New Britain herald., 1926-06-17

of-town man was lured from this notor'- ous dive not so long ago, taken to girls apartment and shot dead,
 q know another place which is patron ized by crookdom and swelldom alike which is run by thief whose life right now is hanging in the balance, and ne expects any night to be his last. lnis particular resort is fayorite one where criminals dicker with the men who act aS their distributors The od-time fence who does business in the little back room of a pawnshop or in some rookery Tn the slums doesn't get look-in on these big deals Men are not stealing S2oo- GOO of goods from loft, S100,0o0 worth of crude rubber from a Pennsylvania barge and small fortunes in goods from large truckloads without knowing where they are to dispose of their loot before stealing it; and they have to deal with big men to handle their big assign ments.
 If people would only realize what suckers they are when they patronize those palaces of phony peasure' The prices they charge for drinks is simply astounding. In the black -and-tan dive 1 mentioned they soak you s3.5o for glass of champagne which is noth- ing more than plain hard cider-and not so hard at that!
 GIT ISN'T only New Workers who are
 the boobs-in fact, believe that the majority are out-of-towners. who be- lieve that they are really seeing life, These visitors greet the men or women who offer to show them the town as guiding spirits, and follow them through the sewers of the transplanted under world from dusk to dawn then they wake up wiser, but darned sghs sadder.
 "The 'revues' which are offered in many of these places are cast from the the discarded chorus girls of the cheap est burlesque shows. Seen through an alcoholic haze maybe they look like houris! Seen with sober eyes they are certainly like wrecks of rainy night.
 "I don't mean that all night clubs are bad at all. There are charming places. but we are not concerned with those. What we want to clean up, and warn people against. are the notorious resorts financed and run by ex-convicts of all sorts-murderers thieves and criminals who have been convicted of felonies which are not mentioned in print. You cant tell by looking at these slick gentry that they belong outside decent society: they have veneer of suavity and a wardrobe of expensive clothes that transform them into excellent limitations of genial hosts. But if you want to take chances in going to such places, at least take a few precautions: Don't drink their vile liquor, don't flash a lot of jewelry, and don't make casual acquaintances.
 "The wise guy who thinks he can take care of himself often falls the hardest, He challenges the slippery graduates from the Bowery who have lived by their wits from the time they learned to toddle-and he hasn't chance against them.
 What the gangster can't handle him. self, he'll turn over to his fiashily dressed lady friend and accomplice, who is the up-to-date edition of the 'molls' of the Bowery, who supported their overlords in the old days by lifting feathers, strip. ping lushers and shoplifting.
 "Once thief, always thief; once . criminal, always a criminal, is a good axiom to remember. There are excep- tional cases where men have reformed but they are unique and extraordinary.
 Police Commissioner McLaughlin's drive to close all objectionable classes of night-life resorts will do a tremen- dous lot to rid the city of crime. The younger generation won't sec criminals Haunting their ill-gotten gains; instead they will learn that the wages of crime is-jail"
 copyTiohT by Pubne Ledoer