Dark Pays for Bootleggers.

Waikato Times, Volume 107, Issue 17953, 24 February 1930, Page 15

Dark Pays for Bootleggers.

The bootleggers, it seems, have been | hurt by the Wall Street crash far | more than by any prohibition drive. j Business has fallen off. Being gamblers, the speakeasy men | have lost their own funds in the slump. | Mr F. P. Dunne, who i covers theatres for the New York “World,” paints a j gloomy picture of j the situation, 3ays the “Outlook and Independent.” '

MUCH has been written, and a lot more gloomily said on street-corners and J elsewhere, about the 6 devastating effects 5 of the recent de- ) bade of the stock l market. Scarcely a business or of

,nv sort hw failed to feel these effects But nowhere is the aftermath ot the crash to bo seen with mere tragic clarity than in the establishments of that very considerable group of our businessmen, the proprietors of the speakeasies. There is, for example, the restaurant of Georgio Canella, a young south European whose real namo had best not be mentioned. Canella is an educated man able to speak five or six languages faultlessly and charmingly, and his tastes are in accordance with his breeding, which is to sav that they are good. His place of business, located in a handsome mansion on the West Side of Manhattan, is beautifullv furnished in tho quiet manner with a , touch of modernism, and it has about fifteen tables and a chaste mahogany bar. The food Georgio serves is excellent, the wines are the host obtainable in those difficult davs, and the pru.es commensurate y fitoh. Until the crash there was scarcely a night when the place was not crowded with a brilliant assemblage of well-groom-ed epicures, whose chattering voices drowned out the sounds of the radio (always. played piano). But right now, one may enter his doors at dinner-time, and find most of the tables empty. Last week, for example there was only one party there—a party of two at that—and the dining-room presented a dismal aspect of desertion. Everywhere were white table cloths unrumpled by use, and the shine upon the brass rail •it the gar was unmarred by tho feet of miests. In places of the usual symphony ,of conversation there was silence and the radio.

“To night,” said Canella, with a sigh, “is unusually bad, but still, I have lost 75 per cent, of mv business since the stock market went down, not to mention losing most of my own savings in the crash. Our business —I am speaking of the hignclass speakeasy restaurants—is a luxury business, and luxury businesses arc not so profitable nowadays. And when people do come here now, they don t buy champagne as they used to. They are all trying to cut down on their expenses, and the good speakeasies are the first to 6uflei as a result.”

Canella’s experiences are no exception. Proprietors of other high-class speakeasies have the same story to tell: that good liquor at present-day prices ranks as a luxury, and thaT the bottom has fallen out of the luxury market. The good jewellers and tailors and milliners know that, too, to their sorrow.

Consider for a moment the plight of Clement. He is a waiter, and ari artist at it, with the result that by working in speakeasies, where the tips are much higher than elsewhere, he had been able to accumulate nearly $20,000. During the, spring, summer and autumn, he worked in New York establishments, and his winters he habitually spent in Palm Beach, working there in an open-air speakeasy of the greatest elegance But when the market tumbled, it took bis littlo world right down with it, for he first lost all his money, then his New Yorx employer had to let him go, and now ho has just received word that his winter boss is not going to open up in Palm Beach this year for the simple reason that he doesn t believe the winter visitors are going to have enough money la/ night clubs. £so Clement is cut in the cold.

Clement’s former employer, Tony Sforza (one of the many Tonies in his line of business) has a speakeasy in the very shadow of Park Avenue. llis customers usually dress for dinner, and before the crash, it was practically impossible to get a table at the dinner hour. To-day, there is no difficulty in doing so. His business he says, is off at least fifty per cent, and he is in grave doubt about his ability to keep going through the winter unless things improve radically and in a hum*. There is just now a slight movement in the rig'ht direction, but he is afraid it will not bo rapid enough to save him because those who do still visit his establishment are buying only the less expensive liquid wares, and many of them are merely eating his lavish two dollar dinner on which he makes almost no profit. There are many other similar cases. One man estimates the depreciation in his business at forty per cent.; another at thirty. Channaino Satis, a young Frenchwoman, whoso specialty is hue wines, —champagne, Bordeaux and burgundy—and who once saw her place crowded to the doors until the morning hours, now surveys a practically emptyroomful of round red tables, while hei bartender, in a striped apache jersey, languishes behind his bar with little to do. And she, too, lost most of her savings in the market.

