Joe Bruno's Mobsters - Six Volume Set (30 page)

Whenever one of his trucks left New York to distribute the booze to other parts of the country, they were vulnerable to being seized by the hundreds of hijackers who operated
throughout the country. Dwyer knew to stop this from happening he had to take in partners;  members of the Italian mob and the Jewish mob. Since he was raking in millions in profits, Dwyer didn't mind, and he certainly could afford to share the wealth. The problem was, Dwyer
c
onsidered himself no more than a businessman
and
wasn't a gangster himself. Dwyer needed someone in the underworld who could make the contacts Dwyer needed to continue to operate without fear of being hijacked.

Almost by accident, that person fell right into Dwyer's lap.

In 1924, two of Dwyer's shipments were hijacked in upstate New York. Dwyer leaned on the cops on his payroll to find out who was responsible for the hijackings. Word soon came back to Dwyer that the perpetrator, who was arrested for the hijackings, was none other than Owney Madden, an Irishman himself, who grew up in Liverpool, England, before he emigrated to New York City as a teenager. Madden was a vicious con nicknamed “The Killer,” and he had once ruled the murderous Gophers gang in Hell's Kitchen.

Dwyer paid whomever needed to be paid to get the charges dropped against Madden, with the order, “Get me Owney Madden. I want to talk to him. I've got a business proposition we need to discuss.”

Madden got word who his benefactor had been, and that a meeting with Dwyer was expected of him in return. The two men met at Dwyer's office in the Loew's State Building in Times Square. There is no recording or transcript of this meeting, but T.J. English, in his masterpiece on Irish gangsters,
Paddy Whacked
,
said the conversation between Madden and Dwyer might have gone something like this:

“You've got a problem,” Madden told Dwyer. “Gangsters have been picking off your trucks like sitting ducks and what are you going to do about it?”

“That's why I called you here,” Dwyer said.

“You
gotta organize the shooters and the cherry-pickers, not to mention the bulls (cops) and the pols (politicians).”

“You're right. I need the hijackings to stop. I need a place to make my own brew right here in the city. Protected by the Tiger and the coppers. And I need outlets – speakeasies, nightclubs, you name it.”

“You need a lot, my friend.

“Are you with me, you Liverpool
Mick bastard?”

“Give me one reason why.”

“I can make you rich.”

“Pal, you and me are two peas in a pod.”

And that was the start of the New York City Irish Mob, which would then unite with the Italian and Jewish mobs to control the rum running business throughout the United States of America. The grouping of the three ethnic groups was known as the “Combine.”

With Dwyer's millions, Madden oversaw the creation of the Phoenix Cereal Beverage Company, which was located on 26
th
Street and 10
th
Avenue, right in the heart of Hell's Kitchen where both Madden and Dwyer had grown up. This red-brick building, which comprised the entire block, was originally the Clausen & Flanagan Brewery, which was created to produce and sell near-beer, a swill no true beer-drinker would ever let pass their lips. The beer produced at the Phoenix was called Madden's No 1.

With Dwyer basically the money man behind the scenes, Madden became the architect who created and nurtured their empire. Madden brought in a small-time crook and former taxi business owner Larry Fay as the front man for several high-class establishments, that were
needed to sell Madden’s No. 1, plus all the scotch, rum, vodka, Cognac and champagne that the Combine could smuggle into the city. One of these places was the
El Fay
at 107 West 54
th
Street.

The main attraction at the
El Fay
was Texas Guinan, a bawdy cabaret singer/comedienne, who was later copied by May West. To entice Guinan to work at the
El Fay
, Madden and Dwyer made Guinan a partner.

Guinan was famous for her wisecracks, which she belted out between cl
acks from a clacker or toots from a piercing whistle, while she was sitting on a tall stool in the main room. Guinan's signature saying was “Hello Sucker,” which is how she greeted all the well-healed
El Fey
customers, whom she called “Big Butter and Eggs Men.”

When a singer or a dancer finished their performance at the
El Fey
, Guinan would exhort the crowd to, “Give the little lady a great big hand!”

One day, a prohibition agent, who couldn't be bought by Madden or Dwyer, raided the
El Fey
. He marched over to Guinan, put his hand on her shoulder and said to his fellow agent, “Give the little lady a great big handcuff!”

