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Title: Washington Confidential
Author: Mortimer, Lee, Lait, Jack
Language: English
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[Illustration: Washington Northwest]
[Illustration: District of Columbia and Vicinity]
WASHINGTON CONFIDENTIAL
_Previously Published_
_by Jack Lait and Lee Mortimer_
NEW YORK CONFIDENTIAL
CHICAGO CONFIDENTIAL
_by Jack Lait_
HELP WANTED (_a play_)
THE BIG HOUSE
BROADWAY MELODY
BEAST OF THE CITY
PUT ON THE SPOT
GANGSTER GIRL
BEEF, IRON AND WINE (_short stories_)
GUS THE BUS
OUR WILL ROGERS
WILL ROGERS’ WIT AND WISDOM
A PRACTICAL GUIDE TO SUCCESSFUL WRITING
_by Lee Mortimer_
NEW YORK BEHIND THE SCENES
_WASHINGTON
Confidential_
_BY JACK LAIT_
AND
_LEE MORTIMER_
CROWN PUBLISHERS, INC.
NEW YORK
COPYRIGHT, 1951, BY CROWN PUBLISHERS, INC.
_Second Printing, February 1951_
_Printed in the United States of America_
_American Book--Knickerbocker Press, Inc., New York_
_The Confidential Contents_
Introduction: WASHINGTON CONFIDENTIAL ix
Part One--THE PLACES (Confidential!)
1. DISTRICT OF CONFUSION 1
Washington’s whys and wherefores, guaranteed to mystify,
amaze and amuse.
2. “GORGEOUS” GEORGETOWN 8
No relation to the wrestler, only sometimes he makes
more sense than the rich big domes and fancy queers
who reside in this made-to-order Greenwich Village.
3. NW COULD MEAN NOWHERE 12
North West is the only section of Washington which
counts. On the other hand, what is there in it you won’t
find in Denver, Detroit or Dubuque, except the White
House?
4. NOT-SO-TENDER TENDERLOIN 21
Where the hustlers hustle.
5. HOBOS WITH NO HORIZONS 30
They can’t vote the bums in Washington’s flophouses,
otherwise these skidrows are like your home-town
Bowery, except there are three.
6. GREEN PASTURES 34
Here the poor, downtrodden colored folk are not equal,
they’re superior. And there are more of them. This is a
Negro Heaven.
7. MIGHTY LIKE A ROSE 46
Where the blackest crimes are hatched.
8. CHINATOWN CHIPPIES 56
Washington’s Chinatown offers inducements other than
Chop Suey and Chow Mein.
9. THE OVERFLOW 62
A. The Free State--where anything goes for a price.
B. The Policy of the Old Dominion is policy.
10. UNCLE SAM: LANDLORD 70
The government owns 40% of the land. Read this and
find out what happens on it.
Part Two--THE PEOPLE (Confidential!)
11. THERE’S NOTHING LIKE A DAME 74
You can say that again about those in Washington.
12. G-GIRLS 77
They come in two grades:
A. Government Gals--they’re many and not so glamorous.
B. Glamour Gals--they’re few and not so glamorous.
13. COMPANY GALS 83
Being a dissertation on a specialty known only to Washington
and how one finds same.
14. FOR IMMORAL PURPOSES 86
The capital was made for lupos. An elucidation on how
one goes about being one.
15. GARDEN OF PANSIES 90
The hand-on-hip set wins the battle of Washington.
16. THE LITTLE RED HERRINGS 99
Agrarian reformers--that’s what the bright State Department
lads call them, in other countries. We call those in
Washington traitors.
17. KICKING THE GONG AROUND 107
When we speak of hopheads, we don’t mean Congressmen.
18. THE YOUNG IN HEART 118
Until we read this book we liked children. In Washington
the little dears are devils.
19. BOOZE AND BOTTLES 123
Washingtonians imbibe three times as much as you.
Where they get it, how and why, with pointers on what
to do with your hollow leg.
20. CAFE AU CORN 131
That’s Washington’s Cafe Society.
21. CALL ME MADAME 134
With apologies to Irv Berlin. Being the story of the Social
Climbers who climbed in when SOCIETY climbed out.
22. STRIPED PANTS 144
Elsewhere men who wear ’em bury the dead; in Washington
most who wear them are dead but not buried.
That’s the sad tale of what happened to the once oh, so
gay diplomatic corps.
23. LOBBYIST’S LICENSE--THE RIGHT TO PETITION 155
The population consists of so many five percenters,
lobbyists, fixers, lawyers, press agents and men from
Missouri, you’d think everyone was taking advantage of the
Constitutional guarantee.
24. RACKETS BY REMOTE CONTROL 171
Washington’s underworld is operated by local overseers
for absentee landlords. This is how the system works.
25. WHO’S WHO IN MOBOCRACY 177
The Blue Book of the silk-lined aristocracy who own the
works.
26. THE TERROR FROM TENNESSEE 194
Estes in Plunderland.
27. LUCKY NUMBERS 206
After all, politics is a gamble, so why shouldn’t the
citizens do it too?
28. IT’S A CRIME 213
Murder and mayhem, rape and robbery are pastimes in
Washington. Jail? Don’t be naïve.
29. THE LAW 220
The poor, underpaid coppers, who try to enforce it.
30. HOW TO STAY OUT OF JAIL 229
Hire the right lawyer and bondsman. This will name him.
31. THE BOSSES 234
They’re responsible for the works working. Maybe that’s
why they don’t.
32. THE MONARCHS OF THE METROPOLIS 240
The “Honorable” members of Congress.
33. WIRETAPPERS, SNOOPS AND SPIES 245
The only thing they can’t tap is sign language.
Part Three--THE ESCAPE (Confidential!)
34. THE TUESDAY TO THURSDAY SET 254
Where shall we go? Anywhere, but most head north to
New York, Philly and Atlantic City.
35. BALTIMORE CONFIDENTIAL 258
Baltimore is less than an hour away, but what a difference!
You’ll find things here they never heard of even
in Chicago.
Part Four--THE LOWDOWN (Confidential!)
36. INSIDE STUFF 276
What they don’t teach you in school.
37. TIPS ON THE TOWNS 281
Advice for the visitor with much that’s unknown to the
natives.
38. CONFIDENTIAL GUIDE TO WASHINGTON AND BALTIMORE 292
Where to find what, when, including much you should
never want, but if you do--
Part Five--THE APPENDIX (Confidential!)
A. HEADWAITERS’ NAMES 298
This and a sawbuck will get you an insult.
B. GUSTATORY GUIDE 298
Where to find what food, when.
C. DINING AROUND THE WORLD 300
For those who don’t rate bids to embassies, but want to
eat foreign.
D. BARE BABES 301
Where to find ’em. Or where to keep away from ’em,
which is harder.
E. LUPO’S LOG BOOK 301
Being some notes to file away where your wife won’t look.
F. THE INNER CIRCLE 302
Extracts from the list of 800.
INDEX 307
WASHINGTON CONFIDENTIAL
P-s-s-s-t!
Here we go again--Confidential.
We turned New York inside out; but we both live there. We turned
Chicago upside down; but we were both raised there. We descended on
Washington not quite like Stanley invaded Africa, because in our
combined 75 years of newspaper work we had been in the capital hundreds
of times. It intrigued us because we never could understand it. So we
decided brashly to do a Lait-Mortimer operation on it from scratch. Our
principal discovery was that nobody understands Washington--the _city_,
not the nation’s nerve-center.
By the time we went through it--its avenues, its alleys, its
cat-houses, its dumps, its mansions, its hotels, its police stations,
its jails, its courts, its clubs, its closets, and its catacombs, we
knew more about it than anyone who lives in it, and finished the job
which stymied Lincoln Steffens 40 years ago; for that classic muckraker
who turned up the shame of the cities recoiled in bafflement when he
attempted to “do” Washington.
It was our toughest task of digging, but we turned up plenty. We think
we have X-rayed the dizziest--and this will amaze you, as it did us,
the dirtiest--community in America.
We are not reformers. We are reporters. As such we will take you with
us through a metropolitan area of 1,500,000, living in what should be
a utopia, but which is a cesspool of drunkenness, debauchery, whoring,
homosexuality, municipal corruption and public apathy, protected crime
under criminal protection, hoodlumism, racketeering, pandering and
plundering, among anomalous situations found nowhere else on earth.
Washington is a made-to-order architectural paradise with the political
status of an Indian reservation, inhabited by 800,000 economic
parasites; no industries but one, government, and the tradesmen and
servants and loafers and scum that feed on the highest average per
capita income in the world, where exist the soundest security, the
mightiest power, and the most superlative rates of crime, vice and
juvenile delinquency anywhere. And this in a seat of intelligence, the
cross-section of the whole United States, where women far outnumber men.
It leads the country in the percentage of the native-born. There are
no peasants, factory-workers or slums as they are known in every other
city of magnitude.
The paternal form of local administration in this disenfranchised and
politically castrated community should eliminate ward and district
bosses, vote-buyers, grafters and gangsters, all of whom elsewhere
thrive primarily on controlling votes. Yet in this magnificent planned
city of majestic proportions, the official heart of the richest and
greatest and freest land in the history of mankind, we found corruption
and perversion, organized and individual, that dazed a pair of hardened
characters who considered themselves shock-proof after their groundwork
for the books that debunked New York and deloused Chicago.
We spent many months in Washington. We made contacts in our own
surefire way, which opened up sources not usually available to the
reporters there, who regard affairs of their town as chickenfeed, and
who dream of becoming syndicated columnists who can pontificate on
Congress, the Cabinet and the White House.
We know plenty about those, too. But we will stick to the Lowdown on
the Big Town, which has become our trademark.
We will not even attempt to be comprehensive. We have no hope or aim to
make Washington a better place to live in. We don’t give a damn what
kind of a place it is to live in, except that the kind of place we
found furnished us with that sole commodity in which we deal--copy.
Everything interested us, but we will limit this to what we think will
interest you. This is no guide-book. This is no preachment and no
appeal, not even a lesson. As we said in the introduction to _Chicago
Confidential_, “We have nothing to sell except books.” And we sold
plenty of them and are still selling them.
This will be the stripped-down story of a queen who turned into a
street-walker.
That’s why we were born--to tell you what you couldn’t find out without
us--Confidential!
PART ONE
THE PLACES
(_Confidential!_)
1. DISTRICT OF CONFUSION
The Nation’s Capital is a bastard born of a compromise and nurtured on
a lottery.
The founding fathers, whose infinite wisdom gave us a Constitution
and form of government well nigh perfect, located the seat of that
government in a stinking, steaming swamp. This was a peace offering to
recalcitrant Southerners, who were that way then just as they are now.
The first funds to build and improve that city were raised by selling
real estate by lottery. With such ancestry, it is no wonder today that
“numbers” make one of the biggest businesses in Washington. The policy
racket far exceeds bookmaking, the Number 1 source of gambling revenue
in all others parts of the country.
Before the plane which brings the arriving traveler to Washington lands
at the National Airport, on the Virginia side, it swoops gracefully
over the city in a salute. The tall, needle-like Washington Monument
and the familiar dome of the Capitol arise through a sea of green, to
dominate the landscape.
They and the other public structures, which alone form the skyline in
a city where buildings over 110 feet high are banned by law, are the
symbols of Washington. It is an old-fashioned, tree-shaded Southern
town, delightful and gracious, taken over by a gigantic governmental
apparatus which, though founded on Colonial Virginia’s tradition
of personal freedom, has mushroomed into the world’s greatest
bureaucracy, humpbacked and bow-legged under tons of laws and endless
regulations.
The spacious avenues, the tree-shaded lawns, the green which one sees
wherever he looks, is a symbol too--that Washington is dominated by the
rural mind.
It is the only capital of any world power where there is no variety
of humanity. London, Paris, Berlin, Buenos Aires, Tokyo, these are
great commercial centers where national government is incidental.
Washington is inhabited by residents of every state in the union and
representatives of every country on the globe, yet it is as backwater
and provincial as any small inland one-plant town.
This most uncosmopolitan capital is overshadowed by that giant of
metropolises, New York, only minutes away by air, and by Baltimore,
with its wide open and blatant vice much nearer. The foreign trade
commissioners, the visiting bankers, and all the important public
personages go to Manhattan, where the United Nations is cutting into
Washington’s diplomatic monopoly. The lowlier links lam the 36 miles to
Baltimore to cut up.
Not that Washington has no vice and venery. It has more of it than the
escape havens. But, as in all ingrown towns, the “respectables” must go
away from home to prance and play. It is the story of the deacon from
Dubuque all over again, and what happens to him in the Big Burg. Only
here the deacon is a Congressman, or--
As we unfold the rates of crime, vice, sex irregularities, graft, cheap
gambling, drunkenness, rowdyism and rackets, you will get, thrown on a
large screen, a peep show of this stately concentration camp of cold
monuments and hot mammas where there are four women for every three
men. Murkier than the “smoke-filled room” so often used as a cliché to
typify a corral of politicos, it is a vast bedroom with a jumbo bottle
of bourbon beside the bed.
And yet its manners and morals are those of the barnyard and the
railroad-junction town rather than the romantic intrigue of the salon
and the scented boudoir.
Washington has a kind of glamor all its own. It is not the kind one
finds in New York, or Paris, or even Atlantic City. The Washington
feeling comes from being close to great events and to the memory of
great people. It is, to a certain extent, similar to the public appeal
of Hollywood’s famed Forest Lawn Cemetery, the place where the movie
stars are interred. Forest Lawn there is a must for tourists. There is
no sacred peace about this graveyard. Trippers photograph its ornate
tombs and profane its dead. The tombs were purposely designed by hams
who craved publicity even in death.
Washington does remind one of a well-kept cemetery. Its gleaming public
buildings of white marble are like so many mausoleums. It is the
nation’s Forest Lawn, where is sunk its priceless heritage, killed by
countless generations of getters and gimme-ers.
Washington is a reflection of Los Angeles--a Los Angeles without palm
trees. Where it doesn’t look like a cemetery it resembles a movie set.
It has a feel of unreality. This is a designed city, the only important
one in America, and its streets are so straight, its architecture is so
conforming, and its sidewalks are so neat and clean, it might have been
set up in _papier-mâché_ only today.
And it’s a dead heat which--Washington or Los Angeles--has more yahoos
from more dull places. New York gets its share, but its tourists
include many from fairly alive communities; the plowboys hail from
New England or other points not very far away. But the barbarians
who inundate Washington and Los Angeles would be conspicuous if they
visited Little Rock. Heaven knows where they come from. Their clothes,
make-ups, manners and expressions are of the cow-pasture.
We were sitting in the Senators’ Reception Room in the Capitol, waiting
for one solon to come off the floor. This rococo room is open to the
public. While we sat there, we idly contemplated the sight-seers
who gaped at the mid-Victorian gold and mosaic with which it is
embellished. One coatless yokel, with two dirty-nosed youngsters in tow
and a dreary wife toting a wailing babe bringing up the rear, figured
we knew something because we were wearing ties and sitting down.
“What room is this?” he humbly asked.
“This is the President’s private office,” we replied. “No visitors
allowed.”
You should have seen them scram!
The number of transients who enter and leave Washington annually is in
excess of 45 million. Most of them are peasants who shudder when they
ride in an elevator and gape at an escalator. The sessions of Congress
find them in the galleries of the noisy House and the sedate Senate.
The men are negligee with firemen’s suspenders, the women often suckle
babes at their breasts while some Demosthenes below debates a bill
vital to the world.
But the residents of the Washington area are, on the whole, remarkably
well-dressed--not only the natives in Washington but the government
employes drawn from every corner of the map. It is surprising how
quickly they shed their corn-fed looks and begin to look like
Easterners and try to act like them.
One wonders where the hoards of ill-dressed, low-mannered visitors eat
and sleep.
Tourists may wander coatless through the White House and in the
legislative office buildings, but all of the better restaurants and
hotels require men to wear coats and ties at all times. This, of
course, is universal in New York, but in Chicago, horny-handed, wilted
hoi polloi are seen in lobbies of such swell hotels as the Ambassador
and Drake in shirt-sleeves.
Washingtonians are completely white-collar. Its private business
is merchandising. The service trades, such as feeding and sleeping
visitors, form its chief non-governmental activity. Before the New Deal
put a premium on alphabet soup, federal employes got miserly wages.
Washington was a poor city. Now some secretaries make as much as $8,000
a year and Senators’ assistants drag down $10,000. We talked to one
babe, some kind of an expert in the Treasury, who draws $15,000 a year
on a fee basis. In her spare time she checks hats in a joint which
sells liquor after hours.
The average family income in Washington is the highest in any big city
in the land, despite its disproportionate Negro population. Colored
folk work for Uncle Sam at salaries equal to whites’, in many cases get
preferential treatment, and others draw liberal relief checks. Another
reason for high family income is that in so many families husband and
wife work for the government, and many who are grounded there also
hold outside jobs, after hours. This practice is permitted in many
departments. Even members of the Metropolitan Police are allowed to
accept outside employment after their eight-hour day. Many drive taxies
or are chauffeurs.
The per capita income in Washington is $1820, compared with the
national average of $1330. Even rich New York is second to Washington
with $1758.
Washingtonians file more income-tax returns per capita than do any
other Americans. More than two-thirds of the homes in the District
are worth more than $12,000. The city has the highest retail sales per
capita on earth. Government employes are paid regularly by a boss who
never goes broke--though that isn’t the fault of the politicians.
Added wealth streams constantly into the city, from the cornucopias of
lobbyists with no-limit expense accounts, tourists and representatives
of foreign governments who let loose a few francs, shillings or lire
before tapping our tills.
Here we have a city which, if mental cripples who believe in planned
economies were correct, should be a happy place, free of crime and
vice. Washington is rich and almost everyone in it is insured against
want for life. Yet it has that apex rate of crime. The waterfront of
Marseilles, the alleys of Singapore’s Chinatown, the sailor’s deadfalls
of Port Said have nothing on it. Washington makes even Chicago look
good. And that’s been going on since Abigail Adams hung the family wash
in the backyard of the then unfinished White House--and shuddered lest
the President’s drawers be stolen.
In the early years of the Republic, grifters and grafters, highwaymen
and conmen, pimps and prostitutes flocked into the city. Instead of
being a community where women greatly outnumbered men, as they do
today, early Washington contained almost entirely males. The first
Congressmen and early office-holders were easy pickings for the fancy
girls and their fancy men, who arrived a jump ahead of the lobbyists.
Lonesome men whiled their time at cards and dice, and ever since then
Washington has been a gamblers’ garden.
Foreigners and many American political philosophers say one great fault
of our American system is our form of municipal government. They point
out the astounding crime, legal laxity and municipal deviltry in this
country where we elect our local governments directly and give them
great power, whereas most foreign countries are ruled from above, with
cities and provinces allowed minimum authority.
Well, Washington is ruled from above. It has no votes, no county
chairmen, no campaign funds to be raised, no favors to be returned. It
is policed by a constabulary appointed directly by the United States
government and paid from the public treasury of the United States.
Its judges are appointed by the President with the consent of the
Senate, and all but municipal court judges serve for life. Its District
Attorney is chosen by the President, as are its city commissioners,
and through them all public District officials.
There is no chance for a neighborhood gang boss to establish himself
through floaters and colonized flotsam. Yet there are neighborhood
bosses. There is influence. Judges and police are bought. Washington
has the blackest record of any city in the country on the F.B.I. ledger
of reported crimes. Black is the color of its crime, too, as will be
shown. The proportion of Negro crime to white is almost eight to one.
Another reason for Washington’s defiance of the law which is made in
Washington is that, except for ogling tourists, everyone who comes
comes to get. To get jobs, contracts, favors, pardons, commissions, and
sometimes social preferment. This acquisitive horde is not interested
in the city. Toward local public affairs there is lethargy of mind,
spirit and body, nothing conducive to enterprise or local pride.
This potpourri of human beings on the make remained within bounds until
the first World War. There was room for all. As every schoolboy knows,
the original grant of land from the states of Maryland and Virginia for
the national capital was a square, ten miles wide. This proved too big
and the Virginia part was receded more than a hundred years ago. The
remaining area, all in Maryland, was ample for the needs of the city
until overnight, in 1917, it changed from a country town to a madhouse
in which all the residents are inmates. There was some respite during
the 1920’s, but since the coming of the New Deal, Washington burst its
pants and overflowed back into Virginia and across into Maryland.
As with other large cities, the 1950 census returns found the rate
of growth of Washington suburbs far outstripping the parent. At this
writing there are about 800,000 people in the city limits and 750,000
in the satellite suburbs of Virginia and Maryland. The percentage of
Negroes is higher than it is in Mississippi.
Seniority rules in the Congress, which permit one-party Southern
Senators and Representatives to control more than their share
of committees, account for continuance of its Dixie slant. So
Washingtonians talk like Southerners. Even the Oregonians and
down-Easters fall into the liquid drawl after a few years in the
capital. With the dulcet Dixie dialect comes the Southern attitude
toward the Negro. Fiery FEPCers from New York, after a couple of
years’ indoctrination, wink in private over the “tolerance” they sell
in public. As Negroes move in the whites flee out.
As residents of Virginia and Maryland, these automatically gain
the votes they surrendered or never had. Though still employed in
Washington, they lose all interest in its municipal affairs. They live,
vote, pay taxes, send their children to school and join churches beyond
the borders.
And, as the Negro immigrates and propagates, Washington’s chance of
ever getting the vote dwindles. Even Northern congressmen, with huge
Negro voting constituencies at home, won’t burn their hands with
such legislation. They declare for the principles of home rule, sign
petitions to withdraw bottled-up home-rule bills from committees, then
secretly withdraw their names.
As these pages unfold you will get a picture of how more than 1,500,000
people live. Few would stand for some of Washington’s nauseating
conditions in their own towns. Yet they take them here complacently.
Congressmen, the lords of the city, shrug at what would throw them out
of office if the good burghers in Beloit or Boonetown suspected--and
cared.
Washington has a heritage of “everybody’s business is nobody’s
business.” But the stimulation which sparks its evils is different,
though the result is the same.
Of old, Congress didn’t worry about local crime because all the people
could do about it was write letters to the papers. But now, since crime
is nationally syndicated, some legislators actively protect Washington
crime, because it means more funds back in their bailiwicks from the
branches of the swelling Syndicate of silk-lined racketeers who are
allied with Washington’s criminals.
So this is the nation’s capital: with its panderers and prostitutes;
gamblers and gunmen; conmen and Congressmen; lawmakers and
law-breakers; fairies and Fair Dealers.
It is a city of moods, even drearier when Congress is away campaigning
or vacationing; yet it turns electric when something big is about to
happen.
It is a city of the wistful little people with adding-machine minds.
Over all, a feeling of fear pervades it. People become conditioned to
talking in whispers. Senators will walk you to the middle of the room,
then mumble, even when what they have to say is inconsequential. The
main indoor sport is conspiracy.
We give you Washington: not the city of statesmen, but the stateless
city.
2. “GORGEOUS” GEORGETOWN
We shall begin this catalog of places with Georgetown, by far the
oldest in the city.
Not all who reside in Georgetown are rich, red or queer, nor do all
Washington millionaires, Commies and/or fags dwell in Georgetown.
But if you know anyone who fulfills at least two of the foregoing three
qualifications don’t take odds he doesn’t prance behind Early American
shutters in a reconditioned stable or slave-pen in this unique city
within a city.
Georgetown was a thriving Colonial village when the rest of the
District was swampland. It was included in the District of Columbia
from the time of the original grant, but Georgetown remained an
independent municipality until 1895.
If you like that kind of stuff, Georgetown, which lies in the extreme
NW section of the city, has a charm all its own.
Some people like the smell of dead fish in Provincetown. Others like
to climb up four flights of stairs to ratty garrets in Greenwich
Village. Georgetown is quaint that way, too. Now all this is to be
preserved for posterity forever, through an act of Congress setting up
a commission to keep it looking the way it is under penalty of the law
for modernizing anything in the community without the permission of
some bureaucrat.
Until twenty years ago, Georgetown was just another rundown backwash
in a great city. Most of its residents were Negroes. Most of its real
estate wasn’t even good enough for Southern Negroes, and don’t forget
that a Southern Negro is forced to live almost anywhere. New Dealers
and the bright young braintrusters from Harvard reversed what seems to
be a foreordained rule in every city in the country. In other words,
the whites drove the Negroes out--as many as they could--and took over
for themselves what was practically a blighted area.
This is how it came about: When Washington was suddenly flooded with a
horde of crackpots from the campuses, Communists, ballet-dancers and
economic planners, there was no place for them to live. They abhorred
the modern service apartments. These people were “intellectual.” The
women wore flat-heeled shoes and batik blouses, and went in for New
Thought. The men, if you could call some of them that, wore their hair
longer than we do, read advanced literature, and talked about the joys
of collectivism, though all of them were so individual they couldn’t
bear to live in skyscrapers.
Most of these people had dough. The others got good government jobs,
became “contact men” or spoke at meetings and wrote for publications
sponsored by rich left-wingers to provide automobiles and other
luxuries for the needier pinks.
Washington had nothing like New York’s Greenwich Village, but in the
early days of the New Deal Mrs. Roosevelt herself, during one of the
fleeting moments she was in Washington, “discovered” Georgetown and
conceived it as a genteel bohemian community where her sandal-shod
friends could find congenial company. She wouldn’t allow the WPA to
alter anything though sewage comes up from the river. Georgetown is
overrun with rats, which frequently chew up Negro infants.
Ancient wooden houses, much the worse for the wear of centuries, which
could have been bought lot-and-all for $2,500 in the ’20s, skyrocketed
as it became “smart” for society to move to Georgetown. Some properties
are now worth twenty times what they brought twenty years ago, though
terrible odors emanate from a nearby slaughter house.
Following the discovery of Georgetown, the truly gentle Negroes who had
lived there, some for a hundred years or more, were driven out. Few
owned their homes. Into rickety structures which had once housed as
many as ten Negro families--seventy-five people--moved one millionaire
left-wing carpetbagger and his wife. With improvements, naturally.
Equality is okay to talk about. Hundreds of thousands of dollars were
spent on some of these homes, modernizing, beautifying, disinfecting
and furnishing them. Now they have house-and-garden tours for visiting
Kiwanians.
