Mobs & Machines

GANG RULE IN NEW YORK--Craig Thompson and Allen Raymond--Dial Press ($3.50).

This book is essentially a study in the urban workings of democracy, and a sight more informative one than most sociologists would be apt to produce. Authors Thompson & Raymond are both able and knowledgeable newspapermen. Much of what they have to tell has been known to other such newspapermen for years, but it has been left to them to pull it together. One good reason for the delay is that, until Prosecutors Dewey and Cahill finally got the goods on Messrs. Jimmy Hines, Martin Manton et al., the anatomy of gang rule in New York City could not be fully exposed.

Gang murders like those over which the Brooklyn District Attorney has been putting on such a show (TIME, April 1) are the gruesome small change of the underworld business. Thompson & Raymond are concerned to demonstrate that underworld business would never have nourished in New York City in the '20s and '30s unless it had been an upper-world business as well--a business that became big-time with Prohibition, that became pervasive with the industrial rackets, that reached almost tyrannical power when a queer, greedy slob and gunman named Arthur Flegenheimer gave orders to a top man in Tammany Hall.

The tie-up between politics and mobs was in practice intricate and devious, but Raymond & Thompson give a useful diagram of the mechanism. Founded on Tammany use of hoodlums and floaters to get out the vote and win elections in the 23 assembly districts of Manhattan, the mechanism involved Tammany gratitude to these instruments. Tammany gratitude was partially expressed through mayor-appointed magistrates--a tie-up very shocking to good people when the Seabury investigation brought it out in 1930-31. Judge Seabury's recommendation--that the appointment of magistrates be removed from politics--has never been followed.

The richer that mobs got from bootlegging and allied rackets, the more help they could deliver in elections, the more beholden the bosses became. Thompson & Raymond draw a pretty picture of the principal gangs and gang leaders during that era, of their boyish purchases in haberdashery and chorus girls, their nights into the nightclub business and into sports ("Big Bill" Dwyer introduced professional hockey to Manhattan), their celebrated lawyers such as "The Great Mouthpiece" Fallon. They name certain such semi-criminal fixers who are still in the law business.

No mere rewrite job from newspaper morgue material, the Thompson & Raymond book purports to tell several facts never told before about the great Broad way character, Arnold Rothstein, financier to the rackets, fence for stolen jewelry, unofficial intermediary between honorable Manhattan banking houses and gangsters in need of cash. Sample: Rothstein held insurance policies totaling $1,500,000 on the lives of three theatrical producers (the insurance policy was Rothstein's customary device for insuring collection of loans: if a borrower was killed, his debt would be paid off; if he refused to pay, he knew there was a definite price on his head).

Like most books by working newspapermen, this one is better in detail than in structure. Authors Thompson & Raymond never develop their reference to a fact which would seem highly relevant to the present hullabaloo in Brooklyn: "The reduction of Tammany to the status of a borough organization in Manhattan, the borough of diminishing population, and . . . the rise of other and stronger bosses in Brooklyn and The Bronx. . . ." Their mobsters generally remain two-dimensional. One who comes terribly to life, however, is slug-faced Arthur Flegenheimer, who as "Dutch Schultz" went from beer-running to the numbers racket and in his heyday treated Tammany Boss James J. Hines as his stooge. If Gang Rule In New York contained nothing else, it would be note worthy for preserving the full stenographic record of Schultz's deathbed ravings in Newark City Hospital on Oct. 24, 1935, after a hole had been blown in his side by a .45-calibre automatic. Excerpts :

Please make it quick, fast and furious. Please, fast and furious. Please help me get out. I am getting my wind back. Thank God! Please, please. Oh! Please! . . .

I checked and double-checked, and please pull for me. Will you pull? How many good ones and how many bad ones? Please, I had nothing with him. He was a cowboy in one of the seven days a week fights. No business, no hangout, no friends, nothing. . . .

Please, mother don't tear. Don't rip. That is something that shouldn't be spoken about. Please get me up, my friends. . . . Please, mother, you pick me up now. Do you know me? . . .

Oh, sir, get the doll a roofing. You can play jacks, and girls do that with a soft ball and play tricks with it. . . . No, no, and it is no. It is confused and it says no. A boy has never wept, nor dashed a thousand kim. And you hear me? . . .

(Schultz's wife was brought to the bedside and said, "This is Frances.")

Then pull me out. I am half crazy. They won't let me get up. They dyed my shoes. Open those shoes. Give me something. I am so sick. Give me some water, the only thing that I want. Open this up and break it so I can touch you...

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