The Indianapolis times. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1922-1965, 1931-03-23
Family Tree of the Racketeer

The racket" and the "racketeer rarely are absent
from the front pages of our newspapers but IN the
last weeks they have bobbed up with more than usual
force and frequency. Mayor Walker has been
shocked" into his customary inactivity Governor
Roosevelt supreme knight of the future periphrastic
has retained his recent characteristic pose Of being
about to intervene forcefuly and behave as he did
nearly twenty years ago an independent Democratic
senator at Albany.
The question Of why the racketeer?' has agitated
many writer's lecturers of late. but the expana-
tons usually are single track and inadequate The
racketeer is the composite product of complex set
of forces in American economic social and psychology
cal evolution The notion that he has been produced
by recent immigration from southern Europe or by
the prohibition orgy is not broad enough To cover the
case.
First strains in the parentage of the American
racketeer antedate the settlement Of America They
we're born with the desire of the explorers to get great
riches with small effort. The hopeful search for
mountains of gold runs from the prophets Of Edorado
in the sixteenth century to Rothstein and Capone
This getting something for-ncthing psychology
has permeated our history in speculation in federal
securities and federal lands in prohteerng In war,
in wildcat mining and oil enterprises, in stock
gambling bucket shop swindles and the like
The frontier made its contribution in the spirit of
lawless bravery and optimism. The tradition and
romance of gunpay and gunner born here never has
lost its grip upon the American imagination. The
frontier likewise engendered grandose hopes OF rapid
and enormous enrichment with slight delay and a
minimum of manual effort.
The great buccaneers of American business had
their powerful hand in the provocative efforts which
have produced the moguls of modern gangland Astor
and the monopolsts of the early fur trade set the
pace to be followed by the searchers for great and
sudden wealth in the gold and silver mines of the
west.
jaw Gould Daniel Drew, and Commodore Wander
bilt were as ruthless in exploiting early railroad
development for private gain any Capone or Moran
in utilizing the opportunities which prohibition has
offered Morgan and the great banking syndicateS
followed in their trail.
Rockefeller and his associates in The great struggle
for oil control "muscled" out competitors as I'M
tremendously as Capone applies strong methods
to an independent brewer in Cicero. Carnegie and
Prick used private gunner in stripes as freely and
with as deadly effect any gangster of today employs
squads of machine-gun choppers.
If capital is the grandparent of the racket, labor
is at least its uncle Forced into violence to
bare existence from capital labor gave birth to the
pineapple" technique back in the days of the Hay
market bombing of 1886
Americans are human beings, and hence addicted
to games of chance. love- and alcoholic stimulation.
But they also have tradition of moral purity solemn
ity and earnestness, born of puritaniSm and the
exacting struggles of pioneer society. Therefore,
we are in the moral dilemma of wanting to be both
happy and pure.
This leads us TO pass laws to give us moral
Responsibility, but we have wish serious inten
ton to obey them. AS Lppmann sums the matter up
in The Forum: 1.-THE high level of lawlessness is
maintained by the fact that Americans desire to do
So MANY things which they also desire to prohibit