadership put road-blocks in the Committee’s path.

Nevertheless it is now before the Congress. It will go the same route

others have, or establish a precedent.

Fischbach, with many years’ experience conducting such investigations

for other Congressional committees, turned out what a committee counsel

should be--in happy contrast to the sad picture of the Kefauver group

which was operating at the same time. No one could see him getting

far with his beggarly budget. It hardly allowed for an office staff,

let alone investigators. But Fischbach hired John Woog, a 27-year-old

war veteran and member of the New York bar, as chief investigator

and practically the whole staff. Working 18 to 20 hours a day they

uncovered enough rottenness, funny business and stupidity to fill more

than 1200 closely printed pages of terrifying testimony.

When Fischbach started stepping on some sacred toes the ceiling fell

in. Rumors were whispered around the House Office Building that

Fischbach would be canned. Plenty of Congressmen were a-tremble;

Fischbach was getting too hot. One who tried to throw a barrier in

his way was Representative Wayne L. Hays, a Democrat from Ohio, whose

Congressional district includes tributary territory dominated by the

Akron and Youngstown mob which is ruled by Frank and Tony Milano,

cited before the Kefauver Committee as organizers of the infamous

Mayfield Road gang, Ohio branch of the Mafia. Hays tried to hold up

money for the committee unless Fischbach were fired. He was joined by

Mrs. Mary Norton, who retired at the end of the 81st Congress, and who

represented Hudson County, New Jersey, and was sent to Washington by

the notorious Boss Hague. She did not stand for re-election after Hague

was run out of Jersey politics.

Another who opposed Fischbach was Edna Flannery Kelly, of Brooklyn,

who was chosen by the Democratic leadership to spearhead the campaign.

Mrs. Kelly, who serves by grace of Irwin Steingut, minority leader of

the New York State Assembly, has been an errand girl for the Brooklyn

bosses ever since her election to Congress.

Mrs. Kelly’s reluctance to expose crime in the District may be

understandable to New Yorkers who know that among her constituents are

some of the most evil gangsters who ever slit a throat or lived off the

proceeds of a prostitute.

These three button-holed other Democratic Congressmen and said they

were opposed to Fischbach because, as a New Yorker, he should have

been cleared through the New York County Democratic Committee. That

Committee’s other name is Tammany Hall. To Davis the mere mention of

Tammany Hall is like defaming the Stars and Bars. Lack of Tammany

endorsement was the highest recommendation. On such little things is

history made.

It still remains for the Congress to follow the Davis recommendations.

Meanwhile, all the law-breakers who hid while he was probing slid back

into business as soon as the “probe” was over.

Few solons really want home rule, not even Northern New Deal

Congressmen who scream for it because the Negro press does.

Most of the members shirk the committee meetings, because while

membership gives them great prestige locally, it means nothing

nationally or to their constituents. The District Committee is

a “minor” one, and membership on it does not count against the

legislator’s allowed minimum of committee appointments.

Few remain on it for long, and assignment to it is, in a manner, in the

way of punishment. First-timers, especially in the Senate, are hazed

that way.

A typical majority member of the House District Committee is

Representative Arthur G. Klein, of New York City’s 19th district. We

give him to you not because he is the most active or prominent, but

because he is closest to our home. His district begins a block away.

Klein, an exasperating and annoying pleader for left-wing causes, has

been on the public payroll for 16 of his 46 years, the first six spent

on the legal staff of the S.E.C. He has been in Congress since 1941.

Klein’s district, which runs between the Bowery and the East River,

below 40th St., contains not only the worst slums in New York, but

some of the newest and finest housing developments, as well as large

hunks of the city’s financial district. He promoted the former for his

constituents at the expense of the latter.

Also in it is Manhattan’s downtown Mafia stronghold--parts of Little

Italy--whose voters sent him to Congress and demand favors in return.

Operating in his district is New York’s most evil and notorious

fairy-haunt, the disgusting 181 Club, at that address on Second Ave.,

where every cabaret law and ordinance on the books is fractured

nightly. This profitable venture is overseen by Alan Bono, a cousin of

Joe Adonis, and a contributor to Klein’s campaign funds.

Former Congresswoman Norton served 10 of her 26 years in Washington on

the District Committee. At this writing she has strong backing for the

about-to-be vacant post of District Commissioner and may so be named

before this reaches print.

Even when not a member of the committee, Mrs. Norton always had a

soft spot in her heart for it, and frequently interested herself in

District affairs, being given a respectful hearing because of “the

woman’s angle.”

But Mrs. Norton was and is and always has been a creature of Boss

Hague, one of the most corrupt and thievingest municipal overlords

in the world. At this moment the Hudson County grand jury is working

overtime grinding out indictments against ex-officials appointed by him.

Many Hague specialties were exported to Washington during her tenure as

mayor ex officio, among them a high tax-rate, municipal corruption and

official protection for gamblers.

Mrs. Norton’s home town, Jersey City, was, until last year, the

national clearing house for the laying off of horse bets from all over

the country.

While she was in Congress, Hague was the absentee chief magistrate of

Washington.

33. WIRETAPPERS, SNOOPS AND SPIES

After you’ve exchanged conversation with a number of Washingtonians,

you wonder what made them decidedly different from others. Then it

dawns on you. They are whisperers.

They all seem consciously afraid that they may be overheard. That marks

them even in casual conversations, and when they utter secrets they

are theatrically overcautious. These are acquired habits, not without

foundation. All mankind has a common weakness for spreading gossip.

Most people can retail only minutiae. But in Washington, matters that

may rock the world are entrusted, or pass through the hands of, those

who otherwise would have little to tell beyond back-fence piddle.

Furthermore, for one to say his wires are tapped is a mark of self

importance.

The capital is overrun by snoops and spies, not only using every

cloak-and-dagger device for foreign transmission, but assigned and

trained to catch and report inter-bureau information, rumors included.

An observation at a dinner table by a member of Congress or an

executive may cause an uproar in Moscow, London or Calcutta. Or it may

bring a midnight huddle in a cabinet department or the President’s

sound-proofed den.

You meet almost no one of any importance who converses at ease. The

thinnest statement or flattest opinion can be amplified and multiplied.

If it escapes an official listening post, it may reach a columnist,

which is worse.

There has been considerable furor on the subject of Washington

wiretapping.

That is a topic which every seasoned editor has learned to recognize as

having extraordinary human interest appeal. The phone is such a common,

yet tricky instrument, that kitchenmaids who have affairs with delivery

boys shiver with horrible fears that their big secrets are being

tapped. And this is not confined to small people. In Washington such

suspicions are justified.

