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Speaker 1: This story contains adult content and language. Listener discretion is advised.

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Speaker 2: You have to sever the tie between the underworld and

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Speaker 2: the overworld, and you need to expose the connection and

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Speaker 2: sever it, and so that was part of the strategy.

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Speaker 1: I'm Kate Winkler Dawson, a nonfiction author and journalism professor

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Speaker 1: in Austin, Texas. I'm also the co host of the

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Speaker 1: podcast Buried Bones on Exactly Right, and throughout my career,

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Speaker 1: research for my many audio and book projects has taken

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Speaker 1: me around the world. On Wicked Words, I sit down

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Speaker 1: with the people I've met along the way, amazing writers, journalists, filmmakers,

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Speaker 1: and podcasters who have investigated and reported on notorious true

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Speaker 1: crime cases. This is about the choices writers make, both

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Speaker 1: good and bad, and it's a deep dive into the

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Speaker 1: unpublished details behind their stories. New York and the early

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Speaker 1: nineteen hundreds was filled with people trying to make their

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Speaker 1: lives better, but for many, the rise of organized crime

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Speaker 1: kept them in constant fear. On the Lower East Side,

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Speaker 1: Jewish criminals from Eastern Europe formed crime syndicates. There were

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Speaker 1: gangs of horse poisoners, casino owners, thieves, and thugs, but

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Speaker 1: then a group of Jewish uptowners stepped in and created

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Speaker 1: a vice squad that worked in secrecy. Author Dan Slater

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Speaker 1: tells us the story from his book The Incorruptibles set

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Speaker 1: the scene for me for where we are and what

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Speaker 1: New York City is like during this time period.

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Speaker 2: Well, we are in the New York City of the

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Speaker 2: late eighteen hundreds, and it is a time when there's

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Speaker 2: a lot of immigration from many parts of the world.

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Speaker 2: By there's a lot of immigration from Eastern Europe. You

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Speaker 2: have a lot of Jewish refugees streaming in from Eastern Europe,

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Speaker 2: Russia and the surrounding areas, and they're fleeing a lot

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Speaker 2: of massacres. They're fleeing centuries of severe Prussian and they

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Speaker 2: are coming to New York, which in the eighteen eighties

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Speaker 2: and eighteen nineties is legally considered kind of wide open.

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Speaker 2: There are really very few laws or regulations that are

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Speaker 2: limiting vice and crime. And they are the marginalized folks,

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Speaker 2: and so they find themselves being drawn into the underworld.

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Speaker 2: And that's kind of where we are when the book

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Speaker 2: opens up.

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Speaker 1: I feel like when a vasta, when there's a wave

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Speaker 1: of immigrants who come into New York in that time

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Speaker 1: period and maybe a little bit later. Is that when

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Speaker 1: they sort of take over, Like when the Irish first arrived,

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Speaker 1: that's when we see the Irish mall. When the Italians

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Speaker 1: first arrive, is that when we see the mafias. I

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Speaker 1: don't know if that's right or not, but it just

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Speaker 1: seems like there's turf wars when a new group that

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Speaker 1: could dominate comes in.

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Speaker 2: I would say, yes, yes, and no, I don't think

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Speaker 2: America or New York for it. You know, New York

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Speaker 2: or the rest of the country had seen organized vice

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Speaker 2: in the way that the Jews brought it in. And

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Speaker 2: that's partly because they had been organizing vice at that

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Speaker 2: point for centuries, going back to the money lending days,

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Speaker 2: and they understood how to organize an underworld economy in

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Speaker 2: a way that other ethnicities ever had before. And so

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Speaker 2: that's why the subtitle of my book has the words

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Speaker 2: the Birth of the American Underworld, because part of the

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Speaker 2: argument that I'm making is that it really starts here

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Speaker 2: with these folks and not with the Italians, which was

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Speaker 2: the impression that I had grown up with. I mean,

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Speaker 2: I was I was born in the you know, the

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Speaker 2: late nineteen seventies, and I grew up with sort of

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Speaker 2: the Martin Scorsese stuff and all of that, and I

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Speaker 2: just figured organized crime, the mafia. Everybody knows that. And

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Speaker 2: I think part of my motivation to do this book

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Speaker 2: was the discovery that, hey, it actually began at an

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Speaker 2: earlier point with a whole other group of people, and

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Speaker 2: it was a story it seems like, was kind of lost.

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Speaker 1: When your characters come in, and you can tell me

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Speaker 1: if that's the you know, nineteen tens or twenties, when

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Speaker 1: they come in, what is the geography like for the

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Speaker 1: people who are running these different factions? Where are people located? Where?

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Speaker 1: You know New Yorkers? While I lived in New York

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Speaker 1: for ten years, what would I recognize now as these

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Speaker 1: locations of where each kind of where the groups were.

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Speaker 2: So you have the Eastern European Jewish refugees amassing mainly

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Speaker 2: in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, which by about

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Speaker 2: nineteen oh seven nineteen oh eight was the most densely

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Speaker 2: packed urban area in the world. It had surpassed Bombay,

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Speaker 2: India for that title, Bombay being the modern day Mumbai.

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Speaker 2: What did that mean in terms of numbers? There were

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Speaker 2: as many as sixteen hundred people living on a single

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Speaker 2: square block in the lower East Side. There was a

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Speaker 2: lot of people, there were a lot of density, There

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Speaker 2: weren't a lot of opportunities. It was a ghetto and

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Speaker 2: it was a place that was populated by the people

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Speaker 2: who had really invented the ghetto, you know. The ghetto

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Speaker 2: is a term that goes back to Venice. It originates

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Speaker 2: in the early fifteen hundreds when a bunch of Jewish

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Speaker 2: refugees again show up in Venice in like fifteen oh nine,

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Speaker 2: and the people of Venice are divided over what to

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Speaker 2: do with these folks. The religious people in Venice want

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Speaker 2: the Jews gone, and the more secular people in Venice,

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Speaker 2: the people in the government say, hey, wait, they can

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Speaker 2: be useful as money lenders and as garment manufacturers, and

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Speaker 2: so let's figure out a way to keep them. And

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Speaker 2: the solution they came up with was to take an

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Speaker 2: island called the ghetto. It was called the ghetto because

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Speaker 2: it had been a copper foundry, and ghetto is derived

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Speaker 2: from gaeta, which means to throw or to cast. And

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Speaker 2: they said, well, put them all in the ghetto and

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Speaker 2: during the day they can come on to the main

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Speaker 2: part of Venice to do their jobs and then at

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Speaker 2: night they'll go back. And that's where the word literally

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Speaker 2: comes from. And so these were people who had been

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Speaker 2: ghetto eyes marginalized for like I said, centuries. And so

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Speaker 2: by the time they get to New York in the

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Speaker 2: early nineteen in the late eighteen hundreds, early nineteen hundreds,

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Speaker 2: this is not a strange state of affairs for them

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Speaker 2: necessarily to be living in kind of the worst part

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Speaker 2: of town, to not have a lot of things available

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Speaker 2: to them that other people that other people.