Not all the Negroes could be ousted. Even today, Georgetown has
a considerable colored population, though it is the only part of
Washington where there are fewer Negroes than there were twenty years
ago. Those who remain live in shanties so undesirable that no rich
white fairies can be found who want to turn them into something gay. In
fact, there’s a saying in Georgetown now that you’re not “smart” unless
darkies live next door to you.
The sight-seeing buses point out historic Prospect House, now used
by the government for visiting notables, but they don’t show you the
tumble-down Negro shacks behind it.
One of Georgetown’s most distinguished residents is Dean Acheson.
Emmitt Warring, king of Washington’s gamblers, about whom more will be
found in succeeding chapters, is in business nearby.
Warring is the kingfish of Georgetown. He controls its local police
precinct as well as its local crime. As will be shown, he has direct
affiliations with the national underworld syndicate.
Eleanor Roosevelt gave Georgetown that first big impetus after her son,
Jimmy, who didn’t “got it” in California, moved across the street from
the old Imperial Russian Embassy, in the 3200 block of Q Street. It
looked like good business to build up the area.
Soon the section filled up with all manner of strange people. Many of
these were buddies of the First Lady. We have seen a letter she wrote
to one Ben Grey, in which she pats such types on the head.
One of the queerest sights visible anywhere is the one from a window
on the second floor of Dean Acheson’s quaint home at 2805 P Street. It
faces the 28th Street side over a back yard. The Secretary’s personal
lavatory faces that way. His mind apparently weighted by cosmos-shaking
affairs of state, the secretary forgets to draw down the shade.
It is on the second floor, and Acheson doesn’t know he can be seen.
This is to tip him off to what the whole neighborhood knows, first-hand
and not confidential.
In the next block lives Justice Frankfurter. He and Acheson, fresh air
fiends, walk to town every morning.
Another neighbor is Myrna Loy, out of films while on a special mission
for the State Department. She is developing a “new type propaganda
campaign.” Well, she played enough spy roles in the movies.
Georgetown is also the home of Georgetown University, oldest and
largest Catholic school in the country. The broad acres of its
beautiful campus were undoubtedly originally responsible for
preserving the historic buildings of the community from the onward rush
of modernity which swept over the rest of Washington.
But also in Georgetown is the Hideaway Club. It is known in local
parlance as a bottle club. A bottle club is a resort which gets around
the law which provides that all liquor dispensaries shall close at
2 A.M. Despite a murder at the Hideaway and a recent Congressional
investigation of such enterprises and a flurry of activity by the
United States Attorney, there are still at least 500 of these
unlicensed places, some say more, in the District, a subject which will
be covered in detail hereinafter.
The area’s favorite gathering place is Martin’s Bar on Wisconsin Avenue
where New Deal and Fair Deal policy is made. It was the hangout of
Tommy the Cork and Harry Hopkins, who changed the world over bottles
while Georgetown students roistered around them.
Georgetown is relatively free of street-walkers who plague every other
section. That is because there are no hotels and few transients.
But what it lacks in ambulent magdalens is more than made up for by
homosexuals of both indeterminate sexes. It seems that nonconformity
in politics is often the handmaiden of the same proclivities in sex.
Among the thousands known in the capital, a goodly proportion live in
the storied ancient dwellings of the area. The fun that goes on in some
is beyond words and was even worse when the staffs of the embassies of
some of the Iron Curtain countries still found it feasible to travel
about in society.
Some Washington policemen will tell you with a shrug of despair of the
times the patrol wagons pulled up at particular homes as a result of
complaints from neighbors, only to find the prancing participants in
the unspeakable parties were Administration untouchables or diplomats
sacred from interference.
Which, when you consider that Emmitt Warring also seems to be immune,
makes Georgetown seem like a wonderful place to live in--nobody ever
gets pinched there.
3. NW COULD MEAN NOWHERE
The first question asked by members of the new Seventh Congress, after
taking the oath in the draughty and unfinished Capitol in 1801, was
“where is a saloon with dames?” or the early 19th century equivalent
thereof.
The chief usher escorted them to the steps on the Hill, which
overlooked what there then was of the young city, a collection of
boxes resembling nothing so much as a rude Oklahoma oil-boom town on a
rainy day, and pointed northwest. “There,” he replied. Ever since that
historic moment, anything that matters and much that doesn’t is in that
part of the city known by its postal address as “NW.”
“North West” is the only section of Washington which counts. It is the
capital of the capital. NW is the works.
When Major Pierre L’Enfant accepted the commission to plan the capital,
he went Caesar’s Gaul one better and divided it into four parts. These
he laid out like spokes around a wheel, with the hub “The Hill,” on
which he built the Capitol. He named each section after compounded
cardinal points of the compass, NW, SW, NE and SE. The others you can
throw into the garbage-can--NW is the city.
Other municipalities have distinctive sectors. In Washington
everything, the rialto, marts of commerce, homes of the wealthy, are
piled into this one corner, where they rub shoulders with the lowly,
the dirty and the wicked, not to overlook Washington’s No. 1 problem,
the colored.
Washington’s Main Drag is F St. if you could call it such. The crossing
at 14th Street is its Times Square, its State and Madison--an insult to
both. Most of the 1,500,000 who live in the District and environs, plus
a half-million tourists, pass it daily.
Here are the movie palaces, but its sole legit theatre is almost a mile
away. Its best-known restaurants are around the corner. Any night,
Saturday included, the heart of America’s heart is dark and quiet.
Washington’s Main Stem is somewhat more somnolent than those of most
villages. Don’t get us wrong--things do happen after dark. But--those
who do them don’t want them seen.
When one seeks the reason for the empty dreariness of Washington at
night, where trees swaying in the wind often are the only living
things, he is told what seems the obvious--Washington is a town of
early-to-bedders who do not go in for night life. That is not true.
Washington has hundreds of sneak-ins that remain open all night. Your
hardy reporters almost collapsed before they could complete this
assignment--to visit every place openly or surreptitiously breaking the
law. Almost all are in NW, which should have made it easier.
After-dark Washington is the way it is because it has the smalltown
mentality. People do their sinning in homes and hotels or in
pseudo-private “clubs.”
Now let’s get on with NW.
Most Congressmen live there. That’s a break for all except cab-drivers.
Hack rates are regulated by zones. Passengers pay the same fee
regardless of where they ride to in a zone, with a surcharge for each
extra zone the cab enters. The Congressmen, who make all the District’s
laws, talked the Public Utilities Commission into gerrymandering the
zone map in such a way it ended up allowing them and you and us to go
almost anywhere from the Capitol into NW for a minimum fee. No one
wants to go elsewhere, so it’s a fine deal for all but the cab-jockies.
All the big hotels are in NW. That includes everything from
popular-priced tourist fall-ins near the station to the luxury
hostelries like the Mayflower, Statler, Carlton and the residential
ones in the outskirts, such as the Shoreham and Wardman Park. And the
assignation hotels are downtown, smack in the middle of everything,
very snug.
Perhaps the most famous hotel is the Willard, at F and 14th Streets.
They call it the New Willard now, though the new section was built
during Teddy Roosevelt’s first administration. For almost a century,
VIP’s from all over the world stayed here. Julia Ward Howe wrote the
“Battle Hymn of the Republic” in one of its rooms. Now its cocktail bar
is a hangout for lonesome government girls and other fancy-free women,
best time after 5 P.M.
The new and modern Ambassador Hotel is at 14th and K, one of the many
holdings of Morris Cafritz, husband of Washington’s “first” hostess
since the elevation to the Diplomatic Corps of Mme. Mesta. The High
Hat Cocktail Lounge in the Ambassador is a gay drinking spot, much
patronized by the lonesome of either sex because of its informality.
When we asked a cab-driver where we could meet a “friend” he directed
us to the Ambassador. We sat there five minutes, not long enough to
attract a waiter’s eye. But the eyes of two blonde things, young and
not bad-looking, were quicker. One asked us to buy her a drink. We did.
Before long we were old friends. They told us they’d spend the evening
with us for $20 each. We said we had to catch a train. They thought we
meant the price was too high and reduced it to $10--“if we had a place
to take them.”
We returned to the Ambassador half a dozen times, and all except once
we were approached. That time it was too late, about 1 A.M., and all
the volunteers had already booked themselves. We also saw other stags
talk to girls with whom they hadn’t come in, but with whom they left.
Another cash-and-carry supermarket is the gracious old Peacock Alley of
the Willard Hotel, a broad indoor parade where once world statesmen sat
and sized up famed society beauties.
These hotels are not unique. All of Washington’s respectable inns and
cocktail bars are plagued with loose ladies; there’s nothing much can
be done about it, because the muddled situation of District law and
law enforcement makes it impossible for the managements to bounce that
sort of undesirables--if they are so regarded. The cops would refuse to
eject them for fear of suits; the hotels and saloon-keepers are subject
to the same liability. We saw hookers, or busy beavers that looked
remarkably like them, speak to strangers in the cocktail lounges of the
Statler and Carlton, and we were approached by one in the former place.
The hotel situation is never static. Comes war or emergency and the
town is always short on rooms. In times of depression or recession
there are too many rooms. When your authors began their regular trips
to the city in search of material for this book, Washington had not
started to take on its Sino-Korean war dress. We and our money were
welcomed with open arms. We spent lavishly throughout the summer at the
Carlton, a haunt of New Deal and Labor aristocracy, where John L. Lewis
and White House assistant David K. Niles maintain luxurious suites.
As the summer wore on, Washington filled up with hoards of
businessmen, manufacturers’ agents, lawyers, fixers and other
finaglers. They had unlimited expense accounts. Remembering what
happened in Washington during the years of World War II, some leased
permanent suites. Others slipped large and welcome tips to room clerks
and executives. Then reservations at the Carlton for mere confidential
reporters were bitched up. They were unceremoniously moved from room to
room, given second-class accommodations, notified they must get out; so
better spenders could get in--and our bills had been running to $100 a
day.
The Shoreham asked permanent guests to leave. Included were many
Congressmen who had been living there for years. Some had voted against
rent control in the District. But now they were Displaced Persons.
It was no secret that among the permanents who were in danger of being
forced to go house-hunting were several statuesque blondes whose rents
were being paid by high officials, diplomats and senators. The swank
Shoreham, one of the most beautiful hotels anywhere, has figured
prominently in police court and divorce court news more than once.
Washingtonians smile when they wonder if the Shoreham’s managing
director, Harry Bralove, asked his pretty ex-wife to find other
lodgings, too. There was a lot of gossip when she and Bralove were
divorced. Once, when unable to meet an overdue $900 alimony bill,
he convinced the court he no longer had an interest in the hotel,
merely worked for it. Meanwhile he and his former spouse renewed their
sentiments, but figured they’d be happier as friends than as man and
wife. So the former Mrs. Bralove moved into the Shoreham.
A very pleasant exception to the general rule about kicking the guests
around is the Mayflower Hotel, after three decades, still the choice of
Washington’s smart set. In the wing devoted to private apartments are
housed some of the most prominent people in the nation and they haven’t
been moved to enable the management to snag profiteer revenue.
What there is of show business is in NW. That is little. Yet it was
not always so. In the early days Washington was a hell of a show town.
There was gaiety then. Long before the streets were paved, dignitaries
attended the theatres and dined sumptuously at famed eating spots.
The theatre figures prominently in Washington’s history. The martyred
Lincoln was slain in Ford’s Theatre, now a museum. President Wilson
was an incurable vaudeville fan with the real habit, attending the
same theatre every week on the same night. He used to slip out of the
White House to Keith’s, a block away, where the management held a seat
in the back row, where he tried to be unobserved. Washington had top
vaudeville before the demise of that medium. Today Keith’s is a grind
movie house. The only thing resembling variety is at Loew’s Capitol,
where four or five modest acts are sandwiched in between runs of a
picture.
Washington’s sole remaining legit theatre was the National. Once
Washington was a hot road show town. Many New York hits-to-be had
their tryouts there. Successes played week stands after leaving
Broadway. Washington had minor population but supported many houses.
Its residents were avid show-goers. The National gave up the ghost and
turned into a movie house because of the race problem. Few Washington
theatres permit colored patronage, though Negro theatres allow whites.
The National was restricted against colored attendance in its lease.
A couple of years ago, a race-conscious Actor’s Equity Association,
steamed up by Eleanor Roosevelt and her “we’re-all-brothers” group
resolved not to permit its members to appear in any theatre in
Washington while racial discrimination was enforced. Equity did not
issue the same edict against theatres in the rest of the South, all
of which are so restricted. The operators of the National were bound
by the terms of their lease and could not change their policy. Rather
than risk a long, costly fight, they converted the house into a cinema.
Meanwhile, for two years, the capital of the world’s most literate
nation was barren of all living drama.
Within the last few months, the owners of the Gayety Burlesque, on
9th Street, which is Washington’s Skid Row, converted it into a legit
house. The Gayety had offered pretty low entertainment, because
practically anything is permitted. But trade wasn’t too good. The cagey
operators, not hampered by contractual restrictions, switched. To
accent the fact that they were going all out on this new line of race
tolerance, they booked as their first attraction a show with a mixed
cast, “The Barrier” starring Lawrence Tibbett and Muriel Rahn, who is a
Negro. Its theme was miscegenation in the Deep South.
The opening in the old home of burlesque, surrounded by shooting
galleries, tattoo artists and cheap sex movies for “adults only,” was
attended by the top layer of Washington New Deal and left-wing weepers
and critics for the Negro press and the _Daily Worker_. The show was
panned by the other reviewers. It closed prematurely, after five
days. Producer Michael Meyerberg said, “We shouldn’t have opened in
Washington.”
After that, the theatre limped along, sometimes lighted, sometimes
dark. The Negroes showed no zeal to patronize it. The whites passed
it up. Now the Theatre Guild is sending shows there, subsidized by
highbrow subscribers.
Many who want to see good drama go to New York. There’s usually a
Broadway hit playing in Baltimore.
During the summer, attempts are made to present road shows of New York
companies on The Water Barge, in the Potomac, and in some neighborhood
playhouses. Regardless of the success of some individual play,
Washington can be written off as a theatre town.
Despite all the hardships, there are always optimists, especially when
they can get their names in the papers. One of these is Congressman
Klein, of New York, a screaming New Dealer, who represents one of
Gotham’s most poverty-stricken neighborhoods. Klein is trying to get
the government to spend $5,000,000 for a national theatre. Naturally
it is to be named the Franklin D. Roosevelt Memorial Theatre. Some of
his constituents need shoes, but F.D.R. needs another monument. His
bill forbids barring any person from appearing in it or attending it
because of race, creed, color, religion or national origin. It would
be conducted by the Secretary of the Interior, who at this writing is
that well-known showman, Oscar L. Chapman, of Denver, Colorado, who is
a co-founder of the Spanish-American League to Combat Exploitation of
Mexican Workers in the United States, an arty cause, no doubt.
For most of the area’s 1,500,000 permanents and 500,000 transients,
movies offer the big night out. How much longer, in the face of TV
competition, remains to be seen. At the present time, attendance runs
100,000 a day. Most film houses in white neighborhoods are restricted
to whites. Negroes have their own. One of the most famous is the
Howard, in the NW colored section, which often augments its shows with
top-flight Negro stage shows. At such times the place is apt to draw
more white customers than black. Washington has its hep-cats. Many of
the younger social and diplomatic sets get a bang out of hot licks.
These people who willingly sit next to dark folks in the Howard refuse
to permit them in their own theatres or restaurants. That’s typical
Washington thinking.
The high-class shopping street--the Fifth Avenue--is Connecticut
Avenue, running from La Fayette Square, past the Mayflower Hotel,
and out into Cleveland Parkway, past residential hotels and swank
apartments.
There are plenty of first-grade shops here, with chic imports,
expensive antiques and other gewgaws to lure the feminine dollar.
Despite the great wealth of the District and the presence of an
international set, all is not pheasant for these merchants. New
York and the magnet of its style-conscious stores is too near. Even
Baltimore gets some of the trade which can’t find enough smart things
at home. But a curious reverse process has been taking place in recent
years. Whereas many Washingtonians travel to New York to shop and
to dine, a couple of Washington’s best-known institutions have been
reaching out and taking over some of the same places in New York which
Washingtonians travel 225 miles to patronize.
Garfinckel’s is Washington’s high-fashion department store. A couple of
years ago, its proprietors bought out the ancient and aristocratic New
York men’s furnishing house, Brooks Brothers. Within a few months, the
Garfinckel octopus reached out and gobbled up one of New York’s oldest
and best-known Fifth Avenue stores, de Pinna.
While this was going on, a couple of smart Swedes, who had made a
tremendous success at Olmsted’s Restaurant, a popular eatery with fine
food in the NW business section, bought New York’s oldest and most
famous restaurant, Luchow’s, on 14th Street, one of the last places
left in the country where dining is still a fine art.
Reference to the appendix will show many other Washington eating
places, some good, some bad and not all recommended, but most of them
are in NW.
One of the best-known and best is Harvey’s, on Connecticut Avenue, near
the Mayflower. This is J. Edgar Hoover’s nightly eating place when he
is in Washington. Like most Washington restaurants, Harvey’s has been
in business long. It specializes in sea food. The room does a sell-out
business and it’s almost impossible to get a table at the height of the
dining hour. Service by ancient Negro waiters is slow. Best time to
eat is after 9, because most Washingtonians dine early; 6 o’clock is
the standard time. Many start at 5. Those are the homely habits. Some
restaurants close at 8, and a few at 7.
Julius Lully, who owns Harvey’s, is the butt of J. Edgar’s robust sense
of humor. Once Hoover had a batch of wanted-fugitive-identification
“fliers” made up showing Lully in his World War I private’s uniform.
He had them nailed up on posts for miles around Lully’s country place.
When the hick sheriff locked up the restaurateur, who sputtered and
gave Hoover as a reference, J. Edgar said he had never heard of him.
On another occasion Hoover sent a letter, purporting to be from Oscar
of the Waldorf, threatening to sue Harvey’s for appropriating his
salad dressing. Lully hired a lawyer and told him to offer the Waldorf
$2,500, but J. Edgar advised him it wouldn’t be enough.
The Occidental is hoary with age and legend. Pictures of presidents,
cabinet officers and generals cover the walls. This was our favorite,
but the Occidental has succumbed to the new boom. An officious head
waiter, with a typical Prussian attitude toward customers, lined us up
like prisoners of war, then heaped contemptuous abuse when we dared
question his excellency about the possible chances of being seated
and served. Washingtonians take it. They are used to being kicked
around. Senators or cabinet officers they may be, but at heart most are
grass-rooters overawed by the big city. We didn’t take it. We walked
out. We are used to consideration and hospitality, spoiled by the good
manners of heartless Manhattan.
When Major L’Enfant plotted the city, he provided that the streets
should run in three directions, north and south, east and west, and
diagonal. Where the diagonal avenues, which are named after states,
cross the rectangular streets, generally numbered or alphabetically
lettered, there are wide circles or broad squares. One of those is
Lafayette Park, known to all Americans because it is the square in
front of the White House. Here, less than a hundred yards from the
President’s front door, is one of the most sordid spots in the world.
At night, under the heroic equestrian statue of Andrew Jackson and in
the shadow of the foliage of overhanging trees, there is a constant and
continuous soprano symphony of homosexual twittering.
The President knows about it; he reads the papers. The police
superintendent knows about it. Congress, which governs the District,
knows about it. Recently, the secretary of a Senator was arrested
there, charged with indescribable misbehavior. He was acquitted by a
jury. There are few convictions.
Lafayette Park is one of the showplaces of NW. Another is Thomas
Circle. Years ago, the circle and all the streets leading into it
were lined with mansions. Now you can pull up in your car in front of
a newsdealer there, at any hour, day or night, and place a bet on a
horse, buy a deck of junk or get a girl--$10 asking price, $5 if you
put up a struggle.
Another NW cynosure was Dupont Circle. It was social. There were the
homes of such as Princess Eleanor Patterson. Now they’ve been razed or
cut up because of taxes, death benefits, estate distributions and the
high cost of maintenance. Those that still stand have been turned into
embassies, headquarters of national organizations, and rooming-houses
in between. One triangular corner was torn down to make way for the
Dupont Plaza, a glassy and glossy apartment hotel, swell for lobbyists,
flashy girls and 5-percenters. What happened to Dupont Circle hit all
the way out the length of 16th Street, which runs off from the White
House, and Massachusetts Avenue. These two long, broad avenues run
through all NW. They are the “Ambassadors’ Rows.”
Of the sixty embassies, legations and chancelleries, almost all are
on one or the other. Both have a liberal sprinkling of organization
headquarters, such as unions, trade associations and eleemosynary
institutions, with the ever-present furnished-room coops and apartment
hotels.
The complexion of NW is changing, growing darker. The area always had
a large Negro section. There are no racial zoning laws. Restrictive
covenants cannot be enforced. There are no longer any racial boundary
lines and some people think that is dandy. They have been in the
driver’s seat since 1933.
You will find colored people living within a half a block of an embassy
or around the corner from a new luxury apartment house. There is no
reason why this should not be so, but the property-owners and the white
residents do not agree. As the process continues, NW grows less swank
and less desirable, while many of its rich residents move into Maryland
suburbs such as Chevy Chase and across the river into Virginia.
The Negroes and other specific phenomena of NW will be considered in
specialized chapters.
4. NOT-SO-TENDER TENDERLOIN
The District’s “red-light” region may be the largest on earth. That is
because almost all of it is such, neither restricted by law, custom nor
local habit to a particular part of town. But, more than any other, NW
is the Tenderloin, in some ways more blatantly open than ever was New
York’s infamous Satan’s Circus or Chicago’s 22nd Street.
Of all places, you would think Washington would be the last location a
practical, professional prostitute would pick to pitch her camp. With
so many more women than men, so many dames lonesome and far from home,
on the eager upbeat for a meal, a drink or even a kind word, you’d
figure mathematically, psychologically and pathologically that this
would be a ghost town for the trollops.
Part of such traffic is always supported by tourists and strays.
Washington has a large and constant visitation of these, but many
other places have more and have virtually expunged street-walkers and
entirely eradicated the sweatshops where such operators do homework.
Yet in Washington they flourish, though they are supposedly verboten,
and the Weary Winnies parade the pavements. It made a couple of graying
Chicago boys homesick for their childhood.
Lorelles--as the Parisians call them--are in the Washington tradition,
claim the capital by long-established squatters’ rights, almost by
right of discovery.
The same stagecoaches which carried the first Congressmen to Washington
150 years ago brought also the first whores. They and their descendants
have been here ever since, an integral, important segment of the
population.
For the first 113 years they were protected by law. Segregation in the
District was expunged by act of Congress in 1913, in the first year of
the presidency of the school-teacher from Princeton.
In the early days of the Republic, whoring flourished as an essential
and honorable trade. Transportation facilities were so primitive,
many Congressmen and officials from backwoods sections had trouble
getting to Washington themselves and would have found it impossible
to transport their women. Trollops became an adjunct to legislation.
Without them, it is doubtful whether a quorum could have been
maintained for transaction of public business, which might not have
been a bad idea sometimes.
The last compound of the trade was in what is now the Federal Triangle,
between Pennsylvania Avenue and the Mall, from 10th to 15th Streets.
The Willard Hotel, the Treasury and the White House are nearby--which
made it convenient for all concerned.
In the Civil War, General Joe Hooker’s division was encamped in
Washington to protect the President. It was bivouacked in what later
became the official restricted district. One story, accounting for
the term “hooker,” now worldwide, ascribes its origin to the habitat
of local prostitutes, who gathered near the camp to pick up soldiers
and remained after the soldiers left. When local blades went out for a
night of hell-raising they said, “Let’s go over to Hooker’s.”
Another version ascribes the origin of the word to the Hook, in
Baltimore, the town’s sailor section, where tarts picked up sea-faring
men.
In the absence of a determination by H. L. Mencken, we will remain
neutral as to the competing claims of the two neighboring cities,
except to say that the residents of either ought to know what they’re
talking about, because there are so many hookers in both.
Leaving out all occasionals in Washington who do it for fun or because
of temporary monetary embarrassment, and counting only pros--those
who have no other form of livelihood, some say there are at least ten
thousand floozies actively in full-time business at this moment. We
were solicited by half that number.
Most of these girls work as loners on the streets or in the cocktail
lounges and bring their earnings back to their pimps. Some function
through call services, via a headquarters phone-number, a cocktail
lounge bartender, or a switchboard operator in a cheap hotel.
Many are tough and predatory. A 20-year old youth was stabbed and
slashed after he turned down a street-corner proposition at Third and
E. He fled when the woman drew a knife, but two colored men caught up
to him and gave him the business.
Until recently, Washington was loaded with whore-houses, was in fact
the last large city where this ancient and storied institution existed.
That’s because it was necessary to take care of the transients and
the male government employes and officials away from their wives. The
war and the post-war housing shortage virtually put the final kibosh
on such dives here as it had done a few years earlier in other towns.
Property became so valuable, landlords could do better by running it
legitimately.
We spoke to a police captain who told us that obstacles were no longer
placed in the way of the vice squad when it came to raiding these
premises; but it is impossible to keep the girls off the streets
and out of the hotel lobbies and cocktail lounges where they had
transferred their business addresses.
Under the law of Washington, as well as all other municipalities,
vice-squad detectives are forbidden to partake personally of forbidden
wares while on raids. If they do, they have no case, for a prosecution
then becomes “entrapment” and they are agents provocateurs.
During a recent raid, an operational plan was drawn up in advance. One
of the cops, the handsomest, made the pick-up, and his confederates
were supposed to crash in five minutes after he entered the room, which
would give both time to disrobe, and that is enough evidence to make a
collar.
But the raiders were late. The honest, hardworking cop went through the
motions of undressing. Finally he had to get in bed with the wench; 15,
20, 30 minutes passed, and still no raiding party. He couldn’t stall
her off any more.
By the time the doors were busted in, the evidence was null and void.
The figures in this chapter refer solely to white tarts. The black
sisters are mentioned in another one.
Health records indicate that 50 percent of Washington’s white
street-walkers are infected with venereal disease. With the colored
ones, it goes up to 99 percent.
