Wigwam Party

One of the most popular of U. S. heroes is a crusading young district attorney who cleans up dirty local politics. In real life, for half a century, he or his impersonator has turned up periodically in all parts of the U. S. In fiction his reappearances are almost continuous--twice within the last fortnight in cinema alone (TIME, Aug. 22).

When the latest and most successful reincarnation of this popular character last week placed on trial a leader of the most ill-famed U. S. political machine, small wonder that Western Union alone filed 40,000 words to the newspapers of the U. S. on the opening day.

The popular young hero appeared last week in the flesh of Thomas Edmund Dewey, 36, who, unlike his counterparts in Hollywood and elsewhere, has as his chief asset not theatricality but thoroughness. Thoroughly for three years he went about smashing the prostitution, restaurant and poultry rackets of New York City (TIME, Aug. 15, et ante) while his files on the "numbers" or "policy" racket, most lucrative of all, slowly accumulated. And last week, when his big numbers racket case finally went to trial, there was only one defendant, the biggest single political boss remaining in Tammany's battered machine.

Two interested matrons attended the opening. One, who had often been a spectator in courts, was the prosecutor's trim, Junior-Leaguish wife. The other had never attended a trial. She it was who, in 1903 (year after Thomas Edmund Dewey was born in Owosso, Mich.), as the prettiest girl in Tammany's Eleventh District, married an ambitious young Irish blacksmith, James J. Hines. She appeared in court, flanked by her bulky sons and their pretty-girl wives, only because Jimmy Hines was in the worst trouble of his rough-&-tumble career. Like Mrs. Dewey she went to see her man play for highest stakes: political position v. prison.

Jimmy Hines has never been Tammany's titular Boss, like Richard Croker who was hounded out of the U. S., or William Tweed who was locked behind bars in 1873 for negligence and misconduct in office. Nor has he ever held a job as exalted as Tammany Mayor James J. Walker, who resigned under fire from Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932. But, running his district like a patriarch for a quarter-century, passing out countless Christmas turkeys and good jobs at his Monongahela Democratic Club, he has been a potent voice in Tammany's inner councils, was shrewd enough to make with Franklin Roosevelt an early peace which assured his district a healthy share of New Deal patronage in years that have been lean for most Tammany bigwigs.

Jimmy Hines is the kind of man who likes to carry a huge bankroll. The Hines money is supposed to come from insurance and contracting business run by Sons James Jr. and Philip (Harvard). Tom Dewey last week set out to prove that a great deal of it came from a regular levy on Harlem's numbers bankers. Leaning toward the jury box and talking in his customary confidential tones, Prosecutor Dewey explained to a blue ribbon jury,* consisting of one Democrat, four Republicans, two Independents, five gentlemen who had not bothered to register, the basic facts of the numbers game. In this simple lottery a player can pick any number from 000 to 999 and place a bet from 1-c- to $5 or more (most bets are only a few cents) that the same figures will appear in some daily public statistic (e.g., daily bank clearances). Because the odds against the better are 1,000-to-1 and the payoff, minus commissions, is only 540-to-1, numbers is highly profitable to its bankers and collectors. When Dutch Schultz turned his energies from beer-running to numbers, he organized it along military lines with bet collectors at the bottom, controllers who tabulated their slips, bankers who hired the controllers and paid a share of their take to Dutch Schultz. In the early 1930's, numbers grossed some $60,000 a day, $20,000,000 a year. To make it more profitable, Schultz used not Federal Reserve figures but combinations of pari-mutuel race-track odds, which the racket had ways of rigging. To preserve his monopoly, Schultz bought political protection. He bought it, said Mr. Dewey, from Jimmy Hines. To deliver it, Jimmy Hines elected Mr. Dewey's predecessor as district attorney, William Copeland Dodge. Mr. Hines, said Mr. Dewey, described Mr. Dodge as "stupid, respectable, and my man."

With all this spread on the record over voluble objections by Defense Attorney Lloyd Stryker, Tom Dewey put on the stand a succession of witnesses who slowly, nervously, often reluctantly, filled in his picture.

P: George Weinberg, a sleek Schultz henchman whose brother and onetime associate Bo is reputed to lie on the bottom of the East River enclosed in a block of cement, said he was the business manager of the racket. "The Dutchman [Schultz]," said Mr. Weinberg, told him to pay Hines $500 a week. Sometimes, added Mr. Weinberg, Hines got $1.000.

P: Joseph ("Spasm") Ison and Wilfred Brunder, two West Indian Negro policy bankers, corroborated Witness Weinberg.

Mr. Brunder described a racket sideline: the sale of dream books. Said he: "You subject to go to sleep tonight and dream that you were fishing. There is certain dream books if you look up--and look them up you will see fishing gives 736. Well, you will play 736."

Tom Dewey insisted that the State had no "star witness," but the highlight of his Wigwam party was expected to be Witness Dixie Davis, chief counsel for the racket. To squelch insinuations that Lawyer Davis had been blandished into turning State's evidence by permits to leave jail and visit his red-headed friend, Showgirl Hope Dare. District Attorney Dewey declared: "He got a change of clothes. . . . He had his clothes there. . . . There were two detectives and the mother of Miss Dare present, so that anybody who has been reveling in ideas that the District Attorney was conniving at adultery has just been off on the wrong foot. . . . Incidentally, he has been separated from his wife for three years."

With all other defendants dead, missing or pleading guilty, Jimmy Hines stood spotlighted alone. Well aware that crusading district attorney heroes are always elected to higher office, he said to reporters --nonchalantly lighting a cigaret--"This is a political battle. I know because I've been in political battles before."

In dusky Harlem last week Numbers continued flourishing, crowded dockets with offenders.

*Blue ribbon juries are called only in important or intricate cases or cases involving homicide, and only with the approval of the presiding judge. Blue ribbon jurors, drawn by lot from the regular jury panel, are examined in person by the Commissioner of Jurors. Qualifications: alertness, more than average intelligence, more than $250 worth of personal property. Prosecutor Dewey has had blue ribbon juries in all his major racket cases.

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