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Speaker 1: Might So the Lower East Side was that considered a

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Speaker 1: melting pot or was it very clearly segregated based on

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Speaker 1: you know, the immigrants who were there were these sixteen

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Speaker 1: hundred people in one block, all you know, Jewish refugees

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Speaker 1: or from Eastern Europe.

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Speaker 2: Mainly, but there were lots of other folks mixed in.

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Speaker 2: But yes, in the main it was a Jewish ghetto.

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Speaker 1: So your main players and where that kind of action starts, Well,

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Speaker 1: are we through the origin story of how these people

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Speaker 1: ended up here or do we need to continue on

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Speaker 1: in the late eighteen hundreds early nineteen hundreds before we

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Speaker 1: get kind of to the meat of the story.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, So the main players in the book, I would

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Speaker 2: say two of them are products of the immag that

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Speaker 2: we're talking about, and one of them is a product

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Speaker 2: of immigration, but from a slightly earlier period. They are

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Speaker 2: all Jewish, Two of them are pretty young, one of

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Speaker 2: them is a little bit older.

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Speaker 1: Are these folks your main players people who in Eastern

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Speaker 1: Europe had played similar roles? I mean, were these always

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Speaker 1: sort of people who were involved in crime or is

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Speaker 1: this a new thing that's that they're adapting to in

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Speaker 1: New York.

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Speaker 2: The individuals themselves had not been involved in crime in

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Speaker 2: Eastern Europe, but their ancestors definitely had been.

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Speaker 1: So tell me where we start here with this group.

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Speaker 1: Do we talk about him as a group or do

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Speaker 1: you want to talk about them as individual people.

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Speaker 2: There are two characters who cross paths with each other,

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Speaker 2: and then there's a third character who is kind of

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Speaker 2: separate from that. We have a crime fighter who's a

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Speaker 2: young man who wants to reform the Lower east Side.

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Speaker 2: He is the son of Eastern European refugees born in

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Speaker 2: the Lower east Side, and he is the child of reformers.

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Speaker 2: He has a father who's a pretty well known reformer

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Speaker 2: who is always trying to improve the Neighborhood improve Society,

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Speaker 2: trying to get more labor rights for the Jews in

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Speaker 2: the Lower east Side, trying to eliminate the prostitution in

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Speaker 2: the Lower east Side. So this figure was sort of

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Speaker 2: raised in that environment. There's a young woman who is

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Speaker 2: herself a refugee. She comes over as a child, and

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Speaker 2: we see her get lured into the underworld and then

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Speaker 2: later recruited over to the cause of attempting to eliminate

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Speaker 2: the underworld. And then third, we have a figure who

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Speaker 2: is one of the main figures in the book who

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Speaker 2: is sort of more known to history. His name is

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Speaker 2: is Arnold Rothstein, and some people will know that name immediately.

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Speaker 2: Many of these days, I'm finding do not know his

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Speaker 2: name anymore. But if you've ever read The Great Gatsby

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Speaker 2: by F. Scott Fitzgerald, you have gotten a little bit

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Speaker 2: of a taste of Arnold Rosstein, because there is a

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Speaker 2: figure in Gatsby who is based directly on Rostein, and

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Speaker 2: that's the character in the novel who is supposed to

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Speaker 2: have sort of trained Gatsby and given him his initial opportunities.

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Speaker 2: One of the best places to really start the stories

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Speaker 2: in the summer of nineteen twelve. That's not when the

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Speaker 2: book itself begins, but it's when the story really starts

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Speaker 2: to pick up steam. And by the summer of nineteen twelve,

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Speaker 2: Jewish crime had been a running problem for many years.

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Speaker 2: It had been a source of embarrassment to some people

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Speaker 2: on the Lower east Side, who fashioned themselves reformers, but

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Speaker 2: it had also been a source of embarrassment to the

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Speaker 2: other group of Jewish people who were living in Manhattan

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Speaker 2: at the time, and those were the German Jews who

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Speaker 2: were living uptown, largely in the Upper east Side, in

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Speaker 2: big mansions. And these were folks who had come to

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Speaker 2: America a generation chou before the Russians, and they had

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Speaker 2: famously done very well. Here. We know many of their

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Speaker 2: names because those names still adorn important institutions Lehmann, Solomon,

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Speaker 2: the Guggenheims, etc. And they're looking downtown and right at

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Speaker 2: the moment when they figure, Okay, we've kind of assimilated,

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Speaker 2: we've become successful beyond our wildness. Dreams were on the

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Speaker 2: verge of being accepted by the Protestants, the blue Bloods,

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Speaker 2: the Yankees, and now here come these co religionous of

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Speaker 2: ours who we really don't know, but that are connected

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Speaker 2: to us religion, and they're from a totally different place.

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Speaker 2: They're from this kind of backwater. They lack education, they

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Speaker 2: lack language abilities, and they're streaming into the ghetto and

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Speaker 2: they're making the ghetto what the ghetto is known for,

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Speaker 2: which is tough living and a lot of crime. And

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Speaker 2: so these uptowners wanted to eliminate the underworld as well,

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Speaker 2: and they never really knew how to do it. The

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Speaker 2: first decade or so of the nineteen hundreds, they made attempts.

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Speaker 2: Those attempts would often blow back in their face. And

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Speaker 2: so here comes the summer of nineteen twelve, and it's

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Speaker 2: going to really push them to do something beyond what

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Speaker 2: they had tried before. And the reason was is that

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Speaker 2: that summer there was a gambler who was murdered outside

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Speaker 2: of hotel in Times Square. And the murder, it was

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Speaker 2: a murder of a gambler, It was a murder of

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Speaker 2: a Jewish gambler, and the murder generated a lot of

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Speaker 2: publicity for various reasons. One of the reasons was that

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Speaker 2: they're was a cop who allegedly had ordered the murder.

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Speaker 2: And so this was a murder that you know, the

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Speaker 2: folks involved in the murder might have thought that this

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Speaker 2: is not going to get any attention. It's just one

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Speaker 2: of many murders that happens every day in the city.

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Speaker 2: But it ended up being on front pages for the

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Speaker 2: next three years because of its interesting circumstances. And so

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Speaker 2: these uptowners are now saying, we have to do something.