Many of the white women who solicit on the streets are young; it takes
some time for these girls, fresh off the farms, to get the nerve to
hustle in high-class hotels. Police have arrested girls 14, 15 and 16
hawking their bodies on the public highways. Many of these children,
who should be home doing their schoolwork, left the hills when they
were 12, after first having been raped by a local lout, usually a
relative.
This story is not apocryphal. A very young street-walker was formally
charged by the arresting officer with “practicing prostitution.”
“That’s not so, your honor,” she piped up. “I don’t practice any more.
I know how now.”
The going rate for whores, the pick-up kind, is $20 and down. Pretty
fair ones will take $10, and many will come along for $5. These prices
are low compared with the current tariffs in other large cities, the
reason being the extraordinary amateur competition.
Many of the girls roll their customers, mugg them or use knockout
drops and then go through their pockets. But Washington’s prostitutes
are not so hard-hearted as the street sirens in New York, where it is
commonplace for one to be taken to a hotel-room and wake up doped and
robbed, but never loved.
Many Washington nymphs conscientiously give value received.
In other cities the cops take stern measures against the untrustworthy
whores. It is considered the lowest form of larceny to take advantage
of a man with his pants down. New York police recently sent a young
married woman to the penitentiary for five years for just such an
outrage, but in Washington the appointed judges, many unrealistic
and some downright dishonest, condone and encourage such unethical
practices.
David L. Miller, 43, a resident of the Soldiers’ Home, picked up
Alma Lee Dugent and took her to a 16th Street, NW, room. He said the
33-year-old woman robbed him of $2 in bills and a $30 wrist watch while
he lay asleep. The woman pleaded guilty of petty theft.
“This man is as guilty as the woman,” thundered the judge. He ordered
Miller to pay half of Mrs. Dugent’s $25 fine.
At this writing there are few really big madames operating in
Washington. One of the last big operators was Carmen Beach, deported to
Spain. But Nancy Pressler, who figured prominently in the conviction
of Charles “Lucky” Luciano, international Mafia overlord now in Italy,
when she turned state’s evidence against him in New York, is in
business in the capital.
Though many of the girls work as independent contractors, except for
the inevitable pimp, they are loosely organized for emergency purposes
in the event of arrest, through bail-bond brokers and lawyers who
specialize in underworld cases. The law staff of Charles Ford is
frequently in court defending intercepted prostitutes, who usually get
off with a small fine or a warning.
Many singed doves get their weekly check-ups from a physician in the
1700 block of K Street, who charges them $5 a visit. They learn about
him through their community of interests.
We have studied commercial vice in most large cities. It is as a
rule confined by public tolerance to certain streets or sections.
When we wrote about New York and Chicago we were able to name these
thoroughfares and state exactly what kind of merchandise was for sale
in each. That is not so in Washington, where the city seems to be one
huge red-light range, with tramps falling over themselves trying to
grab unattached men.
We made a contact on the southeast corner of 14th and New York Avenue,
NW, in front of the cigar store, with a young pedestrian who told
us her name was Sue. She came originally from Florida and had been
hustling in Washington for four years. We asked how to get in touch
with her again and she said, “Just call the Astoria Hotel and ask the
operator for Sue.” When we inquired her last name she said she was the
only Sue there. The Astoria is a cheap hotel on 14th Street.
About two weeks later we were walking through the plush lobby of the
new Statler Hotel and saw Sue ensconced in one of the comfortable
armchairs. We stopped to watch. The slender blonde leaned over to a
gent in another chair and asked for a light. In a couple of minutes
they struck up a deal and walked into the elevator together. When she
came down half an hour later we asked her how much she got.
“Ten bucks,” she exclaimed, “and the tight-wad stiffed me out of luck
money.”
When we first came to Washington to work on this book almost everyone
we spoke to, except cops who knew better, said we wouldn’t find any
professional whores, because why should anyone pay when so many
government girls are easy?
We took some of these friends--government officials, members of
Congress, newspapermen and others, on our tours. And this is what we
showed them:
We were solicited by two girls at Jack’s Grill, 3rd and G Sts. Three
broads came up to us at 4th and G NW and asked us if we wanted company.
We also saw girls bracing strange men at the Purity Lunch and Grill,
3rd and G NW, and at Mitchell Grill on the same corner. Mitchell’s is
the hangout for precinct cops who saved its license after charges.
A white prostitute tried to date us at the Mai Fong restaurant, in
Chinatown, and two other girls spoke to us at the China Clipper on 14th.
We could have made pick-ups--$10 asked, $5 bid--at the corner of 14th
and R. We were approached by girls at the Casablanca Tavern, 421 11th
St., NW, and the Covered Wagon, 14th and Rhode Island. The manager
of an all-night diner back of the Statler offered to get us a bed
companion for $15 if we bought a bottle of Seagrams for $8.50--cheap
when you consider it was after hours and he didn’t have a license.
Few if any restaurants and bars employ B-girls. These are women who in
Chicago circulate from table to table and hustle drinks on commission.
They are illegal in the District, though quite common in Maryland, near
the border and in Baltimore.
The femmes fatale who frequent Washington joints usually do so in
free-handed reciprocity. The management steers lonesome men to the gals
who hang around regularly. They, in turn, bring their customers in for
drinks or tell them that’s where they can find them. A saloon which
gets a reputation as the hangout for the best-looking dames finds its
gross up.
When a girl closes a pitch, she usually has a place to take the guy,
if he can’t or won’t bring her to his own room. Most Washington
hotels, including the largest, are very broadminded about this, and if
you don’t make noise they don’t make trouble. But this situation is
changing as the hotels are getting more crowded and more independent.
Few small hotels, even if so inclined, properly police their guests.
Some of the girls take their clients to the New Colonial and the Fox.
A former madame named Jackie is now running a rooming-house at 703 Mt.
Vernon, where some of the girls steer their customers. You can usually
find seven or eight girls hanging around Ivy House Inn, on New York
Avenue.
Among the most active hookers are Kay Saunders and Peggy Proctor, both
29, who were once arrested while entertaining 15 male customers. At
this writing they are still in business on the second floor of a house
in the 2300 block, Lincoln Road, NE.
One of Washington’s most famous characters is a toothless old hag known
only as Diane. She hangs around 14th and Florida. Diane reminds old New
Yorkers of the fabulous Broadway Rose, who used to panhandle in front
of Lindy’s until she was carted to the bug house.
But, unlike Rose, Diane is an out-and-out hustler. Once upon a time,
they say, she was a good-looker. But her main trouble seemed to be that
she liked her work too much to commercialize it.
We spoke to a man in his late 30’s who remembered her when he was a
school boy. He said the kids used to pick her up because she would take
“small change.” Now some of her old customers, matured and prosperous
men of the world, occasionally drive by her corner to stake her to a
hand-out.
All she can get now are colored men, “winos” and dregs. But she refuses
to retire.
We picked up a girl by the name of Doris who had just been discharged
from the Federal Hospital for narcotic addicts in Lexington, Kentucky.
The story she told us illustrates how girls are recruited for
prostitution in the District.
Doris said she lived in a small town in West Virginia. She and a girl
high-school mate occasionally did a little free-lance whoring on
Saturday nights, on call of a bell-boy in the local hotel. Once he sent
them to a room occupied by two men. One, whose name was Grigsby, tried
to sell the girls on coming to Washington. He said he’d put them in a
swell house. The teenagers were afraid of the big city. Grigsby told
them the landlady of the house was in the next room and called her in.
She was a motherly sort. They consented to come with her.
They found themselves in the house of a madame named Billie Cooper,
on 7th St., in the 1000 block. Doris told us she was an instantaneous
success in the Cooper menage. She was only 17, fresh, buxom and
bucolic. Madame Cooper’s clients were charmed. After she’d been in
the house a few weeks, the madame asked Doris if she’d like to get a
“kick.” She produced a hypodermic needle and gave the child a shot
in the arm. Doris liked the sensation, wanted more. This went on for
several weeks, Doris said, and every day Billie Cooper increased the
frequency of the shots.
One day Doris woke up, nauseated and ill.
Billie Cooper exclaimed, “You’re hooked!”
She informed Doris she had become a dope fiend, that henceforth Doris
must pay for the shots.
The girl went into debt, though she was taking in up to $50 a day and,
no matter how much she made, the dope always cost more. She knew no
one else who sold it. She was truly hooked, which was Billie Cooper’s
original purpose, to keep the young girl in her joint and take her
money away from her.
Billie Cooper’s clientele was mostly Chinese. When U. S. narcotics
agents raided her establishment at 5 A.M., gaining entrance with a
ladder borrowed from a fire-house, so two T-men would get into Billie’s
bedroom before she had a chance to flush the narcotics down the drain,
they found several Chinese customers in the place. While the search was
still on, 15 more came to the door and were admitted; of these two were
officials of the Chinese embassy.
In the trial it developed that Billie Cooper, who was sentenced for
violation of the narcotics laws, was charging Doris $7 a deck for
heroin, which she bought at half that price from Chinese peddlers. The
F.B.I. proceeded against Grigsby for white slavery violation and he,
too, was convicted.
Doris swore to us that she was off the stuff now. She said she was
living with a Chinaman who worked in a gambling house in Chinatown.
The glamorous brothels are no more. Not since the notorious Hopkins
Institute was closed by the F.B.I. some years ago has there been
anything operating on a lavish scale. Now there are some so-called
masseurs who use that classification as a blind, but nothing on the
grand scale.
When F.B.I. men raided the Hopkins Institute, an innocuous-looking
massage parlor in the 2700 block on Connecticut Ave., they uncovered
one of the most sensational call-houses ever in Washington. Not only
was the clientele accommodated at the so-called Institute, but a phone
call could arrange a date on short notice almost anywhere in the
District. The establishment kept a detailed and up-to-date written
record on each patron, fees paid, dates of service, and eccentricities.
Girls there said this list contained entries that could flabbergast
some very prominent persons, in and out of Washington.
The proprietor of the Hopkins Institute was one George Francis
Whitehead, who lived in New York and seldom visited the place. Profits
were sent to him weekly by the “resident manager,” Diane Carter, who
was vice-president in charge of the operation. The Institute was
established originally by someone else and was bought by Whitehead
in 1941. He ran it for several months, then engaged Diane Carter to
manage it at a salary out of earnings. Her principal duties entailed
accepting calls, arranging to send girls to answer the calls, and to
have girls available on the premises.
Whitehead left Washington in 1941, after the girls began to complain
that his presence was hurting business because of his excessive
drinking, untidy habits and uncouth deportment. He did not live up to
the dignity and spirit of an Institute. The girls threatened to strike.
The record system was originated by the first operator and passed on to
Whitehead. In addition to other entries, initials of each girl filling
an assignment and the amount of the fee were noted. For the fees a code
was used, to conceal the fact that some paid more than others. The word
“FITZGERALD” was the key to the code. Each letter stood for a digit,
i.e., F was 1, I was 2, T was 3, etc. Thus the symbol “FD” beside the
name of a customer meant $10; “TD” meant $30, etc. This method was used
also to bamboozle Whitehead, if he checked on his share of the proceeds.
The U.S. Commissioner issued warrants for the arrests of Whitehead,
Diane Carter and 13 girls involved, on charges of violations of the
White Slave Traffic Act. Whitehead was arrested in New York and
extradited. Two indictments were returned against Whitehead, Diane and
nine others. Whitehead pleaded guilty to both and was sentenced to one
to four years on the Act and to eighteen months on conspiracy. But he
was adjudged insane and committed to a mental institution.
Diane Carter pleaded guilty to both indictments and was sentenced to
three to nine months on each, the sentences to run concurrently. Seven
other defendants were found guilty.
The Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the convictions of the seven,
held the violations were of legislation of the District of Columbia and
not of the White Slave Traffic Act.
But the racket was broken. The place never reopened. The F.B.I. seized
the files and never revealed a name, but hundreds of men still tremble
when they remember the Hopkins Institute. Some still attempt pressure
to try to get their names blacked out. They have no success with the
F.B.I.
5. HOBOES WITH NO HORIZON
The pride of the bum, even when he has abandoned the virile vitality
to hold out his paw as a panhandler, is a terminal twinkle of
consciousness that he is only resting between Election Days, when he is
a man. These derelicts have swung cities and states. But in Washington
even that last link to a reason for being is lost.
No Hinky Dink, no Pendergast caters to him, gives him free beer
and rot-gut or a kip in the flop on the joint. No eager dirty duke
stretches forth to greet the floater and the repeater. He can do
nothing for anyone.
So he is just a shade lower, lousier and grizzlier than the ones at
whom you shudder as you pass them in your own town. Agglomerations of
beachcombers vary little, even with differences of climate. Every city
has its Skid Row. But Washington has three of them. Like everything
else here, they are departmentalized. No alphabetical designations have
yet been allocated to them, but don’t despair.
One is for the general riffraff; the second is for old-timers; the
third is exclusively for sailors.
But first let us tell you about 9th Street--NW, natch--and specifically
where it crosses Pennsylvania Ave.
Stand on one side of the avenue and you are in the shadow of the great
marble structure which houses the forces of law and order. This is the
Department of Justice Building, and the corner we’re standing on is the
entrance to the F.B.I.
Cross Pennsylvania Avenue and walk into 9th Street, and you are an
intruder in the most publicized Skid Row of the three--they call it the
Bowery here, to distinguish it from the others. As such thoroughfares
go, this is pretty classy-looking. It is wide. All Washington
streets are kept clean, so neither rubbish nor drunks litter the
pavements--anyway not by day. By nightfall, topers rendered hors de
combat on smoke and cheap wine pile up in the doorways.
This part of 9th Street is packed solid with “play lands,” featuring
pin-ball machines, peep show movies and souvenir stands which sell
composition statuettes of the White House and Washington Monument, and
embroidered pillows tastefully lettered with “Love to Mom from the
Nation’s Capital.”
But this human dump lacks romance and legend. No songs are written
about it. There are no grisly tall tales, such as are told about the
Barbary Coast, Basin Street and Chicago, much near the Loop and most of
the old Levee. This is merely a street of convenience, moved up from
around the corner when Pennsylvania Avenue itself was flophouse lane
and Al Jolson and Bill Robinson performed on the sidewalk for pennies.
There’s no law agin’ stripping or peeling in Washington, but it doesn’t
pay off well enough to build a permanent industry around it. The old
Gayety Theatre, which ran pretty high-class traveling burleycue, is
now, probably only temporarily, a legit house. Meanwhile, the burlesque
fans buy their titillation in the cheap movie houses adjoining the
Gayety. Sometimes they amplify their celluloid bills with “living
dolls,” at other times the customers have to get their kicks out of
sex movies advertised “For Adults Only.” An ad before us, of the
Leader Theatre, says, “Burlesque’s brightest stars on screen.” The
day’s program provided snake-charming Zorita in “I Married a Savage”;
body-peeling Ann Corio in “Call of the Jungle”; and Maggie Hart, the
stripper, in “Lure of the Isles,” plus “two more thrills.”
In and in front of cheap saloons, cocktail lounges and lunch rooms, are
tarts, reefer-peddlers and novelty salesmen whose chief stock in trade
is “sanitary rubber goods.” Pistols are on sale at $20. The local law
isn’t tough on gun-toters.
Though Washington’s legal liquor closing on weekdays is 2 A.M., this
street, like all in the city, is deserted early. Long before midnight
its habitués have already made sleeping arrangements or are snoring in
the alleys, cheap overnight lodgings or hallways, paralyzed by alky or
cheap domestic red wine.
Crossing 9th Street here, is D Street, known as Pawnbroker’s Row. But
get this--hockshops are against the law.
When you see a shop with a sign reading “Pawnbroker’s Exchange,” don’t
believe it. The window looks like any “Uncle’s” anywhere in the world,
with a profusion of new and used articles ranging from mink coats
to tin watches. But that’s the build-up. These exchanges are only
second-hand stores which buy and sell uncalled for articles pledged in
other jurisdictions, where the three balls of the De Medicis are legal.
The temporarily embarrassed visitor, in need of cash quickly, often
gets rooked in one of these pseudo-hock shops. Take the case of the
stranger who runs short of petty cash until he can wire home. Suppose
he has a $200 watch which he wants to put up for security. Needing only
perhaps $25, that’s all he asks for, figuring when he redeems it in a
few days he will pay only that, plus accrued interest. Yet when he asks
the pawnbroker’s exchange man for $25, he is actually selling the $200
watch for that.
Some of the more legitimate shops get around the law by guaranteeing
to sell the article back to the owner at a specified rate after a
specified number of days. What usually happens to the unsophisticated
is that they have lost their security for a fraction of its value,
because it has already been sold.
Little effort is made to police the Bowery stretches of 9th St. The
armed forces maintain a few MPs, but practically anything goes, short
of mayhem, and even that is not uncommon.
The tomatoes who solicit the young and lonesome men in uniform in
this neighborhood are pretty low. The five bucks they ask, plus three
dollars for a room in a handy flea-bag, should be reported to the
Better Business Bureau, considering the quality of the merchandise and
the strong possibilities of picking up souvenirs of the sort they don’t
display on counters.
Interspersed between the shooting galleries, theatres and hamburger
hideaways are the usual bargain men’s clothing stores, army and navy
outfitters, etc. One of the clothing stores, visible from the windows
of the Department of Justice, was built by money inherited from a
gangster who isn’t around to enjoy it, due to a sit-down strike in an
electric chair.
This street is a little too fast, flighty and noisy for the old-time
bums and stiffs. It is for younger men. The perennials, who know every
flop-house and smoke-joint in the country, and travel from town to
town with the seasons and the harvests, prefer the Skid Row at 3rd and
G Streets, NW and vicinity, around the corner from Chinatown. Come to
think of it, Skid Rows all over the continent are around the corner
from Chinatown.
We call this Mission Row, because it’s where the mission stiffs hang
out. These are the hoboes, bums and tramps who get their morning’s
coffee and their night’s sleep on the benches of a gospel shop nearby
on H Street, in return for listening to a “Come to the Lord” sermon.
Mission Row is the best-looking Skid Row in the country. The streets
are broad, with grass and trees, and most of the set-back buildings are
reconverted residences with stoops and a surviving air of charm. We
have been assured it is refreshing to wake up in the gutter here with a
smoke hangover.
You find no brassy newcomers in these quarters. Young tramps abhor
missions. They prefer 9th Street, with its zip and excitement. The
mission stiff, almost an extinct species, is on in years and no
longer troubled by dames. His animal needs are taken care of by a
bowl of soup and as much red-eye as he can drink. If only one of the
two is available, the former can be dispensed with. Some of these
mission-moochers are junkies. But dope, like everything else, is
suffering from inflation, and the wherewithal is forbidding.
The Greek colony, large for the size of the town, runs into this
Bowery. Many Hellenes are gamblers. Hecht’s Hotel, at 6th and G, where
girls take their men, was owned by a Greek arrested last month in New
York on narcotics charges. The Hellenic Social Club, next door, is a
gambling house.
There’s one Skid Row no visitors and few Washingtonians ever see.
That’s Sailors’ Row. Unlike the other two, which are in NW, this is
in SE--8th Street, down near the Navy Yard. After Chicago we thought
nothing could make us blink. But some of the dives on 8th Street made
it. At the northern approach of this stretch of howling hell are a
couple of Filipino joints where bus-boys, house-boys and valets pick up
white whores. Eighth Street runs into Sailors’ Row proper, a line of
groggeries and lunch-rooms that hit bottom.
The undermanned Washington cops can do little to keep it orderly.
The Navy’s shore patrol takes over most of the policing. We saw Navy
paddy-wagons in front of Guy’s, the Ship’s Cafe and the Penguin. But
the SP’s seldom make a pinch unless there are fights. We visited four
or five of the bars--not alone, because hereabouts, even in the shadow
of the Capitol’s dome, outsiders who travel in parties of less than
four are crazy.
We saw hustlers working in the Band Box, the Ship’s Cafe, Guy’s and
the Penguin. These were the frowsiest broads we have ever seen,
dilapidated, toothless, drunk, swinging the shabby badge of their
shoddy trade, long-looped handbags.
The worst and the cheapest were in the Ship’s Cafe, where two
girls--call them that in charity--offered themselves to us at $3. The
going price in the other places was $5. They circulated along the
bar and from booth to booth and from table to table. They do not work
in these saloons as B girls or house prostitutes. They use them as
points of contact with their trade, apparently with connivance of the
management for the business they bring in. In these Sailors’ Row joints
we saw many amateurs, typical sailor-crazy bobby-soxers, servant girls
and Victory girls. These may ask for money but can be talked out of it.
There are many cheap hotels and rooming-houses close by. But the dark
streets or alleys are free and busy.
6. GREEN PASTURES
Agonized oratory through the decades has been banging against the walls
of the Capitol, demanding that Washingtonians be given the precious
privilege of the vote. It is as futile as spitting against the wind.
And we will tell you why there will be no vote--Confidential.
If Washington got home rule, its first mayor would be a gentleman
affectionately known to his constituency as Puddin’ Head Jones. And Mr.
Jones is a Negro.
We will tell you what no one else has dared to publish--there are more
Negroes than whites in Washington. We will prove it by incontrovertible
figures.
There is an amazing underground proclivity in all big cities, south,
north and everywhere, to fake the facts on Negro population. For some
distorted reason, both races conspire in this foolish flummery.
Census figures are off the beam. They always lag in summing up
minority races. Most of the migrant census-takers assume that they
should help to make the picture as light as possible. If a Negro is
not unmistakably black, he is encouraged, if he does not think of it
himself, to be listed as a Cuban, a Puerto Rican, a West Indian, a
South American, Filipino, Indian, Mexican or even Eskimo; the blood of
all these is sprinkled through many generations of admixture.
There is no way of calculating how many light-skinned citizens can and
do “pass.” Some Negroes sleep in shifts in crowded premises, so that a
count in the regular course would register about one-third of the true
total. Many are house servants and these do not go into the tally where
they are employed, nor are they home during the hours when enumerators
call.
More Negroes than whites are police characters, as will be
demonstrated. And as a rule members of the race are wary and suspicious
of questioners from “the law.” Many census-takers deliberately duck
more than superficial duties in predominantly dark districts, because
they are confused and afraid after getting hostile receptions and
responses.
But in Washington there is one indisputable check.
The District of Columbia has a single Jim Crow law, segregating Negroes
and whites--in schools. When pupils are enrolled they must reveal their
true race. There can be no tampering with these statistics.
And in the winter of 1950–51 there were registered the following in all
public schools through all grades from elementary to teachers’ college:
Negroes, 47,807; whites, 46,080.
Broken down, these figures are even more definitive. There are more
Negroes than is evidenced by the bare totals. Negroes, because of their
economic outlook, do not keep their children in school as long as do
whites. That is sharply proven by the enrollment in the senior high
schools:
Negroes, 4,787; whites, 7,176.
But there are 10,146 colored children in junior high schools compared
to 9,270 whites.
The attendance at parochial and private schools is minor. Washington
has the largest per capita Negro Catholic population in the United
States.
Even an excess of 10 per cent of whites in the grand total and allowing
for unmarried government workers would still indicate a Negro majority
over all, because of the earlier departure from school of Negro
children, as shown above.
This reveals a startling metamorphosis in a ten-year period. In 1940
the school record showed 66,000 whites and 36,000 Negroes. Thus there
has since been a decline of 20,000 white children and a rise of 12,000
Negro children. The over-all decline is due to removal of white
families to suburbs.
Negroes lived in Washington before the first President chose the
rolling land along the Potomac to bear his name. Slavery was legal in
the capital until the emancipation. The population of Washington about
doubled between 1860 and 1870. Much of this influx represented slaves
who escaped from plantations and got through the Union lines during the
Civil War. But the big swell came when thousands of ex-slaves, free
and foot-loose for the first time in their lives, left the destroyed
and deserted Dixie farms and headed for Washington, which was not only
near Virginia and Maryland and the Carolinas, but which exercised a
fascination for them because they felt safer near their savior and
their demigod, Abraham Lincoln.
Until the middle 70’s, Washingtonians of all colors had home rule,
elected their own officials under a territorial form of government
similar to that now practiced in Alaska and Hawaii, where mayors,
legislators, judges and other lower-level officials are elected. They
sent a delegate to Congress.
Long before LaGuardia, Marcantonio, Ed Flynn and Ed Kelly found the
formula of organizing Negroes into blocs which could be voted en masse
to perpetuate control of left-wing and criminal political groups, that
was old stuff in D.C., where it was invented by one “Boss” Shepherd
in Washington, the first large city in the country where Negroes were
allowed to vote, and where there were enough of them to throw any
weight as citizens.
Washington had been a sewer of iniquity during the Civil War; when
Shepherd took over control it turned infinitely worse. The stench
asphyxiated the members of Congress, who were exposed to it so
intimately, and they exercised a forgotten constitutional prerogative,
“to exclusively govern the District.” The polling booths made swell
bonfires.
As will be seen, however, under the unique voteless system, the Negroes
now exercise far more power, and Puddin’ Head Jones is by common
consent the “mayor” of Washington’s Black Belt. As we progress you will
be let in on how that could come about.
Despite the high enrollment of Negro children in public schools where
they enjoy facilities for education equal to white children, Negroes
continue to have an illiteracy far above the full population. In 1942,
illiteracy in the District was only 1 percent for all races, whereas
the Negro group showed 4 percent. Weighing these figures against the
proportions of population in 1942 would seem to indicate that the
Negroes were about 15 times as illiterate as whites.
Much later figures are available, however. Only 4 percent of
Washington’s white youths who took the Army’s mental tests in 1950
failed, but nearly 29 percent of the prospective colored recruits were
turned back.
New York’s Harlem is self-contained. Though Chicago’s Bronzeville has
gone over its borders and set up tributary colonies in other sections
of the city, it is still the center of Negro life there and contains
most of its colored population.
But Washington’s Black Belt is no belt at all. It is sprawled all over,
infiltrating every mile and almost every block in sections which for
150 years were lily white.
In New York, when you refer to Harlem, everyone knows what part of town
you’re talking about. Similarly, Bronzeville and Central Avenue have
definite meanings in Chicago and Los Angeles. In Washington, you have
no way of indicating Darktown, because the Negro section has no generic
name and it isn’t a section. It is all of Washington.