The home and delivery _ men, those gentlemen with a personal clientele who provide the refreshments for parties and personal consumption, are having a hard time, too, though not quite so disastrous a one. The reason is that many parties have been called off or at least reduced in size. For example, at one hotel alone, thirty-two dances for debutantes were cancelled ‘immediately after the crash, and since it may fairly bo estimated that fifty cases of champagne are consumed at a typical one of these, at sllO a case, it may be seen that approximately $175,000 in gross business has been lost to the bootleggers by this single set of cancellations. there must have been many inoro such decisions not to spend money on elaborate gaiety. One stockbroker who planned to have 200 guests at his country house one evening three weeks ago finally invited only fifty.

The demand for champagne, they say, is way off, though they are still selling Scotch and rye in fairly large quantities. But where they are hardest hit is in the matter of getting paid. A good many of their regular customers simply haven t the cash to pay them, so, rather than let their liquor lie unsold on their shelves they are selling it on credit “until the market goes back up again,” which is a risky procedure and not one which will bring them the money they need right away. Also, they are having a terrible time collecting their old bills.

Take the case of Eddie Crenan, a large home-supplier. He lost some $600,000 himself, and when he tried to raise money for morn margin by collecting his bills, he found that his customers were every bit as badly off as lie was, with the result that his investments blew up and he was left high and dry. Moreover, he was forced to dismiss a dozen or so of his employees, because his business had fallen off so alarmingly. One of his colleagues, one Louis Duverne, lost $1,000,000 which he had accumulated duing the past ten years. He started in the trade as soon as the law was passed, and, without striving for more than a small and exclusive custom, was in time in a position to retiro to his native Alsace, and there live like a prince, or better. The market caught him unprepared, and neatly wiped him out, so todav he has nothinor left but an irnnov.

erishecl clientele and a modicum of credit with the wholesalers from whom he obtains his stock-in-trade.

All in all, it is a depressing picture. Not a bootlegger interviewed during trie course of this investigation had escaped without losing much of his own money. All are gamblers or they never would have entered their hazardous business. One had dropped $1,000,000, another $600,000, another $300,000, and others betmV $50,000 and $100,000; and all because none of them had invested in safe and sane bonds or even bought tneir stocks outright. They had gone into the market with a gambling philosophy. Ana businessmen outside the bootlegging tiace know what happened to gamblers in the debacle.

Nor will the community as a whole be benefited. Many of the bootleggers, as I have suggested above, have had to fire some of their men—waiters, truckdrivers, armed guards and all. Theie is no way of telling exactly, hut certainly hundreds and perhaps thousands ol bootlegging underlings have been thrown on the streets, some of them unquestionably to occupations by no means so gentle as the sale, manufacture for sale, and transportation of intoxicating beverages. There is, however, a ray of cheer in the business, and this oddly enough, emanates from those murky dives in the less elegant portions of town where longshoremen and truck-drivers congregate. A typical one of these is that run by Jerry Riordan—an old-fashioned bar with fly-specked mirrors and a picture of a lady in tights over the door. Like the proprietors of the more elaborate places, Jerry is at heart a gambler, but he runs to horse racing, not to the stock market, which is why he can laugh at stock market jokes without a mental reservation. The crash did nothing much to his customers either; few of whom ever get as far beyond the sporting pages of the papers as the financial reports. So Jerry is as well off now as he ever was, and his employees, two bartenders and a door-watcher, arc secure in their jobs. One more case I offer for the instruction and edification c. the bootleggers, and others. Bridget Callahan and her husband had a small beer-saloon in a Long Island town when Prohibition came in. Shortly after that, Callahan died, and Mrs Callahan, with the problem of raising her two sons, carried on by herself, establishing a fine liquor business. So well did she do, that she was able to send both of her sons to excellent schools, from which the elder matriculated at Princeton, and the younger at Harvard. The older boy is now a promising young attorney in New York, and the younger graduates from college this year. Blit Bridget never liked the stock market. It was too far away, for one thing, and she felt she didn’t understand it well enough to trust her fortune to it, so she bought 300,000 dollars worth of real estate, which has since gone up to about 500,000 dollars. And though, like all others who cater to the highest class of trade, she has since lost some of her business, she doesn’t need to worry.

There remains one question: "What are the bootleggers going to do about it all I am afraid the answer is not very cheering. Some of them, of course, being honest men and anxious for their reputations, will try to worry along until matters improve themselves, but there is a definite feeling in the trado that, business having fallen off, a good many of the “boys” will try to make up the loss elsewhere —in a word, by selling inferior stuff. One speakeasy operator says he is already having the devil’s own time getting decent whisky, because his wholesale supply men have been cutting their whisky three or four ways instead of the usual two. “If the price of liquor goes down,” he says, “then you may be sure the quality will go down with it.” ,

For bootleggers are no more philanthropic than other businessmen. Or, to put it in the words of one o£ “We trot to. live, ain’t, we P .