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Speaker 2: And that's when they say, all right, we have found

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Speaker 2: this young man from the Lower east Side who raised

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Speaker 2: on the Lower east Side, raised among the underworld. His

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Speaker 2: father was a reformer who had tried himself to do

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Speaker 2: various things to eliminate the underworld. This is a young

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Speaker 2: guy who's very motivated. We need to tap him and

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Speaker 2: get in touch with him, and they recruit him to

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Speaker 2: lead what becomes eventually a war on the underworlds. So

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Speaker 2: to put it in sort of pop culture terms that

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Speaker 2: people may be more familiar with, it's like a little

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Speaker 2: bit like the elliot Ness story The Untouchables. I didn't

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Speaker 2: call the book The Incorruptibles because it sounds similar to

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Speaker 2: The Untouchables. I called it The Incorruptibles because this young

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Speaker 2: man is eventually moved into the NYPD and they give

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Speaker 2: him his own squad of cops, and this squad becomes

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Speaker 2: known as the Incorruptibles. So that's where the title of

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Speaker 2: the book comes from, and that's really how my story begins.

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Speaker 1: Before we get to the story, let's go back. What

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Speaker 1: was the motivation for Jewish people from Germany to come

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Speaker 1: to the United States. It must have been business opportunities

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Speaker 1: or or what was it.

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Speaker 2: It was a it was a number of things. The

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Speaker 2: German Jews had not experienced oppression like the Eastern Europeans had,

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Speaker 2: but it was still it was. That was not to

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Speaker 2: say that life was good in any any Semitism free

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Speaker 2: in Germany. It was. It was bad. But there had

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Speaker 2: been a Jewish enlightenment in the late seventeen hundreds there

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Speaker 2: in Germany, and life had vastly improved over the next

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Speaker 2: thirty or forty years, but it was there was still there,

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Speaker 2: you know, still oppression. And then there's all this opportunity

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Speaker 2: that's rumored to exist in the US. And there were

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Speaker 2: a lot of Germans who were coming to the States

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Speaker 2: and they were writing these travel guides, publishing these books

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Speaker 2: that would get published back in Germany. So people in

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Speaker 2: Germany were reading these books about all the opportunity that

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Speaker 2: you know existed, and so that was partly responsible for

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Speaker 2: the German Jewish immigration, and they mainly came over in

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Speaker 2: the eighteen forties. There were about forty thousand of them

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Speaker 2: that arrived in the eighteen forties, and by the sixties, seventies,

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Speaker 2: and eighties many of them had moved to Wall Street

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Speaker 2: and were very successful there.

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Speaker 1: When we talk about Jewish crime, what does that mean?

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Speaker 1: Does that mean that the people who are causing crime around,

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Speaker 1: you know, across the city or mainly Lower East Side

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Speaker 1: come from the Jewish people who came from Eastern Europe

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Speaker 1: and they're the origin or they're you know, some of

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Speaker 1: the biggest movers in the crime world. Or is it

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Speaker 1: literally Jewish on Jewish crime.

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Speaker 2: It's a lot of Jewish on Jewish crime. Very interesting

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Speaker 2: and disturbing. Example of that were the Yiddish horse poisoners.

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Speaker 2: This was a gang that made their money by extorting

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Speaker 2: business owners in the neighborhood who relied on horses to

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Speaker 2: get their products around. Some of the most vulnerable were

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Speaker 2: people who sold the perishable item. If you sold ice

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Speaker 2: cream or if you sold produce, you know, you needed

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Speaker 2: your horses ready to get that product to the customer

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Speaker 2: in a timely fashion. And so the Yiddish horse poisoners

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Speaker 2: would go around extorting these, you know, business owners, if

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Speaker 2: you don't pay us a certain amount of money every

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Speaker 2: month to poison your horses, and these guys were terrifying,

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Speaker 2: and if you didn't pay up, they came through. They

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Speaker 2: did what they said that they were going to do.

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Speaker 2: Most of the sex work on the Lower East Side,

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Speaker 2: which there was a ton of, that was mainly all

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Speaker 2: within the community. So the crazy thing about sex work

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Speaker 2: within the Jewish community was that it was highly organized.

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Speaker 2: And that's an important thing to understand because it affects

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Speaker 2: the rest of the story. There was an actual corporation

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Speaker 2: of pimps. They had filed in corporation papers and a

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Speaker 2: corporate constitution in Albany under New York state law. And

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Speaker 2: they would gather at a cafe at ninety two Second

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Speaker 2: Avenue to do business with each other, to network, to

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Speaker 2: pull their money to pay off the cops every month.

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Speaker 2: And they would also be involved in the recruiting of

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Speaker 2: sex workers, which happened all over the city. You'd go

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Speaker 2: to restaurants look for waitresses, you'd go up to the

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Speaker 2: departments tours like Macy's and look for the people who

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Speaker 2: worked as the shop girls. So yeah, there was a

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Speaker 2: lot of sex work on the Lower east Side. It

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Speaker 2: was very organized and like I said, it catered to

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Speaker 2: both Lower East Siders themselves and also even to people

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Speaker 2: who visited city.

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Speaker 1: I don't know if you've ever read one of these,

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Speaker 1: but for a book that I did that was set

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Speaker 1: in New York in the eighteen seventies, they had published

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Speaker 1: these small books that men could buy for I don't

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Speaker 1: know how much, a few books, which would have been

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Speaker 1: a lot of money then. And it was literally like

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Speaker 1: a menu of where to go, what brothels to go.

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Speaker 2: The passwords that you need to get into them, yes.

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Speaker 1: And recommendations in certain houses. And it varied from block

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Speaker 1: to block. Especially, you know, my area was the Irving

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Speaker 1: Plaza Irving Place area, and so it was like block

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Speaker 1: to block you could have a five star place or

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Speaker 1: it would be a one star.

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Speaker 2: I think the important thing to know about well about

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Speaker 2: sex work in general, but particularly sex work as it

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Speaker 2: pertains to the Lower East Side, was that during this

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Speaker 2: time period, prior to the you know, the labor laws

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Speaker 2: that we have now and take for granted now, there

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Speaker 2: were no labor protections at all. So the garbage industry

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Speaker 2: was based in the Lower East Side. It was a

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Speaker 2: Jewish industry. There were Italian women who worked in it.

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Speaker 2: There were women from other ethnicities who worked in it,

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Speaker 2: but by and large it was a Jewish thing. There

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Speaker 2: were these factories, there were these sweatshops all over the

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Speaker 2: Lower east Side, and there was no minimum wage, there

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Speaker 2: was no cap on hours worked, there were no safety regulations,

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Speaker 2: there was nothing. So for a lot of these young

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Speaker 2: women who were coming in, you know, as the immigrants,

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Speaker 2: the decision was kind of stark. It was like, we

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Speaker 2: can work in these factories and here's what that looks like,

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Speaker 2: or there's sex work.

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Speaker 1: Was there a hierarchy with the different sort of I

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Speaker 1: don't know if you call them families or groups or

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Speaker 1: what you would say. I'm so used to families because

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Speaker 1: of course the Godfather and stuff. Was there a hierarchy?