What is occurring in Washington is happening on a lesser scale in large
northern population centers, except probably Manhattan, where Harlem
is geographically restrained by Columbia University and Central Park,
though Puerto Ricans are generously overflowing its borders on both
sides.
In Chicago, instead of being bound in black ghettos, Negroes have
preempted many sections, including former residences of millionaires.
They live along wide and vernal boulevards in once splendid apartments
and luxurious private homes with greeneries, and in palaces of packers
and pioneer pirates.
This process is being repeated in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Detroit
and especially Philadelphia.
The South, with its restrictive practices against Negroes and its
underpayment of them, is gradually being denuded of its cheap labor,
which is drawn North.
The recent census showed the population of most metropolitan cities
remained stable. But their suburbs, beyond city limits, increased in
many from 50 to 100 percent or more. This growth of Suburbia was made
by whites who left as Negroes came. That kept city populations in
status quo.
The words used to paint the picture in Chicago may be repeated in
Washington, but with emphasis and re-emphasis. Here they took mile
after mile of fine old dwellings on wide, tree-lined streets. And they
also overran the slums. But Washington, despite the anguished yelps of
the do-gooders, long was and now is practically slum-free.
Some rookery regions are on F St. and New Jersey Ave. near the Union
Station and Capitol. But there are poor whites living in hovels equally
depressed. On the other hand, 95 per cent of the Negroes live in
lodgings as good as and better than most white residents’. Negroes have
taken over most of the desirable blocks near the government offices and
downtown.
We have before us an article on “The Negro in Washington,” in a recent
issue of _Holiday_ magazine, a slick-paper, 50-cent pleader for
leftist causes, published, curiously enough, by the staid, rich and
conservative house of Curtis, owners of the _Saturday Evening Post_.
This effusion is illustrated with four pages purporting to show the
Negro’s treatment in Democracy’s capital, which the editors call a
“democratic contradiction.” There are photographs of Negro children
at play in cluttered backyards which are called typical of the city’s
overcrowded Negro slums. Another picture shows a Negro woman in an
alley dwelling; another is captioned, “Capitol Dome presents a contrast
of obvious irony to the Negro slums which it overshadows. Overcrowding,
dirt and disease are all prevalent.”
Your authors traveled up and down 1,000 miles of streets and
boulevards, 404 of alleys, not once but a dozen times. They saw the
slums illustrated in _Holiday_ magazine, but they saw few others,
because there are few others. At the most, 20,000, of a total of
400,000 Negroes, live in these “slums,” which, even at their worst, are
turreted castles compared to the degraded dwellings in which Negroes
and myriad whites are forced to live in New York.
_Holiday_ did not print one picture showing the thousands of fine homes
and small apartment buildings in which most of Washington’s Negroes
live.
Cup your ear and we’ll let you into a little secret about these
“slums.” Whether you read _Holiday_ or not, you’ve seen the pictures,
because they are the ones which are always used by Reds and Pinks
to point up to the world how gruesomely America treats its dark
step-children. The reason you’ve seen these pictures--always with the
Capitol dome in the background--is that there are no others available.
Eleanor Roosevelt was one of the chief propagandists who exploited this
“blot” on Washington. This particular slum, always photographed, always
on every sight-seeing itinerary, is only a couple of blocks long and is
surrounded on all sides by presentable Negro homes. But this slum is
permitted to remain behind the Capitol only so the lefties will have
something to breast-beat over. It remained there during the Roosevelt
administration, when public housing and public building projects were
reshaping the face of Washington, only because an official who was in
Mrs. Roosevelt’s confidence ordered it undisturbed--for propaganda
purposes.
The headquarters of the National Association for the Advancement of
Colored People is in a ramshackle old house near the New Jersey Avenue
slums. These are the specious ones referred to elsewhere, which are
kept untouched and maintained to impress visitors with the shocking
degradation forced on Negroes in view of the Capitol dome.
The N.A.A.C.P. is rich and could locate in one of the prosperous, more
imposing Negro sections. But that would wipe out the psychological
advantage of bringing its visitors through the stage-managed
slave-quarters area.
Under Negro occupancy, some of the best dwellings in Washington, once
residences of ambassadors, cabinet officers and the hated capitalists,
now look like the slums the Fair Dealers decry.
In Washington, a Southern town with a Southern mentality, Negroes are
not popular, are not accepted as brothers except by a nagging and noisy
minority. The Negro is not Jim Crowed in street cars. There is no
law against a Negro’s attending a theatre with whites, eating in the
same restaurant or sleeping in the same hotel. But the law has upheld
proprietors who refuse to serve a Negro, though United States Supreme
Court decisions have gone otherwise elsewhere.
Yet there is considerable intermixture between the races. It is not
uncommon to see white girls with colored men, especially jazz band
musicians, who seem to exert a magnetic appeal for Caucasian women
all over the country. Many Negro madames and pimps employ white girls
for their colored trade. In some New Deal left-wing circles it is
considered chi chi to meet socially and even sexually with Negroes,
though, because of accepted restrictions against Negroes in the better
spots, these contacts are not evident in the better public gathering
places.
White people frequent colored night spots. Most of the reputed 480
Negro after-hour bottle-clubs cater also to whites, though no white
club admits Negroes except possibly a prominent entertainer or band
leader.
It is not uncommon to find white women living with colored men.
Practically no instance has come up in recent years of white men
consorting with colored women, except temporary pick-ups or in brothels.
A raid on the Logan Hotel, at 13th Street and Rhode Island Avenue,
disclosed a white girl living with a Negro. She was the daughter of a
Texas physician.
Police answered a trouble call at 17th and Q Streets and found a white
girl, employed by the Social Security Administration, visiting with a
colored janitor. He confessed that six other white girls from the same
U. S. agency visited him regularly for intercourse, one each night--and
paid him for it.
Another white girl employed by the Government was arrested at her home
in Alexandria, after having received marijuana from a colored musician
named Brisco. Brisco, well-known in Washington, mailed the marijuana
from New York. According to U.S. Narcotics Agents, two white Washington
girls under 18 admitted smoking marijuana with him and said they had
unnatural sex relations with him--they were afraid of pregnancy.
Due to determined efforts of local reformers, Jim Crow seems to be on
the way out in Washington, as it is everywhere and should be. Until
1949, the city’s six public swimming pools were restricted, to either
whites or Negroes. In 1948, the last year of such rules, the total
number of swimmers was 415,000, of which only 69,000 were Negroes. Two
pools were set aside for colored and four for white. In 1949, when
there were no racial bars, total attendance dropped off to 332,000.
One pool, Anacostia, was shut down for most of the summer after
disturbances started when colored swimmers first attempted to use the
pool. McKinley’s white patrons stopped using it completely.
It was hoped that whites would have learned tolerance by 1950, and
toward the end of the season many of the loudest crack-pots brayed
about the success of the new policy. In the fall of 1950, Eleanor
Roosevelt, in her syndicated column, mumbled about how all friction was
ended and the millennium had arrived. As usual she was wrong. Official
figures released a few days later showed attendance had skidded another
33 percent, down to a total of 220,000, of which--and get this--only
one-third were Negroes. In other words, whites had almost stopped using
the pools; on the other hand, there were barely more Negro patrons than
when the pools were restricted. Agitation was heard from tax-payers to
shut the pools, now run at a heavy loss to the city.
Only in public schools does legal Jim Crowism hold out. Recently a
performance of a tableau representing the Sesquicentennial of the
founding of the city was banned from the stage of a high school
auditorium because it had a mixed cast. The school board said:
“Congress makes the law and we enforce it.” There is a technical
question about whether a colored member of the board may visit white
schools, and vice versa.
Adopting tactics employed by the National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People elsewhere, Washington Negroes and
whites who are trying to break down racial restrictions often picket
restaurants and other facilities which refuse to serve Negroes, and
sometimes stage sitdown strikes within them. After such an experiment
in the John R. Thompson chain, the demonstrators for racial equality
were arrested for disorderly conduct and sentenced by a judge who at
this writing has not been overruled.
But the lot of Negroes is enviable compared to that of their brethren
elsewhere. We called Chicago’s Bronzeville Black Paradise. But that was
before we saw Washington’s Negro Heaven.
The life of the Washington Negro is made pleasant by the force of many
circumstances. The odds are he is employed by the government, which
has raised salaries. If he doesn’t work for the government, he serves
government workers. He shares in the highest per capita earnings, yet
the cost of living in Washington is not so high as in New York and many
other large cities. All streets, in white sections or colored, are
broad and tree-lined.
No Negro is ever fired from a government job if it can possibly be
helped. When necessary to cut down a staff, the whites go first,
reversing the process of private business.
If they can’t do their work, whites are hired to do it over for
them. An instance, typical of thousands, occurred in the Bureau of
the Census, where five Negro women were so inefficient that their
department head requested permission to discharge them. His immediate
superior almost had a stroke.
“If Eleanor hears about this,” he gasped, “there’ll be hell to pay.”
Eleanor no longer lives in the White House. But she is still a potent
force in Washington, where her kitchen cabinet continues to rule the
nation that President Truman thinks he rules.
The upshot of the matter was that the section head was told to keep the
five colored women and to hire five white girls to do the work over for
them, on the night shift.
The same sort of favoritism is shown Negro job-holders and applicants
throughout the whole governmental set-up in the District. When a white
man wants to become a cop he takes a stiff civil service test and is
subject to a searching investigation. Most of the Negroes who have been
getting on the force recently did it on political pull.
Kid-glove handling of Negroes is the rule in every phase of Washington
life, in addition to favoritism in appointments to the public payroll.
Apparently no effort is made by the police and other public authorities
to enforce the liquor laws in the dark sections. The local Alcoholic
Beverage Control code provides that no one may be served while
standing. Bar customers must be seated on stools, and even then may be
served only beer and wines. Hard liquor may be consumed only at tables.
This is strictly enforced in resorts catering to whites. But almost
all colored saloons sell liquor openly over the bar, where drinkers
stand--as long as they can stand. Few attempts are made to restrict
gambling or policy-slip sales in the colored sections.
Almost 500 Negro after-hour clubs are running, most of them not even
bothering to get club charters. Thousands of Negro flats are operated
as blind pigs, where liquor, mostly gin, is sold openly to all comers
at all hours. None has a license, naturally.
Occasionally hokum raids are made and sometimes the defendants are
fined $25. Next day they are in business as usual. Honest policemen
are afraid to make too many pinches in Negro neighborhoods for fear
the pinkos will list them as “nigger-haters” and send their names up
above--maybe even to the White House. One cop whose name we will not
mention told us that one night after he pulled in a colored after-hour
spot, word came directly from the White House to the 13th precinct
station, in which the arrest had been made, to lay off. F.D.R. was
President then.
Despite the maudlin tears of reformers about the horrible conditions
existing in Washington’s “Negro Ghetto,” there are probably more new
Cadillac convertibles being driven from its doors than from any others.
Sleek, new, expensive convertibles of the flashier brands have become
the sine qua non of Negro policy-peddlers and reefer-pushers here,
as well as in all other major American cities. Respectable people are
returning to the old-fashioned closed models for fear their bankers
will wonder what they’ve been up to.
Yet, despite the flashy visible prosperity of Washington’s Negroes, a
disproportionate number are on public relief. Many draw dole and social
security checks under one name while gainfully employed at one or two
jobs under other names. This racket, invented for the residents of New
York’s Harlem and Little Puerto Rico, has been brought to its full
flower in Washington.
The humanitarians and the New Dealers, worrying about colored votes in
the northern states, help to put butterfat in the colored man’s milk
in the capital. If the colored man works it right, he can get a relief
check the first day he lands in Washington.
This story wasn’t published, but the federal agents who made the pinch
and compiled the record had carried it on their chests so long, they
ached to unburden it where it wouldn’t come back and bite them. When
they broke in on a Negro whom they suspected of selling narcotics,
he indignantly asserted, “You can’t arrest me. I am a friend of Mrs.
Roosevelt.”
To prove it, he brought out a couple of letters from the First Lady,
one of which was addressed “Dear Jim,” or “Joe,” stating she was sorry
to hear that his relief check had not arrived on time, and she would
see that he was not pushed around in the future--he shouldn’t worry.
The boys arrested him and got a conviction.
Mrs. Roosevelt, while in the White House and out, sincerely sought to
improve the position of Negroes everywhere. But sometimes her efforts
went to such extremes she hurt the cause. Once she made a reservation
for a small banquet party of sixty at the swank Hay-Adams House, across
the street from the White House. When the managers discovered it was to
be an interracial affair they cancelled it. On September 14, 1950, Mrs.
Roosevelt tried to register three Negroes in her party into the Willard
Hotel. She was staying elsewhere, with friends. The Willard refused.
White property-owners tremble at the financial danger that would result
should Negroes crash white residential areas.
But entry is made through a tactic known as “block-busting,” developed
by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and
utilized by it and by white real estate agents out to make a buck.
Government agents first heard about it when they arrested a Negro woman
on narcotics charges and asked her for her occupation. She replied with
dignity, “I’m a block-buster.” She explained to the mystified T-Men
that she was employed by a real estate shark and her duties were as
follows:
When her employers had scouted an all-white neighborhood they thought
ripe for plucking, they would find a white property-owner who, for a
bonus, was willing to sell his property to a Negro. If the place was
worth $25,000 he would be bribed with as much as another $25,000 to
sell out. There are few neighborhoods where not one greedy white man
could be found after a searching survey by private detectives.
After the block-buster--in her own name--made the purchase, she and her
large Negro family moved in. Immediately, all other property in the
neighborhood sank in value and most of it was thrown on the market. The
far-sighted realtors then bought it up at greatly reduced values. Then
they resold it or rented it to Negroes at inflated prices, and started
another Negro island in the city.
When this was accomplished, the block-buster moved on to another base
and repeated the process.
You can sense a neighborhood in the process of being block-busted
by “For Sale” signs on porches or lawns, oddities in this otherwise
overpopulated, under-housed metropolis.
In cities where Negroes and whites live in separate and distinct
sections, opportunities for racial strife and violence are rare.
In Washington, where they live side by side all over, use the same
street cars and buses, patronize the same stores and constantly brush
shoulders on the streets, there is friction which sometimes flares
high and hot. Some of their leaders advise Negroes to be assertive,
aggressive, to demonstrate their equality. They pick fights and needle
Caucasians, most of whom are afraid to make complaints, because when
they get into court the federally appointed Yankee judge, whose robe
was bestowed upon him by a “civic rights” President, in many instances
finds for the Negro and castigates the white complainants, especially
policemen.
Among Negroes on the national political level who most zealously fight
to assert prerogatives of their race in the capital are:
Congressman William Dawson, vice chairman of the Democratic National
Committee, chairman of the mighty House Committee on Executive
Expenditures. He represents Chicago’s vile Bronzeville and is a
patronage-dispenser for the malodorous Cook County Democratic Central
Committee. He is extremely friendly with big shots of the infamous
Mafia, which controls all crime and corruption in the United States.
Before a Congressional Committee, Dawson was charged with being the
defender of the rackets. The charge was made by the late Bill Drury,
former Chicago police captain, who was slain by assassins who ambushed
him in an alley after Drury tried to reach the Kefauver Committee in an
effort to put the full inside story of the underworld on the record.
Congressman Adam Clayton Powell, Democrat from New York’s Harlem, who
usually voted hand-in-glove with Marcantonio. He is supported in every
election by the successors of “Dutch” Schultz, whose policy-slip and
murder ring had its headquarters in what is now Powell’s district. He
is married to Hazel Scott, Negro pianist, who has been frequently cited
by Congressional and Legislative committees as indicating pro-Russian
proclivities. She has denied it. He and his wife live in a swank Long
Island home, far from his bailiwick, and ride in a chauffeur-driven
$6,000 limousine.
William Hastie, former governor of the Virgin Islands, now the first
Negro on the exalted bench of the United States Circuit Court of
Appeals. In volume 17 of the published records of the Special Committee
on Un-American Activities of the House of Representatives, Judge Hastie
was cited as belonging to at least five Communist-front organizations.
He was, however, subsequently appointed to the Federal bench by
President Truman.
Wherever Negroes live, they have their own snobberies, castes and
social strata. Rich ones and light ones are contemptuous of the poor
and the black, and toward them they more often use the tabooed word
“nigger” than do most whites. And they add one extra prejudice, not
found among whites--resentment of the native-born Negro for the recent
comer from the Southern plantations.
7. MIGHTY LIKE A ROSE
There is a daily in Washington (as there are others in principal
cities) which never identifies a Negro as such unless he wins a Nobel
prize or is selected the rookie of the year.
We protest. News cannot be honestly reported by arbitrarily slurring
facts. Of almost all other non-whites, many are marked by recognizable
names. Most Negroes have Anglo-Saxon names, many of them adopted
centuries ago from their slave-owners. For instance, Thompson’s
Ebenezer evolved into Ebenezer Thompson.
That same newspaper does not bar true and fair reports of misdeeds by
people named O’Rourke or Ginsberg or Dinkelspiel or Stanislawsky or
Protopulus or Garcia or Potapinsky or Napolitano. Concealment of the
identity as Negro distorts the truth, for the natural assumption then
is that the miscreants are white and we have an unjustified libel on
the Caucasian population.
The most rabid Negro papers publish the crimes of their own people and
then editorialize on the cruel inequalities which help to cause them.
That is the proper use of freedom of the press. Arbitrary withholding
of vital facts is an impertinence and a misuse of the common franchise.
Fancy if you can what this chapter could not tell were we to suppress
racial references.
Of every four felonies and other breaches of the law in the grades
where a defendant has the right of trial by jury more than three are
committed by Negroes. That is not confidential, but official. Arrests
for Part One felonies--the more serious--in 1949 were as follows:
Colored males, 7,715.
Colored females, 1,085.
Total colored, 8,800.
White male, 2,396.
White female, 309.
Total white, 2,705.
Here is a breakdown on some:
Murder, colored 40; white 8.
Manslaughter, colored 6; white 1.
Rape, colored 140; white 23.
Aggravated assault, colored 2,651; white 381.
Burglary, colored 2,322; white 640.
Negrophiles and impractical activists for brotherhood of all God’s
children campaign to force newspapers to omit racial identification of
the lawless and hide it with white lies. That is the foggy, unrealistic
policy of visionaries, sparked by the cold, hard practicality of Reds.
Arrests for Part Two felonies (less serious) and important misdemeanors
showed an even higher incidence of Negro crime.
Estimating the Negro population at 50 percent, this means half the
people commit 85 percent of all the crimes. As will be shown in a later
chapter, a large quota of the white crimes can be charged to transients.
The data on crimes by whites are incontrovertible. Those by Negroes
in Washington, as well as in all other northern cities, do not give
the full picture. Most police officers prefer not to arrest blacks,
especially if there is no white complainant. They have nothing to gain
by such a pinch; they merely invite an uproar for “persecuting the
gentle Negro.”
Many colored law breakers are never arrested; many who are are not
booked, the officers often preferring to mete out summary punishment
on the back stairs, which they know is a better deterrent than the
inevitable discharge or suspended sentence by a timid, “seen” or
left-wing judge.
If you doubt that, the following is from the record of a Congressional
hearing and there are plenty of other stories like it:
Private Hamilton was assigned with Detective Sergeant Clyde Rouse for
midnight cruising. They observed a stolen car parked on Q Street NW,
with two occupants.
Rouse and Hamilton walked up to the car. Rouse went to the left and
Hamilton to the right. Rouse recognized the driver as Charles W. Scott,
colored, 24, of 476 O Street NW, wanted for questioning in connection
with stolen auto hold-ups.
Rouse opened the door and tried to seize Scott, but only succeeded in
shoving the gear shift lever out of gear. Rouse was on his knees on
the front seat, practically on top of the other occupant of the car, a
woman, who proved to be Marian Holston, 20, colored, of 16 Q Street NW,
who had been picked up by Scott.
Rouse made a desperate effort to reach the key to cut off the motor but
the woman fought him, kicking, scratching, and biting. The Negro driver
of the stolen car shoved the gear lever in and with the accelerator
down to the floor board, rocketed the car into high speed. Hamilton,
his head and shoulders through the window, holding on to the wheel,
attempted to steer. It was impossible for either officer to jump or
let go. The stolen car finally collided with a barricade, ran over the
sidewalk.
With Rouse still fighting to gain control, and Hamilton still
struggling, the car, without headlights and at a terrific speed
collided with a tractor trailer truck. The stolen auto was completely
demolished.
Private Hamilton was killed.
Scott had a record which showed he had been committed eight times as a
juvenile delinquent on charges of larceny, and in 1943 was sentenced to
from two to five years for auto stealing. Thereafter he was involved in
six charges of robbery.
But the U.S. Attorney’s office refused to prosecute the Negroes and the
police were advised that if they insisted on going through with charges
before a judge, the DA’s office would nolle prosse the case, because
they did not believe “a conviction could be obtained” against colored
people who had so unfortunately become involved in the killing of a
policeman. But when a policeman kills a Negro in the line of duty, the
politically chosen District Attorney is frequently highpressured by the
N.A.A.C.P. into bringing murder charges.
We have pointed to the misguided tendency to minimize the size and
extent of the Negro population. If more than half of Washington’s
population is not black, the per capita crime rate is even more
appalling.
Like white crime, Negro crime is organized and syndicated. This does
not mean every rapist, hold-up man and car-thief takes orders from
above. But it means that when he gets in trouble he does seek certain
directed sources for bail-bonds, lawyers and fixers.
Policy-sellers, bookmakers’ runners, reefer peddlers and junk salesmen
are employed by an organization which protects them also.
The process, as it works here, will be described in detail in the
chapters devoted to crime and law enforcement, as it is part of the
general picture of organized evil.
In Washington, as in other cities, Negro crime on the consumer and
go-between levels is operated and controlled by Negroes. They report
to, kick back to, and make their fixes at upper levels with, white
criminals. The topmost control rests in the hands of the international
Syndicate, the Mafia, the Unione Siciliano. The Washington Negro
crime-ring has more autonomy than usual, because there are few
Sicilians and even fewer interested in crude crime. The national
Syndicate prefers not to show its bloody hands openly in the capital,
but lurks in the background--in New York, principally.
The most powerful Washington Negro is the aforementioned Puddin’ Head
Jones. Jim Yellow Roberts is the boss of dope and reefers. He makes his
buys in wholesale lots in New York, Philadelphia and Baltimore, direct
from the importers. While temporarily embarrassed by a jail sentence,
Roberts continued to run the Negro dope trade.
“Whitey” Simpkins is king of the Black Belt’s numbers racket. Johnny W.
Carter, who owns the Club Bali, a black-and-tan resort, is one of the
gamblers’ chiefs. Their payoff is a percentage which eventually reaches
the Syndicate through channels which will be set forth in detail in the
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.
Baltimore is a way-station on the international underground railroad
that transports narcotics. Considerable foreign stuff comes in through
the port. It is also brought down from New York in quantity and stored
in the Italian and Negro sections, awaiting transportation in smaller
packages to the District of Columbia.
Local street sales of narcotics are concentrated on Pennsylvania Avenue
in the Negro district, where individual caps of heroin, morphine and
reefers are available cheap. Puerto Rican and Italian peddlers work
the white dives in East Baltimore Street, where they sell to whores,
strippers and B girls, many of whom use it and others sell it.
Baltimore’s Little Harlem--Pennsylvania Avenue--is more peaceful than
the Negro section of any other large town we ever gandered.
The cops don’t let the colored places get away with anywhere near what
they act blind to in the white spots on East Baltimore. Some of the
cleanest and best night clubs in town are the black-and-tan resorts
in the Pennsylvania Avenue district. Though whites are welcome, they
seldom visit them.
Gamby’s is an orderly colored night club with fine Negro entertainment
and a small but excellent line of tan chorines. There was no stripping
here, though one pretty wench, billed as an exotic dancer, shook
swiveled hips but took off nothing. It occurred to us that we had
never seen a Negro stripper anywhere. The girls of that race refuse to
vulgarize themselves in public to the extent that many white girls do.
Not only was Gamby’s show clean and entertaining, but the customers,
all colored, behaved well and were better dressed than the social
sewage we saw in most of the white dives.
We saw no soliciting here. But there was a one-armed bandit in the bar.
Willie Adams is the numbers boss of Darktown.
The Negro joints close on the dot, and then the streets fill up with
thousands of laughing, shouting, usually sober merrymakers. White
policemen patrol the streets in pairs, but at ease. We saw one buck
pull a razor on his sugar in front of Gamby’s. Two white cops in a
squad car drove off.
Baltimore has a large homosexual population, which is swelled by
visiting fairies from Washington. On mild nights you can find them in
Mt. Vernon Place, under the Washington monument, where they pick each
other up and make liaisons. A favorite gathering place is the Plaza
Bar, formerly Longfellows, at Madison and Charles. They also patronize
Ball’s and the Harem, the latter a corny night club with two entrances,
one leading to a stag bar with a sign on the door, “For Men Only,” and
a place on Mulberry near Howard. The lesbians hang out at the Earl Club.
Baltimore follows the trend of most large cities, other than New York,
in that its best people never go to cafes in town. When they feel the
need of night life they come to New York. When they want to drink and
dance in Baltimore, they do it at house parties or at country clubs.
So most of the patrons of Baltimore liquor dispensaries are the lowest
classes. The few better rooms, like the Club Charles, cater to the
sporty set, big spenders, gamblers, buyers and salesmen and trippers
up for the night from Washington.
When the Charles has a first-rate attraction it advertises in the
Washington papers. For a couple of years the ancient Ford’s Theatre
in Baltimore was the only house within 150 miles of the District
offering legitimate shows. Ford’s gets top road companies and attracts
show-lovers from Washington, who drive up for a sea-food dinner, for
which Baltimore is famous, an evening at the theatre, then take in the
cabaret at the Club Charles.
Baltimore’s big night life season begins when the races at Maryland’s
famed tracks bring in loose money from all over the country. Then
the town is brilliant, gambling is rampant and the whores cash in on
bonanza.
The city is the center of the so-called “Minor League” racing circuit.
