New York: Confidential!

NEW YORK:
Confidential!

Books by Jack Lait and Lee Mortimer

CHICAGO: CONFIDENTIAL!
WASHINGTON: CONFIDENTIAL!

By Jack Lait

HELP WANTED
THE BIG HOUSE
BROADWAY MELODY
BEAST OF THE CITY
PUT ON THE SPOT
GANGSTER GIRL
BEEF, IRON AND WINE (short stories)
GUS THE BUS
OUR WILL ROGERS
WILL ROGERS' WIT AND WISDOM
A PRACTICAL GUIDE TO SUCCESSFUL WRITING

By Lee Mortimer

NEW YORK BEHIND THE SCENES

NEW YORK:
Confidential!

by

JACK LAIT

and

LEE MORTIMER

New Revised Edition

CROWN PUBLISHERS, Inc. · NEW YORK

COPYRIGHT, 1948, 1951, BY CROWN PUBLISHERS INC.

All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form whatsoever without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review to be printed in a magazine or a newspaper.

Sixth Printing, February, 1951

Revised Edition, September, 1951

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

AMERICAN BOOK-KNICKERBOCKER PRESS, INC., NEW YORK

CONTENTS

[INTRODUCTION]

P-s-s-t—

Lait and Mortimer want a word with you—confidential:

The authors had a lot of fun writing these pages. And infinitely more getting what they put into them. They both turned prematurely gray becoming Broadway-wise.

What you will read here they observed, absorbed, inhaled and swallowed through the years. They lived it.

This tome has no message. It may be helpful, it may be useful, but never purposeful, though it attempts to offer much sound advice. But who ever followed sound advice? If folks did, there would be no more marriages, divorces, gambling, guzzling, dancing, romancing, chasing, cheating, slickers, suckers, hussies, hangmen or hangovers—heaven forbid!

The "Confidential" in the title means Lait and Mortimer, who have never been in Grant's Tomb, have been in a lot of other places not so roomy, gloomy or wide open. It means they got their stuff off the record and on the up-and-up.

Therefore, this is not for Aunt Katie from Keokuk, but Uncle Dave the Deacon might find it of value next time he attends a convention in New York.

If you are seeking an orthodox guide or travel book about Gotham, lay this down. You will find little about the Empire State Building, Brooklyn Bridge or the $2.50 cruise around Manhattan. The shelves of stores and libraries already groan under the burden of books on those subjects.

No. This is a commentary on and compendium of the Big Burg from the inside out, with some facts and observations that could amaze, amuse and steer not only strangers, but most of those supposedly nonexistent Americans, native New Yorkers.

The gaucherie of many locals as well as all yokels defies the emery-wheel polish of the world's most exciting, most thrilling and most misunderstood metropolis.

The cognoscenti—you can count them on the keys of the piano that Polly Adler stored when, after 40 years of lucrative operation of the oldest profession, she quit and went to Hollywood—know a few things, but their experiences have been circumscribed. Knowing New York is a full-time career.

To those who still get dizzy looking up at the tall buildings, who think a headwaiter smiles at them because he likes them, who send notes back to the stage-door tender and who think this is just Milwaukee multiplied, we cheerfully dedicate the memory of our mornings after and aspirins thereafter. We will them the thousands of waking hours when we should have been asleep, as lagniappe.

But we believe that if our readers study this work assiduously and note its findings and one-way arrows, they may avoid some booby-traps. We believe so, though we don't expect so.

If this volume has any aim, it has four. It is designed to tip off the frequent visitor, who "knows" his New York; to derube the first-timer or the once-in-a-whiler; to polish up the permanent resident, who is sure he knows "our town"; and to give the largest classification, the vicarious traveler who does his New York sightseeing at home, in his easy chair, a series of close-ups that he never ogled off a screen or Sunday supplement.

We shoot at all ages, sexes and checkbooks. To them we present an island, hard, hostile, palms up and thumbs down—but hot.

Its creed is cash. Don't try to crash it otherwise.

You can't buy everything—only almost everything.

And it's worth all it costs you if you buy the right merchandise in the right spot at the right time.

That's why we were born, to tell you about it—confidential.

[PART ONE]
THE PLACES
(Confidential!)

[1. MY LITTLE GAY HOME IN THE EAST]

This little island called Manhattan is the summer resort supreme.

Never a mosquito, rarely a fly is seen.

Millions live high, where it's cool and rather quiet, except for the soothing and varied whistles of the boats and an occasional fire or police siren.

You don't have to be sociable with heterogeneous strangers or even your party-wall neighbors, whom you seldom know on sight.

If you want to sail, there are two magnificent rivers, the broad and sporting Sound and the most breath-stopping harbor on earth.

If you want mountains, you go by magic elevators to the observatories in the Chrysler Building, Radio City or the Empire State, where you get a magnificent view as soon as the suicides clear the railings.

There are, even in mid-July, two score legitimate theatres offering the great hits, for shows that survive into this period are all lusty and hardy. Within easy drives are locality playhouses with several other sturdy attractions, and "straw hat" try-out and revival productions. You have a wide choice of concerts, indoor and outdoor opera, a dozen swanky or swift cabarets and a hundred minor ones.

There are three big-league baseball teams within a $1.50 taxi hop from Times Square, always one and often two at home, all exciting, usually at least one out in front.

There are a half-dozen boxing shows each week, al-fresco or, like most of the burg, air-conditioned.

If you would attend churches, we have some of the finest and most famous cathedrals of all faiths and creeds.

Half the saloons are equipped with television, and for the price of a beer you can see and hear leading sports and other biff-bang affairs as they are proceeding.

There are eating places from sub-sub basements to the 85th floor, and from automats where you slip in a coin and get back a hot hamburger to the Stork and El Morocco, where you won't be allowed in, which is just as well for your bank roll.

There are sidewalk cafés, acres of penthouse-terrace restaurants, menus and service and customs of all nations, including the Scandinavian and not excluding the Moravian.

And, summer or any season, you have a feeling that the world is spinning about you—and whole little worlds, not geared just for tourists—concentrations of all nations and segments of them—even a White Russian colony.

Taxis galore drop the flag at 20 cents. The average haul is a half-buck.

Everything is big time. There's an air and a snap and a tang to Manhattan that is generated by championship rather than by huge mobilizations of people and of money. Brooklyn is far more populous; Chicago has more than twice the population. But there is a zip and a zing here, a supercivilized, metropolitan method of behavior, unique and indescribable.

Manhattan has a nonchalance about the world and itself known nowhere else. The newspapers do not bother to publish the borough's own vital statistics. One can be born, married, have children, die and be buried, entirely unnoticed. At the other extreme, nobody is important. Celebrities get a passing glance, maybe, and not always that.

Bank statements list billions in deposits and almost no one reads them. Ships from every port come and go and get a line for the record, in a few gazettes.

Yet there is civic pride, there are organized boosters; Rotarians and Kiwanians and Lions meet and slap backs and call one another Pete and Baldy.

No visitor can catch "the Voice of the City." O. Henry, who called it that, didn't. Nor can readers of the beloved tales of Damon Runyon. Damon was our friend and we admired him profoundly, because he could write fascinatingly, almost entirely from imagination, not from photographic impression. Characters like those he concocted never lived, around "Mindy's" or anywhere else. He laughingly said so, himself.

New Yorkers compose plays about New York and any resemblance to the living or dead is carelessness.

In truth, Manhattan—which for most fact or fiction material is New York—cannot be transcribed or translated.

It isn't even itself!

There are so many foreign and unrelated elements undergoing a steady, invisible process of blending; the picture changes slowly, yet ceaselessly; and no human camera is fast enough to catch it in the static focus of repose.

No one has portrayed New York as Dickens did London or Sue did Paris.

Those who tried have had to sectionalize it; none could wrap it all up into a comprehensive entity.

If they grasped the financial or theatrical or criminal or social or artistic or political aspect of the city's life, they could not extend the panorama into the human, the domestic, the personal phases.

If they looked on high they were so spellbound they could not turn to grope into the subterranean.

Those who realized the astounding things and people could not vitalize the humble, the ordinary, the devout and industrious bread-and-butter brothers and sisters.

Manhattan doesn't materialize to even those who spend their lives in it.

A thrilling, throbbing mystery!

[2. THE CANYON]

Damon Runyon immortalized 47th Street, between Sixth and Seventh Avenues, as "Dream Street." Jack Lait dramatized it as "The Canyon."

It is a shabby, dismal block. Its 200 yards are lined almost unbrokenly by cheap hotels and rooming houses sheltering all manner of strange characters: retired vaudevillians, down-and-out horse-players, dope fiends, grifters and grafters, pickpockets, derelicts (male and female), drunks, stage widows, miserly recluses, tars and their tarts, crap-game steerers and bottom-dealers.

On fine days you see them on the sidewalks. Old women with grotesque young get-ups and peroxided hair, parading their pooches; bewhiskered, unkempt men on the church steps, passionately studying racing scratch sheets; apoplectic dipsomaniacs airing out cheap jags; actors whose world has gone by, talking of starring roles of the past—and next season.

Here is the stage door of the once fabulous Palace, mecca for all vaudevillians. The theatre, pride of its builder, Martin Beck, was the hub of the old Keith-Orpheum Circuit, and on its stage appeared, for a quarter of a century, the top names of show business.

Around the corner is Broadway and the Great White Way.

A block to the east is prosperous Fifth Avenue, glistening in mink and pearls.

But life on Dream Street goes on, oblivious of these other worlds.

You may walk it at any hour. No one will molest you.

Maybe a panhandler will try to mooch a quarter; maybe a flea-bitten, superannuated sister in sin will make a half-hearted signal to you that she can be had. But you won't be in danger.

What goes on upstairs, in those small, old rooms, is something else. There crime and vice and con games and watering whiskey and hypoing horses are hatched.

There adultery is accepted as a fact of life.

There people who work are regarded as outlandish and queer.

But there you find no sluggers, stickups or bullies.

These are kindly folk. Violence is not in their bag of tricks.

This is, rather, a community. The members recognize the right to steal, to cheat, to beg, to scheme, to mate, and to woo weird fancies with hooch and hop.

But, no disorder, please—this is The Canyon!

Yet in the midst of this murk and muck, grew a flower.

Not a peony, not even a rose; a violet, gentle and shrinking and modest, admired and worshiped, but doomed to be crushed by the heavy hobnailed boots of the ruthless underworld and the equally pitiless protagonists of respectability.

In the middle of that bleak block, in a second-story apartment, lived big, hearty Martha Geiss. She was a one-bottle and one-case bootleggers' stock exchange. She didn't handle the stuff herself, but she had worked up a trade in hotels and offices, so small buyers 'phoned her when they wanted something sent up quickly, day or night, and she in turn relayed the orders to the various petty peddlers of gin and what was supposed to be whiskey.

Her commissions were never large and her work was wearisome and confining. But she always laughed and always had enough to help others and to act as a sort of mother to all the neighbors. And she was a mother—the mother of Frances, the only thing clean and virtuous and young and lovely on Dream Street.

When 200-pound Martha parted with her husband and cast her lot with the lawbreakers she brought with her the child, who went to a school in the slums west of Broadway.

Everybody knew her and everybody protected her. Youngsters were a great novelty in those parts and Frances was an unusually winsome and friendly one.

No one around there would harm her or let anyone else even say a questionable word that she might hear.

She was physically precocious and at 14 was a ripe, full-blown beauty, shy, courteous, simply but tastily dressed. Martha's heart was set on having Frances become a schoolteacher.

Of course, the child had eyes and ears—very pretty ones. She knew that this was no kindergarten in which she lived. She saw the liquor and dope-pushers, the demi-mondes and the semi-men. She smiled at them all and they smiled back, but as close as they were to her they were far away.

In the summer vacation, when Frances was 16, going to high school, Martha's business was rather low. It always fell off in summer, when many of the customers were in the country. Frances was eager to do her share, but Martha hated to send her into the world, where, strangely, she would not get the sheltering care and affection which had always been hers on dirty, degraded Dream Street. Across the way from Martha's window, where she could look into it on summer nights, was an Italian restaurant. Caruso, the owner, was her friend and at times her customer. She suggested that he hire Frances during the vacation as a checkroom and cigarette girl.

The patronage was not of the richest, but she did fairly well, what with her beauty and affability. Then, one night, she was called to a private dining room upstairs, where some men were secluded in what seemed to be a heavy conference. At the head of the table sat a stocky, blond, not bad-looking fellow in his thirties, who bought a fistful of cigars and reached for a $10 bill. As he looked up he saw the girl—then he reached for a $20 bill.

Later he came down and went on the make. She turned away and told him she never went out with men. He laughed and asked her:

"Do you know who I am?"

She shook her light brown curls from side to side.

He put his face very close to her ear and said huskily:

"I am Dutch Schultz!"

In every walk of human life there is an upper class. Among the lifers in Alcatraz, who never again will freely see the light of God's sun or draw a free breath, there are classes. A man who has killed three cops looks down upon a piker who only kidnapped a child or robbed a post office.

The name he whispered had an electric effect. Among the prohibition aristocracy none stood as high as Arthur Flegenheimer, a tough boy from Yonkers, who not only controlled a large section of the beer business of New York but was the king of the policy racket—the numbers—in Harlem, with political connections that went right through to the White House. Through his pudgy, uncalloused, overmanicured fingers passed $100,000,000 a year.

Frances ran across the street, breathless, to Martha, and told her the news, in the same emotional exultation that would have possessed a debutante with a sudden invitation from the Prince of Wales.

Martha certainly was not putting her daughter on the market for anybody, but she, too, was swept away with the mighty magnificence of the name. She advised Frances to go for a drive with him in the big, slinky, steel-jacketed and bullet-proof car that she could see from her window. Frances, hatless and flushed, ran back and got an hour off. When Dutch Schultz asked, few people questioned.

As she came out, two men slipped from the front seat, and as one opened the door the other, with his hand inside his coat at his armpit where he carried his gat, looked up and down the block. Schultz and Frances got in and the door closed with that authority which only a high-priced limousine can express with a bang and a click.

Within a month, Frances was Mrs. Arthur Flegenheimer. It was infatuation on the whisper of a name, but it had grown into a tremendous and all-conquering love. Few romances with figures that defy the law were ever more mutually fervent and sincere.

Schultz was always in trouble. Despite the enormous sums he took in, he had to pay out, at times, more. He cheated on his Federal and State income taxes, kept enormous staffs of bodyguards and fixers and collectors, and when he wasn't hunted by the Internal Revenue men he was tracked by gunmen of rivals who wanted to take over. He was frequently arrested and numerous times shot at, and his only chance for a few hours or days of happiness with his bride was to drive to remote villages in New England or 100 miles out on Long Island, where, under an assumed name, he might hole in for a day or two before someone recognized him.

Thus they lived for four years, in which time two children were born, first a girl and then a boy. She proudly named their son Arthur Flegenheimer, Jr.

He bathed Frances in furs which she didn't want to wear, and weighed her down with jewels which she rarely wore; and he got her up in the middle of nights and took her to strange places, whence they frequently had to escape on a moment's notice, more than once to the music of whining bullets.

On October 9, 1935, they were under cover in a hotel in Newark, N.J. They dined in their rooms and then he told her he had to meet some of his henchmen in a little restaurant. She went to a movie. Schultz walked into a little café and joined two other men on a bench in a booth.

The two favorite methods of murder among the outlaws were "put him on the spot" and "take him for a ride." The first was designed to plant a victim, drawn by treachery, to be slaughtered by executioners who would know just where and when, and thus elude the uncertainties of pursuit or having to do a job in a public street. The theory of "taking for a ride" also was usually carried out through misplaced faith, though sometimes at the point of a gun, and its strategy lay in taking the body-to-be out to a quiet, lonely spot where there would probably be no police or witnesses.

Dutch Schultz was put on the spot.

No sooner had he sat down than the two men who had lured him there dived to the floor, as a man in a green hat stepped out from behind a pillar and gave Schultz all his six bullets in the belly, the gangster's favorite target. To make certainty doubly sure, he was shot with slugs dipped in garlic, a deadly poison to the mucous membranes of the bowels. They took him in an ambulance to a hospital, where he died raving, with Frances' name on his lips. The first she knew she was a widow was when two detectives closed in on her as she returned to her hotel.

Of course, she had a faint idea of who had done it or who had ordered it done. But she hadn't been Dutch Schultz' wife for four years not to know the penalty for blowing the whistle on the Mafia which had ordered the execution.

From that moment on, she was hounded and hunted by prosecutors who wanted to know who had killed Dutch Schultz; by tax collectors who wanted to know where his money was—those millions he was supposed to have cached; by his former associates, who thought they were entitled to some of the money—and where was it?

She lived as a fugitive for years. She had no money. She knew of no money. She knew that he owned a brewery in Yonkers worth more than a million dollars, but he had never dared put it in his own name and those who now controlled it shrugged their shoulders and said they knew nothing of any interest he had. She went to "Dixie" Davis, his lawyer, whom Schultz had made rich, but he had nothing and knew nothing. She sold her furs and jewels, which supported her and the children for a couple of years.

Then she was flat broke.

She worked as a saleswoman in Bloomingdale's, as a waitress, and almost went blind inspecting minute precision parts in Sperry's. Martha had died in an automobile accident and she was alone with her babies.

Not only were the essentials of living a problem, but being allowed to live was even more perplexing. For a while she refused to haul down her flag. She was Mrs. Arthur Flegenheimer and her son was Arthur Flegenheimer, Jr. But when boardinghouse keepers learned who Arthur Flegenheimer had been, and cruel little boys learned who Arthur Flegenheimer, Jr., was, Frances had to pack the little she had and move.

From rooming house to cheap hotel to boardinghouse in New Jersey, Westchester, Long Island villages and the fastnesses of Manhattan tenements, where few give a damn about who lives next door, she fled and fled again as the ghost of Dutch Schultz caught up with her.

Exhausted, penniless, she went back to her church, the church she had left when she married out of her faith.

The priests were kind and understanding. They took the children to a place in the Rocky Mountains and, with the mother's consent, gave them a new last name.

No one out there knew Dutch Schultz; few of the rugged folks had ever heard of him.

Frances followed. She, too, took the name the children had assumed. We must not divulge it.

She turned her back on the city which had given her birth, the city which had given her romance and the city which had booted her around and sneered and pointed in derision to her and her children, the widow and the babies of Dutch Schultz.

She is a nurse in a Catholic hospital, still in her early thirties, still soft and attractive. She loves her new purpose and her new surroundings and the peace and usefulness of her life. Your authors know just where she is and who she is, but they will keep it confidential—even from her old friends on Dream Street—The Canyon!

[3. THE MAIN DRAG]

If Broadway is a "state of mind," as some phrase inventor put it, a clinical psychiatrist should diagnose it. He might isolate the precise form of dementia which drives this wacky world of fancy, flesh, piracy, pruriency and pure poesy to its multiform objectives.

Nowhere else do the Lord and the Devil work so nearly side by side.

Here romance, misery, murder, adultery, mother-love and human frailty are commodities; carnal appeal and ridicule and horror are inventoried and price-tagged; the money-changers throng the steps of the temples of art with none to castigate them.

Slashing through the very center of traffic in solid substances, this highway of economic parasitism dominates the scene.

New York is a great seaport—so are Baltimore and Boston; New York is a great factory town—so are Cleveland and Detroit; New York is a great railroad terminal—Chicago is greater; New York is a great seat of learning—so is Los Angeles.

The difference is still Broadway. There is only one!