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Speaker 2: There weren't Jewish organized crime families per se. Yeah, you

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Speaker 2: didn't see that tradition, the sort of the kind of

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Speaker 2: handed down the way we associated with the Italians, because

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Speaker 2: you have a lot of families that were divided. You know,

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Speaker 2: internally you'd have sort of the black sheep off doing

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Speaker 2: his or earth thing. But then you had folks who

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Speaker 2: might be reformers as well.

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Speaker 1: Well, let's start with the story now. You had said that,

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Speaker 1: you know, was it the summer of nineteen twelve that

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Speaker 1: a gangster was murdered in Times Square? And that's kind

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Speaker 1: of what the ball rolling with the people who came

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Speaker 1: from Germany, who said, we've got to get a hold

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Speaker 1: of this because they're giving us a bad name or

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Speaker 1: giving us too much attention or whatever.

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Speaker 2: And I think the other is because I think it's

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Speaker 2: important to establish the motivations of why did these wealthy

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Speaker 2: uptowners feel the need to intervene. It was definitely bad name.

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Speaker 2: They felt they'd worked for decades to be accepted and

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Speaker 2: to assimilate, and they felt that their chances of being

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Speaker 2: accepted were now diminished. But these folks also really believed,

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Speaker 2: I think in the Promise of America. They believed in

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Speaker 2: open borders. It had been the thing that benefited then

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Speaker 2: and they didn't want to see that go away. Meanwhile,

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Speaker 2: there was this big anti immigration movement that had begun

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Speaker 2: in the eighteen nineties and by nineteen twelve was beginning

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Speaker 2: to gain some steam, and the anti immigration folks they

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Speaker 2: wanted to shut down the borders. They wanted to stop

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Speaker 2: immigration entirely. They wanted eugenics to play a role in

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Speaker 2: the siding who could have a baby, all that stuff.

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Speaker 2: And so the German Jews defined themselves partly in opposition

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Speaker 2: to this anti immigration movement. And that was another reason

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Speaker 2: why they wanted to eliminate the Jewish onward of the

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Speaker 2: Lower East Side, because they wanted to take away as

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Speaker 2: much fodder as they could, you know, as much of

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Speaker 2: the you know, the argument that the anti immigration folks

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Speaker 2: were using.

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Speaker 1: So I've written about Thomas Nast before. It was the

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Speaker 1: famous cartoonist who just lampooned people, including Boss Tweet with

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Speaker 1: Tammany Hall, with these cartoons oftentimes targeting immigrants, specifically Irish immigrants,

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Speaker 1: and they're sort of these caricatures of Irish people just

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Speaker 1: sort of slovenly and ruining. He was a nativist, clearly

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Speaker 1: and ruining New York City. So how were the Jewish gangsters,

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Speaker 1: I guess, or you know, the folks in the Lower

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Speaker 1: East Side versus the German Jewish folks, how were they

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Speaker 1: to picked it in the media or how how did

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Speaker 1: they fit into the media.

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Speaker 2: It was all of that. It was the same kind

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Speaker 2: of things. Jews are all gamblers. That's why they that's

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Speaker 2: why they like the stock market, you know, so much,

379
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Speaker 2: because they're gamblers. They're they're you know, inherently a moral

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Speaker 2: people who we should not consider part of the Protestant,

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Speaker 2: lily white, blue blood future that we see for the US.

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Speaker 2: And information about Jewish crime was wonderful for them. It

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Speaker 2: was always saleable. It was just great stuff. And so

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Speaker 2: you can kind of feel what those German Jews might

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Speaker 2: have felt like, we got to get rid of this. Meanwhile,

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Speaker 2: it was it was a tough proposition because the German

387
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Speaker 2: Jews were trying to have obviously the best relationship that

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Speaker 2: they could with the co religionist downtown, despite the fact

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Speaker 2: they come from different backgrounds, like, these are our people.

390
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Speaker 2: We want to elevate these people. And so in addition

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Speaker 2: to trying to get rid of the underworld, the German

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00:24:08,040 --> 00:24:13,359
Speaker 2: Jews provided a ton of philanthropy. They built free hospitals,

393
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Speaker 2: free education. They had pasteurized milk depots where women could

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Speaker 2: go get pasteurized milk for free, which then eliminated the

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Speaker 2: typhoid problem. I mean, they had free matza giveaways on passover,

396
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Speaker 2: free shoes in the winter time, there were a number

397
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Speaker 2: of things they were doing that were much less controversial,

398
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Speaker 2: but when it comes to eliminating crime, it's obviously more

399
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Speaker 2: controversial because you're going to get kickback from folks who say,

400
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Speaker 2: why are you coming down here and calling to sell criminals?

401
00:24:45,640 --> 00:24:48,199
Speaker 2: Why are you painting us with the same brush that

402
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Speaker 2: all the anti Semites want. So it was the crime

403
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Speaker 2: fight begins secretively a little bit for that reason, and

404
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Speaker 2: then it becomes eventually more of a public thing.

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Speaker 1: I'm not sure where we are local politics in nineteen twelve,

406
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Speaker 1: what we're talking about, but I know that Tammany you know,

407
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Speaker 1: the Democrats whilst tweet they pandered to the immigrants which

408
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Speaker 1: were voting in mass for them, because they were saying,

409
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Speaker 1: we're here for you. Was that the situation or was

410
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Speaker 1: there anybody on the side of Jewish immigrants, either the

411
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Speaker 1: wealthy or the not wealthy.

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Speaker 2: Yes, So, when the German Jews are trying to make

413
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Speaker 2: their moves and trying to elevate the downtowners and massage

414
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Speaker 2: the relationship as much as they can, one of the

415
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Speaker 2: competitors to them was Tammany Hall. Because Tammany Hall was

416
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Speaker 2: trying to do a similar thing. But in a different way.

417
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Speaker 2: They were also trying to cater to the immigrant masses

418
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Speaker 2: because their votes were valuable, and one of the ways

419
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Speaker 2: you could cater to them is by making sure they

420
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Speaker 2: got out of prison when they committed a crime. I mean,

421
00:25:53,960 --> 00:25:57,680
Speaker 2: that's a bit of a simplification, but not really. And

422
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Speaker 2: so that was another hurdle that the reformers needed needed

423
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Speaker 2: to get over.

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Speaker 1: It's so interesting because, you know, Boss Tweed was perhaps

425
00:26:07,160 --> 00:26:10,919
Speaker 1: the most corrupted politician of that time period, but he

426
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Speaker 1: started so many social programs specifically to get votes, you know,

427
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Speaker 1: and it's so odd to think of that dynamic, somebody

428
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Speaker 1: who could be so corrupt, But at the same time

429
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Speaker 1: his corruption is beneficial to some of the really disenfranchised

430
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Speaker 1: people in New York in that time period.

