The Wilmington morning star., 1943-11-03
BY WEsTBROOK PEGLER

NEW YORK-The contest in New York OF
two associates of underworld gangsters for a
place On the Supreme Court which is a mis-
named county court and not court of appeals,
| assumes national Importance because here.
tor the first time the bosses of new deal union
ism have had the cynical effrontery to put
forth as a friend of labor an individual who
openly, and for money, consorted with some
of the foulest and most brutal oetrayers of
labor in the whole evil roster of the American
Federation of Labor and gave them aid and
comfort
These are the principals: First Thomas Au-
relic. He is a typical Tammany lug who ran
with Jimmy Kelly, born Di Salvo, an old-time
bowery hoodlum, and boatlegger, now risen
to the command of a political fiet called an
assembly district, and with Frank Costello,
another gangster who also assumed an Irish
name for reasons of his own. Aurelio has in
sisted that he did not know Costello was rack
eteer. But he can't say he didr't know the
character of Kelly for this mobster has been
called notorious for quarter of century and
once, in the compilation of an interesting per-
sonal police record, was arraigned before Au-
relic sitting as magistrate Aurelio discharg-
ed him.
OSSOlio, N1dltIlSW Levy, ike Joseph PdQWay,
the general counsel of the American Federation
of Labor and mouthpece for gangsters in
unionism, Levy perceived that there was big
money in union litigation for attorneys to set
themselves up as spokesman for the toilers
AS hitherto reported Levy is not a selfless al
TRUST in the relation of counsel anG client when
he represents union He got about $500 900 out
OF one local of the Browne-Bio racket and held
out certain important papers belonging to the
nnchi boI
rendering them only on the payment of SIC, OO0
Levy was nominated boss -fashion by Alex
Rose, who runs one of the Zig needle trade
unions and holds the position of secretary of
that mixture of radical European isms which
calls itself the American Labor Party, and
tags along with the new deal. His nomination.
like Aurelio's, was an arbitrary, personal Sc
lection.
LEWIS political morality and the flavor of
his Americanism may be judged from the fact
that his political boss, Rose, very pointedly
ordered his subjects to register IN the Ameri-
can Labor party, his party. For the enrich
ment of which Sidney Hillman, his colleague
in unionism seriously proposed that every I'M
ION worker in the state, voluntary or captive,
be compelled to pay political tribute
When you register Rose commanded his
subject. enroll in the American Labor Par
ty." That is the imperative. That is Levys
party.
The alternative to these two is George Fran
kenthaler, republican with good reputation.
The unioneers, all of them ached to the
new deal have represented Levy as a man
who stands in contrast to Aurelio when the
fact is that right down to June 1910, when Will
lie Bioff had finally been sent to jail for white
slavery and Browne was defending him as
martyr and the racket was notorious through
out the country, Levy sat in the midst OF the
racket at their Louisville convention and had
nothing but good to say of Browne.
The unions, far from disavoWing crooks and
racketeers and moving to send them to prison,
have chosen to brazen it out and thus, in the
recent convention of the American Fedora
ton of Labor Joseph V. Moreschl, the presi-
dent of the national shakedown known as the
hodcarriers' union, was selected to take the
chair while William Green was PLACED in nom-
ination and elected to his goth term as presi-
dent Moreschi's union is crawling with GRIM
inals as Green knows. The selection of Levy is
gesture of similar meaning for, if Aurelio
should have known that Kelly and Costello
were rogues, as Levy and Rose insist then
Levy was equally naive in believing that
Browne was an honest servant of labor, if he
did, or equally dishonest in declaring that he
didn't have the slightest suspicion.