Many mentally connect wiretapping with the F.B.I. The two have been

joined in recurrent publicity. Deliberate left-wing propaganda has

exaggerated and exploited the notion. The F.B.I. uses this method,

as does any other efficient police force. But emphasis thereon is

disproportionate. The practice is widespread with only a modicum of

use in criminal investigation. The F.B.I. itself makes a daily check

against cut-ins on its own wires, including J. Edgar Hoover’s own

private lines. He and his bureau are Enemy No. 1 to the Reds and all

their sycophants and sympathizers, the only man in the country who

called the shots on the Communist situation since the beginning. And

as the eyes and ears of the Department of Justice, the G-men handle

dynamite affecting interests from car thieves to disloyal U.S. employes

to chairmen of the boards of trusts.

Tapping F.B.I. wires is not a profitable career. The bureau knows

all the tricks. New electronic developments now make it possible to

intrude on some communications without physical contact with the wire.

No instruments can detect such espionage. This is a hazard beyond

mechanical defense.

We said everyone in Washington lives in constant fear and dread of

being overheard, even if the subject matter is of importance to no

one. It becomes habit. Congressmen and officials are cagey when they

talk on the phone, though after a few minutes of cryptic conversation

they forget and loosen up. When you visit the average office holder

in his sanctum he steers you away from the walls, then speaks in an

undertone. In your hotel room his eyes wander around the walls,

searching for “bugs” which can pick up and record every sound.

Wiretapping is a merry indoor sport in Washington, engaged in by dozens

of agencies--public and private.

When the White House wants to know what’s going on it employs Secret

Service experts. They ferret out information about the President’s

political enemies, inside and outside the government. It is filed

away for future reference to be used for retaliation or guidance.

Some Democratic Senators and Congressmen use Congressional committee

wiretappers. Investigators get the dope on political enemies in

Washington and back home. Administration leaders tried desperately to

“get” Senator McCarthy and no method was beneath them. Minority party

members, deprived of the services of official wiretappers, hire private

detective agencies. Kefauver complained his committee’s wires were

being tapped.

Many cabinet officers and other high officials usually have their own

intelligence services for spying on associates, the opposition, Hoover,

and even on the President himself.

Foremost among these administrative intelligence sections are those of

the Department of State, Treasury, Defense, and the Post Office, with

its sureshot inspectors.

Oscar Chapman, Secretary of the Interior, has a fine intelligence,

headed by Mike Reilly, former chief of the White House Secret Service.

The political cross currents are such that at any time five or six

sets of wiretappers, each unaware of what the other is doing, may be

listening in on a subject’s wires; while the subject may have his own

dicks listening in on the principals whose agents are cutting in on his

conversation.

Like lobbying, wiretapping is an insidious system used by everyone,

acknowledged by no one, so Congress shrinks from delving deeply into it.

Communists recently forced the issue into the open, as they did with

lobbying, both of which they use extravagantly. The Senate came up with

a weak-kneed investigation of wiretapping. Senator Claude “Red” Pepper,

of Florida, already a lame duck, was appointed to head the committee.

Pepper tried to slant the hearings to make it appear the only

wiretappers in Washington were Republican leaders. He named Senator

Owen Brewster of Maine as the goat. About all the investigation

brought out was that the Metropolitan Police Force is a chief offender.

Police Lieutenant Joseph W. Shimon, the cops’ expert, admitted he

did some outside work on these lines for private clients and for

Congressional committees. Senator Brewster said he paid Shimon’s

expenses to investigate a man who, Brewster thought, was “shadowing”

him. It turned out also that Shimon was paid to tap Howard Hughes’

wires when that eccentric nabob was probed in connection with his

wartime airplane contracts.

After the Senate committee spent a lot of time and money investigating

wiretapping, its counsel, Gerhard Van Arkel, who also wants to be

District Commissioner, made a brilliant discovery. He said the group

already had proved its chief point, namely, “There is a good deal of

wiretapping going on in Washington and it is difficult to act against

the practice under present law.”

Foreign government operatives compile volumes on the words of our

officials, as well as from embassies and snoopers of other foreign

countries. Wiretappers do not expect to garner much direct information,

but they winnow a thousand talks for one bit that will compromise the

object of the tap and make him vulnerable to power pressure.

Lobbyists and labor unions get the goods on people they need. And

government wiretappers often listen in on them.

Add to all this private intrigue, suspicious husbands and wives, and

you have an industry.

Because Washington is federal property, its telephone setup is governed

by the Federal Communications Commission. FCC rules forbid unauthorized

listening in on phone calls. U.S. law makes it a crime to divulge such

information. Evidence secured by wiretapping may not be used in federal

courts. Supreme Court Justice Holmes decreed it “a dirty business.” The

strict rules hamper legitimate law enforcement officers, but do not

hinder those snooping secrets for blackmail or political pressure.

In many other states, New York especially, any evidence, obtained

legally or illegally, is admissible in court, though the detective

who breaks the law to land it may be prosecuted, but never is. He’s

decorated, instead.

New York law is liberal in extending the right to local peace officers

to tap wires by judicial sanction, ex parte, for specific inquiries,

never refused. Federal agents working on cases in New York and other

such states usually tie up with local cops and prosecute in local

courts, because the Feds are restrained in their own. In the District

there is no local law, so the authorities are handcuffed.

Wiretapping is rarely used to procure actual evidence. Judges and

juries don’t like it. But eavesdropping alerts officers and then

they go after collateral evidence and don’t reveal where the tipoff

originated.

Instead of developing more stringent legislation which is what the

Communists, who break every law, want, the radical-sponsored Pepper

investigation failed so miserably that many Congressmen agreed the

government should have more power to protect itself by means of

wiretapping. The Department of Justice is sponsoring a bill to permit,

under some circumstances, the use of evidence in court so obtained;

to be accepted after a Federal Judge issues an order on application

of government intelligence agencies, and to sanction such agencies to

engage in wiretapping directly, not for court evidence, subject to

approval by the Attorney General.

Many sober observers feel that to forbid the F.B.I. any reasonable

means for counteracting treason and espionage is childish prudery, and

that its bitter opponents are not in good faith.

You hear a lot from pinks and phony progressives that the nation’s

capital is a police state where no man is free to utter his thoughts.

But most of the spying is done not for legitimate government sources,

but is privately sponsored by politicians, office-holders or subversive

and inimical interests. Washington is no OGPU camp. Most of the

work done in the headquarters of federal investigative agencies is

administrative. They decentralize their field work. The Washington

offices of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, the Alcoholic Tax Unit and

several others are branches of the Baltimore division and report to the

superintendent there.

The Washington field office of the F.B.I. is as remote and as

independent from the director as, for instance, the ones in New York,

Chicago and Los Angeles, and like them is run by an agent-in-charge,

through regular channels like out-of-town offices, via Clyde A. Tolson,

the skillful associate director, and brainy assistant directors Mickey

Ladd, Hugh Clegg, Lou Nichols, Dick Glavin, Rolf Harbo, Al Rosen and

Stan Tracy before Hoover handles any matter.

The agent-in-charge of the Washington field office has as much

authority and autonomy and is as locally independent as Ed Scheidt and

his assistant, Bill Whelan, in New York; George McSwain in Chicago, and

Dick Hood in L.A., all solid and seasoned chiefs of ability, integrity

and patriotism.