431
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Speaker 2: And Tammany also winds up supporting the movement for labor

432
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Speaker 2: laws that becomes sort of the kernel of the modern

433
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Speaker 2: day Democratic Party. Not that there's not a ton of

434
00:26:37,720 --> 00:26:40,560
Speaker 2: corruption in both parties, but it is interesting to think

435
00:26:40,600 --> 00:26:44,520
Speaker 2: that our modern Democratic party really does start with Tammany Hall.

436
00:26:45,280 --> 00:26:48,080
Speaker 1: So where do we start now, So we've got the

437
00:26:48,280 --> 00:26:52,879
Speaker 1: German Jewish folks kind of you know, trying to reform,

438
00:26:53,400 --> 00:26:56,640
Speaker 1: So tell me more about who they recruit, who who

439
00:26:56,680 --> 00:26:58,320
Speaker 1: is the person that they bring in that they try

440
00:26:58,359 --> 00:27:01,360
Speaker 1: that are trying to change. How can you do that

441
00:27:01,880 --> 00:27:04,800
Speaker 1: when it's obviously such a systemic issue where they live

442
00:27:04,960 --> 00:27:06,919
Speaker 1: and how they're treated in general in the way that

443
00:27:06,920 --> 00:27:09,240
Speaker 1: they're reacting as refugees yees.

444
00:27:09,320 --> 00:27:12,960
Speaker 2: So the person that they bring in is a young

445
00:27:13,040 --> 00:27:16,679
Speaker 2: man named Abe Schoenfeld. I was talking about him a

446
00:27:16,680 --> 00:27:20,560
Speaker 2: bit earlier. He's the son of a reformer. He is

447
00:27:20,800 --> 00:27:25,679
Speaker 2: embarrassed and ashamed by the crime in his neighborhood among

448
00:27:25,720 --> 00:27:29,440
Speaker 2: his people. He's also, by the young age of twenty one,

449
00:27:29,920 --> 00:27:33,080
Speaker 2: he's already lost many of his friends to the underworld

450
00:27:33,160 --> 00:27:39,520
Speaker 2: into crime, and he is really motivated to do essentially

451
00:27:39,600 --> 00:27:42,399
Speaker 2: what the German Jews uptown also want to do, but

452
00:27:42,600 --> 00:27:46,560
Speaker 2: his reasons are maybe a little bit more personal, and

453
00:27:47,080 --> 00:27:50,480
Speaker 2: he's growing up in a really interesting time. He's born

454
00:27:50,520 --> 00:27:55,320
Speaker 2: in eighteen ninety one, and by the early nineteen hundreds,

455
00:27:55,400 --> 00:27:58,600
Speaker 2: nineteen oh five, oh six, oh seven, eight, those years,

456
00:27:58,880 --> 00:28:03,040
Speaker 2: the reformers uptown, the wealthy people who want to eliminate

457
00:28:03,080 --> 00:28:06,440
Speaker 2: the underworld, want to reform the criminal underworld. They are

458
00:28:06,680 --> 00:28:11,240
Speaker 2: hiring people like a young folks who are from the ghetto,

459
00:28:11,600 --> 00:28:16,760
Speaker 2: to produce research about the underworld, to write pamphlets and

460
00:28:17,040 --> 00:28:22,680
Speaker 2: articles and research reports about sex work, about the gambling problem,

461
00:28:22,960 --> 00:28:27,440
Speaker 2: about the horse poisoners, and all of these things. So

462
00:28:27,680 --> 00:28:32,239
Speaker 2: Abe drops out of high school as a freshman. He

463
00:28:32,320 --> 00:28:36,480
Speaker 2: was a freshman at Stuyvesant High and interestingly, the reason

464
00:28:36,520 --> 00:28:38,400
Speaker 2: that he dropped out is not because he was like

465
00:28:38,440 --> 00:28:41,320
Speaker 2: a bad student. He was actually one of the best students.

466
00:28:41,960 --> 00:28:44,880
Speaker 2: There was an interesting around nineteen oh six that was

467
00:28:44,920 --> 00:28:49,680
Speaker 2: the Eastern European Jewish immigration peaked the Principles that the

468
00:28:49,680 --> 00:28:52,320
Speaker 2: schools of Manhattan got together and said, we have to

469
00:28:52,360 --> 00:28:56,320
Speaker 2: cut down our ranks because we have too many kids.

470
00:28:56,840 --> 00:28:59,200
Speaker 2: So one of the solutions they came up with was

471
00:28:59,360 --> 00:29:03,400
Speaker 2: just to advise their top students to leave, basically saying

472
00:29:03,400 --> 00:29:05,760
Speaker 2: that if you stay, we just don't think you're going

473
00:29:05,840 --> 00:29:09,640
Speaker 2: to learn much because the pace of learning is going

474
00:29:09,680 --> 00:29:11,640
Speaker 2: to be slowed down so much. So Abe was one

475
00:29:11,680 --> 00:29:15,000
Speaker 2: of those people who was called in and they said, look,

476
00:29:15,000 --> 00:29:17,840
Speaker 2: if you have a career in mind, something you want

477
00:29:17,920 --> 00:29:20,400
Speaker 2: to go pursue, this would be a fine time to

478
00:29:20,440 --> 00:29:22,720
Speaker 2: go and do it. And he did. He had a

479
00:29:22,840 --> 00:29:27,280
Speaker 2: dad who was a reformer, and he wanted to follow

480
00:29:27,440 --> 00:29:31,160
Speaker 2: in that path and see if his sort of generation

481
00:29:31,960 --> 00:29:35,120
Speaker 2: could maybe have more success than his father's generation had.

482
00:29:35,600 --> 00:29:38,920
Speaker 2: So he spends you know, he's fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen

483
00:29:38,960 --> 00:29:42,680
Speaker 2: years old and he's going around the Lower East Side.

484
00:29:42,760 --> 00:29:47,959
Speaker 2: He's interviewing sex workers, he's producing reports, he's getting paid

485
00:29:48,080 --> 00:29:52,760
Speaker 2: by the uptowners. Is almost like a freelance reporter type.

486
00:29:53,200 --> 00:29:55,680
Speaker 2: And then the summer of nineteen twelve comes along and

487
00:29:55,680 --> 00:29:57,760
Speaker 2: by now Abe is twenty one years old and he's

488
00:29:57,760 --> 00:30:03,280
Speaker 2: already jaded about this whole reform project because he's been

489
00:30:03,320 --> 00:30:06,760
Speaker 2: producing all this writing and research, but it hasn't achieved anything.

