Gambling in Texas

Texas' Galveston, once a pirate hideout, has earned an equally robust reputation in recent years for freewheeling vice, gambling, prostitution and illegal liquor traffic. The Galveston papers, the morning News (circ. 17,510) and evening Tribune (circ. 11,909), both owned by 87-year-old Financier W. L. Moody Jr., do not get excited about it. They take the view that the wide-open situation is what Galveston wants; any change should come at the polls, not through their crusading. But their little brother and Galveston County neighbor, the Texas City Sun (circ. 4,573), which is also owned by Moody, had a different view of things. Sun Editor Clyde Byron Ragsdale, 37, thinks "a newspaper should stand for something in a community, like a church."

Indictment. In the summer of 1951, the state's "little Kefauver" Crime Investigating Committee found plenty of evidence of gambling and vice in Galveston County, but the probe soon died of official inaction. Ragsdale, an ex-Air Force staff sergeant and novelist (The Big Fist), who moved to Texas City three years ago after working on several west Texas dailies, went to work. He sent reporters out to visit the joints, ran descriptions of them and their operators. At one point Ragsdale led Texas Rangers to 320 slot machines hidden in a barn, to the chagrin of Ranger Chief Homer Garrison Jr., who had said Texas was "clean as a whistle."

As the campaign rolled on, gamblers warned Ragsdale to get out of town, but he kept on headlining his stories, ran front-page boxes asking County Sheriff Frank Biaggne what he intended to do about gambling. "That Ragsdale is an s.o.b.," retorted the sheriff in a radio interview. "If I closed down all the joints, they'd have to close all the hotels in Galveston." Ragsdale duly printed Biaggne's remarks in full, finally spurred a Galveston County grand jury into action, although a grand jury had not returned a gambling indictment in 20 years. Ragsdale and three members of his staff laid the evidence they had collected before the jury, and the jury indicted 23 people, including 16 members of the politically powerful Maceo organization, on charges of gambling.

Dismissal. Last week, after five postponements of the trial, district court judges dismissed the charges on recommendation of County Prosecutor Raymond Magee. Said Magee: the evidence was "incomplete." To Galveston, the dismissal of the indictment came as no surprise. Said the weekly Galveston Times, owned by Mayor Herbert Y. Cartwright Jr.: "Most Galvestonians will approve the action of County Attorney Magee [because they] have never felt that . . . gambling is a felony."

But Editor Ragsdale is convinced that if gambling flourishes in Galveston, vice, prostitution and illegal liquor sales will thrive in its wake. He plans to continue to keep a sharp eye on the gamblers, who as a result of the paper's campaign have been forced to lay low. Says Ragsdale : "If they open up again, we'll go after them."

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