(7 of 9)
Contracting-Day before his policy raids Prosecutor Dewey made his first public move, after a 13-month investigation, against an electrical contracting racket. Subpoenaed were the books of city power companies, of three trade associations, private contractors, and of a local of International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (an A. F. of L. affiliate). A Dewey aide charged that the leaders of the union had, by violence aided a monopoly of electrical contracting which cost New York citizens $10,000,000 per year. Baking. Two days later Mr. Dewey closed in, after more than a year of sleuthing, on a baking racket. He arrested a lawyer, the owner of one of the city's largest cake & pastry bakeries, and the president and business agent of a local of A. F. of L.'s International Brotherhood of Teamsters, Chauffeurs, Stablemen & Helpers, whose President Daniel J. Tobin was chairman of the Democratic Labor Committee in last year's Presidential campaign. His electrical and baking cases, along with his moves against poultry, trucking, garment and used-brick rackets, typified the kind of thing that Prosecutor Dewey is really after—the racket that preys on law-abiding businessmen. But not until the restaurant racket trial began last week did he enter in open court the kind of battle whose outcome would indicate eventual success or failure for his whole crusade. Labor Cancer, Imbued as a boy with the doctrines of a union printer in his father's shop, Thomas Dewey professes himself a true friend of Organized Labor. As such, he views with sorrow and anger the growth of the labor union as the prime tool of industrial racketeers. The technique of industrial racketeering, he has discovered, is simple, standardized. A racketeer gets control of a union, or a union leader turns racketeer. In such highly-organized industries as New York City's, a strike is a paralyzing weapon. After a few samples, the mere threat of strike is usually enough to keep businessmen in line. The racketeer employs sluggings, bombings, window-smashings as supplementary discipline. But he shrinks from murder, resorts to an occasional killing only to prove that he means business. Hand in glove with the corrupt labor union usually works a "trade association." Sometimes it is organized by racketeers who force reputable businessmen to serve as a front.