490
00:30:07,240 --> 00:30:09,840
Speaker 2: And he sees how it's often used in the end,

491
00:30:09,880 --> 00:30:13,640
Speaker 2: which is to get a headline in a newspaper or

492
00:30:13,680 --> 00:30:17,160
Speaker 2: to elect a certain politician. But they call him in

493
00:30:17,560 --> 00:30:21,320
Speaker 2: after the murder of the gambler in the summer of

494
00:30:21,400 --> 00:30:24,960
Speaker 2: nineteen twelve, they call a Bin and they say, look,

495
00:30:25,000 --> 00:30:28,800
Speaker 2: we want to get more aggressive. Do you think you

496
00:30:28,840 --> 00:30:34,080
Speaker 2: can help? And so that's when Abe's story really begins,

497
00:30:34,400 --> 00:30:39,200
Speaker 2: and they want him to start with the gamblers. They say, okay,

498
00:30:39,240 --> 00:30:44,360
Speaker 2: how can we make effective inroads to eliminate the gambling problem?

499
00:30:44,360 --> 00:30:47,680
Speaker 2: Because they were like casinos all over the city, but

500
00:30:47,760 --> 00:30:50,520
Speaker 2: particularly Lower East Side, and he said, well, you need

501
00:30:50,560 --> 00:30:52,959
Speaker 2: to find the name of the cop and the NYPD

502
00:30:53,120 --> 00:30:56,520
Speaker 2: who takes the monthly payments from the gamblers. In the

503
00:30:56,560 --> 00:31:00,760
Speaker 2: same way that the pimps had their own sort of corporation,

504
00:31:01,320 --> 00:31:05,440
Speaker 2: their own fraternity, the guys in the gambling arena also

505
00:31:05,800 --> 00:31:08,480
Speaker 2: had their own association. And so I said, well, you

506
00:31:08,520 --> 00:31:10,320
Speaker 2: need to find the name of the cop who gets

507
00:31:10,640 --> 00:31:13,400
Speaker 2: the payment. And they said, okay, can you do that?

508
00:31:13,720 --> 00:31:17,960
Speaker 2: And over the next few months he sort of against

509
00:31:17,960 --> 00:31:22,480
Speaker 2: the odds, has success with that. And when he has

510
00:31:22,520 --> 00:31:26,640
Speaker 2: success with that, the Mayor of New York, who is

511
00:31:26,720 --> 00:31:30,360
Speaker 2: a really fascinating figure, he sees what they're doing, what

512
00:31:30,400 --> 00:31:33,320
Speaker 2: the German Jews have done with this young kid, and

513
00:31:33,360 --> 00:31:35,840
Speaker 2: they say, hey, what if we install this kid in

514
00:31:35,880 --> 00:31:39,520
Speaker 2: the NYPD, will let him choose the cops that he

515
00:31:39,640 --> 00:31:42,680
Speaker 2: wants to work with, because he knows who's corrupted, who

516
00:31:42,680 --> 00:31:45,600
Speaker 2: takes money, and who doesn't. They can go around the

517
00:31:45,640 --> 00:31:50,480
Speaker 2: neighborhood and maybe eventually around around the city and shut down,

518
00:31:51,080 --> 00:31:54,920
Speaker 2: you know, whatever he thinks he is shutting down. And

519
00:31:55,000 --> 00:31:58,680
Speaker 2: it's just an enormous amount of power and responsibility to

520
00:31:58,720 --> 00:32:02,240
Speaker 2: put into the hands of any but particularly a twenty

521
00:32:02,320 --> 00:32:04,960
Speaker 2: one year old. So that was like the kernel of

522
00:32:05,000 --> 00:32:09,480
Speaker 2: the story. That was what I initially discovered in research

523
00:32:09,640 --> 00:32:15,200
Speaker 2: back in about twenty seventeen, twenty eighteen, and it was

524
00:32:15,320 --> 00:32:19,200
Speaker 2: just a really compelling footnote to start with. I thought,

525
00:32:19,520 --> 00:32:23,200
Speaker 2: who was this guy? What did he actually do? And

526
00:32:23,640 --> 00:32:26,800
Speaker 2: that's what set me on the path to writing the book.

527
00:32:27,800 --> 00:32:31,960
Speaker 1: This initially even must have been very, very dangerous though

528
00:32:32,560 --> 00:32:35,960
Speaker 1: for Abe, because he's from that neighborhood. He's going around

529
00:32:36,000 --> 00:32:38,320
Speaker 1: all of a sudden asking questions when he was once

530
00:32:38,360 --> 00:32:41,280
Speaker 1: in school and now he's really you know, asking I'm

531
00:32:41,280 --> 00:32:43,240
Speaker 1: assuming not dumb enough to drop things down right in

532
00:32:43,240 --> 00:32:46,120
Speaker 1: front of people. But then you're moving forward and he's

533
00:32:46,160 --> 00:32:48,280
Speaker 1: trying to figure out, you know, who the cop is,

534
00:32:48,520 --> 00:32:52,680
Speaker 1: and then he'll be installed there. He's straddling to worlds,

535
00:32:53,080 --> 00:32:55,280
Speaker 1: both of which could have been dangerous on either side.

536
00:32:55,360 --> 00:32:57,760
Speaker 1: You know, having money can make you dangerous. Maybe he

537
00:32:57,840 --> 00:33:00,960
Speaker 1: knew too much, so I assume I think a lot

538
00:33:00,960 --> 00:33:02,760
Speaker 1: of well not a lot of your sources, but I

539
00:33:02,800 --> 00:33:05,240
Speaker 1: know one of your sources was Abe. Is that right?

540
00:33:05,360 --> 00:33:06,360
Speaker 1: He did some writing on this.

541
00:33:07,320 --> 00:33:13,320
Speaker 2: Yeah. Abe had written an unpublished memoir that he started

542
00:33:13,720 --> 00:33:17,880
Speaker 2: in the late nineteen twenties, and he worked on an

543
00:33:17,880 --> 00:33:20,440
Speaker 2: audit off for the next fifty years. And when he

544
00:33:20,600 --> 00:33:25,040
Speaker 2: died in nineteen seventy seven, he had about a dozen

545
00:33:25,200 --> 00:33:29,520
Speaker 2: different drafts of this memoir that were in his papers,

546
00:33:30,320 --> 00:33:34,600
Speaker 2: and the papers were all inherited by a niece of his,

547
00:33:35,120 --> 00:33:38,720
Speaker 2: actually a grand niece who had kind of been like

548
00:33:38,760 --> 00:33:40,720
Speaker 2: a daughter to him because he never had a kid

549
00:33:40,760 --> 00:33:44,800
Speaker 2: of his own. So the grand niece inherited these papers,

550
00:33:44,840 --> 00:33:49,280
Speaker 2: and forty years later, when her husband wanted the space

551
00:33:49,320 --> 00:33:52,400
Speaker 2: in their home back, the niece donates the papers to

552
00:33:52,520 --> 00:33:56,200
Speaker 2: a research institution in New York, and that's how I

553
00:33:56,280 --> 00:34:00,320
Speaker 2: was able to see them. But that memoir was a

554
00:34:00,440 --> 00:34:03,840
Speaker 2: huge source source of information. One of the interesting things

555
00:34:03,840 --> 00:34:07,600
Speaker 2: about the memoir was that it was not his entire

556
00:34:07,720 --> 00:34:10,640
Speaker 2: life that he was trying to cover, even though he

557
00:34:10,760 --> 00:34:14,719
Speaker 2: did amazing things in the thirties, forties, fifties and sixties

558
00:34:14,719 --> 00:34:16,760
Speaker 2: as well, he moved on to a whole new field.