Dwyer did what he did best, Guinan was released from prison, and the
El Fey
was soon hopping again, making everyone involved very rich indeed.

Madden and Dwyer also partnered with former bootlegger Sherman Billingsley at the posh
Stork Club
on East 53
rd
Street. The two Irish gangsters spread their wings to the north part of Manhattan when they bought the
Club De Luxe
from former heavyweight boxing champion Jack Johnson. They inserted Big Frenchy De Mange as their operating partner, and they changed the name to the
Cotton Club
. At the
Cotton Club
, De Mange instituted a “Whites Only” admittance policy, despite the fact the waiters, dancers, and headline entertainers, like Cab Calloway, Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Lena Horne, Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, and the Nicholas Brothers, were all black.

Still, the
Cotton Club
was wildly successful with the big spenders from downtown, putting tons of cash into Dwyer's and Madden's pockets.

In 1925, Dwyer was arrested for attempting to bribe Coast Guard members during a sting operation headed by the Prohibition Bureau. Dwyer was sentenced to two years in prison, but he was released after 13 months for good behavior. With Dwyer in the can, Frank Costello took over Dwyer's rum running business.

While he was in prison, a despondent Dwyer said to one of his cellmates. “I wish I had never seen a case of whiskey. I spent years in daily fear of my life, always expecting to be arrested, always dealing with crooks and double-crossers, and now look at me. My wife is heartbroken and I am worse than broke."

As we shall see, that was not exactly the truth.

When Dwyer hit the streets again, he eased himself out of the rum running business, leaving the operation to Costello and Madden. To pass his time, Dwyer started investing in legitimate businesses, especially sports teams.

In 1926, boxing promoter Tex Rickard conned Dwyer into buying the Hamilton Tigers of the National Hockey League. Dwyer did so, and he moved his team into New York City's Madison Square Garden, and re-named them the New York Americans.

As smart as Dwyer was in running the rum running business, he was just as dumb in running a hockey team. His pockets bursting with rum running cash, Dwyer's strategy for winning was basically to overpay everybody on his team. With the average hockey player making between $1,500-$2,000 a year, Dwyer gave Billy Burch a 3-year, $25,000 contract. Shorty Green also got a huge raise when Dwyer awarded him a $5,000-a year-contract.

Being an old crook at heart, Dwyer took an active part in running his team, even going as far as trying to rig the games. Dwyer paid off goal judges to rule his team had scored a goal if the puck just touched the goal line, instead of completely passing the goal line, which was the rule
then.

In 1927, at a game in Madison Square Garden, the goal judge, whom Dwyer had in his pocket, for some unknown reason started taunting Ottawa goalie Alex Connell. Connell responded by butt-ending his hockey stick into the goal judge's nose. Dwyer became incensed at the Ottawa goalie's actions (you don't manhandle one of Dwyer's employees), and Connell was told to leave town quickly after the game. A police detail took Connell
to the train station and protected him until the train was safely out of town. After the train left the station, a man asked Connell if he was the Ottawa goalie Alex Connell. Connell, afraid for his life, told the stranger no. As a result, Connell lived to goalie other hockey games.

In 1929, bypassing a league rule that a person can't own two hockey teams, Dwyer, using ex-lightweight boxing champ Benny Leonard as his front man, purchased the NHL's Pittsburgh Pirates. In 1930, Dwyer inserted his grubby fingers into the newly-formed National Football League, too, by buying the Dayton Triangles for $2,500. Dwyer moved the team to
Ebbets Field in Brooklyn, and he renamed the team the Brooklyn Dodgers.

In three years, Dwyer, again overpaying all his players, began
losing so much money he sold the Brooklyn Dodgers to two former New York Giant Football players: Chris Cagle and John Simms, for $25,000. Even though he sold the team for 10 times more than he had paid, Dwyer estimated he still lost $30,000 in the three years he owned the team.

In 1934, having his fill of America sports teams (he stilled owned the New York Americans, but they were bleeding money), Dwyer bought the famed Tropical Park Horse Racing Track in Miami, Florida.

