Systematic Graft

Ever since Halley's comet flickered across the television screens last year, the U.S. has been discussing organized graft and crime. Still, the U.S. may not quite understand how organized crime can become. Subjected to the American genius for systematic administration, the casual bribe and the brutal threat are sublimated (and made more dangerous) by standardization of services, fixing of prices, replacement of piecework by a regular wage, centralization of authority and cost accountancy. A case in point is that of James J. Moran.

When his old pal, Mayor Bill O'Dwyer, made him New York's first deputy fire commissioner, Moran set out with a crusader's zeal to correct one of the city's perennial rackets: the shakedown of contractors seeking permits to install oil burners and tanks. Last week, as Moran was on trial in Manhattan, charged with 23 counts of extortion, even the most exacting connoisseur of corruption had to admit that he had done an amazing job.

Before his day in office the racket had been haphazard in the extreme--non-uniformed fire department inspectors had simply demanded whatever they thought a contractor would pay. But Moran put things on a business basis. He put fire inspectors in uniform, doubled their take-home pay by matching their salaries with graft money.

Under the Moran plan, an ironclad schedule of graft rates was instituted--$10 to $35, depending on the size of an installation. Most of the city's 1,000-odd contractors were thus able to predict the bribe necessary to get a burner or tank certified for operation, and the more venal among them were able to pass the cost along to the customer in their early estimates.

One witness, Fireman James F. Smith, told the jury that he handed Moran up to $2,500 at the Knights of Columbus gymnasium in Brooklyn every Friday. After the bundle was passed, Moran and Smith invariably played a friendly round of handball.

To protect the honor of the fire department, no inspector was ever allowed to certify an unsafe burner or to wink at a leaky tank; contractors were forced to comply with the law before a bribe was accepted. If a contractor refused to pay, nobody threatened him; the collector simply waited for cold weather to jar him into paying.

The prosecution estimated that the city's oil-burner contractors were bled of $500,000 a year. And when Moran learned that the new Impellitteri administration had barred him from further profit, he took it in a businesslike way. "Well," former Fire Captain James Keohane recalled his saying, "we had a good run of it and it's the fortunes of war."

The jury found Moran guilty on all counts. After this, it will hardly be necessary to investigate whether Organizer Moran also violated the antitrust laws.

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