559
00:34:17,360 --> 00:34:20,080
Speaker 2: But when he looked back on his life, he thought

560
00:34:20,080 --> 00:34:23,000
Speaker 2: the most interesting and unique thing was this crime fight

561
00:34:23,080 --> 00:34:25,360
Speaker 2: that I was involved in for several years on the

562
00:34:25,360 --> 00:34:28,480
Speaker 2: Lower East Side. So the memoir was a couple hundred

563
00:34:28,520 --> 00:34:31,839
Speaker 2: pages long, and it was all about this one five

564
00:34:31,920 --> 00:34:33,680
Speaker 2: to ten year span of time.

565
00:34:34,200 --> 00:34:37,239
Speaker 1: So he at age twenty one, is then, you know,

566
00:34:37,320 --> 00:34:40,360
Speaker 1: recruited essentially to be in the NYPD and create his

567
00:34:40,440 --> 00:34:43,680
Speaker 1: own squad. Tell me about what happens moving forward. Where

568
00:34:43,680 --> 00:34:47,600
Speaker 1: does the twenty one year old start with reforming you know,

569
00:34:47,800 --> 00:34:51,120
Speaker 1: the Jewish gangsters in the Lower east Side to please

570
00:34:51,200 --> 00:34:54,280
Speaker 1: the you know, Upper West Side. I presumed Jewish folks

571
00:34:54,280 --> 00:34:58,360
Speaker 1: from Germany and the mayor who has now hired him.

572
00:34:58,760 --> 00:35:02,680
Speaker 2: It's super person for him. He's from the neighborhood. He's

573
00:35:02,800 --> 00:35:07,719
Speaker 2: grown up just surrounded by all of this stuff, so

574
00:35:07,840 --> 00:35:12,360
Speaker 2: he knows, he knows everything about He's been a researcher

575
00:35:12,440 --> 00:35:15,680
Speaker 2: for sort of like an underworld researcher for several years.

576
00:35:16,160 --> 00:35:19,279
Speaker 2: He really knows where all the bodies are buried, so

577
00:35:19,440 --> 00:35:23,640
Speaker 2: to speak. And he's been kind of dreaming for years

578
00:35:24,040 --> 00:35:28,600
Speaker 2: about this kind of opportunity and what he might do.

579
00:35:28,680 --> 00:35:31,400
Speaker 2: He's been talking about it with his dad for years.

580
00:35:32,000 --> 00:35:37,160
Speaker 2: So he does come in surprisingly with the ideas and

581
00:35:37,200 --> 00:35:41,320
Speaker 2: with an agenda for how they need to go about

582
00:35:41,360 --> 00:35:45,080
Speaker 2: wiping out the Jewish underworld. And so the way that

583
00:35:45,120 --> 00:35:49,240
Speaker 2: it happens is they go kind of phase by phase.

584
00:35:49,440 --> 00:35:54,000
Speaker 2: So it starts with gamblers and the sex work industry,

585
00:35:54,719 --> 00:35:59,040
Speaker 2: moves on to the Yiddish horse poisoners and the gangsters.

586
00:35:59,400 --> 00:36:02,920
Speaker 2: The Jewish gangsters were working actually for the garment industry

587
00:36:02,960 --> 00:36:07,279
Speaker 2: and for the garment unions specifically because there was this,

588
00:36:07,880 --> 00:36:10,879
Speaker 2: like I said, there weren't any labor laws, and so

589
00:36:11,000 --> 00:36:14,440
Speaker 2: the Jewish unions on the Lower East Side became more

590
00:36:14,480 --> 00:36:18,640
Speaker 2: and more radical and aggressive over the years as they're

591
00:36:18,680 --> 00:36:23,359
Speaker 2: responding to all this injustice in the labor field, and

592
00:36:23,400 --> 00:36:27,640
Speaker 2: they had finally resorted to hiring the gangs to go

593
00:36:27,800 --> 00:36:33,399
Speaker 2: and attack the manufacturers and the factories. So when there

594
00:36:33,480 --> 00:36:36,400
Speaker 2: was a strike on when there was a labor strike on,

595
00:36:37,080 --> 00:36:39,160
Speaker 2: of course you have manufacturers that are going to go

596
00:36:39,239 --> 00:36:42,759
Speaker 2: and hire scout workers to get around the strike. And

597
00:36:42,960 --> 00:36:45,480
Speaker 2: in the past the unions hadn't had any way to

598
00:36:45,600 --> 00:36:49,120
Speaker 2: sort of to control that. And so once we move

599
00:36:49,160 --> 00:36:52,560
Speaker 2: into nineteen oh nine, nineteen ten, nineteen eleven, these years,

600
00:36:52,840 --> 00:36:56,160
Speaker 2: you have these unions who are basically forming an army,

601
00:36:57,080 --> 00:37:00,600
Speaker 2: and so that became another app yet yet another aspect

602
00:37:00,880 --> 00:37:04,799
Speaker 2: of the larger picture of you know, the underworld and

603
00:37:04,840 --> 00:37:07,800
Speaker 2: what Abe needed to go after.

604
00:37:08,480 --> 00:37:11,800
Speaker 1: Well, how do you go after that entire industry sex

605
00:37:11,880 --> 00:37:15,120
Speaker 1: work and the garments and you know, and working with

606
00:37:15,200 --> 00:37:17,600
Speaker 1: grocers and poisoning horses and everything. How do you, one

607
00:37:17,640 --> 00:37:20,000
Speaker 1: by one, how do you take these you know, systemic

608
00:37:20,040 --> 00:37:20,840
Speaker 1: issues down.