In its days of richest glory, Broadway's crown jewels were its masters of stage production; their thrones were its theatres where their works reigned.

Of all these, not even excepting the brothers Frohman, the most lustrous was David Belasco. He covered a wider range of time as well as of topic. He was the archdirector, a playwright of cunning talent, a manager and star maker. He was a more intensely exciting character than any he ever dreamed up.

He built the Belasco Theatre, which was his show-case, his workshop, his royal castle, his private museum, and his play pen.

Past 76, he was vigorous, virile, and planning for the future.

Mr. B. (even his mistresses called him that) told one of your authors, who was his intimate friend despite a wide disparity in ages, that he couldn't truly interest himself in a play unless he had a sweetheart in the cast.

Handsome, distinguished, with hypnotic and penetrating eyes under black lashes in contrast with snow-white hair, wearing always a priestlike costume which he had designed and would never explain, his years did not dim the electric effect he exercised on beautiful women.

Six floors above street level, over the stage flies of the Belasco, he had fitted up a private gallery housing the spoils of the ages—tapestries, paintings, rare furniture, Venetian glass, armor, snuffboxes, statues, miscellany.

Beside it was a complete living suite, practical but furnished with antique plunder. There he often lived while in the pangs and ecstasies of conception, preparation, and consummation of his plays. Few ever penetrated that sanctum.

He had another private retreat on the balcony level, walled in off the nave. There he received esoterically but with broad hospitality, with a steward to serve drinks and tidbits.

In that room, one night, while a hit play was in action below, he got word from his stage manager that a feminine principal had fluffed some lines. He sent for her after the act. In the presence of one of your authors, he berated her as a gold-bricker and an ingrate.

"I gave you everything you ever had," he shrilled. "And the first thing I ever gave you was a bath!"

She bitched up no lines in the next act.

The next season another beauty gave him the romantic interest he required for a later success.

At the height of its run, he was stricken with pneumonia. His amazing constitution and will licked it, though he had passed his 76th birthday.

Weakened as the great Belasco was, the soul of the great lover still burned within him. He had been in retirement for weeks. The girl, a blonde this time, was young, and, he feared, fickle. As long as he was on his feet, none of his mistresses dared stray around. But he had been laid up for weeks.

The inamorata of the moment was ensconced in a private three-story residence not far from the Gladstone Hotel where he lived. Because of his family she could not come to see him during his illness. He did not tell her when he would be allowed out again. And, the first night he could ambulate, he decided to spy on her.

He set up his post across the street, where, from behind a light-pole, he could look up and over.

A sudden rainstorm poured out of the sky, and with it a cold wind. But he had seen a shadow—of a man and woman, it seemed to him. And with the consuming zeal and drive with which he did everything, he remained there, drenched and shivering, ignoring everything but those windows.

He found out nothing.

But the exposure resulted in a second attack of pneumonia.

That tawdry anticlimax ended the life of the genius at whose feet Broadway had bowed—a martyr to suicidal jealousy at his advanced age—jealousy over a run-of-the-mill gal whose name no one would remember on the street that will never forget him.

a.—Give My Regards to Broadway

When Georgie Cohan penned his crude classic, New York's Main Drag ran from Herald Square at 34th Street, on Broadway, to Times Square at 43rd Street, with tentacles precariously reaching northward a few blocks and a few outposts of the Tenderloin's last frontiers stretching southward.

Broadway's uptown growth had been progressive from historic days when the theatre and hotel zones were around City Hall Park, not far from the Battery.

During the years, successively, Diamond Ditch moved up, centering at 14th Street, then again at 23rd Street, coming to anchor at Herald Square before its final migration to Times Square.

Within memory of men who for old time's sake are still called "middle-aged," the crest of the White Way was in the 30's. Here such noted playhouses as the Herald Square, Garrick, Empire and Casino had clustered about them the town's half-a-hundred legit theatres. The still standing and thriving Metropolitan Opera House was then the Mecca of Pittsburgh millionaires.

On Broadway, in the district and its side streets, were famous cabarets and night clubs, places like the Normandie, the Pre-Cat, Café l'Opera and others.

The tide imperceptibly but inevitably flowed northward. Even while Herald Square was in its ascendancy, Times Square bloomed and blossomed, with 42nd Street, between Broadway and Eighth Avenue, flashing more legitimate theatres than any other block in the world.

By the end of World War I, Gay Gulch had crossed the great divide, was almost entirely north of 42nd Street, though many theatres and a few night clubs continued to stay below 42nd Street as late as the early 20's.

The coming of Prohibition found most of Gotham's glamor studding what we still call the White Way.

The Paramount Theatre now occupies the site of Shanley's famed café. The Claridge, popular-priced tourist hangout, was originally Rector's and later, as the Claridge, top spot for stage and movie names.

The Knickerbocker Hotel, with its memorable bar and the Parrish painting of King Cole, was at 42nd and Broadway. Today it is the Newsweek Building. The King Cole painting now hangs in the aristocratic bar of the St. Regis Hotel on Fifth Avenue.

The Palais Royale operated in the present location of the Latin Quarter, at 48th; the New York Roof was atop a structure on the site now occupied by the new Criterion Theatre; the Bartholdi Inn, celebrated theatrical boardinghouse, was at 46th and Broadway, where Loew's State now stands.

The coming of Prohibition dispersed the pickle factories. The big places with grand old names couldn't stand up without liquor revenue. The wining and dining industry was taken over by a new breed and operated in side street cellars and stables and old residences.

At the same time, a number of new night clubs, mostly intimate affairs, were opened on Broadway. These were not supposed to be speaks. You brought your own makin's and they supplied the set-ups. If you forgot your flask and they knew you, they'd get you all you could carry.

The most celebrated speakeasies were clustered in every side street of the 40's and 50's on both sides of Broadway, and down to the East River.

Some of the most famous night clubs of the present period such as the Stork Club and Leon & Eddie's began as humble blind tigers. More about them in later chapters.

Among the rooms best remembered from the torrid 20's are the El Fey, Tex Guinan's, the Madrid, the Hotsy Totsy, the Abbey, the Silver Slipper, the Plantation, the Argonaut, the Frivolities, La Sportiva, Cap Williams', the 50-50 Club, and Sid Solomon's Central Park Casino, which was Jimmy Walker's night "City Hall."

Some had lurid histories, with gangland killings and knifings an almost everyday commonplace. But many of today's Hollywood and Broadway greats came out of this hurly-burly.

Harry Richman and Morton Downey both played pianos in speaks.

Georgie Raft hoofed at Roseland dance hall, later for Tex Guinan, at $50 a week.

Joan Crawford, then Lucille Le Seur, worked as a show gal at the Frivolities, where a fabulous story of Cinderella on the Main Stem happened.

It was the custom on Sunday nights to hold chorus girl "opportunity contests," at which outstanding youngsters appeared and sang or danced.

The winner was awarded a $50 bill.

These contests were conducted by Nils T. Granlund, a character truly as fantastic as the lies told about him, who had been Marcus Loew's personal press agent and the first radio star in the country, working under the pseudonymic initials, N.T.G. He became the leading café man of his age.

N.T.G., known as "Granny" to thousands in show business, was then directing the entertainment policy of the Frivolities, as well as ten other midtown clubs, and the "opportunity contests" were rotated from club to club, week after week.

Tests of this sort, run on the level, can become tremendously dreary affairs. So Granny picked out three sparklers from as many shows and arranged for them to enter all the contests.

One of his trio always won.

One of these pert pigeons was a show gal named Ruby Stevens. Today, in Hollywood, she's known as Barbara Stanwyck.

Another was Clare Luce—the actress, not the playwright-politician.

The third was Lucilla Mendez, who became an exotic star.

One Sunday night, back in the 20's, the contest was at the Frivolities.

At the appointed time, each of the three took the floor and did her little song or dance. They were so good, having it down pat by now, that they expected no competition from uninitiated outsiders.

But one dared it, an unknown child who looked about 13. Compared to the three sleek and sexy sirens who had preceded her, she was bedraggled. Her heels were worn down, her stockings in runs and her face shiny.

The audience tittered. But she stole their hearts with a brand of dancing never before seen on jaded Gaiety Gulch.

The customers cheered. They shouted. They screamed.

So, though the three hot-house lovelies sneered and pouted, Granny handed the youngster the prize. And he told her he was going to put her to work at the Strand Roof, at $50 a week. The girl almost fainted.

As an afterthought, N.T.G. asked her name.

She replied: "Ruby Keeler."

She became that almost mythical creation, "The Toast of Broadway."

She was taken under the "wing" of Johnny Irish, a long since forgotten gangster, whose hoodlums saw to it no others romanced her. But Al Jolson, then the king of show business, fell—and hard. Irish, who loved her with a love that passeth understanding, called the singer to his hotel room. Al, fearing he was about to be taken for a ride, was agreeably surprised when the mobster asked what "his intentions are."

In relief, Al blurted out that he wanted to marry the dancer. Big-hearted Irish adopted a noble pose, gave the girl up.

"I'll take my boys to Atlantic City," he said, "and you hop an ocean liner with Ruby. Otherwise maybe some of them will get an idea you're taking her away from me and maybe they won't like it. And heaven help you if you don't marry her."

She married Al Jolson at 17. She hit film stardom. Then she chucked it, still in her twenties, to marry a poor boy, rusticate in Pasadena and have four children.

b.—No Cover Charge

By 1928, it seemed Prohibition was here to stay. The easy money boys, grown fat and rich with two-by-four hideaway speaks, began to think about expanding.

But when a law-evading night club got too big, too noisy, too public, even the usually complaisant cops had to smack it down. And if they didn't, a rival mob did.

The hotel grills and roofs, forced to go straight to protect huge investments, long were dead ducks by now and so were the hotels. There just was no big place where a man and girl could go and have some dancing and fun, unless he was known to the gorilla at the door and could afford citrate of magnesia labeled Mumm's at $35 a throw.

That year, Granlund had a vision.

He conceived the idea of building a huge cabaret room large enough to pay off on quantity business alone, instead of bootlegging.

As a further inducement to lure the wary man of moderate means, ducking high prices, fancy foreign headwaiters and tremendous tariffs, he invented the minimum charge, to supplant the imported and resented couvert.

A syndicate built such a cabaret on Broadway, between 48th and 49th Streets, in a room once occupied by Rector's of hallowed memory, and after that having housed a chop suey palace.

The new place was named the Hollywood Restaurant. It got off to an immediate success with big bands, famous acts, and the most beautiful girls this side of heaven.

The great Ziegfeld, as a smart business, tied up with N.T.G. on an exchange policy, which called for a selected few of the Hollywood girls to double into the "Follies," an equal number of the glorified doubling into the Hollywood.

No liquor was sneaked at the club, but if you brought your own you were sold a set-up (costing two cents) for a buck.

The Hollywood's success was immediate, and before the club expired more than a decade later, it had lived to see the cover charge die.

Club after club in New York, Chicago, Hollywood, Europe, Asia, South America, followed the policy of elaborate shows and minimum charge. The Hollywood was the daddy of practically every cabaret in business today.

This revolution, plus the hard times following 1929, again changed the face of Rue de Revelry and environs. Even before Repeal, many clubs of the Guinan era and stamp folded, including Guinan's. On one side, they were hammered by the depression; on the other they were against the competition offered by the Hollywood and its imitators.

A new crop of lovelies had come up, were displayed and went on to Hollywood. To mention one, Alice Faye—a Hollywood Restaurant pony.

Rudy Vallee, leading the band there, adopted her as a protégée. He later took her with him into George White's Scandals, in which he starred.

Alice, who had dark brown hair in those pre-blonde days, did one bit number. It was enough, with Rudy's backing, to show trained talent scouts.

Soon came the equally large and elaborate Paradise Restaurant, across Broadway from the Hollywood, to compete. The syndicate which built it lured N.T.G. away from the Hollywood, some said at the point of a gun. There were times during those shimmering nights when show girls, those with followings, were paid as much as $250 a week simply to undulate across the floor. Many were driven to work in Rolls-Royces.

Minks—even sables—were a dime a dozen. Naked was the doll whose arms weren't covered with diamond bracelets.

Fifteen years ago, the hegira to the East Side had not gotten under way. Playboys, head salesmen, mobsters, visiting firemen—all fast with a buck—nightly made happy the hearts of headwaiters.

c.—From the Circle to the Square

Though what the world calls "Broadway" is not a street, but a condition, the purpose of these few pages is to tell you about the thoroughfare named Broadway, and more specifically, that part of it now the Rialto of the western world.

This meandering bit of avenue, following the tortuous curve of an ancient cow path, is delimited south of 42nd Street by the flourishing wholesale garment industry; and, north of Columbus Circle, by Central Park and automobile row, some of which extends south of the Circle, encroaching into the White Way as far as 54th Street. So, all the Glittering Gash can honestly claim for its own is 12 short blocks, measuring exactly three-fifths of a mile.

This is the street of a million lights, of a broken heart for every bulb, and more bulbs every night.

This is Gotham's Main Drag; strangely, save for the milling crowds and the blinding Mazdas, it has not now and has not had for the past decade those features which are universally supposed by all the people "in the know" all over the world, except in New York, to be on Broadway.

At this writing, on the whole "street," there are but two theatres permanently devoted to the legitimate stage.

But there are more than 30 legitimate theatres in New York. All, except the aforementioned and a handful on parallel avenues, are located east and west of Broadway, in narrow side streets in the 40's and 50's.

Of about 1,500 licensed cabarets in New York, there are at this writing but four with entrances on the Stem.

If, from seeing the film of that name, you thought 42nd Street—where it crosses Broadway—is the center of Manhattan's mad gaiety, you have much to learn.

That thoroughfare, once the home of a dozen proud theatres including the New Amsterdam of red plush and wonderful memories, is now devoted exclusively to "grind" movie houses, penny arcades, flea circuses, army and navy goods stores, orange juice stands and frowzy but friendly dames.

Broadway teems with dime dance halls, open air hot dog counters, photo and shooting galleries, souvenir and novelty holes-in-the-wall. It is the honky-tonk that was Coney Island, the crossroads carnival.

But, strangely enough, in the daytime, when the bright lights that draw the rubes are off and Broadway's sidewalks are comparatively free, it reverts to its old estate as the home and capital of the entertainment world.

For here, and nearby, are the offices of the theatrical producers, the agents who sell the acts, the dance studios where embryo chorus fillies learn to hoof; the costumers and the hooters, the scenic artists and designers—and Tin Pan Alley.

When Mike Jacobs moved his handmade teeth and his principality of pugs a few feet west to Madison Square Garden, he broke up a mongrel marriage of sock and song, which had long been the Brill Building.

An old-fashioned, ten-story structure, smoke-grimed, with creaking and groaning elevators, it had become the stronghold and nerve center of two giant industries.

Prize-fighters, the tycoons and tramps who manage them, rubbers, sponge-carriers, trainers and the motley mob which gathers around the boxing racket rubbed against music publishers, composers, lyric writers, piano players, arrangers and the others of the equally heterogeneous individuals engaged in creating and selling the songs of the world.

On the main floor, facing Broadway, are two cafés—the Turf, hangout for musicians, and Dempsey's, rendezvous of pugs.

Across the street, on the 49th Street side, is the Forrest Hotel, long the secondary concentration headquarters for the boys of Jacobs' Beach. Up the street and across Eighth Avenue is the Garden, the Taj Mahal of the biff business.

In the dingy Brill Building, day and night, swarm the unsung individuals of the singing empire, in every respect unique and little known outside its own realm.

There are 320 firms in New York City that publish music. Of these a dozen are highly successful, another half dozen do well and the rest are mostly shoestring affairs, picking up the ragged edges and discards of the leaders.

The sine qua non of a music publisher is his demonstrating rooms. These are usually tiny cubicles scarcely larger than the battered upright pianos they contain, each manned by a key-thumper who can transpose, ad lib and torture a melody into any tempo for any purpose from a soft-shoe dance accompaniment to a cry for help that would break your heart.

Getting these songs before the public, or as the trade terms it, the "plug," is perhaps the soul of the industry. There are scores of men and women infesting every radio station and theatre where "flesh" performances still remain. Their business is to get their songs sung or played or whistled or even ground out on a hand organ. The big stars are hard to approach and the business, which is organized, has long ago put a foot down on what was formerly an elaborate system of bribery, so that personality, pleading, pull, as often as actual merit and fitness, go to place songs with leading orchestras and ace headliners.

But a late development in the business, one which suspiciously smacks of a restraint of trade violation, is the practice of some publishers of giving a stock interest in their firms to noted crooners, band leaders and disk jockeys, who in return "plug" the latest publications of the companies in which they are interested.

An offshoot of this kind of tie-up, which has the further effect of keeping the compositions of the unknown or the unelect from the market, is off-the-record agreements between the principal publishing houses tied up with singers and band leaders to play only the product of the companies in the charmed circle. You scratch my back and I'll scratch yours.

The demonstrating offices are besieged by ambitious youngsters, failures and never-could-be's who think that they can find a "Yes, We Have No Bananas" or "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes" to draw them to the top overnight. These are inconsequential persons and they are insulted and refused, but they break through here and there.

For a bad singer, all songs are bad. Yet it is in the nature of the stage-struck never to admit that they have failed, but to carry the deathless conviction that it is the "material." They haunt the music publishers, fighting for a chance at the latest, always with high expectations that this time this will be it.

So the Brill Building, overrun as it was for years with every element of the prize ring and the sheet music world and its vocalists and hoofers and bandsmen, naturally became a beehive for minor agents, who pick up shabby fees from unimportant performers.

Some of these have offices in telephone booths and some of them only in their hats. For a commission they will try to sell anything to anybody. They watch the cheap saloons for a "disappointment"—which means that an act has fallen out temporarily or permanently because of delirium tremens, dismissal or death; they try to induce other saloons, without entertainers, to try some—find small, off-key dens and seek to sell them a singer or a sister act. The amount of aggressiveness and persistence they put into their misspent endeavors would probably get them a good income anywhere else—but they would be out of "show business," and they never will be.

Tin Pan Alley has its own glossary. All songs are "numbers." Love songs, mother songs, anything romantic, are "ballads"—a remote adaptation of the original word. All songs of regret and revenge and love's bitter grief are "torches." All crazy songs, which make no sense, are "freaks." All crazy songs which make some sense are "novelties." War songs are "flag wavers." All songs about the south are "Dixies."

The overnight possibilities of radio and millions of juke-box and parlor records have revolutionized the arts and wiles and guiles of "plugging," which is too bad in some ways, though the members of the craft were generally about as venal vultures as the morasses of Manhattan have disgorged.

Their vocation gave them license to knock on dressing-room doors, and many pressed their advantage beyond the call of duty.

They had expense accounts, some professional standing and a fund of that gutter shrewdness and knowledge which are perilous possessions of the unprincipled, yet licensed, scavengers who infest the outer rims of a world which holds forth a few miraculous rewards and an untold number of sordid soul-searings to young, impressionable, overoptimistic girls who reach so desperately for that one chance in a million.

Such girls are exposed to contacts in getting costumes, make-up, dancing shoes, printed "notices," their very jobs. They are hectic, striving, not subject to the reactions and restraints of sheltered, normal living.

And it is no attack on the geniuses and executives of the music business to state that the riffraff of its ragtag has a sustained record of abusing the hospitality of a harum-scarum world where shadow and substance have undefined borders.

