Crime-of-the-Week

President Kerwin Holmes Fulton of Outdoor Advertising, Inc., Publisher Albert John Kobler of the Daily Mirror, Banker John Edward Young, silk merchant M. C. McGill are among the residents of Manhattan's fashionable Upper East Side who keep their expensive automobiles in the Carlyle Garage on East 76th Street. One morning last week they heard that three armed thugs had held up the garage's night attendants, slashed and acid-burned 27 cars, including their own. Otto W. Peters, owner of the garage, said he had been threatened for weeks. He appealed to police and the District Attorney, spoke defiance through the Press. His potent patrons backed him to a man.

Thus to public attention came a new racket which has been growing in New York for some five months. The formula: A "protective association" demands that the garage owner force his employes to join a "union," pay a $10 initiation fee and $2 monthly dues from each man's wages. Refusal brings attempts to lure away his patrons, violence to himself and cars. The racket is spreading rapidly. In Brooklyn last week four thugs tied up a garage watchman, rolled him under an automobile, slashed the upholstery of ten cars.

Said Garageman Peters last week: "Before I play along with the racket boys I'm going to play along with the police and District Attorney. I think what they say is true--that if business men would cooperate with the authorities and not cooperate with the racketeers, then the rackets could be stamped out."

Manhattan's wizened District Attorney Thomas C. T. Grain, 72-year-old Tammanyman, said he was "powerless to act" without names of suspects, referred the problem to police.

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