Word: raceways
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Nassau County (pop. 672,765), is J. Russel Sprague, old friend and crafty political lieutenant of New York's Governor Thomas E. Dewey. Last week Sprague, under fire for his ownership of $500.000 worth of stock (which cost him, in effect, $24,000) in the scandal-ridden Yonkers Raceway, resigned as New York's Republican national committeeman...
Long Island's Nassau County is a solid rock of Republicanism. For 36 years Republicans have been breezing into Nassau County offices, usually by more than 2-1. This year scandal swept across the county from the Roosevelt (trotting horse) Raceway, where labor racketeers had been shaking down the employees and some owners of stock had made fabulous profits. The county's Mr. Republican, National Committeeman J. Russel Sprague, turned out to be one of the stockholders of the scandal-ridden Yonkers Raceway, in nearby Westchester County...
Although it is published in Garden City, Long Island, a quiet suburb 20 miles from the bustle of Manhattan, Alicia Patterson's tabloid Newsday (circ. 180,964) has never been content to lead the quiet life of a suburbanite. Almost two months ago, when Yonkers Raceway's Labor Boss Tommy Lewis was murdered by a hired gunman (TIME, Oct. 5), Newsday said pointedly: the Yonkers trotting track is "40 miles from [Long Island's] Roosevelt Raceway, but only inches separate [them] in operating procedure." Newsday knew what it was talking about. Unheeded by other papers...
Among those indicted was Newsday's biggest target: Long Island's longtime Building Trades Boss (A.F.L.) William De Koning, "just about the richest labor leader in the world." who had got control of the raceway's three key unions (parimutuel clerks, police protection force, maintenance employees). De Koning's lawyer angrily placed the blame for his client's trouble, and gave Newsday the accolade it had waited for. Said he: "The bitter personal hatred of Union Organizer William De Koning by the managing editor of Newsday, Mr. Alan Hathway, has resulted . . . in scurrilous attacks...
...came to Newsday eleven years ago from the New York Daily News, Hathway has been deluged with tips and complaints about De Koning's rough, highhanded labor tactics. When De Koning ("I ain't afraid of no one") moved in to take over control of the raceway's employees, Hathway set his reporters to work. Newsday discovered that De Koning's union members, to hold their jobs at the track, were forced to kick back part of their salaries, buy tickets at exorbitant prices to dances and dinners laid on by De Koning...