There are five half-mile tracks in Maryland, which run almost all
year, with unknown plugs and has-beens, raced by “Gypsy” horsemen.
These are a unique breed. They own one or maybe two nags, which they
may have picked up for dog-meat money. They train them themselves and
often are their own jockeys. It is not uncommon for them to live in the
stables with their horses and even travel from track to track on the
horses’ backs. The entry fees at these tracks are as low as $10 and a
$100 purse is something to shoot at. The shenanigans at these tracks,
controlled by the gamblers in Baltimore, are atrocious.
This smudgy picture of the Baltimore that embraces the visitor brings
up the question: How Come?
This city of H. L. Mencken has long prided itself upon rebellion
against what most of its citizens believe to be an invasion of their
private rights. Prudery was never profitable in Baltimore. The
Prohibition Amendment was deported as an undesirable alien.
One old-timer said, “You think this is something? You should have been
here 50 years ago!”
Baltimore, the mid-Continent seaport, is one of the most provincial
of Eastern cities. In some of its set ways it is a backwash to the
colonial days and the cavaliers.
Yet Baltimore is the “big city” to thousands of hillbillies from the
nearby mountains of Western Maryland, Virginia and West Virginia, and
the poor white trash of Maryland’s Eastern shore counties on the
seaboard, and Delaware. They are the folk who trade and settle in
Baltimore.
It took us some time to figure out why there were so many pretty young
girls whoring in Baltimore. If they left home to sell it, why didn’t
they go on to New York? Research showed they came from the nearby hills
and farms; even those with roots deeper in the South or in the reaches
of West Virginia came to Baltimore because that was as far as their
small savings or imagination could get them. Some planned to make the
major league when they saved up a roll, but they were the exceptions.
One girl put it up to us frankly. All she had to offer was all she had.
New York, the word has spread, is closed to hustling hucksters. New
York’s market trades through switchboards for smartly turned-out call
gals, models, chorines, pent-house patooties. A rosy-cheeked milkmaid
in gingham dress, with no capital, would be pinched and jugged if she
winked to a Sand Street sailor.
The hungry harlots on Baltimore’s streets and in its stinking saloons
come there because the whisper back home is that it’s the place to go
to. Often procurers have brought them and started them, or they are
beckoned by bims who are there. “Bread of infamy” has more raisins than
home-baked loaves.
After soliciting at the bars a while, some get ambition. They see
strippers don’t even know how to walk across a stage, a requisite in
even repellent Chicago. They need only take off clothes, and all gals
know how to do that.
Few, if any strippers, except at a couple of places that import
semi-names, were ever in show business before. Pretty soon they’re
local celebrities, with a special following. These nude numbers are
heart-breaking to Broadway-wise guys who’ve known the best. Few have
looks, none have wit, and at $35 a week most of these stag-show
strumpets are overpaid.
Like New York, New Orleans and San Francisco have flavor, Baltimore
exceeds both as a ship port, yet it has little appeal for travelers.
Seafaring folk whose vessels bring them into Baltimore’s fine harbor
are an unromantic lot. No important passenger ships call. Those that do
carry steerage. Its freighters are cattle-ships and oil-tankers.
In the thousands of uniform flat-front red brick homes with the
balustradeless white stoops, unique to Baltimore, live good, solid
people, white and Negro.
The department of political skulduggery, though, in the Free State
metropolis, is a streamlined model, oiled up and with all the gadgets.
Baltimore is exceeded in population only by New York, Chicago,
Philadelphia, Los Angeles and Detroit. It has passed Boston, St. Louis
and Cleveland, and is growing. It is a combination of an anachronism
and a boom town. Labor is flocking in to work its mushrooming airplane
factories, huge wholesale trading houses, needle-trade shops and ship
works. These are mostly people without roots.
But Baltimore is getting the gravy that overflows from crowded
Washington, the hot money out for the kind of fun not tolerated in
the District. Baltimore is somewhat in the state of development
Chicago knew four decades ago. That city’s political morality is
still primitive. The same trend is manifest in Baltimore. Yet crimes
of violence and serious felonies are not as pronounced as in either
Washington or Chicago.
Most citizens are openly on the side of the law-breakers, too; the
concepts of liberty and non-interference play into the hands of the
hoodlums and the harpies.
At this writing, any and all forms of vice are tolerated and protected.
There is a price for everything, and it’s not much. In fact, it costs
only $500 to jump to the top of the police promotion list.
PART FOUR
THE LOWDOWN
(_Confidential!_)
36. INSIDE STUFF
The sharpie who got tired of selling the Brooklyn Bridge moved into the
District and now sells the Washington Monument.
Suckers aren’t born at the rate of one a minute, Washington never does
anything on time; but the Union Station and the airfield pour them out
day and night. And God made them marks. For they are either simpletons
with cow-dung on their boots or they are the conman’s dream, the lunk
with larceny in his heart. Those who don’t come to Washington to
gawk come to get. And the little chiseler is a setup for the bigger
chiseler. The characters in “The Gilded Age,” by Mark Twain and Charles
Dudley Warner have shaved off their beards, but otherwise are still
with us. Men with grandiloquent schemes, who think a Congressman
from their county can land them a $10,000,000 contract for the quick
conversion of a barn, are ready-made for the polished pros who can wrap
that up for them and who set themselves forth as “expediters.”
They confide, sotto voce, that they have connections which they can’t
even breathe about; they hint with delicacy that certain people must
be reached, and for that purpose advance funds must be placed in hand,
after which the expediter will gladly accept a small commission on the
completed deal--as, if, and never.
That is only one, but the main one, of the lines. Nowhere else are
there so many men and women who live in luxury and are guilty of
vagrancy. In a community of nonproducers, where there is a minimum of
tangible exchange, the nature of man breeds agents and agents’ agents,
because the liveliest industry is “getting to” people who can or could
deliver golcondas.
Those who are not big-time enough to know people can know people who
know people, and do nicely on the far fringes. They case a “prospect”
and work him on whatever he is after. His principal occupation will be
waiting--waiting; thus he will have the time as well as the temperament
to be plucked. In that atmosphere the crudest con-games flourish. Never
trust a stranger in Washington. Gyp-and-clip carney operators who are
run off the lot because they can’t shill a rustic to a ten-cent wheel
of fortune, come here and take executive vice-presidents.
_A. Swindlers with Swank_
Beware of smooth-gabbing guys who drive around in big black limousines
with chauffeurs and live in costly apartments staffed with butlers,
housekeepers and valets. Some may be on the up-and-up. But, what with
taxes and cost of living, few square shooters can afford such luxury.
A few we know:
One has an “in” in the reservation departments of the big hotels. He is
tipped off to the prospective arrival of a wealthy chump. This is how
he worked one case: When Mr. Money arrived at the airport, the grifter
had him paged, then introduced himself with a bunk story, such as being
a friend of the hotel manager, who had asked him to pick up the boob.
The lamb lamps the limo and is sure the glib gypster who is giving him
a lift is okay. The wire has been properly briefed on the stranger’s
habits. He knows he’d go for a little life, so he suggests they go to
his suite for a slug. In a little while, a couple of babes happen in.
Soon everyone is drunk and undressed. That’s when the pictures are
ground out. One metal-manufacturer went for $35,000, left town next day.
Another sold the famous Muscle Shoals Dam to a former Congressman from
Nebraska for $50,000. He used Henry Ford’s name as a reference and
flashed a phony letter from him authorizing the sale.
Some years ago, in another administration, this same tip-and-tosser
tried to sell forged documents to the President and Vice-President and
other high officials. He said they were found in the clothes of a dead
man on the street. The papers, if genuine, were so hot they would have
blown up the government.
If someone tells you he can let you in on the inside of a hot oil deal,
and then introduces you to a couple of “prospectors” who just arrived
from Kentucky, call the cops, especially if one is an Indian with long
plaited hair and the other is dressed like a vaudeville comedian’s
idea of a Southern Colonel. These fast workers make a splendid living
peddling queer securities from an office on the sidewalk in front of
the Ambassador Hotel, at 14th and K. They have a fabulous well in
Kentucky, and they guarantee it is producing. It is. One barrel a day.
They mooch strictly person-to-person. They do no business through the
mails, so they are clear of the Post Office and the SEC. Many of their
meat are middle-aged and elderly women, widows with a small amount of
insurance or a modest business like a rooming-house preferred. But they
will tackle tough touches, approached originally by dames.
Watch out for anyone you meet in a hotel who offers to get you a dame.
Odds are you will end up in a barrel, running second in a badger-game.
The boys tried it on a Washington newspaperman recently, but for once
they saw the back of the eight-ball. Not only didn’t the reporter
have any money, but he knew the right cops. He ended up borrowing a
century-note from them.
_B. Fortune-tellers_
Reading the future is big business and strictly sanctioned by law, at
an annual fee of $250.
Wives of high officials, members of Congress, and society dames are
pushovers for this kind of flimflam, and fork over sums to astrologers,
palmists, psychics, clairvoyants, and other such miracle-mongers. Many
government officials furtively consult fortune-fakers. (Look at the
state the country is in now.)
These thimble-riggers advertise openly. Most of them state “Licensed by
the District of Columbia,” which convinces the morons they have been
investigated and certified by government authorities.
One dame, Madame Harrison Astor, states “... prides herself on the fact
of being the only palmist in the world who during her stay in England
has been officially summoned to the St. James’ Palace to read for his
late Majesty King Edward VII.”
Martha Mar Vell, who advertises herself as a palmist, clairvoyante,
medium, spiritualist and practitioner of spirit ember and Egyptian sand
divinations, haughtily warns, “Please observe hours.”
Many fortune-tellers are on the con, hoodwink the superstitious into
investing in shady enterprises; they often do not even go that far, but
relieve them directly of money to cure the evil eye and the hex.
Some legislators and high officials make no moves without consulting
their favorite psychics. That is why they are licensed here, whereas in
other cities, when they get by, it is sub rosa.
Some oracles who boast august personages or their wives in their
clientele are in the pay of foreign governments, Communists, lobbyists
or fingermen for thieves. Lawmakers or law enforcers come to the
mediums or diviners to seek advice from the spirits or the stars and
get what the swindlers have been paid to tell them.
Gypsies never had it better. Most of them don’t bother to buy licenses.
As this was being written, a gypsy fortune-teller was under indictment
charged with using such props as torn diapers, a red candle and a
department store ladies’ room, to skin three Washington housewives
of $450. Police said Julia Nichols would show up at a woman’s home,
announce she was a church-worker, then tell the housewife she was
hexed. She would ask for money, a handkerchief or diaper. She would
tear the cloth in half, fold the money in it and depart to have it
“blessed.” And blessed if she would return!
Rituals were involved, the police said. In one case Miss Nichols
allegedly placed a silver dollar in a glass of water and told her
victim to park the tumbler in a bureau drawer. In another, she
allegedly enclosed the money in a diaper, with flour, salt, and a
length of the housewife’s hair. In a third case, police said, the
gypsy led a victim from her home to a department store rest-room
before taking her money. In another, she allegedly left a housewife’s
apartment with the currency after giving her a red candle to light and
telling her to recite the Lord’s Prayer.
_C. Free Loaders_
A shrewdie can live here forever on the cuff. A gate-crasher, if
well-dressed, can be choosy about eating and drinking gratis. Every day
there’s a profusion of breakfasts, lunches, cocktail parties, dinners
and late suppers thrown by lobbyists, corporations, officials, pressure
groups, embassies and social climbers.
Admission is by invitation, but bids are sent out broadside.
Organizations and lobbyists exchange mailing lists, even take names out
of directories. Almost anyone who cares to get on such a roster can.
Once on, his name makes all others. If he isn’t entered, it is simple
to mooch an invitation from someone who has one, because few use them.
Few large affairs are well guarded. It takes little ingenuity to walk
in nonchalantly and act like a belonger.
The gate-crashers turn up in the unlikeliest places, maybe breakfasting
at a press conference given by ladies of the W.C.T.U., lunching at a
radio salesmen’s convention and dining, in tails and white tie, at a
debutante’s ball.
Beds, and what goes with them--gals--can be stiffed, too. Those who
make the lobbyists’ lists are invited to the wild parties in the hotels
and mansions, where all that is on the house.
A friend of ours, a Congressman, told us this story. He was walking
down Connecticut Avenue, past the Mayflower Hotel, on his way to dine
at Harvey’s. He bumped into an acquaintance, a press agent from New
York, who insisted the Congressman eat with him. “I’m going up to a
swell private party at the Mayflower,” he said. The Congressman went
along, had a wonderful meal, with wine and cigars, and soon pretty
blondes began to mix. The satisfied legislator turned to his friend and
said, “Gee, this is a swell party. I’d like to thank the host. Who is
he?” The press agent said, “Damned if I know. I’ve been trying to find
out all night.”
_D. The Introducers_
Nowhere else on earth, including New York, are there as many guys who
make their livings introducing people. These articles thrive because
they are personality-plus ghees with guts, who know right people,
and if they don’t they go through the motions. If you want to meet
someone--cabinet officer, army brass, congressman, fixer, or social
hostess--these birds will introduce you--no hoke. They can get you
into the White House to meet the President. They play poker with
General Vaughan.
These fellows are functional. They are the catalysts who bring various
elements together. When they assume a contract from an industrialist to
introduce him to a bureau chief, they serve for the bureau chief, too,
by introducing him to the industrialist from whom he will get favors in
return for favors.
Some of the introducers work for straight fees. Others, smoother, are
taken care of in politer but more lucrative ways, such as getting on
the inside for a hunk of stock or a chance to buy government surplus
for peanuts or other charming get-rich-quick methods.
You can be introduced to charming ladies, too. Polished procuring is a
polite profession. No lush-rolling or extortion involved. It is honest
pimping. Yet, little Rollo, there are still some honest gentlemen in
Washington.
37. TIPS ON THE TOWNS
_Booze_
Washington consumes four times as much hootch as the entire state of
Maryland, including Baltimore, which alone has 200,000 more population.
The most popular kind of liquor is bourbon, suh, with rye next. Only
fairies, English diplomats, New Yorkers and spats-wearers drink Scotch.
The legal liquor closing for on-premises consumption in the District
is 2 a.m. on weekdays and midnight on weekends. Only beer and light
wine may be sold on Sundays. Baltimore sells until 2 a.m., seven
nights a week, though some saloons which do not serve food and which
pay a lower license fee must close their bars at one. (But you can sit
there until 2 to finish anything you bought earlier.) Only beer and
light wine may be sold for on-premises consumption in Virginia. The
closing hour is midnight. Prince Georges, Md., has a law similar to
Washington’s--seldom observed.
Legal boozing age in the three jurisdictions is 21, though minors over
18 may drink beer in Maryland and D.C.
But there’s something about the climate--everyone looks older than he
is.
_Cabaret Info_
Most District area night clubs do three shows nightly, at 8, 10:30 and
12:30, and two on Saturdays and Sundays, at 8:30 and 12. The hotel
grills do two, at 8:30 and 12.
The burlesque joints in Baltimore grind continuously until 2.
Few Washington night clubs impose a cover charge. All have minimums,
usually a dollar or $1.50. The hotel cafes, when presenting expensive
attractions, usually put on a couvert up to $2.
It’s agin the law and the rules of the American Guild of Variety
Artists to permit female entertainers to sit at tables with male
guests. The hotels and the better Washington night clubs enforce
this. The others wink at it. There is no attempt at observance in the
Maryland suburbs or in Baltimore.
_Checks and Chicks_
When the cutie in the checkroom hands you back your hat, don’t think
for a moment she keeps the tip you slip her. She works on a straight
per diem for a concessionaire, who pays the restaurant or hotel by the
year. But if she doesn’t turn in a tip for every hat, she loses her
job on grounds she swiped the money or she is so stupid or icky that
she gets stiffed. For many years, the minimum hat check in New York by
habit has been two bits, but the hoosiers who come to Washington get
lavish with a dime or sneak off ignoring the plate with the decoy coins
entirely. The concessionaire figures 18 cents as the average tip and on
that basis he checks his employes. The gals learn how to pinch part of
the loot from liberal tippers, though their uniforms are made without
pockets. Photo concession girls may keep their tips, but cigaret girls
have to turn theirs in.
_Clip Joints_
Beware of the invitation from the stranger you meet at the bar, who
suggests you go to a friend’s place after hours for liquor and gals.
There are at least 300 clip joints running in Washington, most of them
in the colored neighborhoods, in private houses and flats, where you
can get booze of a sort after-hours; but it may be spiked with knockout
drops and you will wake up rolled and robbed--if you wake up at all.
Baltimore clip-dives operate more closely to the orthodox custom. As
soon as you sit down in a hideaway, a couple of bimbos rush to your
table and order drinks. When you are ready to go, you get a bill that
includes the month’s rent. If you don’t come across, you’ll be lucky to
get out with a broken nose.
_Dancing_
If your specialty is the rumba or samba, don’t expect to find a partner
in Washington or Baltimore, They’ll do a shaky fox trot to that music.
The codgers still do the old conservative dances. The youngsters are
jive maniacs.
At this writing, there are no public dance halls in Washington where
you can meet partners, but, though table hopping is supposed to be de
trop, you won’t have any trouble getting dames on the loose to dance
with you. As in Baltimore, they will solicit you for dances, even if
that’s all they’re after.
All night clubs, but few hotels, present dancing on Sundays in
Washington and Maryland.
For matinee and cocktail dancing consult the appendix or the daily
papers.
_Dates_
If you still can’t get yourself a girl after having read this book, we
don’t think you’re trying. But here are some easy ways:
Ask the bell captain.
Refer to appendix for a list of dance studios.
Call Clara Lane, Friendship Center, Republic 3504 (Washington), for
personal interview.
Get a manicure.
Read the newspaper ads for dances run by the State Societies.
Join a church or the Y.
In the summer, go to any beach or take a ride on a Potomac steamer.
Strike up a “Haven’t I met you somewhere” with any girl you see in a
cocktail lounge or a hotel lobby. For that matter, your chances are
good with almost any girl you see anywhere in Washington. She may say
no. We bet you five to three she won’t.
_Dining_
We will recommend no restaurants here. A list of best-known places in
Washington and Baltimore will be found in the appendix. We guarantee
none. But Baltimore goes in for good food in the good places, while
Washington doesn’t know what fine cuisine is. Meals are cheaper in
Washington than in New York. Baltimore, with some of the finest
restaurants in the country, charges even less.
Most people dine early in both towns. Some of the best restaurants
close for the night at 8 or 9. This is the Keokuk touch.
Washington politicians hang out at Harvey’s and the Occidental. They
don’t mind the insults. Some of the better food is at Olmsted’s. The
tax-payers foot the losses of the dining-rooms in the Senate and House
of Representatives.
Baltimore politicians dine in the back room of the Emerson; the ward
heelers eat at Bickford’s, called “No. 10 Downing Street.”
There are no swank dining places of the grade of El Morocco, the Colony
or 21 in Washington or Baltimore. The elite in government service eat
lunch in their own private dining-rooms and dinner at their clubs.
_Divorce_
The divorce rate in the District, as well as in Maryland and Virginia,
is considerably below the national average, though the grounds are not
particularly oppressive. At this writing there are 4,000 divorced males
in the District of Columbia and 8,000 divorced females.
All three jurisdictions require one year’s residence before beginning a
divorce action, which eliminates them from competition with Nevada or
Florida. If the grounds are out-of-state, it’s two years in D.C. You
have to wait six months after a District decree before remarriage.
Grounds for divorce in the District are adultery, desertion for two
years, conviction for felony, and living apart five years. Maryland
adds impotence and insanity. Virginia also grants divorce for
impotence, pregnancy of wife at time of marriage and wife’s unchastity,
as well as all causes specified in the District.
Some smart lawyers know how to beat the residence provisions, but if
you can afford that kind of a lawyer you’re much better off going to
states that specialize in hot-cake divorces.
_Guns_
You require a license to carry a concealed weapon, but no one enforces
the law if you keep a dozen machine-guns in your house. The courts
have ruled you are not carrying a concealed weapon if you have a gun
in the glove compartment of your car or if you have an unloaded one in
your pocket, even if you have cartridges on you. Cops can’t pinch you
without a search warrant.
The Federal Small Arms Act, enforced by the Alcoholic Tax Unit of the
U.S. Treasury, imposes a $300 tax on transfer of certain firearms
and forbids any felon to carry a pistol. But this is practically
unenforceable in the District, because of the niggardly appropriations
of Congress and the disinclination of federal judges to sentence anyone
for anything.
_Hotels_
In most towns we warn first-time visitors to beware of cab drivers who
steer them to hotels they don’t want to go to. But Washington hotels
are usually so crowded, you’re lucky to be steered. We have seen people
sit in lobbies from early in the morning until midnight, while the
clerks phoned all other hotels, trying to take care of the overflow.
Do not come to Washington unless you have made a reservation in
advance. Be sure the reservation is confirmed. A few hotels are part
of nationwide chains, among them the Mayflower (Hilton), the Hay-Adams
(Manger) and the Statler. You can probably make your reservations and
have them confirmed in your own home town.
Hotel rates are high. The cheapest single room in the first-class
hotels is $8, and that faces the garbage cans. Modest suites are $20 a
day, and you pay at least $25 for anything decent.
But Washington abounds with cheap assignation hotels, where you can
take a broad for the night for three bucks, no baggage required. In
Baltimore you can find this kind for as little as one dollar a night.
Few good Washington hotels have any qualms about your morals. If you
are raided because that gal isn’t your wife, it is because the house
dick and bell captain have their own stable of fillies and they get
no cut-in from outside competition. The “security officer” (refined
designation for a house dick) of one of the oldest and most famous
hotels in Washington, near the White House, was recently fired because
he ran a shakedown racket, putting the bite on guests who brought dames
in.
(_Inside stuff_: Smart guys start charge accounts in hotels and have
their bills mailed to their offices. That way, if they suddenly make
a date, they can call and have a room prepared for them. Hotels do
not like to cash checks for strangers, but will for those with charge
accounts. It is a specific crime to defraud an inn-keeper.)
Washington and Baltimore hotels, unlike those in northern cities, are
not required to serve or admit Negroes.
(Unless you are expecting a guest, do not open your door if someone
raps on it. Many people have been robbed, raped or assaulted that
way. When the girl with the nice voice phones and announces she’s
from Harris & Ewing, the photographers, and read you were in town and
wanted to take your picture, don’t think you are a celebrity. This firm
goes through all registrations, plays for the chumps. After you pose
for their photos, a glib salesman sells you a dozen. We wouldn’t have
minded, but they phoned us at three in the afternoon, and we never get
up until four.)
(_Tips_: And that’s the only way you’ll get along in any hotel--with
tips, big ones. If you can’t get a room, slip the room clerk a sawbuck.
Liberal handouts to the bellhops, doormen and elevator boys will help
you get service, also pave the way for the things that hotels aren’t
supposed to supply, but always do.)
_Limousines_
We told you about the smooth con-men who travel in shiny
chauffeur-driven limousines. The cars are easy to obtain. All smart
travelers rent them wherever they go. They cost $5 an hour, which is
usually cheaper than cabs for any considerable use. They are available
at any hour. The chauffeurs are well-trained and in uniform. The
cars are brand new Cadillacs or Packards, indistinguishable from a
millionaire’s private car, except that the D.C. license plate begins
with the letter “L.” Look in the phone book or ask the hotel porter to
get you a car or phone Haines, HObart 8460, ask for James Conley, the
best driver in town. Minimum tip one dollar an hour, unless you’re a
skunk. In Baltimore, phone Belvedere, LE 8888.
_Marriage_
It’s much cheaper and easier without rice and old shoes here, but you
will always find a few old-fashioned people who like it the hard way.
If you are one who has to be respectable, we will give you the lowdown
on how to go about it in the area.
(_Note_: Common law marriages are valid in the District. They are not
in Maryland and Virginia, though the former state, while prohibiting
such marriages for its own residents, will recognize as binding any
such entered into in the District.)
The marriageable ages in the three jurisdictions are 16 for girls and
18 for boys, with parents’ consent; 18 and 21 in D.C. and Maryland,
without consent, and 21 and 21 in Virginia. Marriages between first
cousins are permitted in all three.
Maryland and Virginia forbid marriages between whites and Negroes or
Orientals. Virginia also proscribes American Indians. There are no
racial restrictions in the District.
Maryland and Virginia require medical certificates before marriage,
but Washington doesn’t. So, if you flunk your Wassermann, come to the
District. The waiting time between issuance of license and ceremony
is two days in Maryland, four in the District, and none in Virginia.
Maryland requires that all marriages be solemnized by a clergyman,
which is pretty prissy for that state, where you can get so much
without marrying at all.
Both the District and Maryland permit one party of a proposed marriage
to take out a license without the consent or knowledge of the other.
Sometimes overly-eager ones take out these licenses (which are
published) as a means of bringing final pressure on the other person.
Recently a 21-year-old Marine shot himself to death after a minister
refused to marry him and an unwilling maiden who had not been aware a
license was issued.
Washington men are the choosiest in the country when it comes to
picking wives. The marriage rate is falling yearly. In 1950, 10,729
licenses were taken out compared to 10,885 the year before and 12,156
in 1948. Meanwhile other cities are reporting increases. These figures
are even worse than they read. Many transients come to wed in the
District, to avoid blood tests elsewhere or to boast they were hitched
in the nation’s capital.
_Medical_
Osteopaths, chiropractors, naturopaths and other such unorthodox
healers are permitted both in the District and Maryland and are allowed
to precede their names with the honorific “Dr.” Many Washington
residents from Los Angeles, the Southwest and the moronic regions where
faith healers, layer-oners-of-hands, herb doctors and other such quacks
are common, are now living in Washington and provide a boom market for
the irregular curers.
One of Washington’s biggest medical problems is V.D., because of
the shifting, transient nature of the population and the unusual
Negro percentage. Last year, more than 16,000 cases of gonorrhea
were reported, and 507 new cases of syphilis. Fifteen people died of
unchecked syphilis.
_Midday Manners_
Both as a world capital and as an Eastern city, Washington’s manners
and modes, on paper at least, could be supposed to resemble those
of New York. But it is in a warmer belt and much of its resident
population originated in other sections of the country, where habits
are different, so some compromise of customs is common.