The same lefties who are moaning about Washington being a police state

recently tried to slip a fast one over, to make it so, and at the

expense of embarrassing and possibly destroying the F.B.I.

When the House Committee Investigating Crime and Law Enforcement in

the District was drawing up its report, certain sources tried to

sneak a sleeper into it, recommending that the F.B.I. be given final

responsibility for policing the city of Washington.

We have determined that the suggestion was made to sub-committee

Chairman Davis by District Attorney Fay who said he concurred in it

with Peyton Ford, an Assistant Attorney General, with a long record of

sympathy for “progressive” causes. Informed observers wonder if Ford,

who helped whitewash Amerasia, was acting for higher-ups out to “get”

J. Edgar Hoover.

The plan was to slip this through into legislation. That would mean the

end of the F.B.I. as we know it. It would then become a city police

force. Its organization would be disrupted, as was the Treasury during

Prohibition. It would have to take on thousands of new agents, waste

time with drunks, whores, policy-slip peddlers and punks, and meanwhile

it would have to take the odium for the conditions portrayed in this

book, which go deeper than mere failure of police.

In recent years it has become the fashion in the movie industry to

produce whodunit pictures about detective agencies of the Federal

government. The Hollywood geniuses think they have covered all but they

missed plenty.

(Note: In all cases their duties are regulated and catalogued by

statute. None, including the F.B.I., is a genuine and general secret

police force--such as Scotland Yard.

Generally speaking, their powers and duties are in one of four

categories.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation “investigates.”

The Postal Inspectors “inspect.”

The Treasury Agents “enforce.”

The Secret Service “protects”--the President and the currency.)

The Narcotics Bureau is covered elsewhere in some detail; but this

is as good a place as any to assure you that Federal cops are human

beings, not machines assembled to turn out convictions. A principal

function of the Narcotics Bureau is to combat the dope evil, not to

imprison its victims. This was demonstrated when a famed Hollywood

movie star went on the junk. The Bureau, in checking prescriptions,

found she was in the hands of a quack who was ruining her life.

Commissioner Anslinger made a trip to Hollywood to plead with the head

of her studio to give her a year off, so she could go to a sanitarium

for a cure. She had two pictures in the works and the studio factotum

demurred. He mentioned her contract, said the company had millions

invested in the films. He “couldn’t possibly see my way clear.”

Anslinger warned him she would collapse and the company would lose an

asset worth even more. The young woman was being kept alive during the

day on benzedrine. Afternoons the doctor tapered her off on secanol.

After work she was dosed with morphine. The inevitable eventuated. She

blew up completely, tried suicide, was hospitalized and suspended.

Then the government stepped in and gave her the cure. Now she is

dehabituated and rehabilitated.

The Intelligence Unit uncovered the huge tax fraud that sent Henry

Lustig, former owner of New York’s Longchamps Restaurant chain, to the

pen. Many stories are told on how the prosecution began, including the

apocryphal one that Henry Morgenthau, then Secretary of the Treasury,

was forced to stand in line and wait for a table in a Miami cafe when

Lustig was ushered in ahead of him; Morgenthau asked who the man was,

exploded and ordered the Feds to get him.

But the real story is this: The New York hideaway office of the unit

is at 253 Broadway. There’s a Longchamps Restaurant in the basement.

Federal agents don’t earn enough to afford its fancy prices. They

usually lunch in a counter-joint around the corner. But one day it

rained. Some agents were tied up on a big case, didn’t have time to

wait, so they ducked down in the elevator.

Many Wall Street financiers lunch there regularly, have tables reserved

and waiting. The only empty one had a “reserved” sign, but the

Intelligence boys grabbed it over the protest of the hostess. When the

millionaires arrived they had to wait. They fumed. Lustig was there. He

shouted, “Why did you let those bums take that table?”

Service to the “bums” was cut off. They wondered whether the

imperious Lustig’s returns were clean, whether he wasn’t the sort

of individualist who would probably steal. They checked. He had

sequestered $5,000,000 in unreported hatcheck money.

When the Intelligence Unit, nicknamed “The U-Boats,” sent Atlantic City

boss Nocky Johnson to the can, they got him by counting the towels sent

to the laundry by the local cat-houses. This established the intake of

the madames, and their kickbacks upstairs.

The Intelligence Unit has been working on the hidden holdings of the

Mafia for years. When evidence in hand is collated, 30 of the most

important hoodlums will trade in their tailor-mades for prison denim.

There’s terrific pressure from higher-ups to stop the forthcoming

prosecution. Only orders from the President or Attorney General will do

it.

Sometimes Intelligence runs into amusing situations like the case of

the rich Chinese and the blonde model. He was a wealthy importer,

named Hsieh, in America on a diplomatic passport as the representative

of the Bank of China. Nationalist Hsieh fell for Marion Saunders, a

sensational slick chick with platinum hair, from Indiana. It became a

terrific romance. Cafe socialites kidded that he bought her a new mink

coat every day.

The Treasury heard about the dough he was lavishing on her. They

looked him up, discovered that as a nonresident alien he was exempt

from American income taxes. But Mr. Hsieh had forgotten gift taxes.

Under the law the donor, not the recipient, is liable for payment--25

percent. The Feds tracked down gifts aggregating $1,000,000--the

untraced value was far higher. Mr. Hsieh was soaked $540,000--tax plus

fines. He was allowed to pay in three installments. He pulled out a

roll of bills and peeled off 180 G-notes for the down payment.

Some months later, Hsieh and Marion were married. Ginmill habitués said

he married her to get his dough back. That couldn’t be so, because

one day, last year, the _Queen Mary_ came in with $2,000,000 in gold

consigned to him. It was landed under guard of six armed Chinese, toted

off in steel-lined limousines.

Which reminds us of the story never told before, too good to keep.

One of the benches in Lafayette Square, gathering place of the faggots,

across from the White House, is wired up. You ought to hear some of the

gay conversations. We did. Then we squirted penicillin in our ears.

PART THREE

THE ESCAPE

(_Confidential!_)

34. THE TUESDAY-TO-THURSDAY SET

The most itching urge in Washington is to get away from it. Few have

the conventional home ties there which bind the average American to

the hearth, or the radiator. Weekends are dismally dull and shop shuts

up from Friday night until Monday morning, with few exceptions. Civil

servants rate thirty-day vacations. The winters are sleazy and frosty.

The summers are insufferable in that swampy, flat region which enjoys

no ocean breezes.

Where to go? Anywhere. Those who can afford it scram to New York

or Atlantic City. The next layer hightails it for Baltimore or

Philadelphia. Some fly to far points. Eastern Congressmen and officials

rarely bring their wives and families to Washington, an arrangement of

mutual consent after the rookies have tried domestic life there for a

few months of high anticipation and depressing disillusionment. Most

Congressmen from east of the Ohio River don’t wait for Friday. They

are known as the “Tuesday-to-Thursday” set, because that’s the point

of departure and return. Frank Roosevelt, Jr. is its most consistent

member.