Nearby, too, are the home offices of all the giant Hollywood studios. The pavements, which at night echo and re-echo to the tread of millions of heels, are pre-empted all day by cigar-smoking, side-of-mouth-talking, sure-thing artists and wise boys; bookies, promoters, pluggers, gamblers, hangers-on and layers-off.

The southeast corner of 50th Street and Seventh Avenue epitomizes the decline of the Stem. Gone is the glamorous Earl Carroll Theatre that once graced the spot.

Today, where the most beautiful girls in the world passed through the magic portals, there is a two-story taxpayer with a five-and-dime, a chain pharmacy and a chop suey emporium.

The career of Earl Carroll was as fantastic as any in show business. A Pittsburgh theatre usher turned flyer in the embryo air force of World War I, Earl first made his mark as a song writer, when Enrico Caruso bought special lyrics from him.

Even before he built the first of his two theatres, he was pressing Ziegfeld in the girl-show industry.

Yet the trade knows that none of Earl's proud productions ever showed a profit on the books, save White Cargo, which wasn't a musical, and the rights to which were taken from him. Carroll, however, lived like a king, on salaries and royalties, though his backers committed suicide, went bankrupt, or both.

On Broadway they still talk of Joyce Hawley's champagne bath. Carroll threw a private party on his stage for friends and backers. Miss Hawley, teen-age chorine, was ordered to bathe in a tub of champagne. Some said she was nude.

Carroll was indicted—not because Joyce wore nothing, but because he denied he bought the wine. Earl was true to his bootlegger, claimed it was only ginger ale. So he did a bit in Atlanta for perjury, rather than blow the whistle.

Carroll's second theatre opened in 1931, with the eleventh edition of the "Vanities." It was the most magnificent legit house ever built, with luxuriously decorated rest rooms for the chorines and a backstage that could play a circus. Before the year was out, they took the house away from him. The $5,000,000 structure limped along as a cinema revival house and cabaret, only to be razed for a Woolworth.

Washed up with New York, Earl produced a supper-club floor show at Palm Island Casino, Miami, in 1935, and again in 1936, when the intrenched mobsters kicked him out. Carroll moved on to Hollywood.

Half the movie colony came in as stockholders on his first night club, the idea being that they would own special private boxes. But the financing came to a halt when the framework was up. The stockholders bowed out and Earl got control. His success in Hollywood became legendary; he lived like an Eastern potentate in a mansion that made a movie set look like a Quonset shanty.

Plenty happened on and off Broadway—to the Earl of Carroll!

The complexion changes at dinnertime, when the excursionists and suburbanites, disgorged by the train-loads from subway kiosks, take over.

The rush reaches its peak between 8 and 8:30, when the steady but slow-moving stream of stragglers, strollers and starers meets the head-on rush of theatre-bound hordes.

Again at 11, when the curtains fall in three dozen houses, there is a mad scramble of hemmed-in humanity.

Soon after midnight, though the lights still blink bravely, the crowd thins out and drops off. Broadway, having lost most of the places that attract revelers, is no longer a late street.

Its larger night clubs, patronized more by tourists and middle-class burghers, have little play after 2 A.M. Only a few even bother to present late shows, though in other sections of the city floor entertainment runs until 4 o'clock.

When the gawkers get off the Stem—but long before the break of day—it is taken over by its third set of citizens.

Dope-peddlers work the west side of the street, between 45th and 47th Streets, and on Seventh Avenue, between 48th and 50th Streets, on the east side of the street.

You can buy reefers in a dozen cheap bars on 48th between Sixth and Seventh Avenues, and at 51st and Seventh, in front of the cafeteria. In fact, when Federal agents haven't their full quota of pinches in at the end of the month, they tap people at random here—and almost every one has the "makings."

Blowzy hookers congregate at 47th.

Runners for clip joints work outside the bigger bars and clubs. Policy pay-off men visit the saloons and cigar stands.

About this time, too, chorines and musicians are getting off. They swarm into the sandwich bars, delicatessens, lunch counters and all-night drugstore fountains.

The first faint streaks of dawn, breaking through the long, narrow lanes to light now almost deserted Broadway, point the way home to offside hotels and bed for make-up-streaked cuties who may dream of Hollywood, fame and fortune.

And this year, and next year, and every year, maybe five will find it.

The pages immediately preceding and following this chapter are devoted to those portions of the New York scene which, not physically on the street known as Broadway, are so intimately connected with it that in the idiom of the city they are referred to as "Broadway."

For instance, "Dream Street," the theatre section, and 52nd Street's Swing Lane are parts of the Broadway scene, though the latter is a good 300 yards removed from the Stem.

At this writing, the late Mayor LaGuardia's verboten on the old institution of burlesque still stands, but the average peasant will not be looking for it here, because his own home town probably tolerates at least one burly-Q house.

The nearest theatres dispensing that form of entertainment are in Union City, N.J., reached by Lincoln Tunnel, or 42nd Street ferry (10 minutes) and in Newark, reached by Hudson Tube (30 minutes) or Pennsylvania Railroad (15 minutes).

Though the so-called "Poor Man's Musical Comedy" is outlawed here, many of our $5 and $6 musicals and stage plays contain material that would make the most frenzied front-row burlesque patron blush. But there are still no "strippers."

One gal of our acquaintance who had made a respectable and comfortable living on the road (even in Boston) peeling in night clubs and theatres, was booked into one of our larger cafés last year.

Aware of the police ban on that form of art, she revised her act to a comedy strip-tease, which left her clothed almost as completely as an Eskimo maiden, at the crucial end of the bit.

But, next day, the management got one word from the cops—"Nix!" The monitors of modesty admitted the girl was completely clad. "But," said they, "it is a sub for a strip-tease."

There is nothing approaching the nudity permitted in other cities in our midtown clubs.

Navels must be covered.

As for higher up—

If you have tears, prepare to shed them now. That's about all you can still shed on Broadway.

[4. THE THEATAH!]

Though films, radio, video and even night clubs far surpass the legit in numbers of those employed and in earnings of most stars, New York is the last citadel on this continent of that phantasmagoria of the ages, the theatre.

Shubert Alley, a narrow private street running from 44th to 45th, behind the Astor Hotel, is its ventricle. Within a 300-foot radius are some of the most important playhouses, the thrones of most of the theatrical impresarios and mighty agents, and the dining places and haunts of the distinctive, generic folk who compose this gregarious galaxy. Old-timers, and some stars, still foregather in the Astor Hunting Room. The mart and meeting place for lunch, dinner and after openings is Sardi's.

The youngsters eat at Walgreen's drugstore, 44th Street and Broadway, and the drugstore in the Astor; instead of cocktails they sip cokes and smoke reefers.

Here they swap dreams, inveigh against the "favoritism" that holds them back and tell what they'd do if they had the part instead of Helen Hayes.

Unfortunately, too many of the adolescents have been tinged with political radicalism and tainted with homosexuality.

Yet, the New York theatre is still the most vital and vibrant facet of show business, and from it comes almost everything good in its bastard offspring, radio, its newer brother, television, and the movies.

Despite the thousands of accounts that have been written about the drama, the comedy and the cruelty that go into an offering in a first-class playhouse, no one has yet conveyed realistically the hopes, the fears, the prayers, of the actors, the authors, the directors, producers and attachés as they approach and experience the momentous opening night.

It is a gigantic gamble, forever in untried walks; for the over-all combination is never the same.

One chuckle in the right spot can make a career and a million dollars; a dimple in a knee, an ad lib side remark which is left in because it was spontaneous, an expression on one face at a critical moment, have been known to do it. Yet, no one has ever lived who could say, before an audience has put thumbs up or down, "This is a hit."

There has been much controversy over the power of the critics. In New York, these dozen professional reviewers are a jury, voting the fate of many men and women, who are on the defensive. But there is no presumption of innocence, and there are no attorneys to plead for the accused.

There is the right of appeal, to the public; and, once in a miracle moon, the people override the reviewers.

Saddle-sore, jaded, blasé playgoers they are; honest, usually. Broadway-wise, they can recognize a success. Because they are regulars and show-weary, they are quickest to rise to anything above mediocrity.

Having been critics, we know the way the fellows react and feel. They are not vicious deliberately, as many have charged; nor are they soft and sympathetic, as many would have them. They have a job to do and their obligation is to the reader, not to the subjects of their criticism.

The first-nighter, whose mass response in a measure prompts and primes the critics, is likewise a recidivist, an addict, and therefore a tough customer. He and she make all the openings—to see, usually to sneer, sometimes to cheer, often to be sadistically delighted at the spectacle of a misspent endeavor.

They do not go, like others, because they are especially drawn by a star or a playwright or the glamor of a title, or—which is most important—because they have heard or read that this is worth seeing. Those who do so are in the mood to be pleased. Those who go to show off sables and necklaces, to see how others dress, to brush against the wise crowd and gossip in the intermissions, are, at the very best, neutral.

And they grow impatient and belligerent because too many around them are synthetically enthusiastic.

Those would be the husbands, wives, sweeties, neighbors, creditors and kin of everyone affected by the life-and-death trial. They laugh on hair-triggers, applaud bit-players' entrances, loudly approve.

They are no corporal's guard. In a city like this, there are a half-million people directly concerned in the destinies of the theatre.

The average company includes 20 performers, 13 stagehands, a unit manager, a press agent, from one to three authors, a director and assistant director, often an orchestra, as often a chorus of 12 to 40, not to mention the house employees. Hundreds have worked on costumes, painting and constructing scenery, the properties (movable tangibles), advertising, wigmaking, lighting, photographing and the many other processes that go into something that someone "presents."

None of these persons must miss a première. Seldom is a single ticket bought, so multiply automatically by two. Then add collateral and congenital kin and romantic close ones.

These favorably prejudiced rooters, plus the asbestos-lined, never-miss first-nighters, plus the critics, the hawk-eyed scalpers, the hard-boiled New York scouts for Hollywood, the agents of the players or acquisitive agents looking for clients, nervous stockholders in the theatre and show and their staffs, comprise the hundreds "out front" on the monumental night when everything is riding on an uncharted path toward a gold mine or a morass.

It is not a "representative" audience. But it represents New York and all the 48 States. For this is the night of decision!

There has been much talk and squawk for "constructive criticism." It would mean about nothing. By the time it appears, it would have to be reconstructive. And it's then too late.

A handful of plays have upset the original opinion, notably Abie's Irish Rose, Tobacco Road and Hellzapoppin'. In all those instances, and the few others where a production caught its second wind, the backers were game and optimistic, plowed through losses with a confidence rare in such enterprises.

As a rule, what the first-nighters say as they come out is final, be it an Ibsen revival or a Theatre Guild musical or a bawdy revue.

Word spreads amazingly fast and far. Fifteen minutes after a smash has rung down, the cigar-store crowds in the Bronx and the burghers on Staten Island and the stoop-sitters in far Flatbush are chewing about it. For a big hit is big business in the Big Burg.

No recurrent event, including contest sports, sells papers like an important opening. Thousands know that what the critics say means a flop or a run. Not only are many directly interested, but millions follow such news, as Los Angeles reads Hollywood trade matter, Chicago goes for stockyards' statistics, Detroit watches auto output, Washington eats up politics and Memphis seeks the latest on "the state of the River."

For the stage is a colossal industry in Greater New York.

Its "legitimate" houses turn over more than $1,000,000 a week in good months.

Its unions are rich and powerful, its personnel exceeds in volume the population of some metropolitan cities.

Yet its fortunes hang on invisible, intangible hairs!

[5. SWING LANE]

In defiance of police regulations, two lines of sleek and fancy limousines are parked nightly outside Jack and Charlie's famed 21 Club in 52nd Street.

One reason why the cops close their eyes while pounding that beat is that the cars, with liveried chauffeurs, are owned by the rich and prominent townsfolk. Another is that many of the machines carry burnished seals, signifying they belong to, or at least are assigned to, high city, state and national officials.

West of Fifth Avenue, 52nd Street was long a street of wealth. Today, the 21 Club is wealth's last outpost.

This was a baronial thoroughfare, lined on both sides by fancy brownstone and brick residences of solid and superior citizens.

But the northward encroachment of business, culminating in the late 20's and early 30's with the construction of Rockefeller Center only a block south, drove the householders elsewhere.

Many of the luxurious brownstones were converted into rooming houses and made over into one- and two-room apartments; but the chief industry in the block was speakeasies. The street was a natural—it ran in the right direction, i.e., its one-way traffic was routed from west to east, which in midtown New York is important, because the bulk and the best of aftertheatre traffic goes that way.

Repeal brought new problems. Drinkers wanted more room and more air. A dozen years of small, smoky dives caused claustrophobia.

In 1933, they welcomed the big, roomy, hotel grills and Broadway cafés.

Of the 50-odd blind pigs in 52nd Street, between Fifth and Sixth, only two remained. But those two have become national institutions.

By far the most famous cabaret night club in the country is Leon & Eddie's, at 33 West 52nd Street. It started in 1929 as a narrow, dingy speak, directly across the street from its present premises, at No. 18, now part of Rockefeller Center.

The 21 Club, next door to Leon & Eddie's, technically is a restaurant, not a night club, inasmuch as only food and liquor are served; no show or music.

A history of the 21 parallels the decline of society, about which more in a succeeding chapter.

Its proprietors, former speakeasy operators, came to be considered arbiters of high fashion. It was supposed to be a great honor to be permitted to enter their saloon. And if one of the bosses deigned to talk to you, it was regarded by many as equal to being a box-holder at the Metropolitan Opera.

When one of them (Jack Kriendler) got scorched in the papers, however, it was over a mess with a middle-aged Long Island matron, and the whole town howled with the anticlimax of it all. Kriendler died at the early age of 48. His funeral, attended by top names, was the social event of the season.

Though most of 52nd Street's gin joints folded and died in 1933, the thoroughfare did not lose its essential character as an entertainment avenue.

People were used to it, the traffic advantages remained, and it was near to the Music Hall, Broadway and the East Side.

Many of the undercover locations blossomed out under new management, and with new decorations, as intimate night clubs.

Leon & Eddie's already had moved across the street and already was famous.

But in a little room, over near Sixth Avenue, called the Onyx, something happened that set the street for all time to come.

The Onyx was a musicians' hangout. It seated about 50, specialized in hot licks played by a small pick-up band, headed by two nimble lads named Farley and Riley.

They had written a gag song called "The Music Goes Round and Round." It was unpublished, but by request they played it eight or ten times a night at the Onyx, and many of the musicians who came in to relax joined in the jam sessions and played it with them.

The song was finally published and became one of the top freaks of all times. Its chief result, however, was to firmly establish 52nd Street as Swing Lane.

Through the years since then, dozens of clubs have come and gone on the street, with Leon & Eddie's and 21 the only prominent ones to remain through it all. Yet it's still known as Swing Lane.

During the past few years its complexion has been changing, as more and more smaller swing spots have begun to specialize in Negro entertainers and bands.

Many of these small clubs have become, for all practical purposes, "black and tan" spots where whites and Negroes (of opposite sexes) mix, not furtively.

Two other developments in the street—said to be natural consequences of its jazz madness—are the presence of reefer (marijuana) addicts and homosexuals, of all races.

Mind you, these people do not go to Leon & Eddie's or many other places in the block.

But the owners of the clubs they infest—mostly small places near Sixth Avenue—have been helpless before the horde and many of them welcomed this new business.

It is the observation of these writers that mad modern music, sex perversions and narcotic addiction run arm in arm. They surely do in night clubs.

Police and Federals have frequently raided these dumps and arrested dope-peddlers, including musicians, hat-check gals and waiters.

A few of the clubs had their licenses lifted for short periods, but in every instance, when the proprietor proved he didn't know about the lawbreakers, they were restored.

One corner of 52nd and Sixth Avenue is particularly obnoxious, a hangout for prostitutes and homos, dark and light.

But don't let this scare you from a trip to 52nd Street. It is part of the spice, and you are completely safe, especially at Leon & Eddie's.

Since V-J Day, many night clubs on the south side of 52nd Street have been torn down to make way for the Standard Oil Building extension of Rockefeller Center.

Many established cabarets were forced to shutter or move when the work first got under way, and present indications are that, before long, the seamier sides of Swing Lane will have disappeared, leaving only a handful of top respectable spots.

Meanwhile, a peculiar situation developed as a result of this infringement by big business. At the eastern end of this one block are stone skyscrapers and exclusive shops showing luxurious wares.

One square to the south is Radio City, and a block north is dignified, restricted 53d Street.

Those who own the real estate at the west end of Swing Lane have a feeling they are directly in the path of Manifest Destiny. Their property has possibilities of incalculable wealth. The golden lightning is scheduled to strike so soon, the freeholders do nothing toward improving the brownstones which still remain, but rent them out at high rates to night clubs on the ground floor while the upper stories cater to transient roomers or have been reconverted into small kitchenette apartments.

In this little valley less than a hundred yards long is a unique concentration of vice and hokum. Here are deadfalls designed especially to attract the tourists with promises of naughty displays of undraped female cuticle; yet, by the time the customer has paid his tab, he's seen nothing more revealing than a fat female supposed to be "nude," whose generously proportioned panties and bra (which always remain on) are constructed of material as thick as carpeting, and as opaque.

Yet other places, next door, cater to dope addicts, perverts and streetwalkers, while many of the furnished rooms over some of the most respectable places are frequently employed as assignation houses, or provide drop-ins for youths and young girls seeking places in which to engage in mad marijuana revels.

Fifty-Second Street, between Sixth and Seventh Avenues, has long been the poor sister of Swing Lane, for most of its length a dreary, dingy path of parking lots, garages, closed stables, and a few saloons, though right near Seventh Avenue there are a few first-class restaurants.

Another 52nd Street phenomenon is an influx of Chinese restaurants in the past few years. There are five in a half block off Broadway, and more than a dozen others within a block radius. But more about the uptown Orient in a later chapter.

[6. EAST SIDE, BEST SIDE]

The lines of the Kipling poem have been rewritten. Here we say—"Take me somewhere east of Fifth, where a man can rinse a thirst."

The past decade has seen most of midtown New York's night life—the publicized part, anyway—transferred there.

Here are the places where Gotham's cabaret-wise go; the big glitter and glamor joints on the West Side are for visitors only.

However, when the oaf searches for the so-called entertainment district on the East Side, he will not find it. All the patronage is taxi trade—or drop-ins—from the huge neighboring hotels and apartment buildings. There is no East Side Bright Belt.

The East Side is where you find such snooty places as the Stork Club, El Morocco and the Colony; such gay spots as the Copacabana and the Versailles.

Many of the world's finest and most celebrated dining spots snuggle in the section; there are so many, it would be impossible to give even a sketchy list here. One—Chambord—surrounded by tenements and low groggeries, where pheasant breast sells for $16, is regarded the costliest on earth.

Once the term "East Side" connoted poverty. It signified endless miles of filthy streets, lined with rickety tenements in which millions of Europe's dispossessed struggled for a foothold in the land of promise.

Of that East Side—the lower East Side—much remains.

Our present excursus deals only with a wonderland of wealth, a unique Mecca of marble and steel with all the world's riches, that lies above 42nd Street, a creation of recent times—a development in the wake of the electrification of the New York Central tracks, and the opening up of miles of priceless and convenient midtown property to exploitation for residences and office buildings.

This East Side cannot be described in one sentence, nor in one book. It is a Manhattan mélange of money and beauty, prodigality and banality, with haunts and hangouts of every description, from pizzerias for truck-drivers to regal retreats.