Washington women generally follow the New York style of not wearing
hats. But the men wear lids all year around, even on the hottest days.
The women wear suits for daytime in winter and print dresses in summer.
Men wear dark suits in winter, but, because of the deadly heat, don
such tropical outfits as Palm Beach, seersucker, crash and linen
in summer. Like most yokels, a sharp crease in the sleeve means a
well-pressed suit.
A Washington woman never wears slacks on the street. When you see any
dame so attired, you know she arrived by bus on a sight-seeing jaunt.
_Midnight Manners_
Few women wear hats at night. Those who do are visitors. Most men
wear dark suits but compromise good taste with god-awful loud ties.
Customers of the classier rooms, i.e., the hotel grills, are apt to
overdress. You see more people wearing evening clothes than in New
York, where such frummery is now worn only on occasions when required,
like a formal ball or the opening of the opera.
All restaurants and night clubs, regardless of season, require men to
wear coats, though some of the more popular-priced ones do not demand
ties in the summer.
_Protocol_
If you are a climber, or the wife of a government official, social
precedence and correct social forms are more important in your life
than the Sermon on the Mount. When in doubt about whether the governor
of Nevada sits ahead of or in back of the minister of Costa Rica, you
should consult Mrs. Carolyn Hagner Shaw, Wisconsin 3030.
_Taxi Talk_
The first thing that amazes the visitor is the terrific number of cabs
on the streets. There is no limitation by law and, at this writing,
there are 9,000. Cabs do not have meters, but operate on a zone system,
the first charge 30 cents anywhere within the zone, or 20 cents a head
for two or more passengers. They are asking for an extra dime a zone.
The out-of-towner is always puzzled figuring out how the owner of the
cab gets a fair shake from the driver, with no meter to check up on
him. It was Congressman Tom Blanton who slipped riders into all bills
to ban meters in the District.
What happens is that every hackman is an independent contractor.
He rents his cab by the day, for which he pays $6, which includes
insurance, tires and advertising. He buys his own gas and oil, which
comes to another $3.50 a day. He keeps everything above that outlay.
When business is bad, he swallows the loss himself. He can keep the cab
24 hours a day, and he usually drives it home at night and starts out
in the morning in it. Some older cabs are rented for less, as low as
$3.50 a day. These are used by men who hack in their spare time, such
as policemen, chauffeurs, and government employes, who act as cabbies
for four or five hours a day.
Washington law not only permits cabbies to double up passengers, but
requires them to do so. Your taxi will not leave Union Station until
it has a full load going in your direction. When Washington cabs go to
the airport in Virginia or the suburbs of Maryland, they make a flat
rate. They are not permitted to pick up return passengers outside the
District. Maryland and Virginia cabs which come into Washington must
return home empty.
Despite the huge number of cabs, it is almost impossible to get one
at around five, when the government offices empty, or whenever it
rains. The rates are so cheap, many Washingtonians find it costs
them only a nickel more to go to their destination by cab than by
bus or street-car. Few locals ever tip. Cab drivers fall all over
out-of-towners.
If you are having trouble hailing a cab, the best place to get one is
outside a hotel or a popular restaurant or night spot, for they will be
driving up to these places with passengers. If you are caught at the
Capitol and can’t get a cab, go over to the Congressional Hotel, across
from the House Office Building, where the doorman can usually snag one
for you. Don’t forget a tip. Our favorite cabbie is Harold Ramsburg, EM
2438, and you can hire him by the hour.
_Tipping_
While on that subject, don’t act like a rube, a Southern cracker
or a dope. Most hotel, restaurant and transportation employes are
practically dependent for their livings on gratuities. Ten percent is
no longer enough. Your waiter should get 20 percent, even more in a
high class place where each waiter has only a few tables. Don’t forget
the captains and headwaiters, especially if you want a good table.
_Traffic Tickets_
We always got our parking and speeding tickets killed by Congressmen’s
secretaries. That is one thing they are good for. Congressmen are
the rulers of the District; when their secretaries call the District
Commissioners or the Chief of Police, they get a respectful hearing.
Congressmen, themselves, are immune from arrest when Congress is in
session. They are provided with special plates over their own license
tags reading “Member, 82nd Congress.” Smart Congressmen seldom use the
special plates. They say that when they do, traffic cops always bother
them, then suddenly pretend they noticed the plates for the first time,
after which they let the Congressman go, making it appear they are
doing him a great favor. The next day they show up in his office asking
for a favor--a promotion, probably.
_Transportation_
You can get to Washington by train, plane, bus, auto, bike, or merely
hitch-hiking. Train service, while frequent and fast, is generally
lousy. From New York on the Pennsylvania there is only one first-class
train, the Congressional Limited, which makes the 226 miles in 215
minutes, but it’s a shell of its old self, when it was all Pullman
and extra fare. The Congressional is one of the few day trains in the
country which runs complete cars of drawing rooms. These are always
full, with lobbyists, officials and their dames, and other heavy
drinking parties, spending the three and a half hours as pleasantly as
possible. (_Note_: No liquor is served on trains in Pennsylvania on
Sundays.)
The two best trains from the West are the B & O’s Capital Limited
and the Pennsy’s Liberty Limited from Chicago. The Capital is an
all-Pullman streamliner and carries a through car to Los Angeles, which
connects with the Santa Fe’s Chief in Chicago.
Railroad and plane tickets to and from Washington are difficult to
get, especially on key days of the week. Traffic moves to Washington
on Sunday nights and Monday and away on weekends, beginning Thursday.
At those times a little judicious tipping of hotel porters is advised.
Railroad and plane employes are forbidden by law to take gratuities,
but who’s going to do anything about it if they find a $10 bill neatly
folded in their breast pockets?
The Washington Airport, though in Virginia, is only 15 minutes from the
center of town. Baggage is unloaded considerably faster than in other
airports. But the Union Station is a madhouse. Sometimes it takes a
half-hour for your bags to get out to the taxi stand, if you can get a
red cap at all. Then there is another wait for a cab going your way to
fill up. (_Note_: The railroad exacts a 25-cent charge for each parcel
carried by the red cap. He doesn’t keep that. You are expected to tip
him on top.)
(_Inside Stuff_: There are special airplane and railroad ticket offices
for members of Congress in the Capitol Building.)
38. CONFIDENTIAL GUIDE TO WASHINGTON AND BALTIMORE
_Alcoholism Treated_: The per capita consumption of hootch here
is the highest in the world. If you raise it still more call:
(Washington) Greenhill Institute, CO 4754. (Baltimore) Baltimore
Clinic, LA 1200.
_Amusement Parks_: Where lonely people meet. The rides are fun,
too. (Washington) Glen Echo Park and Marshall Hall Park.
(Baltimore) Bay Shore Park, Gwynn Oak Park and Carlins.
_Art Instruction_: Learn to paint nudes in the nude. (Washington)
de Burgos, ME 1039; Kane, ST 7917.
_Astrologers_: If you’re wondering what Congress is going to do
next. (Washington) Mabel Bowles, HO 5017. They’re outlawed in
Baltimore.
_Baby Sitters_: Some people still bring their brats with them. If
you’re that dumb after reading this book, call: (Washington) Part
Time Mothers, DI 2300; or Courtesy, EX 5050. (Baltimore) Samuels,
HO 4303; or Villa, CL 1931.
_Bail Bonds_: The fee is $75 for each $500. If you work for the
Big Mob, the price is just half. Call: (Washington) Weinstein,
ME 9292; Jones, ME 8123; Ryan, RE 7661 and O’Conor, ME 5500.
(Virginia) Weinstein, WO 6700. (Baltimore) Statewide, BR 8200 and
Walker, SA 6333.
_Barber Shops, All Night and Sunday_: If you failed to make a
date before midnight, why do you want to get shaved so late?
(Washington) Robinson’s, 829 14th St. (Baltimore) East Baltimore
St.
_Baseball_: The Washington Senators never get anywhere, but they
always make money. That’s because Washingtonians come from every
part of the country and liberally patronize Griffith Stadium
when their old home teams are in town. All week-day games are at
night. Baltimore is larger than half a dozen major league cities,
yet it only has a minor league team, the famous Orioles. Night
games, too.
_Blacksmiths_: Left-Wingers insist conservative Congressmen are
still in the horse-and-buggy stage. This proves it. If you’re
looking for a smithy, try (Washington) Capital, 4706 Rhode Island
Ave.; Del Grosso, 424 New Jersey Ave. (Baltimore) Adams, 2628
Boston; or Phillips, 645 East 25.
_Boating_: (Washington) Potomac Boat Club, foot of 36th St.;
Dempsey’s Boat House, 3600 K St. (Baltimore) Atlas, foot of
Broadway; Ward Brothers, Deal, Maryland. And don’t forget the
excursion and night boats on the Potomac and the Chesapeake.
_Bookmakers_: Must you ask?
_Bridge Games Found_: The experts claim the game is all skill, but
with us it’s purely luck--bad. (Washington) RE 9886.
_Burlesque_: For what New York can’t have--see page 263.
_Carnival Suppliers_: Maybe you’ve always wanted to own a paddle
wheel, a bingo layout or a Jap rolling ball game. Merry-go-rounds
and ferris wheels, too. (Baltimore) Superior, ED 3737 and United,
LE 6239.
_Cats Boarded_: In case your pussy is shy, this place has a lady
attendant. (Washington) Williams, SH 6923.
_Chaperones_: Most unattached ladies are so ugly they don’t need
this. But if you don’t trust your cutie call (Washington) DI 2300
or EX 8596. If no answer, call us.
_Chinese Cooking; How to Learn_: Personally we don’t know why you
want to, but if you got a yen for moo goo gai pan and don’t like
the way it’s prepared in the marts of trade, try Washington
School, EX 0265.
_Cleaners, One Day_: When the Fair Dealers finish spending your
dough, you probably will have gone to the cleaners. But if you
have a suit and you’ve got to get it back the same day, try your
hotel valet or (Washington) Central, 1405 H or Century, 633 F,
cleaning done while you wait. (Baltimore) Premier, Monroe and
Windsor, same day.
_Colonic Irrigation_: Just in case. (Washington) Warcoff, RE 0872;
Riggs, ME 2388; Washington, BI 7701. (Baltimore) Keller, LE 6862.
_Comfort Stations and Rest Rooms_: When you gotta go, you gotta go.
(Washington) Pennsylvania Ave. between 13th and 14th; Library
Park; La Fayette Square; the Capitol and all public buildings.
(Baltimore) Lexington Market.
_Detective Agency, Colored_: That’s not where we got our info.
(Washington) Keystone, RE 8913.
_Detective Agency, Confidential_: They can find anything except
what’s happening to the tax-payers’ money. (Washington)
Bradford, NA 4610; Burns, NA 7681. (Baltimore) Pinkerton, MU 2770.
_Drags, Costumes For, Also Wigs_: (Washington) Jack Mullane, 714
11th St.
_Drug Addiction Treated_: Uncle Sam will do it free if he catches
you first. Otherwise (Baltimore) Relay Sanitarium, phone Elkridge
40, or Pinel, phone Ellicotte City 362.
_Drug Stores, All Night_: If you run out of lipstick at 3 a.m.
(Washington) Peoples, Thomas Circle, HO 1234. (Baltimore) Morgan
& Millard, Baltimore and South Sts., SA 4233. For 24-hour
prescription service, phone Arbutus 2019.
_Emergency Information_: (Washington) Birth Control Clinic, 715 E
St., SW, NA 4780. (Baltimore) Planned Parenthood Association,
1028 North Broadway, DR 1681.
_Escort Services_: To accompany the lonely. (Washington) DE 8000.
_Fashion Shows_: Some guys surprise their wives and ask to come
along. See the pretty models Thursdays at six in the Willard
lounge; Fridays at six, Mayflower lounge (Washington). In
Baltimore--Wednesday luncheon at the Belvedere.
_Friends, to Meet New Ones_: How lonesome can you get? Call
(Washington) The Just For Fun Club, DE 2500 or Clara Lane, RE
3504 (Baltimore). Visit the Baltimore Friendship Club, Charles
Street.
_Frustrated, are you?_ (Washington) Curt Miller, 1406 G St.
_Gambling_: See page 207.
_Ghost Writers_: Some Congressmen write their own. (Washington)
Henderson, NA 4576.
_Guns and Firearms_: After reading this book, you may want to
defend yourself. (Washington) Lorch, 1010 Vermont; Temblers, 913
D. (Baltimore) Baltimore Gun Smith, 218 So. Broadway.
_Handwriting Expert_: In case she forged the embarrassing love
letters call (Washington) Dr. Newton J. Baker, DI 7070. If you
really wrote them don’t bother.
_Limousines_: So you want to put on the swank. (Washington) Haines,
HO 8460, ask for James Conley. (Baltimore) Associated, HA 5494;
Belvedere, LE 8888.
_Manicurists_: No matter how easy it is to get others, most
traveling men still prefer the finger-nail mechanics. They’re on
duty in every hotel and large barber shop. Some will come to your
room.
_Manure_: This has absolutely nothing to do with the subject,
unless it’s what you think about when you hear your Congressman’s
speech. We said Washington is a small town and we mean it. You
can get it by the shovelful or the truckload from American, GE
2440. (Baltimore) Town and Country, HO 0906.
_Maps_: We don’t know what this has to do with this book, because
none of the cartographs they sell are confidential. On the other
hand, a lot of phony foreign spies buy them over the counter and
send them home as the genuine article filched from the files. See
classified phone directory.
_Marital and Sex Problems_: This book is guaranteed to cure them
for some, cause them for others. (Washington) Lurie, CO 1331;
Psychological Service, OL 1980.
_Masseurs_: If you read what we wrote about the Hopkins Institute
you will know why we don’t want to get mixed up with the F.B.I.
on this one. However, if you still insist on getting a massage,
refer to the classified phone book. Most are legit.
_Models’ Agencies_: All girls like to pose. Some get paid for
it. If you want to be a model or hire a model see (Washington)
Phyllis Bell, ST 2353; Fashion Show, NA 6590; Models Bureau, DU
1000; Ralston, RE 0069. (Baltimore) Academy Models, PL 4454;
Model Agency, PL 4019. (_Inside Stuff_: Some model agencies try
to sell you lessons, photos and make-up instead of securing work
for you. Have nothing to do with them.)
_Out-of-town Newspapers_: The news is bad all over. (Washington)
14th and New York. (Baltimore) Calvert and Fayette.
_Palmists_: In Washington, when she says, “Give a little girl a
great big hand,” she ain’t the ghost of Texas Guinan. If you want
to have your palm read, try Astor, ST 0698; De Long, ME 5234;
Gentry, EX 3075. Illegal in Baltimore.
_Personal Services_: We mean such things as running errands,
answering your phone and doing your dirty work. (Washington)
Buddie’s, MI 9034.
_Personality Developed_: They laughed when he walked into the
drawing-room. After he took lessons, they wouldn’t let him in the
drawing-room. But if you’ve got a personality like a dead fish,
try (Washington) Colt, OV 4531 or Parker, ME 2299.
_Post Office, All Night_: Just in case you want to write home for
dough. (Washington) General Post Office. (Baltimore) Calvert and
Fayette.
_Pregnancy Tests_: If your luck is dubious. (Washington)
Professional, NO 2944.
_Psychics and Mediums_: Guaranteed to put you in touch with your
great aunt (Washington) Wright, AD 4249; Mar Vell, HO 5017. No
lost souls admitted in Baltimore.
_Psychologists_: Some people were born goofy, others went crazy
reading this book. No matter how you got that way, call
(Washington) MacBaugh, OL 1980 or Dupont, HU 7979. (Baltimore)
Kaufman, BE 5640 or Schor, LE 5445.
_Punch Boards_: If you would like to set up a little gambling
racket back in your home town, you can buy the paraphernalia in
Baltimore from A & A, 715 Ensor or Royal, 618 East Baltimore.
_Secretarial_: Some people call them because they want to dictate
in their hotel rooms. Others have hopes. We do our own typing.
Look in the classified phone directories under “Stenographic.”
_Shooting Galleries_: Some Washingtonians practice their
marksmanship on the streets. If you want to do yours indoors go
to (Washington) 9th St. between Pennsylvania and G or (Baltimore)
East Baltimore St.
_Shopping Service_: Some guys don’t do anything they shouldn’t when
they’re away from home. Others bring their wives beautiful gifts.
(Washington) Embassy, EX 7158; Ideas Unlimited, ST 0082. Phyllis
Bell, ST 2353 will help women who have no confidence in their
own taste to buy their clothes. (Baltimore) E.Z., SA 0295. All
department stores maintain such services.
_Slot-Machines_: Some people buy them for their game rooms.
Personally, we’d like to own a two-bit one-armed bandit in the
Times Square subway station. Whatever purpose you want one
for, you can buy them in (Washington) at the Game Room, 1538
Connecticut Ave.; Atlas, 1360 H St. NE or Silent Sales, 1771
Columbia Road. (Baltimore) A & A, 715 Ensor; Premier, 214 South
Howard. It’s illegal to transport across state lines.
_Spiritualists_: They talk to the departed. (Washington) Brewer,
EX 3075; Worsley, LI 3-3557. (Baltimore) If they call themselves
fortune tellers they’re taboo. But Madame Matthew, ED 1260, is a
“spiritual advisor.” So is Madame Collins, SA 4745.
_Stags_: Why anyone should have to go to one to see naked dames is
beside us. However, if you want to hire such babes to perform in
the District or in Baltimore, phone (Baltimore) Sponsler, MU 0271.
_Sucker Lists_: Have you anything to sell by mail? (Washington)
Intelligence Bureau, 1311 G, has “wealthy” list of government
executives, home-owners, teachers, graduates, businessmen and
women, etc. for D.C. and suburbs. (Baltimore) call Webb LE 5671.
_Tattoo Artists_: If your girl friend likes pretty pictures, try
(Washington) 8th St. SE or (Baltimore) East Baltimore St.
_Telegraph Office, All Night_: Washington 708 14th NW, phone NA
7100--Baltimore, 108 E. Baltimore, LE 6300.
_Theatre Tickets for New York and Philadelphia Shows_: When the
road won’t come to you, you’ve got to go find it. Always reserve
your seats in advance, because if the show’s any good you
can’t get ’em, and if you can you won’t want to see the show.
(Washington) New York Service, NA 5575; Stabler, RE 7307; Willard
Hotel Agency, NA 5575. (Baltimore) New York Service, SA 2100.
_Toupees and Wigs_: When you blow your top. (Washington) Emil, 1221
Connecticut Ave.; Hepner’s, 612 13th St. (Baltimore) National,
334 North Howard.
_Worrier, Professional_: Before you lose your hair, consult
(Washington) Thelma Hunt, RE 4600 or Clifton, AD 4550. They’re
willing to get bald, for a fee.
And now turn to
PART FIVE
THE APPENDIX
(_Confidential!_)
A. HEADWAITERS
_This and a sawbuck gets you an insult._
AMBASSADOR HOTEL (NA-8510) Hi-Hat: Joe Brito
CARLTON HOTEL (ME-2626) Congo Room: Stephen
COLONY RESTAURANT (ST-8165): Orlando Connio
MAYFLOWER HOTEL (DI-3000) Lounge: Alfred Leggett
OLD NEW ORLEANS (RE-7284): Ivanhoe Wills
OLMSTED RESTAURANT (ME-8055): Gus Kooles
SHOREHAM HOTEL (AD-0700) Palladian Room: George and Alfred.
Blue Room: Paul
STATLER HOTEL (EX-1000) Embassy Room: Nick
WARDMAN PARK HOTEL (CO-2000) Caribar Room: Leslie Matke
BALTIMORE
CLUB CHARLES (VE-8020): Tommy McGee
EMERSON HOTEL (MU-4400): Walter Katzli
LORD BALTIMORE HOTEL (LE-8400) Oak Room: Mr. Cavalier
SHERATON BELVEDERE HOTEL (MU-1000): Antone
SOUTHERN HOTEL (SA-1600): Nick Brown
B. GUSTATORY GUIDE
_Listed, but not necessarily guaranteed._
FOR COCKTAILS:
Anchor Room, 12th & H, NA-9220 (servicemen and pick-ups)
Cafe Caprice, Roger Smith Hotel, NA-2740 (government workers’ hangout)
Chelsea Room, Hotel Carlyle, N. Capitol & E, EX-7670 (gathering place
for Southerners)
Hay-Adams Lounge and English Tap Room, 800 16th St., NW, ME-2260
(respectable)
Hi-Hat, Ambassador Hotel, NA-8510 (pretty babes)
King Cole Room, 820 Conn. Ave., ME-3935 (flashy crowd)
Mayflower Lounge, Conn. Ave. & De Sales, DI-3000 (political)
Statler Hotel, 16th & K, EX-1000 (cosmopolitan)
Washington Roof, 15th & Penn., ME-5900 (summer)
Willard Hotel, Penn. & 14th, NA-4420 (pretty babes)
FOR DINING:
Alfonso’s, 1403 L St., ME-7803 (excellent New York cuisine)
Allies Inn, 1703 New York, NA-0523 (famous cafeteria, high prices,
elderly ladies favorite)
Allison’s Little Tea House, Arlington, Va., OT-7900 (popular suburban
luncheon spot; government workers)
Arbaugh’s, 2606 Conn., AD-8980 (spare ribs)
Cannon’s Steak House, 1270 5th NE, LI-3-8685 (in the market place but
high class)
Ceres Grill, 1307 E, NA-9427 (government clerks like its good food at
low prices)
Colony, 1737 De Sales St., ST-8165 (elegant)
Collingwood, On the Potomac, OV-1521 (suburbanites’ delight)
Duke Zeibert’s, 1730 L, ST-1730 (new and popular steak house)
Hall’s, 1000 7th St., SW, ME-8580 (sea food on the waterfront)
Fan & Bill’s, 1132 Conn., RE-9856 (New York style)
Harvey’s, 1107 Conn., NA-2860 (sometimes the best. Famous for sea food
and celebrities)
Hogate’s, 9th & Maine, SW, RE-3013 (tourists’ paradise)
Hot Shoppes, all over (Washington’s most famous drive-ins)
Louis, Ted, 2655 Conn., HO-3222 (local stand-by)
Michel’s, 1020 Vermont, RE-1356 (Bohemian atmosphere)
Mrs. K’s Toll House, Silver Spring, SH-3500 (bucolic atmosphere)
Naylor’s, 951 Maine SW, NA-9659 (sea food where the boats come in)
Normandy Farm, Potomac, Md, WI-9421 (delightful suburban atmosphere)
Occidental, 1411 Penn., DI-6467 (hangout of five percenters and upper
bracket officials. Too crowded for service)
O’Donnell’s, 1207 E, RE-2102 (almost everyone comes for the sea food
including Charlie Ford)
Olmsted’s, 1336 G, DI-8235 (with that wonderful Luchow cuisine from
New York)
Pierre, Conn. & Q, DU-0666 (the ladies like this)
States, 516 N. Capitol, FR-9443 (for tourists)
Tally Ho, 810 17th St., ME-3218 (popular for luncheon)
Water Gate Inn, On the Potomac, BI-9256 (government girls consider
this a treat)
FOR DINING & DANCING:
Caribar Bar, Wardman Park Hotel, Conn. Ave. & Woodley Rd., CO-2000
Casino Royal, 14th & H, NW, NA-7700
Congo Room, Carlton Hotel, 16th & K, ME-2626
Lotus, 727 14th St., NW, NA-4766
Lounge Riviera, Hotel 2400, 2400 16th NW, CO-7200
Madrillon, 15th & New York, DI-4561
Mayflower Lounge, Conn. & De Sales, DI-3000
Old New Orleans, 1214 Conn. Ave., RE-7284
Pall Mall Room, Raleigh Hotel, NA-3810
Palladian Room, Shoreham Hotel, AD-0700
Rainbow Room, Hamilton Hotel, DI-2580
Shoreham Hotel Terrace, Conn. & Calvert, AD-0700
Statler Hotel, 16th & K, EX-1000
FOR DINING IN BALTIMORE:
Asia, 710 N. Howard, VE-8193 (Chinese)
Baum’s, 320 W. Saratoga, SA-7196 (steak and sea food)
Belvedere Hotel, MU-1000 (better hotel)
Candle Light Lodge, Frederick & N. Rolling, CA-9754 (country dining)
Cathay, 110 W. Saratoga, LE-7985 (Chinese)
Chesapeake, 1707 N. Charles, VE-7711 (steaks)
Dubner’s, 6427 Harfd Rd, CL-6459 (sea food)
Emerson Hotel, MU-4400 (politicos’ hangout)
Gannon’s, 3150 Frederick, GI-6147 (sea food)
Haussner’s, Eastern & Clinton, EA-8365 (unique German with an art
gallery)
Hollander’s, 10 W. Oliver, LE-9869 (steaks)
Marconi’s, 106 W. Saratoga, PL-9286 (French-Italian)
Marling House, 20 E. Fayette, SA-4460 (steaks)
Maria, 300 Albemarle, SA-9366 (Little Italy)
Marty Welsh, 17 E. Fayette, SA-3639 (steaks)
Miller Brothers, 119 W. Fayette, LE-2826 (the town’s biggest)
Nate’s & Leon’s, 850 W. North Ave., MA-2400 (this is Baltimore’s
Lindy’s. Hangout of show folk)
Park Plaza, Charles & Madison, BE-4000 (hotel dining room)
Pierre’s, 704 N. Howard, LE-3506 (high class French)
Pizza’s, 300 S. High, MU-1327 (Little Italy)
Roma, 900 Fawn, LE-8065 (Little Italy)
Rossiter’s, 1001 S. Hanover, LE-9196 (sea food)
Shellhase’s, 412 N. Howard, MU-6783 (H. L. Mencken’s favorite)
Sussman and Lev, 923 E. Baltimore, MU-6321 (kosher)
Walker-Hasslinger, 1701 N. Charles, VE-9410 (steaks, sea food)
White Rice Inn, 320 Park Ave., MU-6790 (Chinese)
C. DINING AROUND THE WORLD IN WASHINGTON
CHINESE:
Cathay, 624 H, RE-3330
Chinese Lantern, 14 F, LI-9534
Dragon, 1329 G, ME-3218
Good Earth, 1609 K, NA-0441
Gung Ho, 1406 G, ST-6339
Orient, 1715 Wisconsin, AD-4700
Ruby Foo’s Den, 728 13th St., NA-3565
Peking, 5522 Conn., WO-8079
Yet Ho Restaurant, 714 11th St., NA-9379
ENGLISH: Old English Tap Room & Lounge, Hay-Adams House, 16th & H,
ME-2260
FRENCH:
Aux Trois Mousquetaires, 820 Conn., RE-2619
Bonat’s Cafe, 1022 Vermont, RE-3373
La Salle du Bois, 1800 M, RE-1124
Maxime’s, 1731 Conn., AD-9811
Napoleon’s, 2649 Conn., CO-8955
GERMAN:
Hammel’s, 416 10th St., ST-9301 (one of Washington’s best)
Old Europe, 2434 Wisconsin, OR-7650
GREEK:
New Athens Restaurant, 1741 K, DI-4081
Old Athens, 804 9th St., ME-9582
ITALIAN:
Aldo Cafe, 1143 New Hampshire, RE-9510
Alfredo’s, 1724 Conn., HO-9729
A-V, 607 New York, RE-0550
Ciro’s, 1705 De Sales, ME-1434
Gusti’s, 1837 M, RE-0895
Roma, 3419 Conn., WO-9833 (dining under the stars)
Villa Nova, 5 F, TR-8978
MEXICAN & LATIN AMERICAN:
Copacabana, 1711 Eye St., RE-9668
El Mexico, 2603 Conn., HO-4550
NEAR EAST: The Sheik, 2317 Calvert, HU-4343
ROUMANIAN: Roumanian Inn, 8151 13th St., RE-6434
TURKISH: Dardanelles, Falls Church, Va., FA-2171
SCANDINAVIAN: New Smorgasbord, 2641 Conn., AD-9659
VIENNESE: Little Vienna, 2122 Penn., RE-9316
YIDDISH:
Holfberg’s, 7822 Eastern Ave., GE-5878
Jones Delicatessen, 1123 S, CO-3786, NO-9862
Pomerantz, 1782 Columbia Rd., CO-4413, CO-8738
Randy’s, 1113 15th St., RE-0661 (the Rueben’s of Washington)
S & L Kosher Delicatessen, 1205 7th St., NO-4633
Uptown, 3500 Conn., OR-1040
D. BARE BABES
_Where to find ’em. Or where to keep away from ’em, which is harder._
WASHINGTON
Kavakos, 8th & H
The Players, 5th & K
MARYLAND SUBURBS
Chesapeake, 3804 Bladensburg Rd.
