Corn Convention

It was largely to attract conventions that a $10,000,000 town auditorium was constructed on Cleveland's lakefront. Not without pride do the managers of Hotels Statler, Hollenden, Winton and even the Van Sweringen Brothers' dignified Hotel Cleveland, recall what fine times they have had with visiting swarms of Elks or Engineers. A Cleveland climax was the G. O. P. convention of 1924.

Last week Cleveland found itself the scene of another convention. Policeman Frank Osowski, patrolling near the Hotel Statler, watched the delegates arrive. Many a convention delegate had Officer Osowski seen before but never like these. They looked too sophisticated to be Elks or Moose. Their diamond rings and stickpins, their healthy paunches, their burly necks, made it apparent that theirs was no Christian Endeavor. They had no strange banners or playful uniforms, they slapped no backs, yowled no songs, threw no bottles or pillows out the windows, so they could not be Grottoists. Officer Osowski thought their opulent luggage, silk shirts, swart skins and furtive conversations looked suspicious, unAmerican. He told headquarters, which sent a squad, which interviewed some of the delegates and sent for reinforcements. Then the Hotel Statler underwent the embarrassment of a police and Federal raid. The delegates, 27 strong, were a "mob" of gunmen from Chicago, Gary, St. Louis, Newark, Brooklyn, Tampa. Their convention seemed to be about corn-sugar, chief ingredient of Cleveland's well-established moonshine industry.

Corn-sugar is not handled by many merchants. An underworld ring is supposed to operate two of the country's few corn-sugar refineries, somewhere in Illinois. Some brothers Lonardo of Cleveland obtained a local monopoly of the product, but were murdered last year by rivals. A police theory of last week's convention in Cleveland was that the Lonardos' heirs had sent for help to solve an industrial crisis. All the delegates, who were arrested in their rooms and suites in various stages of matutinal disarray, were found to be well equipped with money and -lethal weapons. One man was identified as a brother of the late Gangster Tony Lombardo of Chicago.

There was, of course, no definitely incriminating evidence. One does not carry a sample case when taking orders for Canadian brews. One cannot be arrested on suspicion of selling corn-sugar for local 'leggers to distill into "corn likker" and sell to honest householders, who then age it in charred barrels and serve it loudly as Bourbon whiskey. It is a misdemeanor, not a crime, to carry a "rod" (pistol) without a permit--until it is proven you have shot someone. Nevertheless Safety Director Barry of Cleveland and Deputy Prohibition Administrator G. J. Simons, who recognized several of the delegates as racketeers he had known in Chicago, detained the whole unconventional convention for close questioning.