There is the world-famed Stork, owned by the sui generis Sherman Billingsley, a smooth ex-speak proprietor and former partner of Owney "The Killer" Madden, prohibition vice king, which caters to internationally distinguished literary people, personages high in government, newspapermen, industrialists, stars, financiers, Fair Dealers, labor overlords and millionaire left-wing movie stars, writers, crooners and do-gooders.

There is also the far-famed El Morocco, owned by John Perona, another fabulous ex-speak proprietor, which serves much of the Hollywood and international society glamor set. Rules for admission into its zebra-striped confines are tougher than those for the Union League Club. No man wearing a sport jacket, or sport shirt, or sans tie, has ever been permitted to patronize El Morocco, regardless of his worldly rank or the size of gratuity pressed on Carino, the dour visaged maître d'. This Cerberus of the door is unimpressed by royalty, nobility, blue blood or Hollywood fame. He bars mobsters and those who look like them; tough guys and babes; noisy ones and pugnacious ones; those overdressed or overplastered. There are no exceptions. When Humphrey Bogart punched a dame who tried to walk off with his toy panda, in El Morocco, he was put on its louse list forever.

But there are clubs in the East Side that get most of their trade from perverts. Models, out-of-work chorines and loafers of both sexes play near by. A few still cater to what is left of the "mob," notably the Copacabana, where Frank Costello throws his lavish parties.

Park Avenue—beautiful, stately and broad boulevard built over the New York Central tracks—has taken up where Riverside Drive left off, as the place to hole up your "keptie."

Oh, yes, there are respectable people on Park—many of them. The per capita wealth of its residents is probably the highest in the world.

If you are an out-of-towner, and you have been slipped a phone number to call by a friend, for a charming companion to keep you company during your stay—at $20, $50 or $100 a night—you will note that the phone exchange is ELdorado, volunteer or REgent, all East Side numbers.

When your guide points out a building as the scene of a particularly gory sex crime, you will invariably find it is on the East Side, probably near the East River.

For Gotham's Tenderloin has moved and changed.

No longer are the rich, lush pickings and pick-ups around noisy, flamboyant Broadway clubs.

New York has grown up, it seeks its pet pastimes amid surroundings of class, taste and luxury, of which these is plenty in the East Side.

Its shops contain priceless furs and gems, the screwiest and most expensive clothes and hats, the rarest and most unobtainable antiques, furnishings and rugs.

Its well-groomed and deftly made-up and turned-out ladies of leisure come high.

There is more wealth, more splendor, more finery gathered here than in any place on the world in any period of history.

The Sybarites were wrong-side-of-the-trackers by comparison.

A curious phenomenon of the recent war resulted in the greatest collection of treasure in the history of the world being stored in squalid Second and Third Avenue tenement houses, in the upper 40's and 50's, on the East Side.

Soon after Hitler took over, displaced merchants began pouring into America with rare gems, antiques and works of art as their only medium of exchange.

The beginning of war brought a tidal wave of similar fine works to these shores, as British and Continental art dealers moved their stocks here, out of reach of bombers.

New York, already an overcrowded commercial city, had absolutely no room to accommodate the hundreds of merchants who sprang up to sell these priceless goods. In desperation, they were forced into ground-floor stores of creaky and ratty old buildings in the slum stretches of Second and Third.

But, because this is a strange city, with contrasts in each block, and few well-defined upper class and lower class residential sections, it so happened that right around the corner from these tenements, quite often in the same block, were the apartment homes of the wealthiest folk in the nation—those most interested in buying such wares.

At the time the fabulous goods poured into the country, American millionaires began collecting jewels, art and expensive furniture as a hedge against inflation, on the theory that they always have value and are easily portable.

If you are coming to New York to make a splurge, or learn what life is like, or impress someone on a business deal, you must headquarter on the East Side.

Most any of its hundred standard hotels will do. If you are staying a while, you may want an apartment.

Humorist Harry Hershfield used to explain to his friends that he was "on Broadway, but not of it."

Those were the days when it was considered a rap to say of one "he has gone Broadway."

When one went Broadway (or Hollywood) it wasn't nice at all. He developed a severe case of big-shotitis, spoke of money in tablecloth figures and referred to Lee Shubert as "Lee" and Louis B. Mayer as "Louis" (when they weren't around).

But now, with most of the things that were then so characteristic of Broadway as de trop as a pug dog, the people who used to go Broadway go Park Avenue.

It is the same sort of disease, but more aggravated, and when it hits the average guy it raises a higher fever.

You can spot a man who went Park Avenue by the fact that he refers to Alfred G. Vanderbilt as "Alf" and Barbara Hutton as "Babs." He mutters gibberish of "dilatory domiciles" and "married maidens," and has a Social Register.

It has destroyed the usefulness of many otherwise useful people, as will be attested by several East Side night club proprietors.

But one of the queer results of the evolution in fashion is that a lot of society girls from Park Avenue have reverted—and "gone Broadway," becoming models, torch singers and even chorus girls.

The Park Avenue bug usually bites hoi polloi in one of the four or five East Side bistros that cater to the high-tipper set—Stork Club, Colony, Armando's, or El Morocco.

An attaché—say a press agent, headwaiter or even the boss—is swept off his feet by patronage of aristocracy; when the debutantes call him by his first name, the ex-barkeep begins to think of marrying one.

Unless a name is in the Register, he gives it a table in left field. He becomes the complete snob, an insufferable boor, and ends up being a chump to the congenital bluebloods and those who knew him when.

Now, some East Side night spot impresarios are hot to hire D.A.R. names, for tone, réclame and "contacts."

Sherman Billingsley of the Stork once thought it good business to engage a group of society girls to publicize his place.

"Maybe the debs can't do the job as well as the regulars, but they don't go ga-ga when they see a DePuyster," he said. "Besides, even if they don't get printed publicity, their friends come to visit them, which brings in business, which is what I'm in business for."

Not all who "go Park Avenue" are fakes or phonies. For the wealth, the fame and the acclaim that go as rewards for talent, endeavor or outstanding beauty also are on the East Side.

Those who achieve—via business, the arts, or charm—soon find the orbit of life has swung away from Grand Street or 42nd Street, as it had from Sioux City, and now extends from El Morocco to the Stork.

Take the tale of Florence Pritchett, outstanding beauty of two coasts, once reported engaged to young Alfred G. Vanderbilt, before his surprise marriage. Then she went with movie star Bob Walker.

Florence is the product of a small Jersey farm. Back home, like most daughters of plowboys, she dreamed of Broadway, read movie and theatrical magazines, studied the fashions in the slick paper issues.

But she didn't know how to dress or make up.

She came to New York, like many others, in search of big things. But Chance quite often puts gals like her behind a five-and-dime store counter instead of inside a natural mink.

Chance, in the person of John Robert Powers, the models' agent, discovered her. He whipped her into one of the most fashionable young women in town. She quickly became his top number.

She married young Dick Canning, who before the war was associated with an advertising agency which handled the account of the New York Fashion Industry. Dick cleverly arranged a tie-up whereby his lovely wife was provided with the most expensive in the smartest of frocks, coats and hats, which she wore nightly to all the swank clubs. Every day she had a complete, different outfit. Imagine that, girls!—wearing $300 dresses, a new one every day, new $30 shoes, new ermines, new silver foxes, priceless hats.

Florence became the talk of the town. She was welcomed in the most exalted circles. Powers put her in charge of his school, teaching other young girls from farms how to become models. Then Dick Canning went away to war. Florence still had to go out dancing, at the Stork and other gay spots.

After her divorce from Canning, the wealthiest and most eligible young men in New York's swank set began to kneel at Florence's feet.

Florence capitalized on her glamor first as a contact woman for Sam Goldwyn, sent ahead of his super productions to woo publicity, then as a fashion editor, and later as a highly paid radio commentator.

She lost Alf Vanderbilt, but married another Vanderbilt heir, the very rich, very social Earl E.T. Smith.

Though clothes made the gal in Florence's case, Café Society doesn't go in for overdressing. The siren with the extreme hat or costume shrieks like one.

You will find that most best-dressed wrens, aristocrats or successful upstarts, seldom wear hats. While it's socially proper to dress formally, the percentage of those in evening wear in the best spots is definitely below the "fast sets" in rich inland towns.

But what East Siders lack in flash is offset in taste, quality and richness.

A mink coat is the irreducible minimum for a squab who wants to travel in our so-called best circles.

In some spots, ordinary minks have grown so common, it's said the women give them to their maids and take on gray and blue minks. In one club, the gag is that you aren't allowed past the plush rope unless you're wearing a stone marten or platina. Other animals are sent around to the back door.

The East Side's most overdressed crowd was seen at the fabulously successful Monte Carlo, a large portion of whose well-heeled customers were nouveaux riches from New York's golden needle trades market.

This club was born as the House of Morgan, built for the late Helen Morgan by a wealthy admirer. Torchy La Morgan was by then on the way down. The place soon folded and went into bankruptcy. Its premises remained empty until Felix "Fefe" Ferry, Romanian-born producer and promoter, an émigré from Monte Carlo, London and Paris, raised a bank roll to open what was to be the town's most exclusive cabaret.

The new company was underwritten by a score of New York's richest men, on the theory that, as part owners, they would become regular patrons.

A requirement for admission to the bistro was evening clothes.

Now, it is a fact that those who like to dress will not do so under compulsion. Even the stockholders stayed away.

When it went broke, Ferry raised new capital and operated under a less rigorous policy. But the seed had been sown and had taken root.

The real estate firm operating the property decided to take a flyer in the saloon business itself, putting Sam Salvin, son of a successful night club operator of a generation ago, and Dick Flanagan, a happy character with a load of friends, in charge.

The policy was quickly changed. Instead of pitching for the trade of debutantes and scions, notoriously poor spenders, Monte Carlo publicized its herring and wooed the rich dress manufacturers and their ladies. When this fizzled out, another switch was tried—quiet refinement.

Once one of the five top money-making cabarets of the world, it is now shuttered. Its patrons now visit Monte Proser's La Vie En Rose.

William Zeckendorf, president of the firm which owned the defunct Monte Carlo, swung the deal to bring the United Nations to New York over cocktails at one of its corner tables.

Another East Side restaurant patronized by those who know is El Boraccho (The Drunkard), strictly a dining and wining place, fronted and partly owned by Nicky Quattrociocchi, one of New York's odd characters. The money to open the place was put up by Gracie Fields, the English screen star, and Monte Banks, her husband.

Nicky, a handsome immigrant who barged in 25 years ago from Italy, is a living example of how you can get by in Gotham on wits, nerve and connections.

After a short and desultory career in Hollywood as Theda Bara's leading man in silents, Nicky gravitated to New York, where he was classified a playboy.

He was always neatly dressed, traveled in the correct circles and knew the right people. Yet things were such that once he gave a "Bundles for Nicky" party, to which guests were invited on stationery headed by a list of 1,000 honorary chairmen, and asked to contribute items to help furnish Nicky's 12-room apartment.

Among the suggestions of what Nicky needed were an electric razor, baby grand piano, love seat and cuspidor. The party was a huge success and the apartment couldn't hold all the gifts. One reason was that Nicky's 12 rooms turned out to be a one-room unfurnished flat.

Nicky achieved another kind of renown—more gruesome. He was completely innocent, but a macabre coincidence attended another of his pranks.

Lovely, exotic Helen Kim Mont committed suicide in her Park Avenue apartment. Mrs. Mont had been on the stage under her maiden name, Helen Kim. She was of Korean descent.

As the poisonous fumes were snuffing out the life of this Broadway orchid—bride of 29 days—the lobby of her apartment building was filling up with several hundred gay society folk who had received Nicky's invitations:

"You are most cordially invited to attend a mystery cocktail party which will be given in honor of someone you know, by someone you know. Such a party, with your kind cooperation, should be the most unusual and amusing in New York."

Nicky had sent out the letters, inviting notables to the nonexistent cocktail party, scheduled to start at the hour the beautiful girl chose to end her life in another part of the building.

Stunned by the tragedy, which gave his jest a Grand Guignol denouement, Nicky said:

"I thought it would be a lot of fun to invite them to cool their heels for a while, and then show up. I had no way, of course, of knowing what would happen."

The deadly fumes had just killed Helen when the ermine-wrapped women and their top-hatted escorts began to flock into the building—and the gas emergency crew raced through the lobby.

Nicky started his East Side Restaurant on an investment of less than $5,000. Friends helped him construct the bar. Decorations consisted of labels from whiskey bottles, losing $100 horse race tickets and the lip imprints of women patrons.

The friends he made during his playboy days flocked to the new café, making it an overnight wow. And it never slowed up.

Despite New York's fame for entertainment, but a handful of cabarets catering to New Yorkers present shows, which are considered attractive to only the prairie flowers.

The average East Side café-goer usually doesn't even want to dance, and when he does he dances only sambas and rumbas, all other steps being passé.

The purpose of dance music in fine clubs is to provide overtones for conversation. For that reason, the bands play pianissimo and all melodies are in one tempo, so you aren't conscious of the breaks.

That's because New Yorkers don't go to clubs for laughs, legs or lilts—they stroll in to dine, drink and talk, to tell their patriots how pretty they are, or even sell a bill to a customer.

When New Yorkers want shows, they go to theatres.

Though we haven't the exact figures at hand, it's a pretty good bet that, per capita, there are more places to purchase liquor around newspaper offices than are to be found in the neighborhood of any other kind of business building.

During the late great drought, the side streets in the East 40's, near Second and Third Avenues, in the vicinity of New York's two largest journals, News and Mirror, blossomed with speakeasies, so many in fact that one three-story building contained four.

After repeal, a good many of these resorts continued in business as legal saloons, catering mostly to printers, proofreaders and reporters, selling food and drink at moderate prices. Who ever heard of a newspaperman with a spare buck?

Came the war's beef and butter shortage. Ex-speak proprietors with bootleg blood in their veins again heard the stirring call to battle.

Word soon got around that you could always get steaks in these places. Furthermore, there was something bohemian in going to them, because you could rub shoulders with newspapermen and maybe once in awhile see a famed columnist or cartoonist.

Then there were the caricatures on the walls, often drawn by needy members of the craft in payment of booze, and the sawdust on the floor.

New York is a town that follows the leader. Locals began taking their out-of-town friends. Pretty soon you needed reservations and still stood in line, and dingy old saloons boasted doormen, while the journalists who had made the places couldn't wedge in.

The places caught on, and even after the shortages eased the once lowly gin mills continued to draw the carriage trade, considered by everyone in "the know" as the last word in "steakeasies."

Among them are the Palm, Second Avenue and 45th Street, known to initiates as Ganzi's; the Montreal, 45th and Second, known as Colombo's; Pietro's, at 45th and Third, once called The Key Club, because during Prohibition you used your own private key instead of a card; the Pen and Pencil and the Scribes in 45th between Second and Third; and Danny's, the Press Box, and Chris Cella's, between Third and Lexington.

A recent development on the East Side is the looming prominence of Lexington Avenue as a "Main Street." Lexington's rise can be traced in an inverse ratio to Broadway's decline, as the better class of visitor began to select East Side hotels and do his dining and dancing nearby.

Before the war—say a dozen years ago—Broadway drew a different type of tourist. Then he was a buyer, with fire in his eyes, desire in his blood, and all tabs paid for by the manufacturers and salesmen who were out to give him a better time than did their competitors.

Other visitors were well-heeled Rotarians from the interior and their ladies, here to see the sights and shows and do some shopping.

These people of ample means were Broadway's leaven, keeping it gay and prosperous.

Both large groups dried up during the war. Their places were taken by millions of gaping and gawking servicemen from everywhere, here on leave or passing through, and other millions of defense-plant workers from nearby Jersey, Pennsylvania and Connecticut communities, their pockets bulging with unaccustomed wealth, for the spending of which they had no talent.

It takes many years of practice and some taste and intelligence to make a buck do the things New York can make it do.

These barbarians inundated Broadway. They drove the last remaining residents off the White Way, and with them went much of the flavor of the Stem.

To cater to this horde, which preferred to ankle aimlessly up and down Broadway, eat at hot dog stands and see a movie as the high point of the evening, came shooting galleries, flea circuses, "playlands," photo galleries, souvenir stores with pennants and fancy pillows embroidered with mushy sentiments, grind movies, "sex" bookstores, ham-and-eggeries, portrait artists who paint your picture while you wait, and stands that sell "cocoanut champagne" at a dime the drink.

When the war ended, the "cheap-John" gravy train was over, too. But the better class of visitors never returned to Broadway, which is now forced to get along on a mere dribble of pikers.

The desirables, who began to come back to New York in great numbers, made their headquarters east of Fifth. Lexington Avenue, though one of the narrowest, soon became the East Side's main drag, for many reasons. First, it has more hotels than any other, many of them new, modern and varied in prices. The subway runs under it. Furthermore, both Madison and Park are restricted as to types of window displays and advertising, and electric signs are, as on Fifth Avenue, prohibited.

Third Avenue is still encumbered by the elevated railroad, the only one not torn down to make way for progress, and Second and First Avenues are not only too far east, but are dingy and slummy.

So Lexington is beginning to take on the attributes of a Main Street. It has all-night restaurants and lunch stands, all-night drugstores, and most of the better night clubs are no more than two blocks away, east or west.

Meanwhile, more and more chorus gals and show people, dispossessed by soldiers, sailors and bus-hoppers who have taken over the traditional theatrical hotels near Broadway, are moving to moderate-priced hotels on Lexington, and the Belmont Plaza lobby and drugstore are camping grounds where you can find that blonde, second from the left—the best pick-up spot in New York.

In this eastward move to Lexington is a less glamorous aspect, as the streetwalkers followed in the wake of lonely men. You can see them, afternoon or evening, on the east side of Lexington, from 42nd Street to 57th—swinging big purses and whatever else they have to swing.

Whereas the $5 sisters in sin have inherited Broadway, these are $10-and-upwards snobs.

Another malodorous phase, which now seems the complementary concomitant of a big-town highway, is the horde of homosexuals who adopted it as their midway.

They parade with mincing steps in pairs and trios up both sides of the avenue. Some are blondined, some act "masculine," Negroes mix with white ones, all on the make for strangers.

Gotham's hard-boiled and efficient, but sadly under-manned, police force does its best to keep these misconceived creatures off the streets and out of bars, but there are so many drinking places on the avenue—in some cases ten to a block—it is impossible to make more than token arrests, of the most flagrant cases.

The fame of Third Avenue, a block to the east, is so frequently sung these days in fiction and the movies, that it is not necessary to tell you much about it, except that the so-called sophisticated set has taken over its dingy, old-fashioned saloons under the "El" with the homey Irish names, and driven their former patrons, calloused sons of the pick and hod, far away and muttering.

Here it is considered ultrasmart to drink at a bar where a self-respecting dock-walloper can't afford the new prices.

Here, drinking shoulder to shoulder, are jaded sons and daughters of the rich, bohemians, musical comedy favorites, artists and newspapermen, fairies and Lesbians. There's no room for a plain, honest Irishman.

Things are moving fast on the East Side. Between the time when this tome was started and its last words were written, John D. Rockefeller, Jr., "benefacted" the United Nations into abandoning the original dream of a bucolic world capital to be at home in a series of skyscrapers being designed for the East River front, between 42nd and 48th Streets.

Both authors of this book live within a block of the development. As they work on this paragraph they can see architectural monstrosities being erected on the former site of slaughterhouses, junk-lots and tenements.

Meanwhile, most of its permanent secretariat has taken up living quarters near the world capital-to-be, adding much "atmosphere."

