RACKETEERS IN ENGLAND

Evening Star, Issue 21316, 21 January 1933, Page 17

RACKETEERS IN ENGLAND

DEMANDS ON TRADESMEN INSTANCE IN LIVERPOOL. The business “racket,” bo notorious in America, has come to England. _ Shopkeepers in the poorer districts of Liverpool are being victimised almost daily. In every locality tradesmen expect to he asked to contribute to certain charities, and are willing to do so, but in one or two quarters of Liverpool, American racketeering methods are being adopted to force them to pay up. . A cobbler running a small business in a thickly-populated area related lately how his work had dwindled as a result of his refusal to contribute to a cause he knew to be unworthy. “Hardly a week passes,” he said, “ without a couple of men or women coming in and asking for money on the thinnest of excuses. There are several thousand people living within _ a stone’s throw of this shop, and every time one of them has a serious illness I am asked to give something.” When anyone dies in the district all the local shopkeepers are asked to contribute toward the funeral expenses. The informant even told of visitors to his shop asking for money toward the cost of *' wakes ” over people of whom he had never heard. The only way to avoid being boycotted is to pay and look cheerful, although most of the small shopkeepers are having a hard enough job to make ends meet.