Word: racketeering
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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Thus to public attention came a new racket which has been growing in New York for some five months. The formula: A "protective association" demands that the garage owner force his employes to join a "union," pay a $10 initiation fee and $2 monthly dues from each man's wages. Refusal brings attempts to lure away his patrons, violence to himself and cars. The racket is spreading rapidly. In Brooklyn last week four thugs tied up a garage watchman, rolled him under an automobile, slashed the upholstery of ten cars...
Wearied with complaints from victims of the old Drake racket, chiefly inflicted on the yokelry, the Post Office Department last week broke a precedent. Postmaster General Brown made public the names of seven citizens to whom the use of the mails would be denied because they had accepted "donations" from hopeful aspirants to the Drake fortune. Oddly enough, 100 letters at once reached the Post Office Department from Northwestern farmers protesting the issuance of the order. The Department calculated that from them and their ilk, $1,300,000 had been bled by Drake racketeers. "There has never been any record...
...callow youth when police used to take snapshots of him for their rogues galleries (see cut). Unlike his imprisoned onetime chief, Al Capone, he shuns the public eye. He is about 34, athletic, has brains. He is credited with having persuaded Capone to enter the cleaning & dyeing racket, headed that department of the Capone industries. He is now board chairman of whatever is left of the Capone syndicate. Public Enemy Humphries claims to be legitimately interested in the cleaning business, chuckles at police...
...their economic system when the time comes for "action" (political). Small groups of "parlor pinks" are worthless to the cause. Workers must be made class-conscious, must be given new and inspiring leaders for the "revolution." Organized labor offers no such leaders because unions have gone in for racketeering. And: "The origin of racketeering is obviously in the Capitalistic system. Capitalism, essentially lawless and brutal, is inherently a racket but in America it is more blatantly...
...University dining halls. Detroiters may buy in the downtown stores tokens designed for sidewalk charity, worth a cent each at the "Penny Cafeteria," but honored as currency nowhere else. Thus the casual passerby is assured that the object of his generosity is not a beggar controlled by a racket, and that he gets something better for his money than needled beer. It is not an ideal plan, but these are not ideal times, and the system excludes most of the evils of panhandling...