This is a world within a world, with Arabs, Chinese, Haitians, Liberians, Hindus, Siamese—in native dress—mixing in hotel lobbies, restaurants, shops and on the streets, with French, Latin-Americans, Scandinavians, British—and the everyday motley of any New York thoroughfare.

[7. WE NEVER GO THERE ANY MORE]

No, we don't. The Bowery, once the storied sinner's paradise, is dead and will not come back. Its glories belong to the past, when New York was young, and, grandpa said, gay.

The wide street under the Third Avenue "El" (soon to be torn down) has been turned over to lofts and salesrooms.

Sandwiched between them are hockshops and the flophouses where homeless hobos rent a clean bed for two bits; and cheap restaurants offer full meals, even in these inflationary days, for the same sum; and filthy bars sell bottled "smoke" at a dime (and an ulcer) a drink.

The only memory of a lurid career of wine, women, song, all-night hubbub and singing waiters (including Irving Berlin) is a lone cabaret: Sammy's Bowery Follies, purposely dressed up in old-fashioned clothes, with lusty, noisy, nostalgic entertainment of the '80's.

In the old days, however, the lines of the song—"The Bowery, the Bowery, they do such things...." meant just what they said.

Whereas at one time this zigzag lane had been the center of middle-class night life, with such music halls as Tony Pastor's, and beer gardens, concert saloons and fairly respectable dance halls where the modest toiler and his girl could spend an evening at moderate cost, in its later days the Bowery became the focal point for the worst dives in the city.

Here were low, mean resorts, beside which the dumps of San Francisco's Barbary Coast, New Orleans' Basin Street, and Chicago's 22nd Street were old ladies' homes.

Prostitutes, thieves, dope fiends, and underworlders of every kind made it their headquarters. Murder, suicide, rape, robbery were so common they were ignored by the daily papers, most of which were published a few hundred yards away, on the southerly extension of the Bowery, known as Park Row.

The Bowery gave up the ghost during World War I. Today, even the bums and hobos who are the last of its denizens are getting fewer and fewer, as reflected by the fact that many of the pawnshops are moving or going under.

But when some refined reformers recently started a movement to change the name of the Bowery, so it could shed some of the shadows of its ancient associations, the town rose in indignation against it.

The remaining remnant of the derelicts will not be disturbed. The city coddles them. A Bowery bum is treated with consideration rated by no other bum. The cops carry him from the curb where he has collapsed and lay him tenderly in a dirty hallway; the magistrates are lenient if a pinch is mandatory; the newspapers feature turkey dinners to the old-timers on Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Since even "smoke" has risen in price, the 'bos now buy a pint of domestic wine, 12 per cent alcohol, and mix it with a pint of grain alcohol, and the result is Olympian.

The rubberneck buses are running again, and the spielers sing the sagas of the old cowpath. But they sound hollow. The bum has gone the way of the bison, a vanishing American.

Dark and dead, like the old Bowery, is Satan's Circus, more generally known as "The Tenderloin."

In less trammeled times, it epitomized wicked all-night life and commercial carnalities too strong even for some gizzards of the period.

Broadway, which then as now, was the show window, bisected it diagonally, but Sixth Avenue was its actual main street.

That long, wide slit (now called The Avenue of the Americas), scheduled by its property owners to be the future rialto, was lined with brothels and saloons from 14th Street to 40th. The lustier aspects of the old Bowery had moved to Sixth Avenue and its environs, and here were hatched the major crimes of the era. The infamous Haymarket dance hall and flesh-market stood at 30th Street.

This section, containing the worst dives in the city and the best theatres, dining places and hotels, was lush picking.

According to the historians it got its name when Police Captain Alexander Williams was put in command of the precinct.

"I been transferred," he is reported to have said. "I never had nothin' but chuck steak. Now I'm gonna get some tenderloin."

The irresistible upward movement that characterizes New York carried the old Tenderloin above 42nd Street, and for many years there was more gambling, vice and felony in the streets between Fifth and Eighth Avenues, in the 40's and 50's, than in any comparable area in the world.

This came to an end—suddenly—after 1912, following the notorious Becker-Rosenthal case, when Police Lieutenant Charles Becker was executed in Sing Sing for complicity in the murder of Herman Rosenthal, a big-time gambler who squealed to District Attorney Whitman about the tie-up between police and the crime syndicate.

Madison Square Garden, where you see the fights, circus and hockey games, is nowhere near Madison Square and is not a garden.

Madison Square is at Fifth Avenue and 23rd Street. The present-day Garden is at 50th and Eighth. A new and larger one is to be built at Columbus Circle.

Long before the huge brick and concrete building you now see was conceived by Tex Rickard, there was the original, memorable Madison Square Garden at 26th Street, on the northeast corner of Madison Square. Its huge arena, like its current relative, housed championship fights, political conventions and auto shows.

Its chief claim to inclusion in any history of New York lies in the fact that its roof garden contained a supper club which, to the New Yorkers of the first decade of the 20th century, was a combination of the Stork and El Morocco of today.

Stanford White, leading artist and architect, had designed it. His glass-ceilinged apartments were in the building's tower.

One night, 40 years ago, while the popping of champagne corks blended with the soft music of an expensive band, Stanford White was shot to death in the restaurant.

His killer was Harry Thaw, heir of an immensely wealthy Pittsburgh family. Thaw, married to Evelyn Nesbit, most beautiful of the Florodora fillies and immortalized as the Gibson Girl, alleged that White had seduced his bride before their marriage.

The court battles which followed were classics, and the story of them is still considered by newspapermen as the top reporter's assignment of all time.

Evelyn opens and closes, still, at forlorn little cafés. There are yet traces of her loveliness—only traces.

Thaw died recently. Before his death he lived on a farm in Virginia and came occasionally to the city he thrilled, shocked and scandalized. His hair was snow white. His face was brown as a nut.

[8. WHERE MEN WEAR LACE LINGERIE]

Not all who call their flats in Greenwich Village "studios" are queer. Not all New York's queer (or, as they say it, "gay") people live in Greenwich Village.

But most of those who advertise their oddities, the long-haired men, the short-haired women, those not sure exactly what they are, gravitate to the Village.

There are really two Greenwich Villages—the one the sightseer glimpses and the less appetizing one inhabited by psychopaths dimly conscious of reality, whose hopes, dreams and expressions are as tortuous as the crazy curves in the old streets.

"Artistic" sections are a magnet in all cities for tourists and for those who would live la vie bohème.

Greenwich Village got an extra shove during Prohibition. The factors which put Harlem on the night-life map also worked out for the Village. It was off the beaten track. Its streets were dark and narrow. Its buildings were old and dingy. A perfect set-up for speakeasies.

The village had once been a ritzy residential section. The Rhinelanders and Wanamakers lived at Washington Square. The Brevoort Hotel was one of the world's most noted. Edward VII, while Prince of Wales, was entertained there in the last century.

Mark Twain lived in a red brick house at Ninth Street.

The city moved northward. Instead of succumbing to the tidal wave of business, the Village became a backwash.

Skyscrapers stayed away. Stables and tumbling shacks remained. But into them came new residents. The district soon became the culture center of New York, and until quite recently, many famed artists, composers, literary lights and show people continued to live there. A few still do.

But a bohemian section always attracts the freaky fringe; those who would live the life of genius without having its admirable attributes, but all its faults and sins.

These, in turn, displaced most of the true intellectuals. In recent years there has been a return to the Village, as modern apartment houses have been run up, especially in lower Fifth Avenue and around Washington Square.

The Village's new "better class" has no more accent on art than on business and politics.

Greenwich Village night life mainly centers around three districts: Sheridan Square, where Fourth Street crosses Seventh Avenue; Eighth Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues, and Third Street from Sixth Avenue to West Broadway.

Little bistros and boites, and even a few nationally famed clubs nest at sporadic intervals in almost every byway of the Village.

The best-known resorts of Greenwich Village are no more bohemian than any of the better uptown spots. Jimmy Kelly's, a beaut of a room specializing in fan wielders and dancing gals, is patronized chiefly by merchants and Wall Streeters.

The Village Barn, dubbed the Kathedral of Korn, features entertainment like Omaha and is the favorite haunt of jays from Brooklyn, the Bronx and Weehawken. El Chico is a rumba hangout.

On another plane completely are the joints patronized by the Village variants, where the customers are so mixed up the habitues don't know whether to use the boys' room or the other one.

There are floor shows in which most entertainers are fairies, men playing the female roles.

Many of these are in Third Street, though on Eighth Street, a few feet from the women's prison, is the city's most publicized "queer" joint—the Moroccan Village.

Most female homos' hangouts are in Third Street, and here, in a small, smoky and raucous saloon every Friday night is held a "Lesbian soiree," at which young girls, eager to become converts, meet the initiates.

These parties are presided over by an old and disgusting excuse for a woman, who is responsible for inducing thousands of innocent girls to lead unnatural lives.

It is a law violation for entertainers to appear in "drag" (clothes of the opposite sex). By means of broad burlesque, the regulation is skirted. The swish in wig and dress is okay if the trousers hang down under the gown.

Technically, homos must not gather on licensed premises or be exploited in a floor show.

Until a decade ago, many midtown night clubs presented such shows and catered to the twisted trade. When the cops cracked down, the pouting queens and Lesbians took to Greenwich Village.

There they are not molested by police if they remain in the district and don't bother others, on the theory that you can't do away with them, and as long as they're with us, it's better to segregate them in one section, where an eye can be kept on them. But the most notorious Lesbian night club in New York is on Second Avenue, south of 14th Street, on the lower East Side—the 181 Club.

Here, too, the police are comparatively lax about enforcing the law against female entertainers or hostesses mingling with guests. One reason for this "tolerance" in the Village undoubtedly is due to the fact that there are so many small joints in its narrow streets, it would take a regiment for enforcement.

Another is that in many of the smaller dives it's difficult to tell who is an entertainer and who a customer. All manner of exhibitionists, frustrated hams and undiscovered artists gather in these places. In many, the floor show is almost always impromptu, with most of the entertainment provided free by the guests, especially the "gay" ones.

Between these two levels of honest if Middlesex entertainment are the atmospheric places gotten up to look very Left Bank, with eerie lighting and futuristic painting to impress the pabulum.

"Occasional" prostitutes work some of the bars, and bobby soxers flirt at Washington Square. But most of the pick-ups in Greenwich Village are those between fags and between skirted women-hunters.

Since the working artistic colony forsook the Village and turned it over to congenital abnormals, the rest of the town seldom, if ever, is invited to Village affairs. All the excitement downtown now is behind closed and locked doors.

Drugs and depravities are prevalent at some of these purple parties, which often turn into unspeakable saturnalias within draped walls, in musk-heavy air.

An uncommonly large percentage of the nation's runaway girls are found in the Village, living with men or women. Recently there has been some Negro penetration. There is no racial discrimination in parts of the section.

In one of the Village's most famed cabarets, Café Society Downtown, the younger boys and girls of both races mingle openly.

This financially successful club had an uptown branch in the swank East Side, where customers also "hopped across the (race) fence." It was shuttered after the president of the corporation owning both clubs turned out to be the wife of America's "No. 2 Communist"—Leon Josephson, convicted of contempt of Congress. The village club is still operated but by new owners—not Red.

But shrewd traders in nature's mishaps profit by the surreptitious reputation of this off-the-highway sector.

They have runners at the clubs and around the town, whispering to likely cash-and-carry strays—women included—of Sodom and Gomorrah on Manhattan, where, for a stiff price, they can behold forbidden fruit.

When a fish is hooked, a quick 'phone call assembles the male magdalens and the female monstrosities. When the visitor arrives, the revel is in swing, to seem spontaneous. What goes on then is pretty much the real thing. Guests are rarely invited to any indulgence—they are spectators.

Groppe (grape) is served. This is made of the crushed remains of the ingredients of brandy, cheap, insidious and atomic. Whiskey is supposed to be adjured, but this concoction is even stronger, though it doesn't seem so to the tongue and tonsils.

The apartment, often a duplex with couches below and a bed or two on the narrow balcony, is candle-lit. The floor is strewn with exotic rugs. The furniture is individual and often distingué.

Whips, handcuffs, leg-chains, wire brushes and other instruments of sadistic and masochistic physical and moral aberration enter into the play.

It's all routined, timed and stage-managed.

The "privileged" who are "let in" on these practices have paid in advance—lest they are overcome by revulsion and cannot stomach the full show. If they stay through, they are besieged for "luck money," as gratuities are known among these habitues and sons of habitues.

This is the Village—if you care for such.

[9. IT'S NOT TRUE]

a.—Chinatown

The visitor to New York will not find the answer to the musty gag: "Is it true what they say about Chinese girls?" in Chinatown. The local slant-eyed Sadies seldom mix with Caucasians; and most of them are so shy they wouldn't tell you, let alone let you explore the question.

Almost every other superstition and preconceived notion you've had about the Chinese and Chinatown is as counterfeit as chop suey.

Remember the old song about "Chinatown, my Chinatown, where the lights are low."

Well, they aren't. Chinatown is so brightly lighted, with gay and multi-hued neon signs, that its few blocks rival Broadway.

Gotham's Chinatown is the oldest in the world, outside the Orient, and looks it.

Long before there were human habitations where now is San Francisco, there were suave and placid Orientals in Gotham.

New York's Chinatown, well over a century old, was first settled by a small group of Asiatics, stranded on our shores when a Yankee showman who had brought them here to exhibit their native customs and handicraft, beat it with the boodle.

Venerable tenements, some of which are said to have been standing when the first Chinese family moved in, more than 100 years ago, line its three crooked, narrow streets.

Though New York houses several times as many Chinese as San Francisco, our Chinatown is considerably smaller and certainly not so lively. Our Orientals are spread throughout the five boroughs of the city in which they work and live, very much like other citizens of this cosmopolitan metropolis. But Chinatown is to them their capital, their county-seat, which most of them visit every Sunday to see friends and relatives, transact business, shop for favorite provisions and stop in at the tong, clan or family clubhouse.

Chinatown boasts many Oriental restaurants, some of world renown, yet it knows no night life. There are more chow mein palaces in the area of Broadway and 50th Street than in Chinatown, and the city's only night club with an all-Oriental floor show, the China Doll, is in West 51st Street.

Chinatown proper consists of three short streets in an irregular triangle: Mott, Pell and Doyer.

Mott Street is in the territory of the On Leong Tong. The Hip Sings, smaller tong, control the other two streets. There are no other tongs in New York, all competitors having been wiped out by the surviving two.

Until 15 years ago, Chinatown was the scene of many gory wars and at times it was dangerous to visit the section. The hatchetmen proved notoriously poor marksmen when they discarded their traditional weapons for automatics. When too many innocents got plugged, the authorities stepped in, and after a threat to deport the whole Chinese colony, a permanent peace was patched up. There have been no wars since, though there is considerable unrest as Communists try to take over the tongs.

The tongs, in their more pugnacious days, might have been compared to the white gangs and mobs that fought each other, with even more ferocious violence, for territorial control of rackets.

Now the tongs are business and social groups, boards of trade or chambers of commerce, as it were. But many members are in dope and gambling.

Today the Chinese are among the most peaceful inhabitants of this polyglot city. Few are arrested for serious crimes, other than narcotic smuggling, in which lawbreakers invariably are sailors from China who speak no English and who are employed by white American criminal syndicates.

New York's Chinese are remarkably well-to-do. The elders of some families are rich even according to American standards, with their money invested in real estate, restaurant and laundry chains.

Chinese on relief are unheard-of, mainly because of a centuries-old custom of family unemployment insurance, whereby those who have jobs help out less fortunate relatives.

Furthermore, Chinese pride and "face" forbid acceptance of gratuities from strangers or public authorities. How backward they are!

Because of respect for family and elders, juvenile delinquency is practically unknown among New York's Chinese.

The sons of Cathay continue to be "pacifistic" in their dealings with white men. If humanly possible, they avoid contact with the white man's system of courts and police. They settle all their own squabbles according to their own customs and Oriental laws. If both litigants are members of the same social or commercial organization, such as a tong or a family club, the elders arbitrate the argument.

But if they belong to rival organizations, the quarrel is taken to Shavey Lee, so-called "Mayor of Chinatown," or to the Chinese Benevolent Society. If either is unable to work out a satisfactory solution, the Consul General of the Republic of China, with offices in Radio City, is called on to act as a court of final appeal. His verdict is always accepted, though one or both litigants may be American-born, thus American citizens.

Strangely enough, under the provisions of New York State's model arbitration act, most of these decisions by the representative of a foreign government are accepted as law. (Another example of how the Chinese did it first.)

However, should these verdicts be unenforceable in American courts, all Chinese parties observe them religiously. They have to. Failure to do so amounts practically to a death sentence—at least exile. For if a Chinese went contrary to the rules, he would be ostracized from the community and unable to do business with any other member of the community.

If he owned a restaurant, he couldn't hire Chinese waiters, buy Chinese provisions or serve Chinese customers.

There is a movement afoot to tear Chinatown down and relocate its remaining inhabitants throughout the city. The buildings are fire hazards and health menaces. But the Chinese are fighting stubbornly to retain their communal district. They say it is the only Chinatown in America that looks authentically like China. Also, it smells like it.

The visitor who has been to San Francisco's Chinatown first will be struck by the almost complete absence from the streets of our section of Chinese females over the age of 14. New York's Chinatown, much older, is far more conservative than those in other cities, or even in China, where the world has moved.

Our Chinese women spend most of their time in the home (which is regrettable, because they are dainty and pretty) while their men are out in the world.

There is far less intercourse between Chinese and whites here, also for that reason. Chinese parents try to keep their daughters away from white men, though in San Francisco, because Chinatown is so intimately connected with the life of the city, it is a commonplace to see them out together.

Naturally, taboos are breaking down as high school and college girls demand the right to associate with their schoolmates, regardless of race.

The tallest and most beautiful girl in Chinatown is Louise Leung, a model and showgirl.

Chinese are inveterate gamblers for high stakes. Some of the biggest craps, poker, gin rummy, fan tan and mahjong games in New York are played in Chinatown. But only between Chinese.

The cops are tolerant if no whites cut in. Many shops are merely fronts for gambling in the rear. The store shelves are almost completely bare of merchandise and if you should have the temerity to wander in and try to buy one of the few items kept as dressing, you'd annoy the proprietor greatly. That is, if you could get him out front, away from his game.

Just to keep the record straight, occasional arrests are made, but after the players pay their dollar fines they go right back to their cards.

In so far as the white population of New York is concerned, there is absolutely no Chinese prostitution in Chinatown. Yet many flats in the narrow streets are maintained with girls smuggled from the Orient as picture brides, expressly for entertainment of the local Chinese males.

The authorities know all about it, but look the other way so long as none but Chinese patronize the houses.

The local male Chinese far outnumber the females, and such places are considered a necessity.

A new traffic has come to the region. "Come to" is what's new about it.

The cops and courtroom loungers have long called prostitutes "flesh-peddlers." This appellation was never quite true. Inmates of houses, when there were such things, "sat for company"—the men came to them. Women who pounded the flagstones were peddlers only to a degree, as they had to be surreptitious, attract with a smile or glance, then be "solicited" to some extent.

But now, in Chinatown, young Puerto Rican girls are sent to bring themselves and offer themselves, to display their merchandise on the spot and to haggle over the price.

They go from house to house, floor to floor, door to door. They knock. If a woman answers (there are few instances of that) they say, "Sorry, mistake." If a man opens the door, the caller asks, "Want nice girl here?"