However, the roof fell in on Dwyer in 1935 when he was indicted on a gambling charge. Dwyer beat that case, but then the government did to him what they did to Al Capone: they hit him with tax evasion charges. Those charges stuck, and Dwyer was stripped of all his assets, except the New York Americans and a house in Belle Harbor, Queens. Almost penniless, Dwyer no longer had the money to keep the New York Americans afloat.

In 1937, the National Hockey League temporarily took control of the Americans. To show the NHL that he was financially solvent, Dwyer borrowed $20,000 from Red Dutton. However, instead of paying his team's salaries with the money he had borrowed from Dutton, Dwyer decided to try to multiply his money in a craps game. That didn't go over
too well, when Dwyer busted out and lost the entire twenty grand. Unable to pay his team, and unable to raise any more capital, the NHL booted Dwyer out permanently, and the league took final control of the Americans.

Broke and despondent, Dwyer retired to his Belle Harbor home.

On December 10, 1943, Big Bill Dwyer, the “King of the Rum Runners” died at the age of 63. Dwyer was reportedly penniless at the time of his death; his only asset being the roof over his head.

F
arley, James -- King of the Strikebreakers

He started out as
a simple altar boy in upstate New York. But during his fast and furious life, James Farley became known as “The King of the Strikebreakers.”

James Farley was born in 1874
in the sleepy town of Malone, New York, just miles from the Canadian border. Although he became an altar boy in a Malone Catholic Church, Farley was a rough and tumble kid, always looking for trouble and mostly finding it.

When he was 15-years-old, Farley ran away from home
, and he headed south in New York State. In 1889, Farley took a job with Frank Robinson's circus. The circus ran its course in Middletown, New York, so Farley traveled to nearby Monticello, when he found employment at the Madison House, where he worked as a poolroom attendant, a clerk, and then a bartender. His bosses liked Farley's intelligence and toughness, and soon they made him the manager of the Madison House.

One day, Farley needed some dental
work done. While he was sitting in the dentist chair, Farley accidentally swallowed a huge lump of cocaine, which was then used as a painkiller. Farley completely freaked out, and instead of getting his dental work completed, he bolted from the dentist chair, ran madly out of the dentist's office and disappeared into the nearby woods. For weeks, Farley lived like an animal in the woods, while the local police sent out a search party looking for him.

The effects of the cocaine overdose having finally
worn off, and Farley knowing his managerial position in the Madison House was toast, headed further south, until he reached Brooklyn. Farley's first job in Brooklyn was as a rail guard for the Revenue Service. But soon Farley transferred to the Brooklyn City Railroad Company, where he toiled in the power house, mostly shoveling coal.

In 1895, the relationships between the railroad workers union (District Assembly No. 75 Knights of Labor) and the
Brooklyn City Railroad Company had frazzled to the point where a strike was inevitable. There had been a collective bargaining agreement in place since 1886, which was renewed yearly. However, this time the owners insisted on bringing in non-union workers who would work cheaper. The union would have none of that. So the owners employed “strikebreakers” to convince the workers, mostly by force, that the owner's way was the right thing to do.

Farley, for some unknown reason, abandoned his union, and
he started fighting for his bosses. During the riots between the union workers and the strikebreakers, according to various accounts, Farley was shot at, stabbed, hit with bricks, clubs, and baseball bats. And Farley had the scars to prove it. In the end, the owners won the battle and the union was marginalized.

One local newspaper reported on the Brooklyn City Railroad Company strike, “Strikebreakers came from all parts of the country, and as a result, the railroad companies were able entirely to reorganize their working staffs. When the strikers sought to interfere with operations, 7,500 state troops were sent into the city at the request of the mayor. Cars began operating under military protection on January 22. Two soldiers rode
in each car. In one encounter, shots were exchanged among the strikers, strikebreakers, and troops; one man was killed and a number wounded.”

With the strikebreaking working in the owner's favor, they looked kindly on Farley for the work he had done on their behalf. As a reward for his loyal service, the Brooklyn City Railroad Company put Farley in charge of fifteen special officers.

And this was how Farley's strikebreaking career began.

