RULE OF CRIME.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 249, 21 October 1933, Page 4 (Supplement)

RULE OF CRIME.

BLACKMAIL BUSINESS. RACKETEERING CHARGES. "ROOTING OUT" CORRUPTION IN UNITED STATES. Behind the indictment on racketeering charges of 24 prominent Chicago men— including a University lecturer, a famous lawyer, the city's Republican leader, who is right hand man to ex-Mayor "Big Bill" Thompson, and Al Capone (now in gaol) and his successor —is the Roosevelt administration's determination to root out corruption in the United States. Under successive Republican Governments, graft had become so highly organised as to be virtually the machinery of State and municipal rule. Racketeering is not a separately conducted "industry. It is part and "parcel of the corruption which has honeycombed politics. The gangsters are generally under the control of politicians in the background. At the same time, there is a "tie-up" with certain figures in high finance. It is not forgotten by the officials responsible for carrying out the "Roosevelt Purge" that one international financier, now dead, had the notorious "Legs" Diamond (also departed) as his personal bodyguard! Racketeering, which means the blackmail of business men and firms into paying for "protection" by gangsters, has developed to a fantastic extent since the war. No big city is free from it. New York suffers as much as Chicago, whose "Century of Progress" Fair has 40 of its concessions in the hands of the racketeering fraternity. Defiance Brings Death. Dozens of industries are carried on only by the dearly bought good will of the gunmen. To defy the racketeers by refusing to pay fees for protection means ruin or perhaps death. The methods of the poultry racketeers are typical of those in other distributive trades. Of head of poultry brought to New York every year, not a million are sold except under the control of a crime ring. ■ First, the breeder is, told to what whole-' saler he may sell his chickens, geese or turkeys. He must send them to town in crates sold by the racket, on motor trucks run by the same gentry. He must also buy from them the poultry food they eat on the way. Even after a chicken has reached the market and been dressed and pluqked, it is not free of violence and crime. If the man who has bought it does not work in with the poultry "trust," it will arrivo at the shopkeeper's sprinkled with paraffin or poison, completely unfit for sale. Two dealers who rebelled last year had more drastic and simple treatment. They were shot dead. The "control" of the chickens does not end till the shopkeeper has had his customers assigned to him, for which he pays his fee. It is estimated that the extra cost of chickens sold to the* Jewish community alone in New York, through the toll of the poultry racket, is over £3,000,000 a year.