Some of these peddlers are in their early 'teens, for Caribbean females blossom young.

They are sent forth by their lovers, by their husbands, some by their own parents, to garner the dough.

In Little Spain sex is cheap, selling it is precarious and competition is not only voluminous, but perilous, for the girls will fight with knives over a prospect.

So the Puerto Ricans went hunting for a market and found it among the Chinese, underwomaned thirty or forty to one, racially conspicuous, so they cannot go forth into the byways, let alone the highways, on the hunt.

The secret of the new system, self-delivered sex, wasn't long kept dark.

The downtown hoodlums began to lie in wait for the girls after they had made their rounds, to beat them up and take their money from them. So now the girls, after one Mission Mott Street, book themselves ahead, dating each flat for the next duty tour—and they have the Chinese buy postal money orders, made out to them, individually, against the next visit. These are not cashable except by the beneficiary without running into trouble with the Feds, and the toughest canaille shudder away from that.

So the flesh-peddlers' profits now get to Little Spain.

The hick who takes in Chinatown from a sightseeing bus is led first to the Rescue Society for Bowery bums, which, according to the guide, is located in what was once an opium den.

Then he is shown a joss house, in back of the Chinatown post office, and he is told about the maze of secret tunnels which are supposed to connect most of the buildings in the area, for use during tong wars, opium or Prohibition raids.

The modern generation of American-born Chinese never smelled, let alone smoked, opium, and few of the old-timers remain. Occasionally you can spot one, a bent, wizened, broken and prematurely old fellow who stands out like a barn alongside his non-indulging brethren, who have the Chinese gift of seldom showing their age.

Concubinage is permitted under Chinese law, and some of the older, wealthier Chinese own an extra wife or two, or even a slave-girl brought over from the old country. But these are things you can't prove, and anyway, it's done uptown by the white folk, but under a different name.

Even in these days of sulfas and vitamins, most Chinese still believe in herb therapy. Maybe they're not so wrong. Many important drugs in the modern pharmacopoeia were discovered in Cathay, centuries ago—ephedrine is but one.

Chinatown herb dealers also sell concoctions guaranteed as love potions, aphrodisiacs and virility nostrums. Perhaps there's something to their formulae. The population of China is 450,000,000.

New Yorkers eat more Chinese food per capita than any other occidentals; more Chinese food is sold here than that of any other foreign origin.

Favorite is chow mein, with chop suey a poor second. Neither of these glutinous creations is indigenous. Both are American inventions. The Chinese themselves, and those who know good food, never eat either mongrel dish. You are spotted as a neophyte if you order them.

The authentic Chinese menu contains hundreds of exotic items, made of everything from eels to birds'-nests. If you want to play safe and not show your ignorance call for mo gu gai pan, which is a distant cousin to chicken fricassee.

Though Chinese men drink considerable potent spirits, women of the race seldom, if ever, imbibe. They say it makes their faces red—and it does. Their men discourage them from drinking, but white wolves, aware of the effect of champagne on slant-eyed dolls, try to load them with it, often with encouraging results.

The Chinese call us "white devils," lo fan or fan guey, and their word for wolf is chai long. Their favorite drinks are mui kai low and ng ga pai. Don't try either unless you possess a strong stomach.

b.—Little Tokyo

Before the war, there were few Japanese in New York. Most of them were treaty merchants, technicians or students, who evaporated with Pearl Harbor.

But then came the influx of Japs from the West Coast states. As many as 10,000 are reported to have moved here after being released from relocation centers, while countless thousands more came East before the final deadline to vacate Pacific areas. There was no Jap-baiting here. Many have since gone home.

There had been no "Little Tokyo" here. Now there are at least three small ones in Manhattan, alone.

The most concentrated one is in 65th Street, near Broadway, in the heart of the Filipino colony. Another, but sporadic, Jap settlement runs from 18th to 23rd Streets, near Ninth Avenue. A third group lives on the upper West Side, from Columbia University southward into the 90's and 80's where there are several Japanese churches, Christian, Shinto and Buddhist, and northward into Washington Heights.

Since the war, the Japs have taken an even less active place in the community than do the Chinese. Few are merchants or storekeepers. They, however, mix more freely with whites. The girls, especially, are found working in American offices, hospitals, hotels and even in show business, where many of the "Chinese" acts really are Japanese.

There are three Nipponese restaurants in New York, specializing in such concoctions as suki yaki, the national dish, and saki, the national knockout. These operated unhindered all during the war and were patronized by Americans and Chinese as well as Japs.

Miyako's in 56th Street, just west of Fifth Avenue, is internationally famous.

Among New York Japs there is considerably less resentment against the relocation than appears on the West Coast. Those resident here before the war and those who came shortly after Pearl Harbor escaped confinement in concentration camps completely, while those who were shut in for short periods missed the worst of the indignity.

In this tolerant city, even during the height of the war, they found sympathy and encouragement and employment. With few exceptions, white neighbors treated them hospitably. They were not made to feel like a special, inferior class.

Even the Chinese welcomed them and gave them employment.

For that reason, the young Nisei in New York is less apt to be a sucker for Communist propaganda than his more bitter cousin on the West Coast. There are, it is true, a few leftish Jap youth groups here, suspected of being under Red domination, but most of the local Nisei disavow the movement, and resent attempts of radicals to involve them in an all-out anti-white movement, together with other dark peoples.

As noted, Japanese maidens are considerably less shy than their Chinese sisters, and more frequently mix with white men. Many local connoisseurs of Oriental beauty prefer Japanese women to Chinese, for, though it is practically impossible to detect a physical difference between them, the Jap girls are said to be more feminine, fun-loving and lively. Some of the outstanding "Chinese" girls at the defunct China Doll café were Japanese—notably Ann Koga, Katherine Kim, Trudy Kim and Tobe Kai.

c.—Koreans

Your authors once read somewhere that Korean women are supposed to be the most beautiful in the world. The expert who so stated said, "Ask any sailor, if you don't believe me." Since then scores of service men have written us to say it ain't true.

The New York Korean colony is small. Though there is a Korean church near Columbia University, there are said to be no more than 100 permanent residents of that race in the city. The number is slightly swelled by a few students, most of whom reside at International House, and frequent visitors from Honolulu.

Many work in Chinese restaurants. Some of the prettiest "Chinese" girls in show business are Koreans. At least one, June Kim, was a Ziegfeld Follies girl. Lovely Florence Ahn is a noted singer.

d.—Corregidor

The Filipino colony extends from 63rd to 72nd Street, approaching on Broadway. There are few Filipino women in New York, and for that reason the district is known to abound in disorderly houses.

Though many of their own women are as dainty as Japanese dolls, which they greatly resemble, most Filipino men seem to prefer blondes, big billowy-bosomed, over-painted ones. Many in that category are supported on a group or communal arrangement, each by several Filipino boys.

Well, some white gents keep several babes!

It's a difference in customs. Economics probably is at the bottom of it.

And half a blonde is better than none.

[10. AROUND THE WORLD IN NEW YORK]

As befits the most cosmopolitan city on earth, you can dine, wine, dance, make love, gamble or raise hell or children in practically any language you choose in New York.

In the one block of West 49th Street, between Sixth and Seventh Avenues, you will find bistros serving these native foods: Singhalese, Chinese, Jewish, French, Spanish, Mexican, Italian.

But the blood from the pulsating heart of New York's 8,000,000 doesn't pump only into the main arteries.

There are some 1,500 licensed cabarets in the city and some 20,000 saloons. These are scattered over all five boroughs. In many localities, especially those inhabited by foreign racial groups, miniature Broadways have sprung up, reminiscent of main drags in foreign countries.

a.—Beer und Pretzels

Clustered around Third Avenue and 86th Street in the heart of Yorkville, is the German section. Here there are dozens of beer halls, with waiters in native costume and fat, funny Brünnhilde sopranos singing Viennese waltzes and Bavarian seidel-songs.

Before Hitler, Yorkville was a fad. Prohibition was only an English word, untranslatable. The "Hoboken steam beer" was potent, spiked with ether before your eyes by the waiter with an eye-dropper. One visitor asked, "Hey—where's the operation that goes with this?"

We used to call the people we saw there "gemütlich," which means homey, and talk about their quaint costumes and customs and placid way of life.

Later—when lists of Nazis were released—we saw many of these stolid heinies on record. Though outwardly all Yankee light and love, the district is still a hotbed of Nazi fanaticism, though you hear few talk about it, even after a dozen beers.

The younger generation, of course, is solidly American and resentful of the old folks' European ways.

Other but smaller German sections abound throughout the city, notably in the Bronx and in Queens. In the latter borough were some of the most rabid pro-Nazis in the country. Here some of the German spies who landed from a submarine during the war were sheltered.

Many Lutheran churches in the Bronx and Queens conduct all their religious services in the German tongue.

A smaller and older German colony survives on the Manhattan East Side, between 14th and 23rd Streets. These are no newcomers; some of their restaurants trace back to the days when liberty-loving Germans escaped from Prussian feudalism in 1848.

One of the most famous eating places in the world and one of the oldest in New York is Luchow's, at 14th Street and Irving Place. Here, in several spacious rooms, occupying a block, is a memory of gracious, graceful days now unfortunately gone forever.

Eating is an art at Luchow's, undisturbed by raucous talk or jive. Instead, there is the pleasing music of a three-piece stringed aggregation which plays waltzes and operas and drinking songs. Luchow's features 14 different kinds of beer on draught and was the first American restaurant to obtain genuine Rhine wine and Pilsener after the war.

Throughout the years its guests have been the New York great, leaders of art, literature, finance and politics. George Jean Nathan and Henry Mencken eat there once a week, a practice they began almost a half century ago with Huneker, the great critic.

The menu is heavy with rich German dishes; the decor is strictly Teutonic. But the present owner of Luchow's is a Swede from Washington.

b.—Borscht and Blintzes

Second Avenue, south from 14th Street, is the Main Stem of the Russian, Romanian and Jewish lower East Side. A score of night clubs are here, many of national repute, presenting floor shows comparing favorably with the biggest.

The eating places are patronized by connoisseurs from everywhere, who relish European dishes.

There are theatres in Second Avenue presenting drama, musicals, revues and vaudeville, in Yiddish, where world-famed artists appear.

Second Avenue is as brightly lighted with neons as Broadway, and its shops display wares as costly as those on Fifth Avenue.

The people who patronize this gay way are imbued with the traditions of the old lands. Here, there is little whiskey drinking; wines and beer are preferred, along with a leisurely dinner, and pinochle afterward.

Vice does not thrive here, because the young blades seek it elsewhere. They find their legitimate amusement uptown, too, leaving the lower East Side almost entirely to the old folks, who are too set in their ways to want or appreciate the hurried pleasures of the Americans.

As these lines are being typed, at the corner of Henry and Pike Streets, in the very core of what once was the most famous American ghetto, lies the collapsed remains of a five-story synagogue.

It just gave up, after a hundred years of service, and tumbled into rubble.

The amazingly significant feature of this incident is that, though it happened on a Saturday afternoon, nobody was injured. The building, though still actively functioning, was empty.

This, on the Jewish day of rest and worship, gives you an idea of how time has changed the ways of that section of Manhattan into which poured the millions fleeing the pogroms, the Cossacks and the other European elements of outrage which made New York the largest Jewish population center in the world.

From the numbered streets beginning with First, down to the old commercial district, and from the Bowery to the East River, about 600,000 Jews, nine-tenths of them European refugees, lived for generations in squalor, dirt and congestion. Most of them followed devoutly their orthodox faith and rituals. No razor ever touched a male face. Girls from the marriageable age onward never exposed their hair, but hid it under wigs. All activities ceased Friday at sundown, after which, until dark on Saturday, no Jew could carry anything in his pockets—money, watch, keys, even a handkerchief. No Jew could light a fire or a candle or a lamp. For heat and illumination, Gentiles were hired and paid to strike the matches.

On Sunday, when the rest of the town was still, the ghetto bristled with business, trade, the myriad sweat-shop operations—which were largely carried out in the rooms in which families slept, ate and lived—and the Jewish population was a community set apart, neither adopting the manners of others nor proselytizing them to assume theirs.

Fifty synagogues flourished, some of them handsome and imposing, though the Jews in the main were miserably poor. Intermarriage with other races was unheard of. The Jews had their own banks and stores and mechanics, who kept their calendar and who spoke their language, Yiddish, which has a universal base, though it wanders off into a dozen different dialects, mainly of European derivation.

Today, all that has changed so that there are scarcely a fifth of those of Hebrew descent in the area and virtually the only ones who practice any of the habits of their forefathers are a handful of refugees who managed to get here since Adolf Hitler began to persecute so-called "non-Aryans" under the drive of his mad megalomania.

For decades, as the Jews became more prosperous, they scattered to better homes in upper Manhattan, the Bronx and Flatbush, where they penetrated into every walk of American life and became active in commerce, politics, arts and letters, journalism and even pugilism. About one-third of the old territory into which they originally huddled for mutual comradeship and protection has been razed for modern ideal apartment developments. Another substantial segment has disappeared under the advance of commercial construction. And what is left is largely the habitat of big business, which includes some manufacturing but is devoted mostly to jobbing and retailing, some of it on a tremendous scale.

Jewelry and furs are sold in magnificent stores, especially on Grand Street. The merchandise is frequently advertised in the regular daily press and among the customers are the dowagers and debutantes from the smartest sectors of the city.

The remainder of those who still choose to live in this teeming, malodorous and entirely alien stockade without walls constitutes a unique contingent in New York and American life.

That this was once the center of aristocracy during the pre-Revolutionary British occupation is attested by the names of the streets which still appear on the corner signs: Pitt, Eldridge, Norfolk, Suffolk, Stanton, Essex, Broome, Rivington, Delancey, Rutgers and Elizabeth. But one has been added—Houston Street—which is pronounced Howston, though named after Sam Houston, and the downtowners will never change it.

On the once mansioned Pitt Street and for eight square blocks is New York's gypsy colony—thieving, bootlegging tricksters who do no useful work, who are unbelievably soiled and live 15 and 16 in a room, a vacant store or a cellar. Conditions here are far worse than in Harlem because most of these are illiterates and by some strange ruling, their children are not sent to American schools.

They have picturesque ceremonies for weddings, births and funerals, though all of these are common and frequent enough. For important funerals the tribes gravitate here from all parts of the country. Rejoicing, lamentation and just plain drunken disturbances are of no concern to the police. The gypsies pay no taxes and do not even vote. But they seem to enjoy a feudal duchy almost as immune against authority as it is against soap.

Surrounding them are specialized little Jewish groups, mostly arrivals within the last dozen years, comprising Jews of Galician, Russian, Romanian, Hungarian, Polish, Latvian, Lithuanian and Ukrainian origin. These are excellent, thrifty, industrious people who bridge the chasm of foreign tongue and customs by hard work, a stubborn pride in their old-country ways and staunch worship of their God and the teachings of their church.

They occupy the only islands in this historical portion of New York with local rabbis whom they maintain from their meagre earnings, mostly at new trades which they had to acquire in this mechanized civilization after they had fled from the primitive villages and fenced-in cattle-corrals of the larger European centers.

Unlike many of the Americanized, American-born young GI's who cheerfully joined the 52-20 contingent, these oldsters do not go on relief. They appreciate the blessings of freedom and sincerely try to pay for them by good and upright citizenship even before they can become citizens.

All around them they see grocery, delicatessen and butcher stores run by their co-religionists, with ham and bacon in the windows.

They mutter in their beards over the moral decadence of the youth. They are teased and taunted by the young Jews as cruelly as, generations ago, all Jews were mistreated by their Gentile neighbors, especially the Irish during the heavy immigrations that followed the potato famines and divided this whole section into an unending battlefield. The Jews by tradition are not cowards, though they have through modern history been compelled to be on the defensive as a minority everywhere.

Out of these early conflicts rose some of the toughest and most murderous gangsters in American history—Little Augie, Kid Dropper, and the Murder, Inc. mob led by Lepke and Gurrah. Once they learned they had to battle, they became fierce warriors with knife, gun and every other equipment.

There are still four Yiddish daily newspapers, all prosperous and all with different policies as to politics, orthodoxy and the never-ending controversy of the Jew in every land to which he drifts—assimilation.

One organ pleads for organization and Americanization, even intermarriage and decentralization of the ghetto; another is passionately for rigid maintenance of Jewish customs and traditions and all the age-old tenets, such as Sabbath observation, kosher food, even the mikveh, according to which every married and marriageable female is expected to bathe in a community establishment at certain times.

Between the completely "emancipated" and the extremely orthodox there still remains a segment which has cut away from the old but still fears to ignore completely the God of Israel.

As a result there are thousands of Jews who pay no heed to the ways of their forefathers excepting on the high religious holidays—Yom Kippur, Rosh Hashana and the Passover. For these there is a rush to get room in the few remaining synagogues. It is not impossible that the ticket scalpers will yet take these bonanza days over.

One of the pet stories having to do with this condition is told of a shabby little tailor who rushed up to the "schul," the synagogue, on one of these holy days. The pews had been sold weeks in advance at high rentals. The sexton stepped in and barked: "Ticket!" "I have no ticket." "If you have no ticket you can't get in." "But I got to get in. I got to see my rich brother. He is in there." "That's a lot of hooey." "But I tell you I got to see my brother—it's a matter from life and death." "Well, if it's life and death O.K. Go in and see your brother and come right out ... and don't you let me catch you praying!"

c.—The Not-So-Blue Danube

Upper Broadway, from 72nd Street to 110th, is now a mid-Europe in miniature. Many of those who sought refuge here during the 1930's—especially Austrians, Czechs and Hungarians—settled thereabouts and the atmospheric night life of middle Europe followed.

Here are stores that sell the delicacies of Central Europe and pastry shops where fat, but stylishly turned-out women gorge on rich chocolate sweetmeats washed down by the white wines of Tokay, the Rhine and Moselle.

This part of town was once one of New York's finest. Riverside Drive is one of the grand avenues of the world, with a view across the broad Hudson toward the palisades of New Jersey.

The castle of Charles M. Schwab has been demolished. The fine tree-lined West End Avenue, and upper Broadway with its grassy center lane, all are frayed and frowzy.

Now a score of small and medium-sized clubs purvey what purports to be the food and entertainment of Vienna, Budapest, Bucharest, Prague and Sofia.

But it mostly boils down to a gypsy fiddle and a bowl of goulash.

d.—Little Italy

Not long ago, the center of Italian life was Mulberry Street, near the historic Five Points and police headquarters. Here one went in search of such Italian delicacies as pizza and ravioli.

In the years between the two World Wars, older immigrants gradually became Americanized. Italians, last of the large racial groups before the Puerto Ricans came to colonize, soon became one of the most populous and most dominant minorities.

Little Italys took root all over the five boroughs. Italian restaurants blossomed forth in every part of town, to run the Chinese chop suey parlors a close race for the trade of those who like exotic foods.

The sons and daughters of Italy went into show business, trade and politics, and their domination extended to vice, crime and gangsterism, but also to the sciences and fine arts.

It is scarcely an exaggeration today to speak of all New York as one huge "Little Italy."

But the old world colony is still centered around Mulberry Street, running north from Canal and west from the Bowery. Here is the acrid odor of Naples—garlic and garbage, dirty restaurants, plump, dark-eyed hookers, evil billiard halls and saloons where a pint of red ink still sells for two bits and you don't have to park your stiletto at the door.

Another fragrant little Italy skirts the borders of Greenwich Village.