For the next seven years, Farley engaged in strikebreaking throughout the country, almost all of them having to do with the railroad industry. He hired men who were rough and tumble, and some of them carried guns, which they were not afraid to use. Farley paid his men more than other agencies did for their strikebreaking activities, and this bought Farley a great bit of loyalty.

Farley himself set an imposing figure, with a Colt .38 revolver in a holster dangling on his right hip, like he was ready for a fight at the O.K. Corral. Farley also smoked cigars like a chimney. Rumor had it that he smoked 50 cigars a day; usually fat maduro coronas from Havana, Cuba.

According to an article in the
United Mine Workers Journal
, Farley “Stood before his mercenaries, mostly tough lumpenproletarians from big city slums, 'with the air of a potentate', wearing a long Cassock overcoat. And the men looked up at him with gaping mouths.”

In 1902, Farley, already having broken many strikes, opened his own detective agency, which was in direction competition with the more famous Pinkerton Detective Agency for the strikebreaking jobs. However, the Pinkertons were more diversified, while Farley stuck strictly to strikebreaking.

In 1905, just after the construction of the IRT subway system in New York City, the workers went out on strike. The owner of the IRT was August Belmont, one of the richest men in America. Belmont hired Farley to do the strikebreaking, and Farley and his men immediately went to work.

While the tension intensified between Farley's men and the strikers, a reporter tried to interview one of the strikebreakers about Belmont's strategies in ending the strike.

The strikebreaker barked at the reporter, “Who the hell is Belmont? Farley is running the show.”

At the successful conclusion of Farley's work for Belmont, Farley was reportedly paid the kingly sum of $300,000.

Farley's biggest strikebreaking coup took place not in New York City, but more than 3,000 miles away in San Francisco, California. Patrick Calhoun, an official of San Francisco's United Railroad, contacted Farley in New York and implored Farley to come out west to handle the insurgence of the streetcar Carmen's Union. On May 5, 1907, after their demands for an 8-hour work day and a salary of $3 a day was turned down by the San Francisco's United Railroad, the Carmen's Union went on strike.

On Tuesday morning May 7, called “Bloody Tuesday,” the strikebreakers and the strikers finally met face to face. A brigade of Farley's men were locked and
loaded, and looking for trouble as they stood inside six railway cars that had just pulled out of the Turk & Fillmore car barn. The six cars were immediately pelted by bricks and rocks thrown by the strikers. Rather than jump off the cars and engage in hand-to-hand combat, Farley's men opened fire into the crowd, estimated at 300 people.

An eyewitness said the strikers “had been shot down like dogs.”

The police came in to squelch the riot and were caught in the crossfire. When the dust cleared, three strikers had been shot dead and another dozen wounded. Two policemen were also shot, but they survived. As a result, the police arrested twelve of Farley's strikebreakers and charged them with murder, or attempted murder.

Farley, and the San Francisco United Railroad, turned out to be the big winners, when the following day, the union called off their strike and ordered their men back to work.

You would have thought, due to the rough, and sometimes deadly tactics Farley employed, he would have been portrayed in the press as somewhat of a thug and a gangster. However, that was not always the case. After the San Francisco railroad strike of 1907, the
San Francisco Chronicle
spoke of Farley in a soft tone as “a man who prefers hot blood to water as a beverage.” Newspapers throughout the country took Farley's part, portraying him as a noble figure, protecting businesses against “communist agitators,” and “foreign bomb-throwing activists.”

Farley himself hid behind the cloak of decency, when he claimed, that although he had
broken up 50 straight strikes throughout America, in not one instance did he defend businesses that he considered to be in the wrong. Farley stated that, if after he examined the circumstances and determined that the workers were right in their actions, he would turn the strikebreaking job down flat.

However, Jack London, the most prominent journalist of that time, did not think so kindly of Farley and his work. In London's novel
The Iron Heel,
London even mentioned Farley by name.

London, a left-wing union sympathizer, wrote that Farley, “Was an example of a pernicious trend, men who were 'private soldiers' of the capitalist...thoroughly organized and well-armed...held in readiness to be hurled in special trains to any part of the country where labor went on strike or was locked out by employers. Strikebreakers were an ominous sign of bad times ahead.”