Club La Conga, 9412 Baltimore Blvd.
Crossroads, Bladensburg at Peace Cross
Hilltop, 5211 Marlboro Pike
Senate Inn, 5704 Marlboro Pike, SE
Waldrops, 4318 Rhode Island Ave., NE
BALTIMORE
Ambassador, Fayette & Washington (low)
Bettye Mills, 704 E. Baltimore
Chanticleer, Charles & Eager (high class)
Copa, 21 W. Baltimore (ditto)
Kathleen’s, 612 E. Baltimore
Kay’s, Baltimore & Frederick
Miami, Fayette & Frederick (low)
Oasis, Baltimore & Frederick
E. LUPO’S LOG BOOK
_Being some notes to file away where your wife won’t look._
Backstage Phone No.: The Capitol Theatre, RE-7193. Star’s dressing
room call RE-1000 and ask for extension 305
Boy Meets Girl Dance: Every Saturday, Victor Roosevelt.
District Age of Consent: 16.
Lipstick Stains Removed (No Odor): Texas, phone MI-9301.
Lonesome Gals: Friday and Saturday nights at the Officers’ Service
Club, 1624 21st St.
Florist, All Night: Charles Chisley, 603 4th St., ME-8709.
Tourist Courts: On the Baltimore Highway.
F. THE INNER CIRCLE
These are extracts from a master list of 800 names submitted to the
Kefauver Committee of the U.S. Senate by Narcotics Commissioner Harry
J. Anslinger in June 1950.
Since this list was compiled by Commissioner Anslinger some of the
subjects on it changed their addresses--some to a much warmer climate.
NEW YORK
SAVERIO, Frank, Alias Frank COSTELLO: (International List 310)
This subject holds the No. 1 position among major criminals in
the United States today. He is a member of the Grand Council of
the International Mafia and ranks among the “top ten” of the
organization. Costello, as he is usually known, controls the
gambling interests in New York, New Jersey, Louisiana, Florida
and California, collaterally with interests in Colorado and other
western states. His gigantic coin machine operations which extend
through many sections of the country have gained him the title
“The Slot Machine King.” The subject is reputed to be interested
in all the major criminal activities conducted by the Mafia and
other organized criminals throughout the United States. He is
regularly seen in close association with wealthy and influential
persons and powerful political figures on both state and national
levels. The political success of candidates sponsored by Costello
in New York and Louisiana, which have included some of the
highest officials of both states, are attested facts.
DOTO, Joseph A., alias Joe ADONIS: (International List 79) This
subject is one of the most important figures of the Mafia
organization in New York City, a member of the Grand Council
of the International and a powerful leader in the national
underworld. For several years Doto has controlled gambling
and other rackets in New York, New Jersey and collaterally in
the west and Pacific Coast. He is a national figure in the
organization, beyond question. In addition to his gambling
interests, Doto long has been known as an important smuggler and
distributor of narcotics. He maintains a home at 1020 Dearborn
Road, Palisade Park, Fort Lee, N. J. He travels extensively. He
is of Italian descent and was born at Passaic, N. J., in 1902.
MANGANO, Vincent or Vicente: (International List 211) Subject is
an important member of the Grand Council of the International as
well as of the national organization within the United States. He
is reputed to derive a sizeable commission on all gambling and
other rackets in which the organization is engaged. He professes
inability to speak English. Mangano also controls the labor
unions on the Brooklyn docks and has connections with underworld
operations along the waterfront engaged in smuggling and
distribution of narcotics throughout the United States. Subject
is closely associated with top members of both the international
and national Mafia organizations. He is of Sicilian descent and
so far as records reflect was born in New York in 1887. His
address is 254 President Street, Brooklyn.
MANGANO, Philip: (International List 208) Although of less
importance than his brother, Vincent (above), subject is a highly
influential member of the Mafia in New York City. He is closely
associated with leading members of the organization there and
throughout the United States. He was born in Italy in 1900 and
became a naturalized citizen of the United States in 1925. He
lives at 1126 Eighty-fourth Street, Brooklyn.
PROFACI, Joseph: (International List 274) Subject is a member
of the Grand Council of the International. Although there is
much indirect evidence that subject’s criminal activities have
included smuggling, counterfeiting, extortion, narcotics traffic
and murder, he has no record of convictions.
GENOVESE, Vito: (International List 130) Subject is an important
member of the Grand Council of the International and is powerful
in the underworld of New York City and the national tie-up. He is
associated with virtually all the influential Mafia members in
New York and with key individuals of the organization throughout
the United States. He is a notorious gunman and at one time
was linked with one of the most extensive narcotics operations
in the country. In 1939 Genovese fled to Italy while sought by
Kings County, N. Y., authorities in connection with Murder, Inc.
He was returned to the United States in 1945 and subsequently
was acquitted of a murder charge by a New York jury. Subject’s
criminal activities include murder, smuggling, extortion,
theft and gambling. He lives in an expensive home in Atlantic
Highlands, N. J.
CARFANO Anthony, aka Augie Pisano: (International List 031)
Subject is a highly important member of the national Mafia and
is a powerful leader of the underworld in its transcontinental
connections, as springboarded from Brooklyn and Miami. He has
been linked actively in the conduct of major drug smuggling
operations, with horse booking, the race wire and other gambling.
He was a former partner of Charles (Lucky) Luciano and was a
close associate of the late Al Capone. Carfano has accumulated
considerable wealth and lives lavishly. In recent years he has
been associated closely with Vincent (Jimmy Blue Eyes) Also in
operation of exclusive gambling establishments in the Miami area.
These resorts are known to be hangouts for major underworld
figures of the nation when they are in Florida. His summer home
is 85 Clayton Avenue, Long Beach, N. Y., but usually he lives in
various swank hotels in New York and Florida.
MORETTI, Quarico, aka Willie MORETTI: (International List 235)
Subject is an influential member of the Grand Council as well as
the national organisation and is one of the chief lieutenants to
Costello. He is the recognized leader of the New Jersey operation
and is associated with all the heavy rackets. He is considered
to be a man of substantial wealth. He is of Italian descent but
probably was born in this country. (Note: Subject is paretic
and highly unstable, hence his position today is known to be
precarious because of various ill-advised decisions which have
been costly to the organization recently.)
ANASTASIA, Albert, 842 Ocean Pkwy, Bklyn
BARRA, Morris--aka Mickey Mouse--Lorillard Place, Bronx
BONANNO, Joe--aka Joe Bananas--114 Jefferson, Bklyn (See Colo.)
BONASIRA, Anthony--aka The Chief--1117 83rd, Bklyn (SE202)
COPPOLA, Mike, NYC (Int. List 052)
LANZA, Joseph, NYC (SE193)
LASCARI, Michael, 1111 Park Ave., New York City
LI MANDRI, Michael--aka Mimi, Marco--325 E. 58th St., NYC (Int.
List 187) (NYS 2719) and Calif.
LIVORSI, Frank--aka Chuck--NYC (Int. List 193) (NYMV 123 B) (NYS
4997)
LUCHESE, Thomas--aka Three-fingered Tommy Brown--106 Parsons Blvd.,
Melba, L. I.
MAGARDINO, Stefano, 1809 Whitney Ave., Niagara Falls
RAO, Vincent, 19 E. 80th, NYC
STROLLO, Anthony--aka Tony Benda & Tony Bender--NYC (Nat List 392)
TEXAS
MACEO, Sam: This person is a very important member of the Mafia in
Texas and an extremely powerful and nationally known figure in
the underworld. He is associated with leading Mafia members and
other major racketeers throughout the United States. Maceo was
born in Italy in 1894 and came to the United States at an early
age. Prior to 1920, he worked as a barber in Galveston, Texas;
however, during the Prohibition era, he became the leader of
a group of liquor and narcotic smugglers who operated in that
vicinity. Following the repeal of prohibition, Sam Maceo and
his brother, Rosario, continued their drug smuggling activities
and at the same time “muscled in” on the gambling racket at
Galveston. Within a reasonable length of time, the Maceos were in
control of the gambling racket in that area, and as a result of
their diversified activities they became very wealthy and also
influential in politics. In 1937, Sam Maceo was reported with 87
other defendants in our Case File SE-131, involving an extensive
narcotic smuggling enterprise. However, Maceo was acquitted by a
jury on this charge. At the present time, the Maceo organization
has control of all gambling rackets in Galveston which consists
of dice, roulette, handbooks, policy, bingo, corno games and slot
machines. They also own several night clubs and bars and two
hotels in Galveston. Sam Maceo is a naturalized citizen of the
United States.
ANGELICA, Binaggio: This individual is an important member of the
Mafia Society of Houston, Texas, and is closely associated with
influential members of the organization throughout Texas, and
in the states of Louisiana, Missouri, Illinois, New York and
Florida. He has long been an important narcotic smuggler and
distributor and on October 20, 1938, was sentenced to ten years
in prison for violation of the narcotic laws in connection with
our Case Files Texas-9349 and SE-131. Angelica was formerly
identified with Mafia activities in Pennsylvania and was arrested
in Philadelphia in 1932 for “blackhand” extortion. The subject
was born in Italy and is a naturalized citizen of the U. S. He
resides at 1906 State Street, Houston, Texas.
ATTARDI, Alfonso: This man is an important member of the Mafia
Society in Houston, Texas. He was a former associate of Nicolo
Gentile, the former national arbitrator of the organization
and was associated with other members throughout Texas and in
the states of Louisiana, New York and Missouri. Attardi was
co-defendant in our Case File SE-131, NYS-5198 and Texas-9225 and
on January 10, 1940 was sentenced to 8 years in Federal prison in
the latter case.
MISSOURI
DI GIOVANNI, Joseph: This man is the head of the Mafia society for
the state of Missouri, and without question is the most feared
and influential man in the Kansas City underworld. Di Giovanni,
who is now one of the wealthiest Italians in Kansas City, came to
the United States as a poor Sicilian immigrant in 1912. He began
his career as the leader of a small group of extortionists and
within a short time was the leader of the Mafia element in Kansas
City. During the Prohibition era, Di Giovanni and his associates
controlled the manufacture and distribution of all contraband
liquor in this area as well as the raw material used therein, and
in the early thirties, his group organized the narcotic syndicate
which operated in Kansas City until 1942. At the present time, Di
Giovanni owns and operates a wholesale liquor business known as
the Midwest Distributing Co. at 1109 Cherry St., and also owns a
chain of retail stores known as the Happy Hollow Liquor Stores,
Inc. He resides at 410 Gladstone Blvd.
BALESTRERE, James: This individual is the head of the Mafia Society
at Kansas City, Mo., and is second in command in the state.
Balestrere is often referred to as the “Mystery Man” of local
politics by the _Kansas City Star_ and has been known to exert
considerable influence in both state and national circles. For
a number of years, Balestrere was the leader of the North Side
Democratic club which controlled the entire Italian district as
well as the greater portion of the northeast section of the city.
In 1943, Balestrere went into so-called retirement and installed
an associate, Charles Binaggio, as the club head. On April 5,
1950, Binaggio was assassinated. During the interim, Balestrere
and his superior, Joseph Di Giovanni, have directed all matters,
political and otherwise, from the background.
DI GIOVANNI, Peter: This individual occupies a position of great
importance in the Mafia society at Kansas City, Mo., due to
the influence of his brother, Joseph, who is state head of
the organisation. He resides at 502 Campbell St. and was a
stockholder in the former “Kansas City Narcotics Syndicate.”
DE LUCA, Joseph: (Nat. List 102) This man is a very influential
member of the Mafia Society at Kansas City, and one of the most
vicious characters in the underworld of that city. He was the
head of the former “Kansas City Narcotics Syndicate” and during
the Prohibition era was one of the largest bootleggers in the
state of Missouri. De Luca resides at 2840 Forest St.
GIZZO, Anthony Robert: This subject, usually known as Tony, is
an influential member of the Mafia and long has been regarded
as Balestrere’s first lieutenant. He personally looks after
Balestrere’s business enterprises and is said to have a small
interest in each. In addition, Gizzo is the owner of one of the
largest horse books in Kansas City. He is a close associate of
the Fischetti brothers in Chicago, Joseph Profaci of Brooklyn,
and Carlos Marcello of New Orleans. He is frequently a liaison
man for the Kansas City Mafia between these points.
IMPOSTATO, Micolo: (Nat. List 189) This subject is a very
influential member of the Mafia at Kansas City and reputedly
holds a high seat on the International Council. He is a known
professional “killer” and is known to have been brought to Kansas
City originally from Springfield, Ill., as an enforcer for the
local Mafia. Impostato was the general manager of the former
“Kansas City Narcotics Syndicate” and on April 13, 1943, was
sentenced to two years in Federal Prison for violation of the
Narcotics Laws. He lives at 32 Warner Plaza, Kansas City.
COLORADO
DIONISIO, Robert Victor: This subject is an important and
influential member of the Mafia at Trinidad. He is a son
of the late Rosario Dionisio, who formerly was head of the
society in Southern Colorado. The name Dionisio is well known
throughout Southern Colorado in that the family long has been
notorious as so-called “black-handers.” The Dionisios have been
investigated by numerous law enforcement agencies in connection
with bootlegging, bombing, gang killings, etc., but for the most
part have no criminal records. Robert Dionisio was indicted and
convicted in 1938 at Trinidad on fraud charges growing out of
misuse of public funds. He was one of 12 so convicted. Subject
was born in Lucca, Sicula, Sicily, and came to the United States
when he was 17. He operates a grocery at 1002 Arizona St., and
also has an interest in a tavern. He resides at the Arizona St.
address.
BONANNO, Joseph, Trinidad, Colo., and Brooklyn, N. Y. (Bonanno also
has a home at Tucson, Ariz.)
MISTRETTA, Anthony, Denver (NY-E 105)
CALIFORNIA
RIZZOTTI, Antonio (Alias Jack Dragna): This subject, usually known
as Jack Dragna, is a member of the Mafia in Los Angeles. He is a
powerful figure in the underworld and has the reputation of being
a big time gambler and racketeer. He is a member of the notorious
Rizzotti or Dragna family. Dragna’s home is 3521 Beechwood
Avenue, Los Angeles.
LI MANDRI, Michael (Alias Mimi Li-Mandri): This subject is a very
important member of the Mafia and an influential figure in
the California and New York underworld. He is associated with
leading members of the Mafia throughout the United States and for
many years has been a major trafficker in narcotics. Li Mandri
is known to have been a leader of a gang which was engaged in
smuggling of narcotics from Mexico to the United States and
processing it into heroin. He maintains a home at 335 E. 58th
Street, NYC.
MAUGERI, Salvatore: This man is an important member of the Mafia in
the San Francisco area and is closely associated with influential
members of the organization throughout California, New York and
New Jersey. He has been an important trafficker in narcotics many
years and formerly was a partner with Charles La Gaipa in an
extensive narcotic smuggling enterprise on the Coast. Maugeri was
sentenced to 10 years in prison, Nov. 30, 1944, for narcotic law
violation (SE 204 and Cal 3368). Other important associates of
Maugeri in this case, in addition to La Gaipa were Joseph Tocco,
Charles Alberto and Joseph Dentico. Maugeri also has a record of
counterfeiting, with one conviction in 1935, for which he was
sentenced to two years in prison. He was born in Italy, Sept 13,
1892, and is a naturalized citizen of the United States. His
legal address is 378 23rd Ave., San Francisco.
TOCCO, Joseph: This individual is an important member of the Mafia
in California and New York. Prior to his imprisonment he divided
his time between the two states. He was a member of an extensive
narcotics ring operating in New York and on the Coast. On Aug.
16, 1944, Tocco was arrested in possession of 630 ounces of
opium and 8 ounces of morphine at Chicago while en route from
California to New York. He was sentenced to 10 years imprisonment
the following Nov. 30 (see Case Files Calif. 3368 and SE 204).
His legal residence is 315 E. 114th St, NYC.
MILANO, Tony, 9451 Sunset, Hollywood
NANI, Sebastiano, San Mateo
ROSELLI, Johnnie, LA
SICA, Joseph, 627 N. Griffith Park Drive, Burbank (ditto above)
FLORIDA
TRAFFICANTE, Santos: This subject was head of the Mafia at Tampa
for many years and still holds an influential position in the
organization there. In 1946, Trafficante was replaced as head
of the local organization by Salvatore Scaglione through the
intervention of the Diecidue family, who have long opposed
the subject. During the period from 1929 to 1942, Trafficante
and other members of the Mafia in Tampa, New Orleans, New
York, St Louis and Kansas City were involved in an extensive
narcotics racket. This enterprise was broken up by the arrest
and conviction of eleven defendants, two of whom were members of
the Tampa organization. (See Case File 202). His address is 3010
North Blvd., Tampa.
DIECIDUE, Apphonso: This individual is the father of Antonio,
Thomas and Frank Diecidue and is an important figure in the
Mafia at Tampa. However, in view of the fact he now is 78, a
large portion of his influence has been delegated to his eldest
son, Antonio. The latter is alleged to dictate all policies of
the Tampa organization. Alphonso is and has been for many years
the head of the Unione Siciliano in Tampa. It has been well
established that this organization is substantially the same as
the Mafia. He has long been closely associated with important
Mafia figures in NYC, New Orleans, Chicago, Kansas City and
St. Louis. The subject formerly engaged in extensive narcotic,
alien and liquor smuggling operations and is reputed to receive
dividends from the proceeds of all gambling and bolita in the
Tampa area. His home is at 46th and E Sts., Tampa.
DIECIDUE, Antonio: This subject is a close personal friend of
Vincent Mangano of Brooklyn and is probably the most influential
member of the Mafia in Tampa. He is closely associated with
important members of the organization in NYC, New Orleans,
Chicago, Kansas City and St. Louis. For a number of years,
Diecidue opposed Santos Trafficante as leader in Tampa and
finally succeeded in deposing him in 1946. Salvatore Scaglione,
or Scagliano, who was sponsored by Diecidue, now heads the
organization there.
ITALIANO, Salvatore: (Int. List 154) This individual, usually
known as “Red,” is an influential member of the Mafia at Tampa.
During the period from 1929 to 1942, Italiano and other members
of the Tampa Mafia were engaged in an extensive liquor, narcotics
and alien smuggling operation. This was broken up by the arrest
and conviction of eleven persons, two of them relatives of
Italiano. (See Case File SE202). Italiano was convicted in 1929
of a narcotics charge. He is a naturalized U.S. citizen, born in
Belmonte, Italy, Oct. 19, 1896. His citizenship was revoked but
he regained it in 1947. Italiano is closely associated with top
members of the Mafia in Chicago, New Orleans, Kansas City and St
Louis. He owns a beer firm known as Anthony Distributors, Inc.,
1707 20th St., Tampa, and lives at 2801 Nebraska Ave.
LOUISIANA
MARCELLO, Carlos: (La 1M) (La 15M) This subject is head of the
Mafia in Louisiana and advanced to that position in 1947 when
Francisco Paola Cappola, the former leader, was deported.
Marcello is closely associated with Frank Costello and with
other important figures of the organization in Texas, Missouri,
Illinois, California and Florida. He is associated with Costello
and Kastel in the Neverly Club and reputedly owns the New
Southport. Marcello also owns the largest coin machine company in
Jefferson Parish, known as the Jefferson Music Co. He lives now
at Marrero, La.
KASTEL, Philip: This individual is a very important member of the
Mafia and an extremely powerful figure in the rackets. He is the
main representative of Frank Costello in Louisiana and is in
charge of the syndicate’s gambling and coin machine enterprises.
Kastel is closely associated with leading members of the Mafia in
Louisiana, New Jersey, New York, Florida and Illinois. He owns a
palatial home in Florida but lives for the most part at a suite
in the Roosevelt Hotel, New Orleans.
CARROLLA, Sam or Silvestro (deported in 1947) (now in Tijuana)
CAPPOLLA, Francisco Paola (deported in 1949) (now in Tijuana)
MICHIGAN
LICAVOLI, Pete: This individual is one of the most prominent
members of the Mafia in Michigan and a very powerful underworld
figure of national reputation. He is a member of the notorious
Licavoli family of Detroit and St. Louis, whose gang was in
competition with the Purple Mob and eventually supplanted and
liquidated that group. The subject is associated with leading
members of the Mafia and other important racketeers throughout
the United States. Although he maintains a legal residence at
1154 Balfour Ave., Grosse Pointe, he spends a great portion of
his time at the Grace Ranch, Box 521, Route 2, Tucson, Ariz.
MELI, Angelo: This subject, usually known as Genni Mell, is an
important figure in the Detroit Mafia and is closely associated
with Angelo Polizzi, et al. He is a notorious racketeer and
underworld character, acquiring his reputation when he was
leader of a mob with Jo Barzoli, known as the Meli-Barzoli mob
in the Prohibition era. In recent years be has been engaged in
night club operations, gambling and other rackets in Detroit.
He has a record of 15 arrests, 13 of them for felonies and
two misdemeanors, ranging from murder to being a disorderly
person. These cover the period 1919 to 1944. He has only one
conviction--carrying concealed weapons. He lives in an elaborate
home at 1060 Devonshire Road, Grosse Pointe.
BOMMARITO, Joe (Scarface), 7340 West Seven-Mile
LUCIDO, Sam, 1507 Sunningdale, GP
MASSEI, Joe, Detroit and Miami
OHIO
MILANO, Frank: This subject is a member of the Grand Council of the
International and is head of the organization in Ohio. Although
he maintains legal residence at 375 North Hawkins Ave., Akron,
he spends a great amount of his time in Mexico, where he has
extensive business interests. Among these is a 45,000 hectare
ranch called “La Columbia” located near Vera Cruz, and the
controlling stock of two corporations--the Tehuacan Lumber Co.
and the Columbian Plantation Oil Co. Milano has a long criminal
record dating from 1913, involving two charges of murder and a
number of arrests for counterfeiting. He is a nationally known
figure in the underworld and an associate of Lucky Luciano, Al
Polizzi, Frank Costello and other outstanding Mafia leaders in
the United States, Mexico, Cuba and Italy. Milano was born in
Sicily and is a naturalized citizen of the United States. He
spends the greater part of his time at his apartment at Atenas,
No. 31, Mexico City, D. F.
POLIZZI, Alfonso: This subject, usually referred to as Al, is an
important and influential member of the Mafia and is believed to
rank second in the organization in the state of Ohio. He was a
former business partner of Frank Milano and is closely associated
with members of the organization throughout Ohio, Michigan and
Florida. Polizzi is a very powerful figure in the underworld and
is greatly feared.
CAVALLARO, Charles: This individual is a member of the Mafia in
Youngstown. He is associated with members of the organization
throughout the state and in New York, Illinois, Pennsylvania
and to a lesser degree elsewhere. Subject has been arrested
on several occasions on such charges as extortion and liquor
law violation and has been a suspect in other criminal
investigations. He has operated gambling houses in Youngstown and
his last known address was the Pick Ohio Hotel there. He was born
in Italy and entered the United States illegally on May 1, 1921,
at New Orleans, as a stowaway aboard the _SS Cerco_. His FBI
number is 1144812.
ANGERSOLA, Fred, Cleveland
ANGERSOLA, John, Cleveland
ILLINOIS
DELUCIA, Paul: This individual, usually known as Paul (The Waiter)
Ricca or Ricci, is an important and influential member of the
Grand Council of the International and a powerful figure in the
underworld. He is a former member of old Capone organization in
Chicago and is one of the defendants in the Brown-Bioff case.
