Big Warm Blanket

A Jewish lawyer in New York, a notorious criminal in Atlanta Penitentiary, a college professor in Reading, Pa., a fugitive from Federal justice, an alderman vacationing in Europe and 19 other assorted Chicagoans all had common cause for worry last week. It was a big warm blanket indictment by a Cook County grand jury charging them one & all with being trade racketeers. Behind the indictment lay Chicago's years of industrial bombings, murders and terrorism, and twelve weeks of secret investigation by the grand jury before whom appeared 588 frightened witnesses. A strapping, six-foot Irishman elected State's Attorney on an anti-racket platform and a hard-hitting little criminal lawyer named Raber were the spearheads of the attack. Ahead lay the city's first real chance to get convictions and break a spell which holds a bil lion dollars worth of business in thrall to crooked labor unions and their underworld "gorillas."

Chicago's first major trade racket mur der occurred on the warm afternoon of Aug. 3, 1926 when Morris Markowitz, one time Russian pushcart peddler who be came an independent teamster but refused to join a ruthless teamsters' union, was shot down at 37th & Princeton Streets. Since then no less than 274 business rackets have been uncovered, varying from bootblacks, fish dealers and candy jobbers to garagemen, glaziers and electricians.

Between 1923 and 1929, 269 indictments were returned, from which only 27 convictions were obtained. In 1929 Republican John Swanson succeeded "Big Bill" Thompson's Robert Crowe as State's Attorney. He talked loudly about law & order but failed dismally to check industrial violence. Last November Democrat Thomas Courtney, a young two-fisted "reformer," beat State's Attorney Swanson for his job by a thumping majority. The Cook County Democratic machine was not overjoyed at its own man's victory; it feared he would "raise hell with the status quo." That was precisely what he set out to do.

True to his campaign pledge State's Attorney Courtney went after the Chicago racket system-unscrupulous businessmen working hand-in-glove with unscrupulous labor leaders, aided by thugs to do the bombing, window smashing and shooting and backed by crooked politicians and shyster lawyers. He induced kinetic Edwin J. Raber to serve as his special prosecutor. Able Lawyer Raber dug into old newspaper files, searched police records, tapped wires, persuaded timid witnesses to tell the grand jury all they knew. First fruits of these efforts were last week's indictments against cleaners & dyers, laundry owners, their union cohorts and counselors. Prosecutor Raber did not bother with the little underworldlings but went straight to the top to nab presidents of trade associations and union "business agents" who give the orders for violence.

The 24 defendants were charged with criminal conspiracy to stifle trade by collusive extortion and malicious mischief. Evidence against individuals was withheld for the trial in September. Headline names among those indicted were : Alphonse Capone, once Public Enemy No. 1 , now serving an eleven-year sentence for Federal income tax evasion. He was supposed to have got a 2% cut on the gross business of cleaners & dyers and laundrymen in return for "protection." Prosecutor Courtney planned to have him brought from Atlanta to Chicago under guard to stand trial. Murray Humphreys, a Capone lieutenant now in hiding from a Federal income tax indictment.

Aaron Sapiro, who resigned in June as the $25,000-per-year attorney for Chicago's Laundry Owners' Association. Lawyer Sapiro describes himself as a "cooperative organizer." He has organized farmers, milk dealers, taxi drivers, motion picture exhibitors, was a good friend of James John ("Jimmy") Walker. When Henry Ford's Dearborn Independent at tacked Jews in general and Organizer Sapiro in particular on farmers' marketing associations, Lawyer Sapiro in 1927 sued Mr. Ford for $1,000,000 libel, settled out of court for $75,000. Arrested in Man hattan last week and held on $1,500 bail, Defendant Sapiro prepared to fight extradition to Illinois. Said he: "It's all very humiliating. . . . Everything was open, legal and aboveboard. . . . We arranged for price-fixing and we tied up with a labor union. I'm personally prolabor. . . ."

Oscar F. Nelson, handsome Republican alderman from Chicago's 46th ward. He is vice president of the Chicago Federation of Labor and his word is law in union circles. He is also attorney for the Laundry & Dye House Drivers' Union.

Dr. Benjamin Mark Squires, graduate of the University of Wisconsin, a Doctor of Philosophy from Columbia, lecturer on economics and labor problems at the University of Chicago, conciliator for the U. S. Department of Labor. In 1931 he founded the Chicago Master Cleaners & Dyers Institute to clean up the industry, stabilize prices. His salary was to be $25,000 per year. Helping him to run the show was Lawyer Morris Kaplan, also indicted last week. But violence and crime were not to be downed by a college professor. An independent cleaner & dyer named Rosenberg was shot and killed. Hurrying back from a Florida vacation Dr. Squires offered $5,000 to drive out racketeers. The money disappeared, the racketeers remained. A year ago Dr. Squires quit the Institute which promptly collapsed. He had a 16-cylinder Cadillac but not all of his salary. His erstwhile friends called him the "Warren G. Harding of the Cleaners & Dyers," a theoretical economist who turned his back on practical, organized crime. In Reading, Pa. where the De partment of Labor had sent him to try to settle a hosiery strike (TIME, July 31), Dr. Squires was "astounded" to learn of his indictment. Said he: "I attempted to clean up the industry and when I found

1 couldn't, I resigned. The indictment against me is a charge of conspiracy to fix prices which I freely admit doing. If I am wrong in this, however, then so is the President of the U. S."

Of Defendants Squires, Sapiro and Nelson, Prosecutor Raber declared: "They provided the setup for the conspiracy. They helped organize the groups responsible for bombings, sluggings and strikes, the terrorism that put the price of cleaning a suit up to $1.75 while Al Capone took a cut and the public paid the bill. . . . When we've finished the shades will have been pulled off racketeering in Chicago for all time."

By the end of the week only 6 of the 24 defendants had been rounded up by the Sheriff and the State's Attorney's office.

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