AMAZING BLACKMAIL.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20768, 10 January 1931, Page 11

AMAZING BLACKMAIL.

EVIL IN UNITED STATES.

VICTIMISING BUSINESS.

ABOUT £20,000,000 A YEAR.

REVOLT AGAINST "RACKETEERS"

/That, general revolt against extravagantly vicious crime conditions in the United States to which the righteous have looked forward with faith, though oft disappointed, seems to bo nearer. Officialdom is waking up. On November 21 tho Federal Government, under the le;id of Attorney-General Mitchell, says the New York correspondent of tho Observer, London, announced that the Hoover Administration had begun a war of extermination and would continue the greatest .recorded Federal effort against disorder and dishonesty until tho nation bad been normalised, with or without tin- co-operation of local authorities, upon ♦ lie same national scale which surely characterises the efforts of gangdom. The Attorney-General says ho believes that Chicago is the most acutely affected of any population centre, and into that city have been thrown many Federal agents skilled in combating organised ■violation not only of the laws concerning bootlegging, but associated with the white sjave traffic, narcotics and immigration inegularities. Ilie Federal Government now stands pledged to war upon the promotion of vice and especially on the comparatively new crime of blackmailing business

Curiously enough, the Federal income tax legulation, penalising failure to report al! sources of income, has been more effective than tho criminal law aimed directly at the principal offences probably because of bank co-operation—but direct action is promised now.

Extent of the Evil. That free born business men under the influence of American traditions should abjectly submit to such domination by the. banded blackmailers and thugs known collectively as "racketeers," as is revealed this week in Now York, speaks ill for the modeln spirit. It is declared that complaints already indicate an actual annual blackmail paid in New York City of £20,000.000. Ihe same scandal exists in a lesser

degree in smaller cities, while condi

(inns surpassing oven those of New York plague Chicago. Chicago is the acknowledged centre of "racketeering," which means blackmail under threats of financial loss, and personal injury, .with murder as tho final rebuke for laggards. \ irtually every trade, vocation and commercial or industrial activity in the metropolitan region to-day is shadowed by grim threats.

To give some idea of the seriousness of the extortion, it is stated that racketeers are at present levying a tribute of three halfpence a hundred-weight on all freight from ships or .railways at New Yorkdocks or railWay terminals. Every railway and all steamship companies but one are systematically victimised. How the Consumer Suffers.

Apparently this "racket" is a graft, of bander) drivers for money paid by employers direct to them. How they later divide with the leaders is a mystery. rfefus.il means material positively u'nmovert or possibly destroyed. Of course, the criminal surcharge is eventually added tn the retail price, and thus passed on to the consumer. Labour unions are also mulcted, every member of one (unaffiliated with tho American Federation of Labour) being assessed eight shillings weekly, with no pretence of giving value other than immunity from further persecution. Nearly all union musicians must pay four shillings daily or risk injury or loss of their job. Laundrymen are especial victims, many establishments having been dramatically wrecked. The prosecutor who has exposed these, find many other details, pledges himself to find and drive out tfie offenders, though New York is absorbed by the miseries of hard times, and is curiously apathetic to all such matters.