The Corruption of Cities

Evening Post, Volume CXVI, Issue 103, 28 October 1933, Page 23

The Corruption of Cities

Behind the indictment on racketeering charges of twenty-four prominent Chicago men—including .a university lecturer, a famous lawyer, the city's Republican leader, who is right-hand man to ex-Mayor "Big Bill" Thompson, and Al Caporie (now in gaol) and his successor—is the Roosevelt Administration's determination to root out corruption in the United States, says a London paper. The gangsters are generally under the control of politicians in the background. At the samp time, there is a "tie-up" with certain figures in high finance. It is not forgotten by the officials responsible for carrying out the "Boosevelt Purge" that one international financier, now dead, had the notorious "Legs" Diamond (also departod> as his personal bodyguard. Racketeering, which means the blackmail of business men and firms into paying for "protection" by gangsters, has developed to a fantastic extent since the war. No big city is freo from it. New York suffers as much as Chicago, whose '.'Century of Progress" Fair has forty of its concessions in the hands of the racketeering fraternity. Dozens of industries are carried, on #niy by the dearly-bought goodwill of

tho gunmen. To defy tho racketeers by refusing to pay fees for protection | means ruin or perhaps death. The methods of the poultry racketeers aro typical of those in other distributivo trades. Of 00,000,000 head of poultry brought to New York every year, not a million aro^sold except under tho control of a crime'ring. First, the breeder is told to what wholesaler he may sell his chickens, geese, or turkeys. He must send them to town in crates sold by tho racket, on motor trucks run by the same gentry. He must also buy from them tho poultry food needed on the way. Even after a chicken has reached tho market and been dressed.and plucked, it is not freo of violence and crime. If tho man who has bought it docs not work in with tho poultry "trust," it will arrive at tho shopkeeper's sprinkled with paraffin or poison, completely unfit for sale. Two dealers who rebelled last year had more drastic and siniplo treatment. They were shot dead. Tho "control" of tho chickens does not end till the shopkeeper has had his customers assigned to him, for which ho pays his feo. It is estimated that tho extra cost of chickens sold to the Jewish community alone in Now York, through tho toll of the poultry racket, is over £3,000,000 a year.