Shoes for Baby

Into Western Union's local office at Bridgeton, NJ. seven weeks ago walked Nelson Stamler, New Jersey's deputy attorney general. He had not come to send a telegram, but to arrest Office Manager Charles Frake, 39. The charge: operating a horse-betting establishment. Records seized by Stamler showed that in one year Frake's office had handled the transmission of $300,000 worth of horse bets by telegraphed money orders to out-of-state bookmakers.

Last week, a Cumberland County grand jury indicted Frake and the Western Union Telegraph Co. on bookmaking charges. It also indicted four St. Louisans on charges of operating a nationwide horse-bet syndicate. Same day, Missouri highway patrolmen swarmed into the syndicate's innocent-looking office in a St. Louis suburb. Called the "Gold Bronzing Co.," it purported to be busy gilding keepsake baby shoes. The cops found no baby shoes, but a gold mine of records, ledgers and racing form sheets.

A Profitable Proposition. In a box marked "Western Union Agents,they found a list, of 200 Western Union employees, many branch-office managers. Records indicated that agents had been transmitting horse-bets to the syndicate in return for a 25% commission. The seized records included a copy of a wire from an East Coast Western Union manager to the syndicate: "I believe I could develop some business for you here and in surrounding towns. Just what kind of a proposition do you offer?" Another manager was so grateful for his commission on bets that he offered to send a crate of cantaloupes to the bookies.

In Manhattan Western Union officials said that if any of, their employees had been taking betting commissions they had violated company orders. They exhibited a letter to all offices last October warning employees against accepting any gifts or commissions. As for the actual transmission of a money order used to make a bet, Western Union said that as a common carrier it must accept any message that is not obscene.

A Great Future. To Western Union's further embarrassment last week, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch's Crime Reporter Theodore C. Link dug out an interesting new fact. Among Western Union's 15 largest stockholders, he reported, is William, Molasky, vice president of St. Louis' Pioneer News-Service, a racing news syndicate. Molasky, withhis wife, owns 14,000 shares of Western Union stock (present valuer about $400,000). Western Union's reply was that it had no control over who bought its stock in the open market. That was true enough. But in Washington members of the Senate crime committee reported that they had found evidence that other gamblers were investing in such businesses as Western Union, presumably in the eventual hope of controlling them.

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