Word: underworlders
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...Catholics we abominate and we condemn syndicated crime and vice. It is as despicable as it is evil. We condemn the underworld and all its barbarous and cowardly ways. But we condemn also the overworld-liquor executives, public officials . . . and the like who, though able to retain the aura of respectability, sacrifice every decent principle for their own contemptible and selfish ends...
...votes in his pocket. He boasted that he controlled 40 state legislators, that he had elected Governor Forrest Smith. But Charlie Binaggio, who looked deceptively like a mild and prosperous chiropodist, made a mistake which is as fatal in politics as it is in the underworld-he overestimated himself...
Bums & Gandy-Dancers. Charles Binaggio started modestly enough, in the Kansas City underworld nurtured by the late Boss Tom Pendergast. The storm that swept old Tom into prison passed him by, and he was arrested only occasionally on gambling and bootlegging charges. He took over the heavily Italian First Ward with its flophouse bums, indigents, and gandy-dancers, slowly began building back the lopsided majorities of Pendergast days. He took cuts on gambling, used his "influence" to sell Canadian Ace Beer, a brew produced by prosperous relicts of the old Capone syndicate in Chicago. He bought a handsome house...
Success went to Binaggio's head. He went to bigger men than he in the underworld, promised that if his man Forrest Smith was elected governor, the state would be thrown wide open to gambling, slots and betting. All Charlie wanted was $100,000 or so for the campaign. He got it. Said Jim Pendergast: "My God, how he spent that money. He was paying-as high as $50 for some of the boarding houses we used...
...easy virtue. First, like many of her fans, she is a shiny-nosed household drudge, bored and burdened with a husband who doesn't understand her. Escaping rebelliously, she becomes a cynical tart with a burlesque strut. Finally, having double-crossed her way onto the lap of an underworld titan, she acquires all the graces of a society matron. Along the way, Joan proves the undoing of four tall, handsome men, including Kent Smith, an honest but weak accountant, and David Brian, a pseudo-respectable gangland big shot with a taste for Etruscan vases...