The facts for this chapter were gathered shortly before the November election. The new county government was sworn in on December 5. We returned to Prince Georges in early February for a recheck and found little changed. The new sheriff, Carlton Beall, made ten raids since New Year’s Eve. But the strip-joints still ran, though not so blatantly. Instead of featuring the nudies in their ads, they gave them second billing and headlined the male M.C. instead. But the babes were just as bare.
The gambling was under wraps, too, but it still flourished. The big gamblers took the precaution of moving their books and their bank accounts back to the District, whence they had fled a decade ago.
The crime syndicate’s technique was to keep moving across county lines from Anne Arundel to Howard to Prince Georges in the area near Laurel, where the three join.
The militant Republicans fired the Chief of Police and appealed to Senator Kefauver for aid. At this writing, the Senate Crime Investigating Committee tossed the hot potato right back into Maryland. One of Kefauver’s four colleagues on the Committee is Senator Herbert O’Conor, Maryland Democrat, elected with the aid of the corrupt Democratic machine so soundly trounced last November.
The second act of the new Republican commission was to hire another Democrat to succeed the ousted Democratic Police Chief.
The Prince Georges border is a 15-minute drive from the heart of Washington. Depending on the road you take out of town, you soon reach Bladensburg or Colmar Manor. The latter is Rum Row, with several blocks of dirty drinking-joints where wind-broken broads solicit drinks, roll drunks and whore, often as a pastime when no dough is available.
If you go to Colmar Manor to spend money, Silver Spring in adjoining Montgomery County is the place where you can get money. This is no gag. The entire main street of Silver Spring and nearby Mount Rainier in Prince Georges is lined on both sides from the District border for more than a quarter of a mile with personal loan agencies. This is because D. C. law makes it almost impossible for small loan firms, which lend you money on your own signature or that of co-signers, to operate. It so limits the interest rate as to make the business unprofitable, fixing it at one percent a month. On the other hand, both Maryland and Virginia are much more liberal with the loan companies. The former allows three percent monthly and the latter two-and-a-half. The Washington wage-earner, working for the government or privately employed, does his borrowing across the borderline. If he should default, the loans are collectable in the District, though its courts are increasingly looking into the conditions under which the loan was originally granted and refusing to issue judgments where they believe the interest is usurious.
Most Washingtonians know Prince Georges County as a place to go to have fun. This is not because Maryland’s laws, or even their enforcement, are more liberal than the District’s. With few exceptions, they are not.
The legal liquor closing on weekdays is 2 A.M. in both. No hard liquor can be sold at all on Sundays. They cheat in Prince Georges.
Prince Georges County is lined with dumps that specialize in strip-teasers. There are also many fag-joints. Peeling isn’t against the law in Washington, either. It goes on in the 9th Street burlesque houses when they operate, and at Kavakos’, near the navy yard. But Washingtonians prefer not to patronize the nuders near home. Their feeling of delicacy is overcome when they drive five miles.