Juke-boxes, vending-devices, slot-machines and other Frank Costello monopolies are handled locally by Joseph Corbi, of the brothers, out on bail at this writing after being arrested by the F.B.I. as one of the chief operators of an international lottery ring.
Senator O’Conor is the sponsor of a new plan to bring in 36,000 Italian immigrants forthwith, mostly from Sicily. The Baltimore underworld hopes to route most of these to Maryland. But New York’s Republican Senator Ives has boosted the ante to 130,000. There are more Italian voters to appease in the Empire State.
The importation of Sicilians, legally and illegally, under the padrone system, is again growing. Huge numbers of aliens have been brought into the country and settled in certain key spots dominated by the Mafia, where they work off their fare and keep, usually by acting as dope-peddlers, numbers-runners or sluggers, or selling their daughters into white slavery.
Now let’s catch up with our mythical refugee from Washington, who comes to Baltimore for only one purpose—and that’s no good. You can be sure he finds what he wants in Baltimore. It’s got everything that’s no good.
The visitor’s first impression is of a dirty old town, with ancient, smoke-grimed structures and narrow, rambling streets, one-third of which are still illuminated by gas-lights—with Welsbach globes!
Baltimore is overrun by rubes. And the dress, manners and customs of most residents appear provincial. Washington is a city of hicks, too, but it is a yokel cosmopolis, with farmers drawn from all sections of the country, leavened with some civilized folk and foreigners.
Baltimore is the market for more chicken-farmers than any other of our cities. It is the place, therefore, where they come to raise the kind of hell a chicken-farmer would.
Washington women on the average seem smart and well-dressed compared to those in Baltimore. Yet Baltimore has some famous high-fashioned women’s shops which bring customers up from Washington. But the street types don’t patronize them, for they walk around in cheap house-dresses and shapeless coats of cloth, plush and phony fur.
This is the more surprising because Baltimoreans are the most finicky shoppers in the world. As we write this, the local department stores insert a pleading full-page ad in the papers:
“Gentle Reader.... Over 11,000 purchases daily are sent back to Baltimore stores. NO OTHER CITY EVEN COMES CLOSE to our percentage of returns.... Think how thousands of sales people lose productive time making over 3,000,000 sales a year that come back.”