But in ex-Congressman Marcantonio's East Harlem the poorest and most crime-ridden Little Italy in all the world begrimes New York.

e.—Stromberry Poy

Though Greece was a land of noble statesmen and warriors, most of her sons who settled in New York are engaged in the less exalted though more necessary work of filling hungry American bellies.

A large proportion of the fruit and vegetable business, wholesale and retail, is controlled by Greeks; lunch rooms and cheaper restaurants are almost Greek monopolies.

However, oddly enough, many Hellenes make their living in the huge needle-trades industry. A majority of fur workers are Greek, though most of the plants are owned by Jews.

There are self-made Greek millionaires, too; but they live on estates in Westchester when they are not on their ranches in California.

The hub of the Greek colony is in 58th Street, from Eighth to Ninth Avenues, with restaurants, hotels and bawdy houses. No place for any but Hellenes. English spoken, but seldom understood. Another Greek settlement is at 42nd Street and Eighth Avenue, near the fur market.

f.—Modern Babel

The map of midtown Manhattan is more of a racial hodgepodge than the Balkans ever were, with cabarets, eating places (see Appendix F) and wenches in every idiom.

One of the city's largest French sections is in the 40's, west of Eighth Avenue, with little ground floor bistros in musty old rooming houses and broads smelling of powerful perfume.

Armenians and Turks, historic enemies, live and eat in the 20's, on the East Side, near Lexington, and the Hungarian section is in the east 60's before you come to Yorkville. Here the females are fat.

The corner of 110th and Fifth, with its West Indian population, looks like the seamy side of any large Caribbean town, and stinks worse.

There are Persians living in East 58th Street.

International House, near Columbia University, at Riverside Drive and 122nd Street, houses students and visitors from all sections of the globe and of all colors, shades and varieties.

Men live in one wing, women in the other, and if the steel door which separates them, but is never locked because of fire regulations, is opened, a bell clangs throughout the building. (Hell of a Good Neighbor policy!)

[11. BLACK GHETTO]

There were Negro freemen on Manhattan Island before the Revolutionary War. New York never was a station in the abolitionist underground.

The race was represented by only a few scattered thousands at the beginning of the present century. The heavy influx began shortly thereafter in a drive by industry seeking cheap labor.

Agents were sent to the South to recruit whole train-loads of black people to throw into unskilled work against the Irish, Italians and others who were already becoming troublesome to the industrial moguls with demands for higher wages. The pay spurned as too low by the whites looked big to the cotton pickers and ditch diggers of Dixie.

The Negro population grew rapidly. So did the spirit of resentment and hatred which surrounded them everywhere, despite the Northern fiction of race equality.

Not only were the Negroes driven together for protection against a powerful prejudice which kept their lives miserable and unsafe, but they found themselves caught in a ring, welded by small and big owners of real estate, which literally caged them in.

The net result has been the most congested ghetto on the American continent—Harlem.

In the tiny area of Harlem there is now a population of around 650,000—approximately that of the full census of Pittsburgh or San Francisco proper.

There has been practically no new housing built there in decades. The crumbling firetraps, almost all of them still owned by whites, and many by millionaires, have seen little improvement in provisions for sanitation, much less for human comfort. But per room, the rents exacted often equal many in the luxury edifices of gilded Park Avenue.

These thousands of dark-skinned people are truly displaced persons—held in a concentration camp surrounded by the barbed-wire fence of ironclad prejudice. But they attend free schools. They go to the polls. Therefore, maneuvered by slick politicians, white and black, they have become an enormous power. But little of this power is used for their benefit.

Until some 20 years ago tradition and the memory of Abe Lincoln made almost every Negro anywhere a Republican. The Republican machine in New York took this for granted and counted in the Harlem votes automatically before the elections.

A metamorphosis began with the organization of the American Labor party and the growth of the Communist party. These radical groups were weak and poor. They had no hope of electing anyone, and therefore could promise anything to everyone. Negroes, who had nothing to lose, began to be attracted.

For the first time they found themselves wanted, courted, flattered.

The Republicans suddenly woke up to find Harlem slipping away. They joined the parade, and held out new big promises of patronage. They suddenly grew conscious of social obligations, too, a new line for the G.O.P.

Everyone hopped the bandwagon in this new crusade—for the Negro vote. But the Negroes had been inflamed over their grievances and preferred to nurse them, now that self-seekers had acknowledged and emphasized them. Besides, the Republican party never won local elections anyway.

On the crest of this wave rose a shrewd little opportunist named Fiorello H. LaGuardia. He took over Harlem as a private preserve with a fusion of both the Republican and A.L.P. bodies of New York. After he was elected mayor, he sent to Congress, to succeed him from the fringe of Harlem, one Vito Marcantonio, a stooge who had worked in his law office.

With Marcantonio the local leader (State Chairman of the A.L.P.) and LaGuardia for a round dozen years in the City Hall, the pay-off began. The unfortunate Negroes, who had been cuffed and confined so long, were suddenly silk-gloved and pampered, made virtually immune from the police and the law. In this tight little empire ruled by the LaGuardia-Marcantonio axis, everything went, short of, and sometimes including, murder in the first degree.

Harlem, which had once been notoriously frustrated, now sprang into a peculiarly privileged status in reference to the city's laws.

Those of the dark-skinned citizens who were eager to lead decent and normal lives for themselves and their children found the situation worse than before. Instead of emancipation from the sordid conditions in which they were confined, the political need to keep them in one district was added to their bonds. And they saw their disreputable elements abetted in lawlessness.

Here were some 260,000 votes in one bag. The political sharks knew just the way to play to make them stay put.

The results were disastrous, as many dismayed respectable Negroes found, especially among the growing youth. The police, who carried night sticks in the lobby of Madison Square Garden and Grand Central Palace, pounded the flagstones of Harlem empty-handed and all but handcuffed.

The meekness and silent suffering which had marked the Negroes in a city of a hostile majority went with the new wind. They got practically nothing tangible from their new protectors. The bad physical conditions remained, the conspiracy of prejudice which imprisoned them remained. But their emotional release and mounting anger against their wrongs grew. That crime and immorality under these bizarre conditions should increase was inevitable.

This metamorphosis was taking place during the later years of Prohibition, when lawlessness was smart, sin a laugh, and decency a joke. In their landlocked area of poverty and congestion, when gangsters, flappers and gigolos were symbolic and many college boys were getting out of hand throughout the country, young Harlem threw away the book.

Decent Negroes, seeking only a normal existence, were appalled. But the tough elements had the support of the dominant political power; and Harlem was a trap from which few could escape.

An occasional Negro was appointed to public office; a few got into civil service; a dribble made the professions. But by and large the wretched economic and social conditions of the race remained, and remain today, not greatly changed over the plight of the race a generation ago.

Today, Harlem is a politician's stronghold. The ward heelers, their bosses and their friends rate high political favoritism. Harlem has this kind of equality, but no other.

The result has been sad.

As this chapter proceeds, the authors will not attempt to review in connection with each incident or observation the abnormal and unique circumstances which have corrupted much of the life of this gigantic Negro concentration camp. They will proceed to tell of Harlem as they know it and have seen it. In Harlem, of course, are many thousands of God-fearing Negro families thoroughly dismayed by the violence, vice and excesses which now exist there, and which will probably continue to exist as long as Harlem remains the exploited landlocked island that it is. Many who could took their families to the Sugar Hill district, where live the more prosperous Negroes, or to the several tree-shaded streets where life continues to flow by rather quietly and respectably.

But in other sections of the district, robbery, rape and murder are rampant and raw. Prostitution is scandalous. With certain elements, assault has become not only a profession, but a pastime.

The New York newspapers, by common habit, rarely publish anything about Harlem crime. The city editor looks at the address and spikes the item.

Police shrug their shoulders and turn their backs not only on complaints, but on misdemeanors and felonies within their own sight. This is especially true where no whites are involved.

Shortly after the outbreak of the war, Harlem was made out of bounds for white service personnel, with armed M.P.'s and S.P.'s stationed at close intervals. Night life became practically one hundred per cent Harlem-patronized.

The days when a metropolitan black belt was picturesque and novel are gone. The decade and more when low-class and high-priced slumming in black-and-tan dives was a big-city fad has passed, too.

Today, Harlem's chief attraction is the famous Savoy Ballroom. This is not a taxi dance hall. There are no hostesses or hired partners. The gents bring their own dames or pick up unaccompanied girls, who also pay their way in. Most of these are not out-and-out hustlers. In the old days the Savoy was a wow. The unrestrained dancing and the first roots of jive and boogie-woogie were beginning to appear. Both the music and the hoofing were fascinating to outsiders. But now few whites come to the doors of the Savoy, and those who do are firmly discouraged from entering.

America stole the Negroes to work the land it stole from the Indians. It has not played white with either.

The living, throbbing Harlem—110th Street, 116th Street, 125th Street, 135th Street, Seventh Avenue, Lenox Avenue, the west side of Fifth Avenue from 110th Street up—those highways which in their time have known throngs of sightseers, which in the heyday of Harlem hotspots housed cabarets and after-hour joints known around the world, are now beset by gangsters, streetwalkers, sluggers and muggers who often bash and slash for the mere mischief and sadism of inflamed imagination and unbridled, coddled encouragement to misbehave.

On these and the dimly lit side streets which cross them property and life are rarely safe.

Here white detectives dare not travel except in pairs; here rent-collectors dare not go about or enter buildings without cops to guard them; here is no place for sightseers or any strangers.

Here rove the numerous gangs, members ranging in number from a dozen to several hundred and in age from almost babyhood to the "heavy workers," who include many ex-convicts.

Harlem first got on the map as a place to have fun during the 1920's, when an imaginative fellow named Lee Posner, who later adopted as a middle name "Harlemania," saw its possibilities after the Chicago "black-and-tan" fad had risen to popularity. Jack Johnson, the ex-heavyweight champion, had a saloon on Seventh Avenue. This became the Cotton Club which, with all Harlem, started toward world-wide fame.

Prohibition was in effect if not in force, but the snoopers passed this district up.

The black part of Harlem was tucked away in the northern half of what is now the section. Its main cross street, 125th, was still lined with fine shops and branches of downtown department stores. Below that thoroughfare old New York families still lived and there were excellent apartment buildings and elegant residences.

By 1930, the Negroes had everything from 110th Street up to the Polo Grounds, at 155th Street, to themselves.

Repeal brought a change to Harlem's night life. The fad had worn thin and the attractions of unlimited liquor and no set hours had faded. Some of the glitter spots moved downtown—Connie's Inn, the Cotton Club, the Ubangi. New cabarets with all-Negro talent began to spring up in the center of town.

When the casual pleasure-seekers forsook Harlem, a few wise boys took over in side-street locations. New York's legal liquor and cabaret closing deadline has been 4 A.M., since repeal. But that was too early for some, especially those connected with the major night clubs, who quit work at that hour and then wanted to play.

Harlem, which was not being called to account on police regulations, took up where the big ones left off.

Many of the remaining joints didn't put on their first shows until after 4 A.M., and they remained open as late as the last customer could lift a glass. Your authors remember often leaving such places at 10 or 11 o'clock next morning, climbing out of a smoke-filled and dingy basement into broad daylight, their eyes smarting.

It was in this period that the "ofays," Harlem's word for whites, began mixing openly. Several female name stars were soon notorious for such habits.

There are very few houses of commercial prostitution in Harlem. They are not needed. Women are too easy to pick up. And they don't have to be picked up.

A man of the world can spot a whore by instinct, no matter what her color. But the Harlem wenches refuse to credit so much intelligence. They have a hundred brazen approaches. One of the commonest is to lead a little dog on a leash, and as a white man comes within hearing, ostensibly addressing the dog, she says:

"You come on with me now. You come on right in the house with me."

If there is any doubt as to what or whom she means, she is dangling the key to her apartment in her other hand. From this up to the most ancient methods, straightforward or from the corner of the mouth, "How'd you like to have a good time, mister?" they fear neither daylight, nightlight nor darkness.

This of itself shocks no one, least of all those whose names are on the cover of this book.

But back of it is a great deal more than the danger of venereal disease, which is inordinately high in these regions, and a sense of having sinned.

The white man who falls for these lures will probably be robbed, perhaps beaten and possibly murdered.

On one morning, on the roof of a squalid walkup, four white men were found strangled and stripped, their bodies thrown behind a chimney. This was the work of one prostitute whose pimp and accomplice crouched in hiding, and when each man was least likely to have his wits and caution, came up over him and choked him to death with bare hands while the woman held him helpless.

This, of course, is an extreme instance. But cases of "badger" workers are everyday occurrences; a white man is no sooner in an embarrassing position but in comes a Negro who claims to be the woman's "husband," and—usually with a weapon, but sometimes only on a threat of arrest—cleans the victim of all he has with him. There are also "panel" houses. These work by having the woman help the man take his clothing off and place it in a certain position, probably over a convenient chair. While he is concentrated on thoughts other than his watch and money, a panel slides open, a dark hand comes through and takes everything out of the pockets.

When a man has finished with such an amour, he generally feels a bit of revulsion and is eager to get out. Therefore he usually does not realize that he has been frisked and by the time he does, he is reluctant to return and is probably afraid, realizing that he has been in a thieves' den. Should he ask a policeman to go with him, he would have to explain how and why he was there in the first place. Should he return alone, he would probably get no answer at the bell, or if he did it would be with a beer bottle or a knife.

The same effect is often attained without a confederate. The woman goes through the man's clothes while he is in no frame of mind to keep his hands on his pockets. This is subtly known in Harlem as "cold finger work."

The cost of living has gone up here as it has everywhere. The price of a woman, 20 years ago, in Harlem was from 25 cents up. Today a good-looking one, especially if she is not leading a man to be skinned, has no compunction about asking $20.

Surely, the most ardent protagonist of Harlem will not challenge its predilection towards sexual and other vices.

Practically every novel and factual exposé by Negro writers and by white writers who glorify Negroes is replete with accounts of illicit relations between white men and dark girls. The Negro newspapers harp on it constantly. And if more proof is needed, contemplate the fact that the largest dance hall in Harlem was closed by the License Commissioner because it was overrun with 12-year-old Negro prostitutes; and one of the larger theatres in Harlem was closed by the License Commissioner because of indescribable orgies in the balcony during theatrical performances.

The result of these disclosures and the hundreds of muggings has been to drive the New York white element, except for an occasional and misguided drunken sailor, out of the area.

Mugging has nothing to do with sex. It is a white invention, in old Chicago days called "strongarming." The technique is for a man or woman—it is operated by both—to come up behind a man or a woman and throw an arm around the front of the throat, closing it sharply, with the elbow out. This gives an immediate condition of semi-helplessness and the defense against it is difficult because both hands are not as strong as one arm. At the same time, the mugger shoves a knee into the small of the back of the victim, further devitalizing him or her and throwing off any balance which might permit of a struggle. By this time one or more co-workers are going through the handbag or the pockets.

Often those selected by such criminals are persons who have been seen in saloons or elsewhere with valuables or sums of money worth the effort. In not a few cases, where victims have put up a struggle, they were stabbed or choked to death.

The comparatively high-class Negro cafés with entertainment which flourished during Prohibition were put out of business by a number of concurrent consequences.

The kindly, grinning, amiable and frequently obsequious Negro was disappearing. In his place came a truculent, class-conscious, race-conscious and union-conscious, embittered man or woman, resenting whites and demanding white wages.

The early clubs, with their all-night white carriage trade, their quick and friendly waiters and their low-comedy performers had to fold. Negroes working for a white employer demanded white men's pay. Negro workers insulted white patrons. The new trend decried Negroes stooping to low comedy—the calling was for dignity; no more thick red lips or prop watermelons or plantation togs. Why shouldn't they sing grand opera? Why shouldn't they play Shakespeare? They have done both, with here and there some success, often overestimated by "tolerant" critics, but there is no more Negro theatre and there is practically no Negro entertainment as it was known so long, a native American institution.

The minstrel show, which was at one time tops in popularity on our stages, was wiped out forever, far ahead of the Uncle Tom shows, which the CIO and the societies for the advancement of colored people picketed out of existence.

There are three good-sized night clubs in Harlem now. They play to very few whites, except those who regularly "mix." It may surprise many of our readers to know that in the constantly growing mingling of whites and Negroes, white women with black men are far more numerous than white men with black women.

The Harlem community accepts—though it despises—these Caucasians who cross the color line, or as it is known above 110th Street, "change their luck" or "deal in coal."

It is common knowledge that girls and women associated with night life to a certain degree have long crossed the line. These are usually dope addicts. That does not mean that many of them are not fresh and young and desirable.

From the days of earliest slavery in the United States and the West Indies, Negroes have swept away their heavy inhibitions, forgotten the burn of the lash and the clank of the shackles with an age-old drug, hashish.

Hashish was used among the ancients to stimulate armies for ruthless killing.

It has since become known as locoweed and in Harlem it is commonly called "tea," and the cigarettes made therefrom are called "reefers" or "muggles." Technically, in the United States Drug Act legislation, this weed, containing a chemical substance known as cannabine, is called marijuana.

No amount of vigilance can stamp out marijuana. It grows anywhere. The Negro chauffeur of one of the authors of this book saved enough money to buy a farm—to grow nothing but marijuana. Acres of it have been found within the city limits of New York and in its environs. It can be grown in back yards and even in window boxes and will flourish.

Because this innocent-looking weed is so prolific and so hardy, a special police class has lectured on its idiosyncrasies. The students were ordered then to keep a keen eye out and if they saw any of it to report it to a specified bureau.

Only one turned in a holler. He had discerned it on a lawn. He gave the address.

An expert was rushed there by auto. He found it, all right—it was in the front yard of a police station!

One plant, which does not occupy more than a square inch of dirt and does not require more than four times that much for nourishment will grow 100 seeds (pistilates). Crushed with the pods and leaves and rolled, that plant will make ten reefers.

The cigarettes come in three qualities—"sars-fras"—the cheapest kind, sold to thousands of school children at about two bits each; the "panatella," or "messerole," retailed at fifty cents; and the top grade, the "gungeon," which produces a voluptuous "bang," bringing as high as a dollar.

There are about 500 apartments in Harlem, known as "tea pads," set up exclusively for marijuana addicts. They are darkly lit, the colors are usually deep blue, there is a juke box or victrola with the jumpiest of jive records. An insidious incense pervades the stuffy air; windows are always closed. The walls are usually scrawled with crude nudes and pornographic sketches.

Here gather the reefer smokers for their "binge." That's the origin of the word for a drunk in modern slang. And drunk is how they get. The first few puffs create an almost painful parching of the throat. This calls for liquor to wet the whistle. The combination of marijuana and alcohol brings on a complete flight of conscience, restraint, decency and shame.

What occurs after such a debauch gets going, in a small flat, with two or three bedrooms and an assemblage of interracial participants of both sexes, will not be described here.

Broadway and theatrical women are not necessarily looser than other women. But for many years, and especially during the 20's and 30's, in vaudeville and musical revues it became the custom to introduce Negroes into companies with whites; especially Negro musicians, who undoubtedly have certain generic talents which white men cannot match.

It is a matter of long record that bandsmen rank high in the lists of narcotics users. Many of our best-known white musicians have been in public trouble over this weakness and thousands of others are known within the profession to be so inclined.

Through the combination of the mingling of Negroes who used marijuana when other dope was cheap and plentiful and still used it and could get it and had established places to smoke it as the other drugs evaporated, white women learned where they could get a "belt," a "jolt" or a "gow." Reefer-smokers are called "gowsters."

