Washington Confidential 32 – Mortimer · Verses Across
Literature · Crime, Thrillers & Mystery
Washington Confidential 32Part 2 · MONARCHS OF THE METROPOLIS
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Literature · Crime, Thrillers & Mystery
Washington Confidential 32
Part 2 · MONARCHS OF THE METROPOLIS
MortimerEnglish
Since wood-cuts added to the native press the element of pictorial illustration, cartoonists have caricatured the American alderman. His heavy foot is on the bottom rung of the legislative ladder. The “gray wolves” of Chicago were known around the globe for venality, degradation and cold-blooded chicanery. The Tammany members of the board, the San Francisco, Kansas City, Philadelphia, New Orleans, Boston, Albany and St. Louis “city fathers” were in their most nefarious days gangsters, brothel-keepers and police court shysters, overlaid with a refined sprinkling of saloon-keepers.
That mixture does not reflect the complexion of our Congress. But when, twice a month, they sit as the Board of Aldermen of the city of Washington, they are about as dignified and statesmanlike as the city council of Peoria.
The Constitution says, “The Congress shall have power to exercise exclusive legislation over such District.”
The actual detail of city government is delegated on the committee system and for all practical purposes the rulers of everything within the Columbia confines are 13 Senators and 25 Representatives on the District committees. In an extremity they can be overruled by their chambers and the President could veto any of their acts, but no one remembers when such a thing happened.
There is a certain local prestige about being a D.C. committeeman. He probably could with impunity drive through a red light or spit on the sidewalk, or even jaywalk, which no unprivileged person this side of an ambassador may dare without at least a stiff bawling out. But the members of Congress assigned to weighty national and world problems shun the task of managing the municipality.
Of the 38 who are completely responsible for every law, appropriation and tax measure in this city of almost a million, only two in the 81st Congress came from communities as large as or larger. They were Congressmen Arthur G. Klein, of New York City, and John F. Kennedy, of Boston. Only three others in the last Congress came from cities with a population in excess of 100,000--Senator Estes Kefauver, of Chattanooga, Tenn., 130,000; Senator Harry Darby, of Kansas City, Kans., 130,000; and Congressman John J. Allan, of Oakland, Calif., 380,000. Darby is not in the 82nd Congress.
In other words, 33 of the 38 Senators and Representatives who ruled this metropolis in the 81st Congress were from farms, villages, and rural towns, that include Fairmont, W. Va.; Lander, Wyo.; Bristol, R.I.; Middleboro, Del.; Madison, S.D.; Skowhegan, Maine; Burley, Ida.; Florence, S.C.; Okolona, Miss.; College Station, Tex.; Scottsboro, Ala.; Stone Mountain, Ga.; Cedar City, Utah; Hammond, La.; Kennett, Mo.; Carrollton, Ill.; Frostburg, Md.; Glencoe, Minn.; Decorah, Ia.; Rosemont, Pa.; and Farrell, Pa. Even those who were sincere did not and could not understand the problems of a giant city.
In the current Congress there are a few more city slickers on the committee: Senators Butler, of Baltimore; Bennet of Salt Lake, and Pastore of Providence.
From time to time, about once every ten years, Congress gets appalled at its own reflection and decides to investigate its own municipal creation. After such probes a few anemic recommendations are submitted to the Congress, a few minor corrective bills are passed. Then the speakeasies and gambling houses reopen, the dope peddlers and murderers come out again, and once more life goes on, as Washington life goes.
The last time Congress got in a mood of righteous selfexamination was in 1950, when a sub-committee of five was appointed by the House District of Columbia Committee to investigate crime and law-enforcement in the capital. The sub-committee chairman was James C. Davis, of Georgia, a sober and sincere lawyer with a distinguished record as a crusading superior court judge and member of Congress. The Congress originally voted the handsome sum of $10,000 to this committee, with which it was expected to dig up the dirt on a billion-dollar-a-year vice establishment.
Davis determined not to get a political hack as counsel. If he had not chosen a dynamic attorney, this committee would have been as innocuous as most others. As it was, it uncovered plenty that should have rocked the nation and shocked the Congress. It was no fault of Davis or Hyman I. Fischbach, committee counsel, that it did not. But Congress, as expected, ignored the report and skipped the record. Davis and Fischbach came up with suggestions--some far-reaching--for a reorganization of the District police, court system and method of prosecution. But to guarantee that nothing would be done about it the Democratic leadership put road-blocks in the Committee’s path. Nevertheless it is now before the Congress. It will go the same route others have, or establish a precedent.