No matter which way you felt about Farley, one thing was true. He was paid millions by railroad companies and regardless of the brutal tactics Farley used, he did his job well.

However, Farley did not live long enough to enjoy all the money he had earned. Since his days in the circus, Farley had a fondness for horses. He invested
enormous sums of money in purchasing horses; both trotters and racers. He kept them at a huge farm he had bought in Plattsburgh, New York.

In 1913, Farley contracted a fatal case of tuberculosis. Farley knew he did not have long to live. So, against his doctor's orders, Farley had a cot placed on the grass
on the Yonkers Race Track so that he could watch his horses in competition.

Farley said, “My horses are all I have to live for now.”

On September 11, 1913, a
New York Times
article said, “James Farley, the noted strike-breaker and horseman, died this morning at 12:10 am at his home in Plattsburgh, New York.”

Farley was
only 39 years old at the time of his passing.

H
ines, James -- The Ultimate Political Fixer

He started off as
a simple Harlem blacksmith, but after he dug his fat fingers deep into Tammany Hall, James Hines became the biggest political fixer in the history of New York City.

Hines was born on December 18, 1876, on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. His father operated a blacksmith shop on 121
st
Street and Eight Avenue, and when his father became ill, Hines took over his father's business at the age of 17.

Through his father's connections in politics in the 11
th
Assembly District on the Upper West Side, Hines became close to “Big Tim” Sullivan, a politician so crooked, he actually took part of the profits from the rackets perpetrated by street gangs who were plundering the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Sullivan was the main cog in the political machine called Tammany Hall, and he played his constituents like a fiddle, getting hand-picked people to vote several times on Election Day by constantly changing their appearance.

Hines learned the ropes from the master, and
i
n 1907 Hines ran for a position called Alderman. With the help of Sullivan's manipulation of the election process, Hines won the election going away. (Sullivan had men, who wouldn't vote his way at the polls, beaten up badly by his street gangs, most notable the Whyos.)

In 1910, Hines took the bold move of running for District Leader against the incumbent. After both sides used roughhouse tactics against the other, Hines was able to emerge victorious. With his newfound power as District Leader, Hines formed the Monongahela Democratic Club, which was his base of operations for many years to come. At the Monongahela, Hines played the
good old boy; providing the poor in the neighborhood with Thanksgiving turkeys, donating clothes to the needy and finding jobs for whomever needed a job. Of course, that meant Hines could count on those people's votes on Election Day for whomever candidate Hines deemed should be the winner, no matter what district that candidate was running in.

Every year, Hines sponsored the annual “June Walk and Picnic” in Central Park, which drew as many 25,000 people, mostly children. On one such occasion (The 22
nd
annual walk), Hines carried a kid on piggyback, and then deposited him by a table brimming with a huge spread of the finest food available.

Hines wiped the sweat from his brow, and said, "Kids who came to the first of these things are voters now. They're not all voting in my district, but they're voting somewhere. In politics, the thing to do is build yourself an army.”

To supplement his income, and with no experience at all, Hines, along with his brother, Philip, formed a trucking company and then a construction company. Almost immediately, the Hines brothers were able to obtain the best and the biggest city trucking contracts and state construction projects, which they subsequently subcontracted out to people who actually knew how to do those jobs.

Even though Hines was the biggest player of his time in Democratic politics, he had very little future in running for elective office. Hines
was an unskilled public speaker and was more adept at back room dealings, where a mere nod of his head would signify which person was getting elected, or appointed to a political job. As generous as he could be with his friends, if someone crossed Hines, as far Hines was concerned, that person may as well have been dead.

During Prohibition, Owney “The Killer” Madden and “Big Bill” Dwyer were running the biggest bootlegging and rum running operations in the entire United States of America. However, both men knew their business could never thrive if they didn't have the police in their back pockets. And the man who controlled the all police promotions at the time was none other than Jim Hines. Dwyer and Madden paid Hines, and they paid him well, to take care of the police, judges, prosecutors, and bail bondsmen. By taking care of Hines properly, Madden and Dwyer knew if any of their men did have the misfortune of being arrested by a cop, who either wasn't getting paid, or was just being plain disobedient, Hines would arrange for that person's immediate release.