The great hegira starts Thursday, when the Congressional Limited

leaves, at 4 P.M. For the rest of the day and throughout the night

every outgoing train and plane is packed and the stragglers fill them

up on Fridays, too. For these trips and returns, hundreds of regular

reservations stand during sessions.

Weekenders who have no fences to mend or wives to mollify or private

practices to superintend hie to resorts in Virginia and the Carolinas.

But the pet dreamland of escape for the hiatus is Atlantic City. During

spring and summer the Pennsylvania Railroad runs a through Pullman car

daily to and from there, via the Delaware River bridge. This is hooked

onto or off the New York-Washington train at North Philadelphia, where

there is a rush for the club car. The drawing-rooms house either poker

games or shut-in shebas who long to smell the sea. Teetotal-voting,

Bible-Belt solons stagger up and down the boardwalk with potted

patooties on the arms that beat the righteous breasts in the hallowed

chambers.

The politicians favor the Claridge in Atlantic City, but the Brighton,

across the street, is rapidly becoming the gay spot, much patronized by

those who go up for laughs. Those who want seclusion usually stay at

the Ritz-Carlton, at the end of the boardwalk and off the beaten track.

The Ritz was once owned by Enoch “Nocky” Johnson, former Atlantic City

political boss, recently discharged from federal prison. Nocky is on

parole now and not supposed to drink or go to public places or engage

in politics, but he does and is still a power in the town and is called

on by visiting Washington G.O.P. dignitaries.

Nocky was one of the few leaders with underworld tie-ups prosecuted

during the Roosevelt administration. Of course, Johnson was a

Republican, not a Democrat, and the orders went out from Boss Hague in

Jersey City to get him.

Many Washingtonians seeking fun go to Philadelphia, of all places!

Philly is a natural for married men who want to do a little cheating,

because who would ever think of looking for them there? “Sleepy” old

Philadelphia is not so sleepy. It is one of the hottest towns in the

country, loaded with after-hour spots which offer fast floor shows and

run later than anything in New York.

Philadelphia is Mafia-controlled, run by the same branch of the mob

which owns South Jersey and its domestic wine industry, and Atlantic

City. Many Philadelphia spots break the law brazenly and openly,

protected by the Mafia.

But Philadelphia has one of the finest restaurants in the world,

operated by one of America’s best-known hosts. This is Jack Lynch’s

Zodiac Room in the Warburton Hotel. Lynch has more friends in show

business and high politics than any other man alive. Many top actors

break their trips from Washington or Baltimore to New York to stop

overnight for an evening with Lynch.

Philadelphia is two hours from Washington on fast trains. Many

show-starved Washingtonians, who don’t have the time to get to Broadway

to visit the legitimate theatre, find they can ride to Philadelphia,

catch a show--there are usually four or five big-time productions

playing--have a drink, and get back to Washington in time for bed.

Washington wolves go to Philly to howl. Mention New York or Atlantic

City and a bimbo knows that’s a weekend and all that goes with it. But

invite her to Philadelphia for an evening, then a few drinks after the

show--and the last train has left. A lady can’t sleep standing up.

Of course, New York remains the chief target for weekenders. Those

on small budgets stay at one of the popular-priced West Side hotels,

visit the usual tourist traps, occasionally see a Broadway show, and

have a hell of a time without spending too much. Government clerks

come away to New York for a weekend, a man and a woman, going Dutch.

Groups of government girls save up for a trip to the big city. They

go sight-seeing and gawking, send home colored postal cards and eat

box-lunches in Grant’s Tomb.

Most good New York cafes will not serve unescorted women. So the best

the typists and filers can do is wander around, oohing at the bright

lights and dreaming up lies to tell when they get back.

The guys in the bigger jobs have a hell of a time when in New York.

Embassy people come up regularly and are provided with introductions

to top models by the State Department. Key Congressmen and high

officials are brought up on junkets by lobbyists, entertained in the

swank joints, and if they don’t have their wives with them they can

have the best. If wives are along, they are invited by the lobbyists to

go shopping at places like Saks-Fifth Avenue, Bonwit Teller, Bergdorf

Goodman and Hattie Carnegie, and charge anything they want on the

lobbyist’s accounts.

The favorite hangout of the New Deal set in New York is the Stork Club.

The attorneys for the Stork Club are Goldwater and Flynn. The Flynn

is Ed Flynn, New Deal Democratic boss, campaign manager of the late

President Roosevelt. The Stork became a hangout for the left-wing and

do-gooder crowd during the 1930’s, when the late Supreme Court Justice

Frank Murphy used to cut up on the dance-floor with cuties. Harry

Hopkins, the ex-Mills Hotel Hopper, who addressed envelopes at a cent

each, favored its rich menu--on the cuff.

Many of the important bleeding hearts, labor union leaders and

spokesmen for the have-nots spent and still spend their time in

New York in the Stork Club, where the have-nots they bleed for are

rigorously barred by silken ropes.

Here such union bosses as the musicians’ Petrillo, a pal of Truman’s,

and the truckmen’s Tobin, a Roosevelt favorite, are served by a

nonunion restaurant staff. Sherman Billingsley, the Stork’s owner,

had to cough up more than $100,000 for back salaries and unfair labor

practices. But while he was fighting organized labor the chief union

bosses, all the Roosevelt sons and half the cabinet frequented his

place. They still do, though the restaurant unions still consider the

Stork unfair. But Sherman’s friends see the place is never picketed any

more.

The diplomatic set, visiting nobility and royal guests of the State

Department, and the older Washington dignitaries visit John Perona’s El

Morocco, the swankiest in New York. One may meet ambassadors, princes,

a dispossessed king and some South American presidents in Morocco at

one time. On these occasions there is more law scattered around the

room than there are customers in most other clubs. A visiting potentate

like a sultan or maharajah, in addition to rating a couple of Secret

Service men, gets four New York detectives.

When the boys come up from Washington with nothing good on their minds

they head for the Sun Up Club, in a private house in West 68th Street,

right off Central Park West. This place is run by a couple of sisters

who used to operate the Hour Glass Club. One, Helen O’Brien, is close

to Joe Nunan, former Commissioner of Internal Revenue and intimate

friend of Boss Ed Flynn. This place gets away with anything and has for

years. It freely sells liquor at any hour without a license and without

regard to closing ordinances.

Helen O’Brien knows a lot of amiable dishes who hang around there. If

there should happen to be none when a visiting padrone comes in, they

soon get there. This spot is practically unknown to New Yorkers, few of

whom, including newspapermen, ever heard of it. It is patronized almost

solely by august Democrats from Washington.