DeLucia received a ten-year sentence in connection with that
case and was paroled in 1949. Subject is closely associated with
the Fischetti brothers in Chicago and with members of the Mafia
throughout the United States. He maintains legal residence at 812
Latrobe Ave., River Forest, Ill., and has a country estate at
Berrien Springs, Mich. He is associated with Jack Guzik and they
are reputed to be the most influential gangsters in the Chicago
area.
ACCARDO, Anthony: Subject lives at 1431 Ashland Ave., River Forest.
He is an influential member of the International. He classifies
himself as a betting commissioner and confines his activities
almost exclusively to gambling operations. He is a former member
of the old Capone organization and is presently associated with
the Chicago syndicate--DeLucia, Guzik, the Fischetti brothers,
Murray Humphries and others. In November, 1948, Accardo was tried
on charges of conspiracy to defraud and for concealing material
facts. He was acquitted.
FISCHETTI, Charles, Rocco and Joe: These brothers are very
important members of the Mafia at Chicago and are members of or
associated closely with the International. They are cousins of
Al Capone. The Fischettis are interested in gambling operations
and various other rackets. Their connections with top Mafia
members extend through Illinois, Missouri, New York, New Jersey,
Michigan, Ohio, California and Florida. They have gambling
casinos in the Chicago area, Indiana and Southern Wisconsin,
Kansas City, East St. Louis and in Florida.
CAPEZIO, Anthony, alias Tough Tony: This subject is mentioned in
Case Files Ill. 5909 and SE 202, the latter in the investigation
into the death in Chicago of Carl Carramusa.
DE GRAZIO, Rocco alias Gramps: Subject figured in Ill. 5909 and in
SE 202. He was an important member in the old Capone mob. He has
been convicted of income tax violation and served 18 months. He
currently controls all gambling in Melrose Park. He is closely
associated with the Mafia.
CAMPAGNA, Louis alias Little New York: Subject is an important
member of the Mafia at Chicago and is said to be a member of
the International. He is a close personal friend of De Lucia
with whom he currently is associated, as well as with Guzik,
Humphreys, D’Andrea and Charles Gioe. Campagna is closely
connected with all influential members of the Mafia in Illinois
and has connections with top-level members in New York, Indiana
and Michigan. He was born in Brooklyn, Sept 23, 1900, and came
to Chicago during the ascendancy of the Capone mob. He began his
criminal career in Chicago and was sentenced in 1919 for bank
robbery. In 1945 Campagna was convicted and sentenced in the
Southern District of New York to 10 years in the Brown-Bioff
case. Later paroled. During the interim he was arrested numerous
times but evaded prosecution. Campagna has two farms on Rural
Route 1, Berrien Springs, Mich., which he has owned since 1932
and which he rents out to tenants.
GIOE, Charles alias Cherry Nose: Subject is mentioned in files in
connection with the International. He was a former member of
the old Capone mob and was convicted with several others in the
Brown-Bioff case. Now on parole.
IMPOSTATO, Nicolo: Subject formerly lived in Springfield, Ill.
He has been identified with various narcotic traffickers since
about 1938, in New York, Kansas City and Tampa. Convicted in
Kansas City for violation of immigration laws as outgrowth of a
narcotics investigation.
D’ANDREA, Philip: Subject is an influential member of the Mafia.
His uncle, Anthony D’Andrea, was head of the Mafia in the Chicago
area some years ago. Philip formerly a big shot member of the old
Capone mob was convicted in the Southern District of New York in
the Brown-Bioff case and is presently on parole.
CAPONE, John, alias Mimi, Chicago
CAPONE, Matthew Nicholas, Chicago
WISCONSIN
CAPONE, Ralph (formerly of Chicago). Now living in Mercer, Wis.,
where he operates the Rex Hotel and Billy’s Bar, a gambling
establishment.
MASSACHUSETTS
BUCCOLA, Philip: Subject is the leading Mafia figure of Boston and
of the state, probably for the entire New England area. A native
of Palermo, he migrated to this country about 1920 and became
a prominent sporting events and fight promoter in Boston. He
operates the Goodwin Athletic Club. He is intimately associated
with Lucky Luciano and leading New York and Florida figures of
the Mafia.
IACONE, Frank, Worcester
RHODE ISLAND
CANDELMO, John, Providence
PATRIARCA, Raymond, Providence (also Patriaca)
N. J. and PENN.
ACCARDI, Sam, Newark and Bloomfield
REGINELLI, Marco, Phila. and Camden (SE 226)
(Many of the above were similarly mentioned in other testimony before
the Kefauver Committee.)
INDEX
Abortion, 89
Acalotti, Attilio, 113, 172, 207, 210, 225, 232
Acheson, Dean, 10, 138, 159
Acropolis, 127
Actor’s Equity Association, 16
Adonis, Joe, 175, 186, 198, 202, 203
Alcoholic Beverage Control, 42
Al Faquih, Sheikh Asad, 150
Alleys, 51
Ambassador Hotel, 13, 14
Ambassadors’ Rows, 20
American Federation of Labor, 167
Americans for Democratic Action, 159
Amvets, 128
Anslinger, Harry J., 108, 109, 110, 183, 184, 251
Armed Services Police, 71
Arnold, Thurman, 158
Arvey, Jake, 160, 165
Astoria Hotel, 25
Atlas Club, 126
Autograph collecting, 132
B Girls, 26, 34, 262, 268
Bacon, Mrs. Robert Low, 136
Bail, 231
Bakar, Abdullah Ibraham, 150
Balbo, Italo, 147
Ballet-dancers, 9
Baltimore, 2, 17, 22, 26, 250 ff.
Band Box, 33
Banneker High School, 54
Barbiturates, 116
Barrett, Robert J., 56, 60, 174, 175, 221
Beach, Carmen, 24
Beard, Sam, 172, 207
Benjamin, Herbert J., 101
Bentley, Faye L., 120
Berman, Mrs. Louise Branson, 103
Bernstein, Izzie, 184
Bettye Mills Night Club, 267
Big Tit Flossie, 53
Billeci, Frank, 225
Binaggio, 191
Black Belt, 37
Black Hand, 180, 181
Black Town, 109, 124, 130
Block-buster, 43, 44
Blue Mirror, 132, 269
Boehman, Ambassador Erik, 151
Bookmakers, 69
Bookmaking, 72, 207, 210, 211
Bottlegging, 55, 124, 130, 145
Booze, 281
Borden, Mrs. Jay, 136
Border of D. C., 62
Bosses, The, 234 ff.
Bottle-clubs, 39, 69, 124–129
Bowers, Florence, 85
Bowery, 30, 32
Boyle, William Marshall, 140, 158, 186, 196
Bralove, Harry, 15
Braverman, Marvin, 163
Bridges, Senator Styles, 99
Brisco, 40
Bronzeville, 37, 41, 45, 119
Brooks Brothers, 18
Brooks, Mrs. Louis Cromwell, 143
Brown, Al, 127
Brown, Constantine, 99
Brown, Lamarr (Polly), 49
Buchalter, Lepke, 191
Bureau of Narcotics, 108, 110, 184
Bureau of the Census, 41
Burlesque, 31, 65
Burning Tree Club, 141
C girls, _see_ Company Girls
Cab drivers, 13, 49
Cabarets, 282
Cafritz, Gwendolyn, 138, 139
Cafritz, Morris, 13, 138, 139, 141
Call girls, 83
Capital Transit Company, 192
Capitol Police, 70
Capone, Al, 67, 172, 175
Carlton, 13, 14
Carter, Diane, 28
Carter, Johnny W., 49
Casablanca Tavern, 26
Casino Royal, 132
Census, 34, 58
Central Intelligence Agency, 100
Century Athletic Club, 260
Chanticleer, 269
Chapman, Oscar L., 17
Charnay, Dave, 164, 165
Chevy Chase, 20
Chevy Chase Club, 141
_Chicago Confidential_, 57, 164, 177, 180, 182, 190, 194, 197, 198,
221
China, 109
China Clipper, 26, 56
Chinatown, 32, 56 ff., 113
Chinese, 112
Chinese, smuggling, 58
Chinese whores, 59
Chitlin industry, 55
Chitlin party, 55
CIO, 167
Clark, Charles Patrick, 157
Clark, Tom, 187
Clifford, Clark, 163
Clip Joints, 282
Club Bali, 49
Club Charles, 269
Club Harlem, 51
Cocaine, 108
Cockrill, Judge Edith H., 120
Comi Brothers, 260
Communists, 9, 58, 99 ff., 112
Company Girls, 83 ff.
Conga, 65
Connelly, Tom, 203, 204
Conners, Harry, 127
Cooper, Billie, 27
Copacabana, 186, 197
Corbi Brothers, 260
Corbi, Joseph, 261
Corcoran, Tommy the Cork, 11, 158
Coronet, 269
Corporation Council, 236, 237
Costello, Frank, 65, 67, 164, 173, 174, 175, 182, 186, 187, 188, 189,
190, 193, 197, 199, 205, 261, 271
Covered Wagon, 26
Crap, 211
Crime, 7, 213 ff.
Crossroads, 65
Crystal Cavern, 129
Culinary Arts, 127
Curran, Boss Bill, 260
Currie, Laughlin, 158
Czechoslovakia, 109
_Daily Worker_, 17
D’Alesandro, Jr., Thomas, 264
Dancing, 283
Darktown, 272
Dates, 283
David’s Grill, 95
Davis, 243
Davis, Henry W., 127
Davis, James G., 242
Dawson, Congressman William, 45
Dawson, Donald, 166
De Callejon, Don Eduardo Propper, 151
De Kauffman, Ambassador Henrick, 149
De Luca, Joe, 191
De Morgenstierne, Ambassador Wilhelm Munthe, 150
Department of Justice, 121
Desvernine, Eugene, 98
Dialect, 6
Diane, 26
Dining, 284
Diplomats, 144 ff.
Diplomats, Sexual life of, 145–149
District Committee, 241, 244
Divorce, 284
Dixie Pig, 66
Dondero, Congressman, 104, 105
Dope, 49, 61, 112, 122
Dope peddlers, 51, 53, 60, 110
Doris, 27
Downtown Club, 127
Dragon, 56
Drury, Bill, 45, 203, 204
Dunbar Hotel, 50
Dupont Circle, 20, 93, 135, 207
Dupont Plaza, 20
Dupont Theatre, 102
Eastern House, 60
Economic Cooperation Administration, 170
Economic planners, 9
Edwards, William J. Foots, 50
Eichler, David K., 97
Emerson, Faye, 160
Emerson Hotel, 266
Eng Hon, 61
Erickson, Frank, 127, 190, 207
Erkin, Feridun Cemal, 151
F.B.I., 28, 29, 104, 106, 169, 173, 184, 202, 203, 213, 246, 249, 250
Fair Deal, 11
Fairies, 10
Fairy Brigade, 71
Fairy Shows, 65
Fastest Runners, 54
Fay, George Morris, 213, 250
Fear, 7
Federal Bureau of Immigration and Naturalization, 58
Felonies, 46
Ferone, Dominic, 127
Fischbach, Hyman I., 114, 124, 125, 216, 242, 243
Fischetti, Charlie, 165, 173, 177, 182, 191
Flynn, Ed, 36. 188, 189, 197, 200, 214, 256
Fong Wah Co., 61
Ford, Charles, 24, 67, 125, 127, 175, 176, 230, 231, 232, 233
Ford’s Theatre, 15
Forest Lawn Cemetery, 2, 3
Fortas, Abe, 158
Fortune-tellers, 277
Forty Thieves, 54
Fox, 26
Frankfurter, Felix, 10, 100, 104, 105, 166, 197
Franklin D. Roosevelt Memorial Theatre, 17
Franklin Park Hotel, 92, 93, 94
Franks, Sir Oliver Shewell, 150
Free Loaders, 280
Freedman’s Hospital, 52
Frye, John, 51
Fulton, Hugh, 163
G Girls, 75, 77
Gabrielson, Guy George, 140
Gamblers, 52, 66
Gambling, 61, 69, 122, 126, 198, 201, 206 ff., 270, 271, 273
Gamby’s, 272
Gangs, 121
Garfield Hospital, 52
Garfinkel, 18
Gayety Burlesque, 16, 31
Georgetown, 8 ff., 207
Georgetown University, 10
Gianaris, Pete, 67, 173
Gilbert, Dan, 199
Gin-flats, 130
Ginmill operators, 51
Gizzo, Tony, 191
Glen Echo, 68
Glickfield, Albert, 127
Goat Alley, 51
Goebels, Tony, _See_ Ricci
Gold Key, 127
Goldberg, George, 260
Goodwin, Mrs. Gussie (Gushie), 137, 138
Goof balls, 117
Grand Council, 182
Greek Colony, 33
Greenwich Village, 8, 9, 51
Gross, Mrs. Laura Curtis, 141
Guess Who, 127
Guns, 285
Guy’s, 33
Hague, Boss, 245
Halim, Tawhida, 139
Halley, Rudolph, 163, 164, 165, 197, 198, 202, 203, 204
Hanlon, Dan, 158
Harding, George P., 174
Harlem, 37, 45, 119
Harrison Narcotics Law, 107
Harvard, 8, 104
Harvey’s, 18, 19
Hastie, William, 45
Hecht’s Hotel, 33
Hellenic Social Club, 33
Henderson, Leon, 159
Heroin, 113
Hetzel, Mrs. Curt, 141
Hideaway Club, 11, 124, 126, 129, 174
High Hat Cocktail Lounge, 14
Hill, Virginia, 205
Hilmer, Lucien, 171
Hip Sing, 57, 60, 61, 113
Hobo Heaven, 263
Holiday, Billie, 132
_Holiday_ magazine, 38
Homosexual Bureau, 97
Homosexuals, 11, 19, 65, 90 ff., 272
Hooker, 22
Hooker, General Joe, 22
Hoover, J. Edgar, 18, 19, 106, 169, 173, 191, 213, 246
Hopkins, Harry, 11, 143, 257
Hopkins Institute, 28, 29
Hotels, assignation, 13, 285
Hughes, Maury, 187
Hunt, Lester, 201
Illiteracy, 36
Impellitteri, Mayor Vincent, 186
Intelligence Unit, 251
International Syndicate, 49
Introducers, 280
Italians, 259
Jack’s Grill, 25
Jarwood’s, 191
Javits, Jacob K., 162
Jawitz, Arthur, 192
Jeffers, Jesse W. Jr., 111
Jewel Box, 93, 94
Jimmy’s Place, 176
Johnson, Louis D., 159, 160
Johnston, William B., 192
Jolson, Al, 53
Jones, Puddin’ Head, 34, 36, 49
Joy Inn, 61
Juvenile Court, 119
Juvenile delinquency, 118
Karrica, Mary, 146
Kavakos’ Grill, 95, 132
Kay’s, 266
Kefauver, Estes, 64, 194, 195, 196, 197, 198, 199, 200, 202, 204,
205, 206
Kefauver Committee, 45, 72, 164, 177, 180, 183, 192, 194 ff., 230,
243, 261
Keith, 16
Kelleher, Black Jack, 207
Kelley, Major Edward, 56
Kelly, Ed, 36
Kenny, Wilbur, 51
Klein, Arthur G., 244
Kronheim, Milton, 165
La Fontaine, Jimmy, 67, 173, 175, 176, 230, 232
La Guardia, Mayor, 36, 103, 108, 164, 186
Lafayette Park, 19
Lafayette Square, 91, 92, 93, 110
Lano, Sam, 69
Lansky, Meyer, 175
Latham, Henry, 161, 162
Lattimore, Owen, 105, 159
Lautrelle, Nathaniel, 147, 148
Lawyers Guild, 169
Ledroit Park, 51
L’Enfant, Major Pierre, 12, 19
Lesbians, 94, 95
Lewis, John L., 14, 164, 165
Lewis, Snags, 66, 67, 173, 175, 210, 225
Lichtauer, Nate, 165
Limousines, 286
Lincoln Barbeque, 50
Liquor, 123 ff.
Liquor, bootleg, 50
Liquor laws, 123, 124
Liquor, legal closing, 31, 65
Lloyd, David Garrison, 159
Lobbying, 155 ff.
Local government, 5
Loew’s Capitol, 16
Logan Hotel, 40
Loose ladies, 14
Los Angeles, 3
Lotus, 132
Lowenthal, Max, 104, 105, 171
Lucas, Scott, 160, 196
Luchow’s, 18
Luciano, Charles Lucky, 24, 108, 182, 184
Lully, Julius, 19
Lund, Nina, 147
Lyre’s Club, 125, 129
MacArthur, General Douglas, 143
MacDonald, 232
MacLeon, Evelyn Walsh, 135
Madden, Owney “The Killer,” 230
Madre, Odessa, 49
Mafia, 24, 49, 60, 67, 108, 130, 160, 164, 172–176, 177 ff., 195,
199–201, 205, 243, 244, 251, 255, 259, 260
Mafia Grand Council, 205
Magnuson, Senator Warren, 87, 143
Mai Fong Restaurant, 26, 59
“Mamma Liz,” 53
Mann Act, 86
Maragon, John, 158, 165, 166, 186
Marcantonio, Congressman Vito, 36
Marijuana, 113
Marriage, 287
Martin’s Bar, 11
Maryland, 6, 20, 26, 62, 63, 64, 65, 207
Masseria, The Boss, 182
Mayflower Hotel, 13, 15, 18, 132
“Mayor” of Chinatown, 61
McCreedy, Dorothy A., 188
McGrath, J. Howard, 186, 187, 196, 213
McGurn, Machine Gun Jack, 184
McKeldin, Theodore Roosevelt, 261
Medical, 288
Mencken, H. L., 22
Messall, Victor, 164
Meserole, Patsy, 127, 128
Mesta, Perle, 137, 138, 139
Metropolitan Police, 4, 173, 210, 216, 221, 226
Meyer, Johnny, 160
Meyerberg, Michael, 17
Meyers, Mike, 66, 67, 173, 175
Miami Club, 264, 265, 266
Mickey’s, 93
Midday manners, 288
Midnight manners, 288
Milligan, Maurice, 190, 191
Miscegenation, 39
Mission Row, 32
Mitchell Grill, 25
Model agencies, 81
Models, 80, 146
Morals violations, 51
Morley, Elizabeth, 85
Morgan, Sam, 68
Movie palaces, 12
Moy, George, 61
Mugging, 52, 53
Murder. Inc, 149. 191
Murphy, Tom, 197
Murray, Arthur, 82
N.A.A.C.P., 39, 41, 43. 48, 136
Nabuco, Ambassador Mauricio, 148
Narcotics, 49, 51, 60, 61, 107 ff., 122, 271
Narcotics Act, 108
Narcotics Bureau, 251
Narcotics, Diplomatic sources, 113
Nathan, Robert, 159
National Airport, 1
National Park Police, 226
National Syndicate, 172, 173, 177 ff.
National Theatre, 16
Negro after-hours clubs, 42
Negro crime, 46, 47, 48, 49
Negro population, 4, 35
Negroes, 9, 20, 34, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 46, 68, 102, 112, 119, 260
Nesline, Joseph, 174
New Colonial, 26
New Deal, 11
New Dealers, 8
New Willard, 13
Night clubs, 132
Niles, David K., 14, 165, 166, 196, 197
Nitti, Frank, 184
North West, 12 ff.
Norton, Mrs. Mary, 244
Numbers racket, 1, 49, 55, 207, 208
Nunan, Joe, 158, 186
O-Girls, 75
Oasis Club, 263
Occidental, 19
O’Connell, Jerry J., 169
O’Connell, Richard, 128
O’Conor, Senator Herbert, 64, 201, 261
Off Beat Club, 51
Olmsted’s Restaurant. 18
On Leong building, 61
On Leong Tong, 57, 60, 61
Oscar of the Waldorf, 19
Palm Grill, 128
Park Police, 70
Parlor-houses, 269
Party-Girls, 83
Patterson, Eleanor Cissie, 20, 135
Patterson, Mrs. Robert, 138
Pawnbrokers, 65
Pawnbroker’s Row, 31
Peacock Alley, 14
Pearson, Drew, 199
Pecora, Ferdinand, 197
Pendergast, Tom, 190
Penguin, 33
Pentagon, 71, 72, 73
Pepper, Claude, 160
Per capita income, 4
Permanent Central Opium Board, 109
Peron, Eva, 148
Pershing, General John J., 143
Piccadilly, 269
Pinball machines, 212
Pinchot, Mrs. Gifford, 136
Podell, Julie, 186, 187
Poland, 109
Police, 220 ff.
Policy-sellers, 69
Policy slips, 1, 50, 55, 207
Political spies, 247
Pollack, Jack, 260
Pope, Gene, 186
Porter, Paul A., 158
Postal Inspectors, 250
Potts, William, 110
Powell, Congressman Adam Clayton, 45
Pressler, Nancy, 24
Prince Georges County, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 175, 176, 210, 233
Proctor, Peggy, 26
Prospect House, 10
Prostitutes, 21–26, 34, 59, 66, 274
Prostitution, 69, 78, 86 ff.
Protective Association, 54
Protocol, 289
Public relief, 43
Public Utilities Commission, 13
Purcell, Gerry, 181
Purity Lunch and Grill, 25
Purple Cross Gang, 54
Queen of the Fences, 49
Quinn, Gary, 127, 172, 207
Quonsett Inn, 56, 67
Race problem, 16
Ramos, Ramon, 137, 138
Rand, Ben B., 161
Red spies, 100
Reefers, 49, 50, 55, 121
Rent party, 55
Restaurants, 12
Ricca, 175
Ricci, Tony, 174
Robert, Evie, 136
Roberts, Charles M., 116
Roberts, Jim Yellow, 49
Robeson, Paul, 103
Roosevelt, Eleanor, 9, 10, 16, 38, 40, 41, 43, 102, 104, 134
Roosevelt, Elliott, 160
Roosevelt, Franklin D., 97, 132, 188
Roosevelt, Franklin D., Jr., 162, 164, 254
Rosen, Nig, 175, 176
Rosenberg, Anna, 167
Russian radio, 152
Sailors, 269
Sailors’ Row, 33, 34
Sand Bar, 93
_Saturday Evening Post_, 38
Saunders, Kay, 26
Scheve, Theodore Little Joe, 174
Schools, public, 41
Schulman, Robert Ryebread, 174
Schultz, Dutch, 45
Scott, Hazel, 45
Seal, Monk, 67
Secret Service, 251
Senate Crime Investigating Committee 64,
_See also_ Kefauver Committee
Seto, Kwon, 61
Seventh and T Club, 51
Sex movies, 31
Shah of Persia, 147
Shaw, Carolyn Hagner, 140, 141
Shepherd, Alexander Robey, 36, 234
Sheriff, Earl, 66
Ship’s Cafe, 33
Shopping, 18
Shoreham, 13, 15
Show Boat Bar, 94
Sicilians, 180
Siegel, Bugsy, 177, 182
Silver Spring, Maryland, 63
Simpkins, “Whitey,” 49
Skid Row, 16, 30, 32, 33, 99, 261, 263
Slums, 38, 51, 122
Smiley, Alan, 187
Smith, Paul T., 166
Sniper, The, 56
Society, 134 ff.
Soviet Russia, 107, 109, 151
Stage-crafters Club, 126, 127, 128
Stanton Park, 93
Star Dust Club, 50
State Department 97, 108, 146
Statler Hotel, 13, 25
Steelman, Dr. John 165
Strip-joints, 64
Suburbs, 63
Sulgrave, 141
Sunrise, 128
Supreme Head of the International Mafia, 182
Sussman brothers, 172, 207
Swindlers, 277
T Men, 44, 78, 191
Tammany Hall, 243
Taxi dancers, 82
Taxi talk, 289
Temperance Court, 51
Tenderloin, 21
Terminal Police, 70
Theatre, 12
Theft of government checks, 55
Thomas Circle, 19, 113
Thors, Minister Thor, 150
Tipping, 290
Top Side, 127
Traffic tickets, 290
Transportation, 291
Transvestites, 92
Treasury Agents, 250
Treasury Intelligence, 184
Truitt, Max, 157, 162, 163
Truman, Bess, 135, 137, 138
Truman, Harry, 45, 137, 142, 157, 158, 190, 194, 265
Turf-and-Grid, 128
20-11 Club, 51
UN Victory Girls, 88
UNRRA, 103, 154
U. S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, 236
U. S. Bureau of Narcotics, 109, 183
Underworld, 171 ff.
Unione Siciliano, 49, 182
United Mine Workers, 164, 167
United Nations, 107, 153
United Nations secretariat, 103
United Nations Social Cub, 129
United States Department of Justice, 66
United States Treasury Department, 112
Vane, Mary Lou, 85
Vaughan, General Harry, 126, 127, 140, 142, 165, 166, 186
Velde, Harold, 100
Venereal disease, 23
Vice, 2, 25
Victoria Hotel, 267
Virginia, 6, 20, 62, 63, 65, 68, 69, 207
Vote, 7, 62
Wagner, Robert F. Jr., 164
Wakefield, Alan A., 98
Wall, Virginia, 85
Wallgren, Mon, 160
Walters, Al, 88
Ward, Charles, 189
Wardman Park, 13
Warring, Emmitt, 10, 11, 172, 173, 207, 232
Washington Criminal Justice Association, 214, 216
Water Barge, 17
Webber, Palmer, 168, 169
Wechsler, Nathan, 161
Weekend Burglars, 121
Wheeler, Burton K., 158
Wheeler, George Shaw, 171
White House Police, 70
Whitehead, George Francis, 28
Whitelaw, 50
Whore Dance, 266
Whores, 53, 76, 262
Willard Hotel, 13, 43
Williams, Johnny, 174
Willie Pye arrest, 217
Wilson Steamship Line, 87
Wiretapping, 245 ff.
Wolfson, Lou, 192, 193
Wong, Sam, 56
Wood, Roy H., 99
WPA, 9
Wyatt, Wilson, 163
“Y,” 51
Yee, 61
Yoking, 53, 54
Yamasee, 127
[Illustration: Washington Northwest]
[Illustration: District of Columbia and Vicinity]
Transcriber’s Notes
Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a
predominant preference was found in the original book; otherwise they
were not changed.
Simple typographical errors were corrected.
The index was not checked for proper alphabetization or correct page
references.
*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Washington Confidential" ***
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