To those who are "hooked," which in the argot means they have the habit, the tea pad sessions are known as "kicking the gong around." That's the origin of this often misused bit of modern idiom. A newcomer into the fold is called a "joy popper." Occasional or slummers who manage to crash, through a "connection," are called "RFD gowsters." When one becomes so habituated that marijuana is an incurable obsession, "the monkey is riding on his (or her) back."

Recently there has been a steady infiltration of society, bohemian and co-ed recruits among white females who go to Harlem for its lurid pleasures. Many women in the professional labor movement have heard the call to prove openly that they are broad-minded. Many avowed Communists all but push themselves on the Negroes and it is a tenet of the party line in New York City that white women must go out of their way to mingle with the colored comrades.

Not all these mix hashish with their politics. But sex is considered a mandatory gesture of complete conversion.

Ironically enough, while all this over-emphasis on tolerance, equality and the brotherhood of man has taken on the magnitude of big business, the Negroes are decidedly anti-Semitic, and Jew-baiting is a constant maneuver in organized and disorganized form. Certain Negro gangs, mostly composed of zoot-suited teen-agers, make a regular practice of it and call it "Jew-hunting." They find fertile ground for it in the nearby Bronx and set off on expeditions to beat up Jewish children going to and from school.

To understand the Negro as a gangster one must look with accusing eyes at the white toughs who so long terrorized the Negroes.

Wherever the blacks poured across a street to take up new habitations that would accommodate the constant influx from the South and widening opportunities for those already in the North, seeking to escape from their hideous encirclement under unspeakable conditions, they were fought and often killed by hooligans from such old mobs as the Hancocks, the Irish Dukes, the Rainbows and the Goat Hill Hoodlums, who originated in the days of Irish squatter possession of Lexington Avenue and west, north of 96th Street.

The Negroes defended themselves the best they could, and under the guidance of grownup "captains and war counsellors," as they are still known, they organized what now constitutes about 75 gangs in upper Manhattan. They run from 25 to 40 and some to 200.

Among the principal Negro gangs are the Sabres, the Socialists, the Chancellors, the Buccaneers, the Copians, the Barons and the Slicksters.

Their activities now range from fighting each other for the pure love of bloodshed (called "rumbles") to highway robbery. Often fights are faked so that in the confusion and the crowd a quick job of larceny is inconspicuous.

The Chancellors, a strict organization with rank and titles, according to age, strength, bravado and accomplishments, is typical. The groups run progressively up from Tiny Tims to Midgets to Juniors to Seniors. Each class takes orders from the one above and all are as strictly ruled and disciplined as were the Czar's Cossacks, by their war counsellors, known as "bigs."

Not the least of their power is in their auxiliaries, girls ranging from 12 years up, who start as Sub-debs and graduate to become Debs. They are usually the mistresses of the Seniors. Their roles are important before, during and after acts of violence.

By police regulations, only females may search females. The Debs and Sub-debs are usually from 50 to 500 feet behind the warriors. They carry the weapons. Should there be a sudden police charge, the girls evaporate in all directions and the men are found unarmed. But the moment the first fist flies, they rush in and slip the took to the Chancellors. Very often they join in the fight with them and punch, bite and stab, and are quite as vicious as the males.

The weapons, featuring the switch-blade spring knife which is the Harlem standby, also run to first-rate shooting arms and homemade guns which are converted from lengths of tubing. Billies, sword-canes and ice-picks are standard equipment. The harmless-looking souvenir toy bats sold at the ball parks, which can crack a skull at a single swipe, are regularly employed.

Developed from self-defense against the whites, the lust for battle and pillage has become a menace to the respectable Negroes. No colored gangster will stoop to work. Once he belongs, he must make his living with his fists and weapons or he must have a woman support him. Harlem is probably the only community on earth where the women earn more money than do the men. Thousands of them are employed as servants and others do well plying less savory trades. It is regarded as manly and superior for a man to be kept, and to prove his masculinity he is expected occasionally to beat his woman to show her who is master.

The younger thugs, who have not reached that lofty estate, but who must not attempt to be Alger boys, bluntly live by robbery. In some sections a Negro boy or girl not belonging to a powerful gang scarcely dares leave home with a nickel. In addition to being despoiled, they are frequently manhandled.

As a result, many Negro families have sent their children to New Jersey and Long Island and even back south of the Mason and Dixon Line because of the intolerable abuses from their own race.

In fact, Congressman Powell, whose district comprises Harlem, and his actress wife spend most of their time on Long Island. Powell, a light-skinned, but professional Negro and bleeding heart, and Mrs. Powell—Hazel Scott—ride in a chauffeur-driven Cadillac limousine. Miss Scott was cited as a left-winger by the Un-American Activities committee.

On his own statement, a 13-year-old Negro boy, who held up a white schoolteacher at gun point and was caught while fleeing, a clasp knife in his hand and his .32-calibre revolver in his belt, was a member of the Purple Cross gang, with a hangout at 114th Street and St. Nicholas Avenue.

He was ambitious to join the Turks, a gang of older boys. He was told he would have to prove he was tough enough. The Turk leaders gave him the gun and told him to pull a stick-up—"then come back and we'll see about taking you in."

One juvenile Harlem gang has another test—before a tyro can be accepted as a full member, he must commit a rape!

The Negroes took merciless punishment in the big depression. And the recovery was slow for them. By 1940 they were angry and sullen. Then hell broke loose, fomented by meddlesome agitators of both races. A bloody and paralyzing race riot exploded.

The police, suddenly allowed to wade in with night-sticks, finished it quickly. But the causes could not be clubbed down. The resentment and bitterness went underground, to emerge through influences described above, but with few flare-ups because the whites virtually quit going to Harlem.

For months, no taxi driver would take whites to Harlem destinations, and some even refused to drive through the district. Even today few white hackmen will take you to a Harlem number or answer a hail in that region.

The muggings and the stick-ups soon began to slop far over the borders and today the extent of Negro crime in all the boroughs scandalizes the decent elements of the race. White men have the money. And since they no longer come up to be taken, the goons spread to greener fields.

Lait and Mortimer have set up above only a camera-eye fragment of their long experience and what they learned first-hand in courts, police stations, and day and night contacts with every class and phase of New York's metropolitan manifestations.

They have eaten in Harlem hideaways and imbibed at Harlem's beehive bars. They have had the confidence of Negro detectives, who are too ashamed of the behavior of some of their people to gloss it over.

This chapter will reform nothing. It was written with no such intent. Its sole function is to inform, and the information should serve as a warning.

Harlem is no place for joy hoppers or joy poppers. Outside of the few white people who have business there and who are familiarly recognized, the sight of a white person in the black precincts brings one of several instant reactions:

If it's a white man "on the make," the Negroes are infuriated, though the dregs of their own women are there to solicit him; if a white woman is seen, she is either a tramp or a nut with a yen for colored men, and though plenty of colored men are willing, Harlem looks on her as a pariah and an intruder; if a white man and wife walk the avenues, looking curiously here and there, they are peepers who regard the Negroes as the zoo visitors do the exhibits in their cages; if white men go to the worst parts of Harlem to get drunk—God help them.

The old days are over. Gawkers and the idly curious who don't know their Harlem may gamble their very lives. Therefore, the gospel of this chapter is: If you haven't legitimate business there—

Stay Away From Harlem!

[12. AND YE TOOK ME IN!]

During the last 12 years and growing every year, there has descended on Manhattan Island like a locust plague an influx of Puerto Ricans.

They arrive now frequently at the rate of 2,000 a month and there are today more than 600,000 natives of the island (one authority calculates 710,000) cramped, some 30 in one cold-water flat, mostly in one section of this great island, the whole of which is much smaller than theirs in area.

One of every four persons born in this generation in Puerto Rico is in New York; one of every 13 New Yorkers is a Puerto Rican.

Referring to these Caribbean wards of the nation as a plague is not prompted by prejudice, anger or careless use of phraseology.

Puerto Ricans were not born to be New Yorkers. They are mostly crude farmers, subject to congenital tropical diseases, physically unfitted for the northern climate, unskilled, uneducated, non-English-speaking and almost impossible to assimilate and condition for healthful and useful existence in an active city of stone and steel.

It would be tragic enough if the sorry results were the consequences only of desperate displaced persons fleeing to a haven of hope from the circumscribed possibilities of their birthplace.

But the story is far more sordid. A majority of these people were lured here deliberately, because, as American citizens, they can vote. They are a power behind ex-Congressman Vito Marcantonio, until recently the only American Labor Party member of the House, who rules the wretched section into which a majority of the 600,000 have poured from leaky ships and from miserable chartered planes which are almost beyond description.

The Puerto Ricans at this moment are costing New York City $12,000,000 a year in relief. There is no residence-period requirement, that having been knocked out during the LaGuardia administration, when Marcantonio's word could wipe out law.

Not only are many of these Puerto Ricans on relief within an hour after their feet land on a dock or a secondary airport, but some are already booked on the dole in advance, while they are in the air or on the water.

Until recently Marcantonio maintained a full-time representative in the office of the Welfare Department, whose business it was to get his constituents not only registered on the rolls but also provided with fat and flowing allowances, using broadly every channel created for emergency cases. Now it is done surreptitiously, but still done.

For voting, the law requires one year in the state, four months in the county, one month in the district. But it is impossible to check, even if the holdover handout officials would want to. The Puerto Ricans all look alike, their names all sound alike and if an inspector calls in one of the swarming flats in the teeming tenements, nobody speaks English.

Travel agencies whip up the movement through agents in Puerto Rico. The newspapers and the bill-boards and even signs stuck beside the dirt roads of the remote regions shout with bargain rates as low as $20 for a flight to New York; ship transportation is sometimes even cheaper than that.

Very few Puerto Ricans at home have or ever have had $20. But the money seems to come from somewhere.

Privately, these poverty-numbed, naïve natives are sold a bill of the tremendous possibilities in the great New York which they have seen in the movies and in the patent insides of their local sheets. They are told that here fortunes await many and the rest can quickly go on relief for sums undreamt-of by them or their fathers' fathers.

The result is a sullen, disappointed, disillusioned mass of people, alien to everything that spells New York. The children quickly learn to resent the fact that, though they are Americans, they are foreigners who cannot speak the language and are thus teased and humiliated in schools and on the streets.

Because they are dark of complexion, they are commonly classified as Negroes and share a large portion of the unfortunate prejudice which still bedevils non-Caucasians, even in a community as broad-minded as New York.

Few can obtain employment, though Marcantonio and a few other politicians place them, to a conspicuous disproportion, in minor public jobs, in hospitals, prisons, public works and other institutions where no skills and no English are required.

The youths of both sections run wild. They take on the vilest habits of their surroundings, and the description elsewhere in this book of conditions in Harlem apply very generally to the sections where the Puerto Ricans have swarmed.

As in the case of Harlem, the Puerto Ricans are concentrated in a small area but do not entirely make that their pleasure ground.

During the last two years there has been a steady flow toward Broadway, until the corners in the lower 50's are crowded day and night with zoot-suited men who hang around the riffraff of the amusement centers and so behave that it has long been necessary to post extra police south of Columbus Circle, around the clock.

They soon become marijuana addicts, throng into cheap and crowded dives which cater to their trade, and many become violent criminals with gun and knife. Many of them are dope-peddlers while on relief.

In their own district the children are natural cop-haters, throw stones at prowl cars and drop bricks from the roofs on uniformed policemen.

There are no tougher saloons in Marseilles, Shanghai, Port Said or Panama City than those which seethe with these island immigrants. 108th Street and Second Avenue is the headquarters of the international dope racket.

The crime rate is stupendous and it is increasing and spreading.

One General Sessions judge who had just finished a six-week trial calendar of criminal cases covering the entire borough of Manhattan reported to one of your authors that more than 40 per cent of convictions during that term had been of Puerto Ricans, of whom 2 per cent were born on the United States mainland.

The disease statistics are even more shocking.

Not a few of the natives are cursed with tuberculosis and syphilis before they arrive; a Puerto Rican leper was discovered not long ago. But once they are here, the venereal incidence is marked with a rapid rise, due to association with low prostitutes, with the result that a random health inspection of 1,000 Puerto Rican males between the ages of 15 and 40 revealed 80 per cent infected.

The conditions which cause these frightful statistics are largely parallel to those which afflict the Negroes, but the Puerto Ricans are harmed even more by these conditions because they are strangers, because they have not come of their own free will, like adventurers of courage and enterprise from other lands, who brave regions beyond their horizon to fight for their opportunities.

Most of these are not only outmatched in every battle of life in the fastest and biggest city in the world, but they were far behind in their own unhappy land before they left, and that was why they left.

The callous exploitation of these weaklings is one of the dirtiest crimes in the long and shameful record of practical American politics. None knows better than those who have primed and prompted and financed the exodus, what they are doing to these victims and what they are doing to the city where they bring them in gutted one-motor planes, sitting on bucket seats, sometimes so crowded that many stand all the way, air-sick and already homesick.

The sight of one of these outmoded flying cattle boats, long since discarded by the government services and regular transport lines, is horrifying and nauseating.

The pilgrims are dropped off at Newark or small private landing places, carrying bundles and babies and the weight of fear and sorrow, through which the gleam of new hope cannot penetrate.

They are marched in and carried in dilapidated buses directly to the filthy, shrieking, miserable rookeries where housing has long been exhausted. This means that each new arrival will be shoe-horned into already jammed, unsanitary, indecent lodgings, to sleep on the floor or even in a hallway.

The relief figures look good and they should, because they are designedly excessive. But prices are high and before these strangers arrive the sharks are waiting and smacking their lips.

And so they constitute not only a horde unfitted for the new habitat, but they quickly become resentful under the hostile conditions, so different from the utopia which smooth-tongued agents painted to people who had never been off the island on which they were born.

Not only that frame of mind, but public support, with a tremendous factor of idleness, proximity to the regions of lowest vice and highest crime, easy opportunity to mingle in the swirl of the unwashed underworld, rapidly perverts them.

They pick up the bad habits of those with whom they are forced to associate, and these they amplify with the enthusiasm of untutored islanders for illegitimate revelry and dissipation.

Merchants of every form of dope, vice and alcohol await them eagerly with merchandise within their means.

Finding themselves unable physically, mentally or financially to compete, they turn to guile and wile and the steel blade, the traditional weapon of the sugar-cane cutter, mark of their blood and heritage.

New York, of course, is not easily pushed around and turns on them, which makes them more bitter and more belligerent, which brings upon them heavier punishment, which makes them uglier, and thus a constant and increasing spiral of hatred spins around these hundreds of thousands.

Some manage to straggle back. But it is an established fact that the city holds and fascinates and imprisons those who have once felt the magic of its embrace.

Columbia University made a survey of the situation. The governor of Puerto Rico put through an appropriation for the island legislature to run down the facts. The Welfare Department of the city and state have thrown up their hands in helpless surrender to this modern scandal, entirely unforeseen only a few years ago, though Puerto Ricans have had free access without passport to the United States since 1898.

The City Welfare Council, in a sympathetic report glossing over much of the situation, nevertheless described "back yards piled high with garbage," also one block so infested with drunks, marijuana smokers, brawlers, holdup men and insulters of women that decent citizens and even the police deliberately avoid it.

So, this chapter is not merely an observation about a portion of Manhattan Island. It is an exposition of a situation which will echo in the halls of Congress and will write its own pages in the history of the nation, because, as has been pointed out, it is far from static; in every phase it is growing and the sorry end is nowhere in sight.

[13. UP IN CENTRAL PARK]

Michael Todd, a theatrical producer who hails from Chicago, made a valuable contribution to the unorthodox history of Manhattan with the long-run hit musical play, Up in Central Park, later made into a movie.

Those fortunate enough to have seen this gay operetta may remember references to a crooked land-grab in connection with the building of the park, which packed the coffers of many Tammanyites of the day.

We have thousands of acres of parks in New York; a world-famed zoo and botanical gardens in the Bronx. None, however, can compare with Central Park, a jewel of emerald green in a rectangular setting of mansions and museums and skyscrapers.

But Central Park is not the chaste oasis its verdure and placid lakes might imply.

The prime spot for a pick-up (if you're not hoity-toity) is the Central Park Mall, during the summer, though Riverside Drive runs a close second—if you're a sailor.

Some years ago, the beneficent city fathers inaugurated a program of free dances in Central Park. They were primarily designed for young men and women of the poorer districts.

They also drew degenerates, rapists and wolves.

It's standard practice there to ask any gal to dance and it doesn't seem to matter what color you are or she is.

Many fallen sisters—and very reasonably—take advantage of this frolic on the green to ply their avocation under police protection.

But the amateurs—especially the bobby sox juvenile delinquents—give them unethical competition.

Friendly bushes, in the darkness, provide privacy (of a sort) for a necking party. But those who stray too far from the well-lighted Mall invite serious danger.

Lurking in the park are all manner of anti-social characters, from footpads to vicious sex-maniacs. Blood-curdling crimes are common.

The police cannot patrol every foot of the big expanse of the park, though at times they have had remarkable success in keeping crime at a minimum by dressing a couple of boyish detectives in women's clothes and turning them loose on the scum.

The place is, of course, a happy hunting ground for psychopathic and physical irregulars, who find it an excellent layout to strike up acquaintances with others of their kind.

The southwest corner of the park, at Columbus Circle, has been pre-empted by Negro homos. The north border, Cathedral Parkway (110th) is alive with wicked wenches.

And yet, graceful old Central Park is one of the most beautiful places remaining in this modernist crazy world.

Its lights, architecture and landscaping retain the pre-rococo charm of the last century.

But the old Central Park Casino is gone, a victim of the leveling-down process of the dictatorship of the rabble.

Here, in a charming building surrounded by trees and the greensward, was one of New York's showspots of the hectic 20's where society and café society dined, danced and broke the dry law.

As Jimmy Walker's night city hall (he rarely arose in time to visit the official one), the casino attracted the cream—and the sour milk—of New York officialdom and gangdom. Its prices were outrageous, but its food divine, its liquor bona fide and its dance music memorable.

LaGuardia, darling of the déclassé, elected in 1933 on a platform of revenge and revulsion against civilized living, made the destruction of the Central Park Casino the first major issue in his campaign of social nihilism. He said the land was needed for a play-ground.

No sooner was the casino leveled than he found an excuse to open another dining and dance pavilion in the park, for concessionaires more friendly to his regime.

To do this he destroyed the historic old sheepfold, where generations of city kids learned about nature watching the grazing lambs, and turned the building into a cabaret called "The Tavern on the Green."

Though its prices are not as astronomical as those imposed by the mourned casino, they are still too high for New York's millions of low-income citizens—the voters LaGuardia said the park was for.

Tucked away on a crosswalk in the 60's is a crazy little carousel, circa last century. Here the kids ride the merry-go-round to a tinkly, wheezy calliope playing the same tunes heard there by Teddy Roosevelt. Here is one of New York's most delightful nooks for romance.

You still find the hackies at 59th Street and Fifth Avenue, the last of their kind in the country. Best time to ride is after 4 A.M., when the motor traffic in the park has come to a standstill and you have the place all to yourself in a barouche or hansom.

If your doll still holds out, after winding slowly through leaf-covered roads, to the tune of the horse's cloppety-clop, wake up the driver and order him right to the morgue. She's dead.

[14. NEW YORK'S DORMITORIES]

We are going to go statistical on you for a few paragraphs and tell you something about the size of greater New York and the parts of it which you'll probably never get to see—and you don't know how lucky you are, at that.