Visiting New Dealers pour also into Toots Shor’s restaurant, where

they are almost as welcome as baseball players and prize fighters. The

late Bob Hannegan, postmaster and Democratic Committee Chairman, was

a regular. Sometimes he brought an unknown Senator from his home state

with him, Harry Truman, who liked the conviviality of the place and

bent an elbow with the boys. When the Senator was Vice President, he

stopped in and played the piano in the private room. Toots, a genial

giant, fat and wide and tall, had lunch at the White House with the

late President Roosevelt and made him laugh. Sometimes at dinner

there’s more Washington brass at Toots’ than there is in Washington.

Toots also runs all non-union. But he can call a cabineteer a

crumb-bum, and is then set down as a character and a wit.

35. BALTIMORE, CONFIDENTIAL

(_Authors’ note_: This is a chapter, not the going-over that a

Lait-Mortimer excavating job on our sixth biggest city, our second

port in tonnage, truly rates. It is a by-product of this work,

because aristocratic, historic Baltimore is the slumming-ground for

thousands of escaping Washingtonians, only 36 miles away over fast

rails and modern autobahns.)

Stir up your memory and try to think when and where you have read an

“exposé” or any other study of Baltimore. You can recall pieces, kindly

or vicious, about San Francisco, Los Angeles, Denver, Chicago, New

Orleans, Philadelphia, New York, and discussions of the peculiarities

of Boston. But Baltimore, a main-line metropolis, with atmosphere and

tradition and volume and character, is by-passed.

We were almost complete strangers there on field-work, though our

tortuous delvings into the continental Mafia-managed Syndicate long ago

fixed for us its place in the national network.

Baltimore is perhaps the perfect example of a Mafia-controlled city in

action. For practical purposes it is a contraction of Chicago and an

expansion of Galveston, extreme gangster-throttled cities with the same

core of Sicilian manipulators who push the buttons and pull the levers.

Italians constitute one of the largest foreign elements in Baltimore

and can always be depended on to vote in a bloc. Little Italy is

centered around Albemarle and Fawn Sts., where much of the deviltry

is hatched over “dago red” wine. Add to this the huge colored vote,

which also is pretty solidly Democratic, and you have the makings of a

perfect boss-run burg.

Our investigations into other American municipalities have shown where

the Mafia dominates there is a disintegration of public morality and

private conscience.

To this major seaport huge numbers of Italian and Sicilian immigrants

have always been drawn. They formed the base for its underworld colony,

made it a star on the Mafia map. It is a concentration point for

illegally-entered Sicilians, stowed away on the freight steamers that

ply between the Mediterranean and Chesapeake Bay, by a smuggling-ring.

As these aliens become Americanized, grow rich and powerful in the

rackets, they import new waves of Sicilians for the underworld’s menial

tasks.

Baltimore is a favorite hide-out for Mafistas on the lam from

other towns, especially New York, and is used interchangeably with

Providence, R.I., for that. When one of your authors was assaulted

by Sicilian hoodlums in the pay of Mafia tycoons last spring at

Bill Miller’s Riviera in New Jersey, New York police investigating

the crime were tipped off that the sluggers were being sheltered in

Baltimore’s Little Italy, where they were feted as honored guests at

a two-week wedding blowout for the daughter of one of the richest and

most powerful Sicilians there. More recently, Tony Rotondo, a Brooklyn

ex-convict wanted on suspicion of being the torpedo who slew Bill

Drury, was found in Baltimore.

In recent years Baltimore has had an infiltration of Puerto Ricans.

It is in handy sea communication with the Caribbean. It has also

considerable air traffic with that area and at a cheaper rate than New

York’s. The affinity between the Mafia underworld and the new Puerto

Rican migrants quickly developed, as it did in East Harlem. Young

Puerto Ricans are employed as dope-peddlers, pimps, and torpedoes.

Their colony is not large as yet. What it lacks in size is made up for

with Latin enthusiasm.

Baltimore’s Negro population is around 300,000. On the whole, the

colored folk there are more orderly than their neighbors in the

District of Columbia. Maryland is still a Southern state and its

whites will stand for just so much. But Maryland’s Negroes have the

right to vote and they have been taken in hand by the professional

do-gooders, the New Dealers and other such ilk, who often work hand in

hand with the underworld. The result is that the Negro, the Italian and

the Puerto Rican votes are often enough to tip the balance in local

elections and perpetuate the criminal rule.

This is expressed on all levels with “fixes” necessary and available

for everything from a special license number which will exempt you from

arrest to the go-ahead for a bagnio. (When you see a Maryland license

ending in three zeros, you know the car is an untouchable.)

The town’s gambling czars are some Comi brothers, some Corbi brothers,

all Italians, and George Goldberg, big in numbers.

Tom Shaw, original owner of the swank Club Charles, also was important

in the gambling firmament until the Sicilians muscled in, taking a

part of his night club as well. Nick Campofreda, a local radio sports

announcer, was put in as permanent M.C.--not good either.

The Century Athletic Club on Baltimore St., was in the fight promoting

business, as well as the central clearing house for bets. The Mafia had

tried long and hard to declare itself in, always without success.

The deal was consummated three years ago, after a couple of swarthy

boys from Brooklyn “stuck” it up. Every newspaper printed the story,

but the cops denied it happened.

The Club has surrendered its fight charter, and is now simply a

gambling place. Five leaders of the Sicilian colony are James Caranna,

Frank Gattuso, Tom Lafata, John Maurice, and Joe Palozzolo. They

control the potent minority votes--through threats and payoffs--and

dictate to Baltimore’s political leaders.

The town’s top Democratic politicians are Bill “Boss” Curran, a lawyer,

and Jack Pollack, former bootlegger, now in insurance. He runs the 4th

District. Pollack was once arrested for murder but never indicted.

They split recently over patronage. Curran nominated his man for

Governor, but Pollack threw his weight to the G.O.P. candidate, thus

putting a Republican in the State House for the third time since 1864.

He is expected to remember his political debt to Pollack.

The new Governor, Theodore Roosevelt McKeldin, was the last Republican

mayor of Baltimore. He had Pollack’s nod then, too.

The Governor can be a nuisance in Baltimore if he wants to, but never

does. City police heads are appointed by him, not by the mayor. Beverly

Ober, the incumbent commissioner, is “social,” and acceptable. Anyway

Maryland law provides a set term for the top cop. McKeldin is expected

to keep his snoot out of Baltimore--he needs it for re-election; and

its Democratic legislators--who control the legislature--to pass his

measures.

A powerful Democrat is Senator Herbert R. O’Conor. The R is for

Romulus. O’Conor is a member of the Kefauver committee. Locally he

works with whatever faction is in power.

George Muller, 4th ward boss and State Racing Commission Inspector is a

local czar.

Juke-boxes, vending-devices, slot-machines and other Frank Costello

monopolies are handled locally by Joseph Corbi, of the brothers, out on

bail at this writing after being arrested by the F.B.I. as one of the

chief operators of an international lottery ring.

Senator O’Conor is the sponsor of a new plan to bring in 36,000 Italian

immigrants forthwith, mostly from Sicily. The Baltimore underworld

hopes to route most of these to Maryland. But New York’s Republican

Senator Ives has boosted the ante to 130,000. There are more Italian

voters to appease in the Empire State.

