The Terms fof Jimmy

To Jimmy Hines, political activity was life, and vice versa. During his gaudy years as a Tammany boss the line formed each morning outside his bedroom door. Supplicants began filing past his bed as soon as he awakened. He listened, smiling genially, to them all. They were the basis of the controlled vote, and the vote meant many things to Jimmy--prestige, front-row seats, wads of bills to bet at the races, comfortable bank accounts in his wife's name. He controlled judges and cops. His friends ranged from Franklin D. Roosevelt to Arthur ("Dutch Schultz") Flegenheimer, the "numbers" king. The vote was his bludgeon and his armor; when Prosecutor Tom Dewey came belling toward him up a trail of racket-busting evidence, Jimmy was unruffled.

But somehow he was convicted, in 1939, of selling Dutch Schultz protection against the law. With appeals, Jimmy Hines fought the case for 20 months before he went up the river to Sing Sing.

The 62-year-old Boss of Manhattan became Convict No. 78,719, was given a job as a gardener in the prison greenhouse. Fellow prisoners treated him with respect. Jimmy Hines, whose grandfather had been a Tammany captain under Boss Tweed, and whose father had been a Tammany captain under Boss Croker, thought of his conviction as political persecution. He began writing a book in which he pictured himself as a victim of injustice,

Twice he went before the parole board to plead for freedom, and was twice refused. Last week, after three years and ten months behind the walls, he went before the parole board for the third time. He was now 67. His ruddiness was gone, and he looked thinner; his hair was white. He talked quietly, affably, but the suspense under which he was obviously laboring crept into his voice. The board conferred, granted him his parole. Then they laid down the terms under which he can keep his freedom when he goes into the world again on Sept. 12, with a suit of clothes, $20 and a railroad ticket to Manhattan's Grand Central Station. The terms: he must not engage in political activity.

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