Fischbach, with many years’ experience conducting such investigations for other Congressional committees, turned out what a committee counsel should be--in happy contrast to the sad picture of the Kefauver group which was operating at the same time. No one could see him getting far with his beggarly budget. It hardly allowed for an office staff, let alone investigators. But Fischbach hired John Woog, a 27-year-old war veteran and member of the New York bar, as chief investigator and practically the whole staff. Working 18 to 20 hours a day they uncovered enough rottenness, funny business and stupidity to fill more than 1200 closely printed pages of terrifying testimony.
When Fischbach started stepping on some sacred toes the ceiling fell in. Rumors were whispered around the House Office Building that Fischbach would be canned. Plenty of Congressmen were a-tremble; Fischbach was getting too hot. One who tried to throw a barrier in his way was Representative Wayne L. Hays, a Democrat from Ohio, whose Congressional district includes tributary territory dominated by the Akron and Youngstown mob which is ruled by Frank and Tony Milano, cited before the Kefauver Committee as organizers of the infamous Mayfield Road gang, Ohio branch of the Mafia. Hays tried to hold up money for the committee unless Fischbach were fired. He was joined by Mrs. Mary Norton, who retired at the end of the 81st Congress, and who represented Hudson County, New Jersey, and was sent to Washington by the notorious Boss Hague. She did not stand for re-election after Hague was run out of Jersey politics.
Another who opposed Fischbach was Edna Flannery Kelly, of Brooklyn, who was chosen by the Democratic leadership to spearhead the campaign. Mrs. Kelly, who serves by grace of Irwin Steingut, minority leader of the New York State Assembly, has been an errand girl for the Brooklyn bosses ever since her election to Congress.
Mrs. Kelly’s reluctance to expose crime in the District may be understandable to New Yorkers who know that among her constituents are some of the most evil gangsters who ever slit a throat or lived off the proceeds of a prostitute.
These three button-holed other Democratic Congressmen and said they were opposed to Fischbach because, as a New Yorker, he should have been cleared through the New York County Democratic Committee. That Committee’s other name is Tammany Hall. To Davis the mere mention of Tammany Hall is like defaming the Stars and Bars. Lack of Tammany endorsement was the highest recommendation. On such little things is history made.
It still remains for the Congress to follow the Davis recommendations. Meanwhile, all the law-breakers who hid while he was probing slid back into business as soon as the “probe” was over.
Few solons really want home rule, not even Northern New Deal Congressmen who scream for it because the Negro press does.
Most of the members shirk the committee meetings, because while membership gives them great prestige locally, it means nothing nationally or to their constituents. The District Committee is a “minor” one, and membership on it does not count against the legislator’s allowed minimum of committee appointments.
Few remain on it for long, and assignment to it is, in a manner, in the way of punishment. First-timers, especially in the Senate, are hazed that way.
A typical majority member of the House District Committee is Representative Arthur G. Klein, of New York City’s 19th district. We give him to you not because he is the most active or prominent, but because he is closest to our home. His district begins a block away.
Klein, an exasperating and annoying pleader for left-wing causes, has been on the public payroll for 16 of his 46 years, the first six spent on the legal staff of the S.E.C. He has been in Congress since 1941.
Klein’s district, which runs between the Bowery and the East River, below 40th St., contains not only the worst slums in New York, but some of the newest and finest housing developments, as well as large hunks of the city’s financial district. He promoted the former for his constituents at the expense of the latter.
Also in it is Manhattan’s downtown Mafia stronghold--parts of Little Italy--whose voters sent him to Congress and demand favors in return.
Operating in his district is New York’s most evil and notorious fairy-haunt, the disgusting 181 Club, at that address on Second Ave., where every cabaret law and ordinance on the books is fractured nightly. This profitable venture is overseen by Alan Bono, a cousin of Joe Adonis, and a contributor to Klein’s campaign funds.
Former Congresswoman Norton served 10 of her 26 years in Washington on the District Committee. At this writing she has strong backing for the about-to-be vacant post of District Commissioner and may so be named before this reaches print.
Even when not a member of the committee, Mrs. Norton always had a soft spot in her heart for it, and frequently interested herself in District affairs, being given a respectful hearing because of “the woman’s angle.”
But Mrs. Norton was and is and always has been a creature of Boss Hague, one of the most corrupt and thievingest municipal overlords in the world. At this moment the Hudson County grand jury is working overtime grinding out indictments against ex-officials appointed by him.
Many Hague specialties were exported to Washington during her tenure as mayor ex officio, among them a high tax-rate, municipal corruption and official protection for gamblers.
Mrs. Norton’s home town, Jersey City, was, until last year, the national clearing house for the laying off of horse bets from all over the country.
While she was in Congress, Hague was the absentee chief magistrate of Washington.