The importation of Sicilians, legally and illegally, under the padrone

system, is again growing. Huge numbers of aliens have been brought

into the country and settled in certain key spots dominated by the

Mafia, where they work off their fare and keep, usually by acting as

dope-peddlers, numbers-runners or sluggers, or selling their daughters

into white slavery.

Now let’s catch up with our mythical refugee from Washington, who comes

to Baltimore for only one purpose--and that’s no good. You can be sure

he finds what he wants in Baltimore. It’s got everything that’s no good.

The visitor’s first impression is of a dirty old town, with ancient,

smoke-grimed structures and narrow, rambling streets, one-third of

which are still illuminated by gas-lights--with Welsbach globes!

Baltimore is overrun by rubes. And the dress, manners and customs of

most residents appear provincial. Washington is a city of hicks, too,

but it is a yokel cosmopolis, with farmers drawn from all sections of

the country, leavened with some civilized folk and foreigners.

Baltimore is the market for more chicken-farmers than any other of our

cities. It is the place, therefore, where they come to raise the kind

of hell a chicken-farmer would.

Washington women on the average seem smart and well-dressed compared

to those in Baltimore. Yet Baltimore has some famous high-fashioned

women’s shops which bring customers up from Washington. But the street

types don’t patronize them, for they walk around in cheap house-dresses

and shapeless coats of cloth, plush and phony fur.

This is the more surprising because Baltimoreans are the most finicky

shoppers in the world. As we write this, the local department stores

insert a pleading full-page ad in the papers:

“Gentle Reader.... Over 11,000 purchases daily are sent back to

Baltimore stores. NO OTHER CITY EVEN COMES CLOSE to our percentage of

returns.... Think how thousands of sales people lose productive time

making over 3,000,000 sales a year that come back.”

Baltimore has a Skid Row that turns your stomach even in Baltimore,

where so much of the burg looks like one Skid Row. Next door to and

around the corner from some of the best hotels, cafes and department

stores, you will find nude strippers, B-girls, hostesses and whores.

Guttered drunks and street-walkers may be the badge of the Bowery

elsewhere; here they are a common sight on every street.

The visitor heads for one of a half-dozen hotels, all but one of

which are almost as ancient as the city itself. The newest, the Lord

Baltimore, is almost a quarter-of-a-century old.

The hotels are cozy, but musty. The elderly Belvedere, once the class

joint, is now part of the nation-wide Sheraton chain. Its cocktail

lounge is the only social hangout left. The Emerson and the Southern

are doddering old ladies. There is an air of laissez faire in Baltimore

which extends to the inns. If you are quiet and gentlemanly about it,

they probably won’t throw that broad out of your room. For it is a

friendly town, as you will have many occasions to find out. Everyone

talks to you, half the girls you meet want to go to bed with you. The

name of its new airport is Friendship International.

When Judy Coplon worked for the Department of Justice she was

considered the most amenable gal there, which made her the most

popular. Harold Shapiro, a good-looking assistant attorney general,

dated her frequently. It was testified at her first trial that they

went together to Baltimore, where they spent a night in a room in the

Southern Hotel.

Judy admitted that, but claimed she did not undress. Shapiro was an

unhappy witness against her, because many thought he had acted for the

government to lure her--kissed and told.

He moaned to friends in Baltimore, “It happens to lots of guys. But not

everyone has a G-Man under the bed.”

The first item on the tourist’s agenda after he gets out of the hay is

East Baltimore Street, part of the main commercial thoroughfare. From

Gilford Avenue to Fallsway it is Hobo Heaven. You know when you are

getting to what you want to find when you see a Salvation Army meeting

on a street-corner, in front of a barker for a burlesque house. Other

towns have honky-tonk lanes, too, but this is the only one where it is

the main attraction.

Skid Row starts as soon as you walk past the Emerson and Southern

hotels. You are right in the middle of it--a good half mile of avenue

lined on both sides with burlesque theatres, cheap bars, low-class

night clubs, novelty stores, shooting galleries, penny arcades,

flop-houses and second-hand clothing stores. All burlesques and some

saloons have hawkers who will pull you in by main force if you hesitate

or stop to look at the pictures.

The most famous dump in town is a basement dive called the Oasis

Club. Years ago, when we first visited it, it specialized in a rowdy

floor-show, with a chorus of elderly relics, their drooping bosoms

unencumbered by brassieres. It is now a strip-joint selling a parade

of nudes, some “refined” with bubbles or fans, pretending to “tease.”

Many peelers make $1,000 a week. But not these in Baltimore. The Oasis

is non-union. The maximum salary is $35. They earn the rest of their

living sitting out with male customers. We had seen crummy shows

before, but nothing quite like the Oasis. Yet, when we stepped around,

we found it tame for the course.

In Chicago, where nudes run wild, they never work at floor level. They

are lewd on raised stages or on platforms behind bars. At the Oasis and

a good many others in Baltimore, they work on the floor. If you are

sitting at the ringside, you can reach out your hand and tap the babe

on her bare behind. And she’ll love it.

One or two Oasis girls strip completely, without G-strings, plaster

or anything on. The m.c. mouths continuous patter of dirty talk in

which he encourages the customers to tickle the girls--anywhere. The

girls talk back to the patrons, jump on their laps, stick their bare

backsides in their faces, in the spirit of good clean fun.

Max Cohen sold the Oasis to Sam Levin. He agreed to get out of the

strip business. But he immediately opened another room, around the

corner, called the Miami. Levin sued for breach of contract and

collected $50,000. The competition between these two sewers opened the

town up wider than it had been in decades. Each tried to outdo the

other in nudity. But a girl can’t take off more than all. Meanwhile,

other strip dives found themselves outstripped and had to meet the new

mode.

The Miami is around the corner from city hall and police headquarters.

The mayor can turn at his desk and look into the Miami, and many other

dives. This is one of the most vicious and lawless areas in the world.

The mayor of Baltimore, whose present term expires in May, 1951, is

Thomas D’Alesandro, Jr., a Democrat. He was chosen Permanent President

of the U.S. Attorney-General’s Continuing Conference on Crime and

Corruption last winter.

Mayor D’Alesandro was, before his election as the city’s chief

executive, the “Mayor of Little Italy.” His rise to the seats of the

mighty, did not turn his head. He refused to move from the slums where

he had always lived, at 245 Fawn St. Instead he rebuilt his home into a

modernistic mansion, a show place surrounded by hovels.

Next door, and connected, is a new commercial building in which the

Mayor operates his insurance business and his wife her home-beauty

treatment supply company.

If the Mayor returns late from a banquet, political meeting or night

session of the City Council, he will not be forced to travel through

dark and deserted streets. For the immediate vicinity of his home

is the bright light section of Little Italy, where neon-lighted

restaurants run all night, and serve liquor in tea-cups, and some

openly in orthodox set-ups.

Kid Julian runs one such place nearby, a mob hangout.

It is interesting how Baltimore’s Mayor was chosen to head the

Conference on Crime over mob-fighting Mayors Bowron, of Los Angeles,

and Morrison, of New Orleans. We know the inside. We covered the

inaugural meeting in Washington at which all problems were solved in

two hours, after President Truman opened it with a pep talk in which

he said there’d be no crime if everyone read the Bible and stopped for

traffic lights.

“Look at me,” he said. “I am the most important man in the world. Yet I

instruct my chauffeur to stop at all red lights.”

That night the President’s car went through 17 en route to a banquet at

the Statler.

Mayor D’Alesandro’s honor came after he read an intelligent paper to

the delegates. It came as a surprise that D’Alesandro had such a fine

grasp on the subject. It came to him that way, too.

You see, when he read it, it was the first time he had seen it. It was

written for him by a Baltimore newspaperman.

The location of the deadfalls in Baltimore reminds us of Galveston,

where the gambling and red-light districts, controlled by

Syndicate-allied bosses Sam and Rosario Maceo, are also contiguous to

the offices of the law enforcement authorities.

The Miami Club is on the main floor of a building which advertises

“Rooms Upstairs.” It has some of the most disgusting acts we have ever

seen. Girls in the show will sit out with you on request. Every time

you pay for your round of drinks--they require you to pay after each

round--the sitter asks you for a dollar tip. The girls who work in the

show get no commission on these drinks. But if they don’t have a drink

in front of them all the time they risk being fired. Their base pay,

as “entertainers” runs from $20 to $35 a week. The rest they make from

the tips and from deals arranged for after work. Some of the girls in

the show aren’t bad lookers. We spoke to one young Puerto Rican, named

Aida, who could have gone places in New York if she had any spunk or

talent. Here all she did was walk around the floor without a stitch on.

Off her it looked good.

The m.c. at the Miami, when we got nauseated there, was a fairy. Some

of the older dames in the show are lesbians. Many fags frequent the

place. The girls told us all that freely, though not free.

The rest of the customers are servicemen, riffraff, sight-seers and

drunks. One seldom brings his wife or girl friend to this place. One

of the nights we were there we saw two policemen and a lieutenant in

uniform, sitting at a table drinking, surrounded by girls. At the

next table was a wizened little old fellow tossing dough away on the

broads. We figured him for a chump. But he turned out to be a retired

Baltimore police captain who quit so rich that he can afford to spend

$500 a night, that way.

Many of the lower-paid employes of the British and French embassies in

Washington hang out at the Miami. Occasionally some of these girls are

brought to Washington when low down high-jinks are wanted. The Miami

advertises regularly in the Washington dailies.

The waitresses at the Miami seem to be independent contractors. Tables

are not assigned. Customers are continuously solicited for orders by

dozens of different ones. Each carries a purse and you settle with

her after every round. She pays cash at the bar for it. It seems any

girl who wants to can come in and hustle drinks this way without being

hired. Some wear slacks, others street clothes, and a few sport cheap

evening gowns. They will sit with you with no coaxing. One of our

waitresses sat down and said, “My tables always buy me a drink.”

At the Miami Club we often saw men seated with girls from the show or

waitresses and making obscene passes--not in booths, right out on the

open floor.

But the ultimate in lowdown shows goes to Kay’s, on Frederick and

Baltimore Sts., across from the Oasis. There is nothing like Kay’s

anywhere, and we’ve seen them all. The dance-floor is about 15 feet

square, all tables on the floor. Practically every girl in the show

works naked and does raw routines within reaching distance of those at

ringside. The women, with words and motions that wouldn’t be allowed in

Fultah Fisher’s boarding-house, solicit men from the floor. One of the

most startling dirty acts we’ve ever seen was done by a woman billed as

Moana. She introduced it as her “Whore Dance.”

Here are some of the sights of East Baltimore Street:

At Number 116, a couple of doors from the Emerson Hotel, is an

amusement arcade where the kid pick-ups come. Those who like them so

can walk off with 13-year-olds.

The first thing you notice is the profusion of stores and shops and

stands selling “sanitary rubber goods” and other immediate accessories.

In the lobby of the Globe Burlesque Theatre is a sign reading,

“SALAMI--RUBBER GOODS.”

A sign in the window of 424 East Baltimore reads “TRY OUR

HAMBURGER--SANITARY RUBBER GOODS--SHOOTING GALLERY IN REAR.”

Most of these novelty stores and newsstands also sell dirty pictures,

including series of snaps showing strips. In one we recognized a New

York chorine we know. On sale are playing-cards with naked females on

the faces.

In the window of the Maryland Gift Shop, in addition to a lavish

display of “rubber goods” and salacious pictures, are switchblade

knives. The newsstand at Gay and Baltimore Streets has “rubber goods”

on display beside newspapers and the usual pictures. Gordon’s Novelty

Shop, at 428 East Baltimore Street, hands out a business card with a

drawing on the reverse side showing a short-skirted cutie standing next

to a young soldier in a rainstorm, with the caption: “Don’t forget your

rubbers.”

Though we saw “rubber goods” displayed in at least 40 store windows,

not only on Baltimore Street, but in other parts of town, we can’t

remember seeing so many pregnant women anywhere else. In New York one

seldom sees such displays, even on the streets.

Many Baltimore Street joints are pointedly pick-up bars. One is the

408. Another is the Midway Bar, where the local hoodlum hot-shots hang

out. Harry’s Bar has strippers and pick-ups. Katherine’s Bar goes in

for a couple of cheap teasers and a lot of cheap whores working the

tables. Next door to Katherine’s Bar is a sign, “Rooms one dollar a

night.”

Down a couple of blocks in the Victoria Hotel, a tawdry assignation

joint, is a dive called Bettye Mills Night Club. It was once known as

the Stork Club, but Sherman Billingsley brought suit. It has a couple

of long bars where soiled strippers work on platforms, above the

bartenders. While you sit on the stools, dames come over and ask you to

buy them drinks. This doesn’t surprise anyone, because they do it in

every low joint in town. Such places have female bartenders, and many

lean over and kiss customers. If not too busy, they come out and sit

with the trade.

One bartender at Bettye Mills is a character known as Mitzie, a plump

little broad, a retired stripper. She has a running line of patter. If

you give her a dollar tip she will pull up her skirt, pull down her

panties and stash the bill in full sight of the customer.

In the men’s room is an ad which reads: “Sanitubes for defense, protect

our Army and Navy.”

Bettye is the town’s chief call girl madame, operating through the

hotel switchboard.

The Village Bar, 12 Harrison Street, around the corner from Baltimore,

is a pick-up dump with B girls, hustlers and barmaids who go through

the customers, and we mean just that. Three of us saw a guy get rolled.

He was a good-looking, well-dressed young fellow, obviously plastered.

A whore in an evening gown sat next to him and pawed him with both her

hands. Then she got up, went to the women’s room for a minute, then

took a seat by herself at the far end of the bar. When the cluck woke

up, he frisked his pockets for his poke. It was gone. Still in a daze,

he wandered around the room looking for the dame. She didn’t give him a

glance. He wandered off, befuddled.

Even the better places have circular bars. We figured that out--they

are better for pick-ups. You can look at the girls from front, then

motion them. But in most places you don’t have to motion. They

practically attack you. Not even in Chicago are they so voracious. They

don’t ask you to buy a drink. They move right in and order.

Few Baltimore B girls work on commission. Most of them live on their

tips, which they solicit after they’ve bilked you for drinks. The

procedure is for a girl to move in next to you, order without asking,

then get ready to blow if not propositioned and demand a dollar tip for

her “company.”

Some saloons which specialize in better-looking ones give them $5 a

night and they keep their tips and anything they can make after hours.

Entertainers must cadge drinks to keep their jobs. No commissions.

Baltimore has a 2 A.M. closing, which except in Little Italy is

generally observed--one of the few laws that is. These easy hours give

the girls plenty of time to pick up money after work. A strange sight

is East Baltimore Street a few minutes before 2 A.M. It is lined with

walls of men waiting for the frails to come out of the bars, strip

dives and burlesque houses. These are not pimps or dates, but men on

the hunt who saved drink-money and put a ceiling on the commodity.

Hundreds of pick-ups are made this way every night, openly in front of

the few cops there on patrol.

Streetwalkers pace in front of the filling-station at Baltimore and

Fallsway. They are very low-grade stuff. Asking prices start at five

bucks and waver to what they can get.

Parlor-houses have about disappeared from Baltimore, as from most

cities, but there is a line of them in the 600 block, on West North

Avenue. There’s one in the 1000 block of N. Charles, also one next door

to the Blue Mirror.

Most of the dives are on Baltimore St. and in the vicinity, but there

is no monopoly there. A store next to May’s department store, in the

retail shopping district, has a window display of “sanitary rubber

goods” and switch-blade knives. Ditto is a shop known as Blizzards,

on Eutaw Street, which advertises a bargain, “Three dozen latex, one

dollar.”

There’s a strip-dive, the Picadilly, around the corner from the Lord

Baltimore Hotel, in the midst of the financial and retail district. It

has pretty lowdown floor-shows and swarms with hustlers who work the

bars. We saw one cute bartender there, calling herself Val, about 18,

from some mountain town in Tennessee. For a dollar tip she’d let you

play around and never slap your hands.

The joints on East Baltimore are bad--but on the outskirts of town, on

the Pulaski Highway at Fayette Street, you find places not patronized

by tourists, bums or sailors, but by local kids. You see nude

floor-shows at the Ambassador, on Fayette, and at De Carlos, on the

Highway, that would make Baltimore Street bums blush.

The Big Mob operates or protects the dives. It owns many of the good

places, too. Every dump and purveyor of filthy pictures now has a sign

in the window: “Re-elect D’Alesandro.”

The better region is along Charles Street, where the more expensive

specialty and antique shops and the few better-class night clubs and

lounges are. Among them is the Club Charles, part of the circuit which

includes the Copacabana in New York, the Chez Paree in Chicago, and

clubs in Saratoga, Miami, Las Vegas and New Orleans, which play such

acts as Sophie Tucker and Joe E. Lewis. When the heat isn’t on, a game

runs in the back room of the Charles.

Less elaborate is the Chanticleer, but far above deadfalls in the other

part of town. It boasts good floor shows and “name strippers.” Among

the good cocktail lounges in this district are the Coronet and the

Blue Mirror. These are places where men take their own girls or their

business associates. They provide no entertainment, but usually have a

musical trio behind the bar.

As the 2 o’clock closing ordinance is generally obeyed, a problem in

Baltimore after hours is to find a place to drink on the premises.

But liquor package stores sell until 2 A.M., and most licensees are

permitted to sell for off-premise consumption, too--a procedure

practically unknown in other parts of the country. So, if you still

want a drink at 2, you buy a bottle and take it with you.

Ask a cab-driver where you can get a drink after hours and he will know

only of two spots--outside of Little Italy--Sue’s and Hector’s. Sue’s

is a lowdown dump. Unless you are known, all you can buy there after

the deadline is beer, which is also illegal. If they know you, they

will sell you rotgut liquor.

Hector’s is not quite so bad, but it closes Saturdays.

The night after we were given a courtesy card to the Press Club, 100

West Fayette Street, it was raided for selling liquor at 3:30 A.M. to

non-members.

There are many cheating private flats and remodeled homes, especially

on Charles St., where chumps are steered from the Club Charles and the

Chanticleer, for girls, booze and stud poker.

Bell-boys and hackies can steer you to anything. Baltimore cab-drivers

have to scrabble for a living. The legal rates are about the lowest in

the country. You can go almost anywhere in town for a quarter and tips

are meagre.

Gambling is plentiful and easy of access. There are horserooms on Eutaw

Street, across from the Public Market. Most of the rooms, however, are

in the outlying sections of South Baltimore and Northeast Baltimore. We

found three running in the 1900 block of Greenmount Avenue and others

in the 2400 block, the 2500, 2700, 2800, and 3300 blocks of Greenmount

Ave. There was wide open gambling in the 1800 block, the 2000, 4300,

and 5500 blocks of Hartford Road, as well as the 5200 block of Bel Air

Road.

Casinos and horserooms run openly across the County line in Anne

Arundel, and a regular scheduled limousine service is maintained to

transport suckers.

The cars leave at frequent intervals from Redwood and South Sts., and

the Biltmore Hotel, Fayette and Paca.

Some of these suburban gaming hells are guarded by armed men stationed

in pill boxes commanding the gates.

There are thousands of one-armed bandits and gambling devices in the

city, where they are illegal even by local option. At this writing, the

city itself was in the gambling business with a game room in the new

Friendship International Airport, eight miles south of the city, in

Anne Arundel County, where slot-machines are tolerated by illegal local

option. But the airport is owned by the City of Baltimore, which is

officially on record against slot-machines.

Into the game-room of the airport came something new in the way of

trying your luck. It is a combination cigaret-vender and slot-machine.

You can buy cigarets at the usual price, 20 cents. But if you want

“action” you put in a nickel instead of the 20 cents, and hope to

get up to 20 packages of your favorite brand--or nothing. The Frank

Costello enterprises are giving the machine its first tryout under this

blessing of legality.

The gambling payoff in Baltimore is made through the police. North Side

cops get $10 a week for their services, those on the South Side only

$7.50.

Sergeants rate $25 and lieutenants $50, with higher officers greased

accordingly.

The cops collect the take from the numbers men and bookmakers and

deliver it to their higher-ups, who then transmit the “documents” to

the gang collector.

One reason for this complicated business is a shrewd point of law

to get around the income tax laws. The government will not allow a

deduction for graft to public officials but if the payoff is taken off

the top before the mobsters get theirs, then all they need to pay on is

what they receive, the net.