609
00:37:21,800 --> 00:37:24,480
Speaker 2: So that's a great question, and it kind of gets

610
00:37:24,560 --> 00:37:27,879
Speaker 2: to the heart of everything. The way Abe approached it

611
00:37:27,960 --> 00:37:32,279
Speaker 2: was that you have to sever the tie between the

612
00:37:32,440 --> 00:37:37,760
Speaker 2: underworld and the overworld. So in any given facet of

613
00:37:37,960 --> 00:37:41,240
Speaker 2: the underworld, there's a point there's a cop taking money,

614
00:37:41,600 --> 00:37:45,600
Speaker 2: there's a politician supporting the cop, or a politician supporting

615
00:37:45,680 --> 00:37:49,919
Speaker 2: the lead pimp or whatever, and you need to expose

616
00:37:50,000 --> 00:37:53,200
Speaker 2: the connection and sever it. And so that was part

617
00:37:53,320 --> 00:37:54,320
Speaker 2: of the strategy.

618
00:37:54,880 --> 00:37:57,920
Speaker 1: What does he think is the biggest emergency, the largest

619
00:37:57,920 --> 00:37:59,880
Speaker 1: fire to put out? First? Did you say it was

620
00:38:00,080 --> 00:38:02,200
Speaker 1: the sex work first? I can't remember.

621
00:38:02,239 --> 00:38:05,359
Speaker 2: I would say it was it was sex work. That

622
00:38:05,600 --> 00:38:09,880
Speaker 2: was the thing that had been portrayed really really in

623
00:38:09,960 --> 00:38:13,400
Speaker 2: the national and the international news as being what the

624
00:38:13,520 --> 00:38:15,960
Speaker 2: Jews are about. It was the way you smear the

625
00:38:16,040 --> 00:38:18,359
Speaker 2: Lower East Side is talking about all the sex work.

626
00:38:18,520 --> 00:38:21,000
Speaker 2: And it was also just a lot of shame. It

627
00:38:21,120 --> 00:38:23,919
Speaker 2: was like, look at these people, you know, they don't

628
00:38:23,960 --> 00:38:27,160
Speaker 2: even care. They just sell their daughters on the street

629
00:38:27,239 --> 00:38:30,239
Speaker 2: and all of this stuff. The girl Abe and fall

630
00:38:30,320 --> 00:38:34,440
Speaker 2: in love with as a teenager had left him and

631
00:38:34,560 --> 00:38:37,759
Speaker 2: gone back to the streets as a sex worker. So

632
00:38:37,960 --> 00:38:41,560
Speaker 2: for Abe, this was that was extremely personal. So, you know,

633
00:38:41,640 --> 00:38:44,239
Speaker 2: they go after the sex work industry. That's in the

634
00:38:44,719 --> 00:38:48,560
Speaker 2: Winner of nineteen thirteen, and then they sort of move on.

635
00:38:49,360 --> 00:38:52,200
Speaker 1: So who's the enabler and the government with sex work?

636
00:38:52,280 --> 00:38:55,040
Speaker 1: Is it a particular cop or a politician who would

637
00:38:55,040 --> 00:38:56,600
Speaker 1: even you know, keep an eye on that.

638
00:38:56,840 --> 00:39:00,879
Speaker 2: Well, so it was a gigantic industry that was generating

639
00:39:01,040 --> 00:39:05,359
Speaker 2: a lot of money, and there were there were two

640
00:39:05,400 --> 00:39:09,680
Speaker 2: figures in the sex work industry. There was the head

641
00:39:09,960 --> 00:39:12,759
Speaker 2: of what I referred to earlier sort of the Corporation

642
00:39:12,880 --> 00:39:16,600
Speaker 2: of Pips by the way. Their official title was the

643
00:39:16,920 --> 00:39:22,799
Speaker 2: Independent Benevolent Association, the IBA, that's what that's what they

644
00:39:22,800 --> 00:39:25,760
Speaker 2: called themselves. And they had kind of this president figure

645
00:39:25,840 --> 00:39:28,640
Speaker 2: who was like the king pimp. And there was also

646
00:39:28,719 --> 00:39:33,719
Speaker 2: a woman who was the largest brothel owner on the

647
00:39:33,760 --> 00:39:37,120
Speaker 2: Lower East Side. And so those were two really important

648
00:39:37,160 --> 00:39:41,680
Speaker 2: figures who were responsible for funneling all of this, all

649
00:39:41,760 --> 00:39:45,080
Speaker 2: this money up up to the cops. The way that

650
00:39:45,160 --> 00:39:49,919
Speaker 2: they approached the sex industry was by it was more

651
00:39:49,960 --> 00:39:55,200
Speaker 2: boots on the ground raiding the brothels. So it was

652
00:39:55,360 --> 00:39:59,160
Speaker 2: brothel raid after brothel raid, and that's the way the

653
00:39:59,239 --> 00:40:03,960
Speaker 2: casinos were managed as as well. And eventually, you know,

654
00:40:04,040 --> 00:40:06,480
Speaker 2: you tried to have a situation that just made it

655
00:40:06,480 --> 00:40:10,480
Speaker 2: impossible for folks to make money the way that they

656
00:40:10,480 --> 00:40:11,760
Speaker 2: had been used to making money.

657
00:40:12,080 --> 00:40:13,520
Speaker 1: I mean, could they just pick up and move to

658
00:40:13,520 --> 00:40:16,680
Speaker 1: New Jersey? Some did that, well, I understand New Jersey,

659
00:40:16,719 --> 00:40:19,040
Speaker 1: but would there be I mean that would this not

660
00:40:19,160 --> 00:40:22,000
Speaker 1: continue in a different borough? Would you then be able

661
00:40:22,080 --> 00:40:24,640
Speaker 1: to target different boroughs or were their jurisdictions where you

662
00:40:24,760 --> 00:40:28,360
Speaker 1: just Abe couldn't reach out past Lower East Side.

663
00:40:28,640 --> 00:40:31,760
Speaker 2: There was a lot of reaching out and there whenever

664
00:40:32,040 --> 00:40:35,840
Speaker 2: the reaching out sort of the expansion would happen, there'd

665
00:40:35,880 --> 00:40:39,920
Speaker 2: be some pushback against the expansion. But Abe and the

666
00:40:40,080 --> 00:40:45,120
Speaker 2: Incorruptible Squad, they would go to Coney Island. They did

667
00:40:45,160 --> 00:40:47,120
Speaker 2: work in New Jersey a little bit. They would go

668
00:40:47,200 --> 00:40:51,080
Speaker 2: to other parts of Manhattan, but yeah, you couldn't. Obviously,

669
00:40:51,120 --> 00:40:53,880
Speaker 2: they were trying to clean up their neighborhood. That was

670
00:40:53,920 --> 00:40:57,120
Speaker 2: the mandate. And it does become a whack a mole

671
00:40:57,280 --> 00:40:59,960
Speaker 2: thing where you can eliminate it, and it pops up elsewhere.

672
00:41:00,719 --> 00:41:04,160
Speaker 2: I think it's really one of the interesting things to

673
00:41:04,320 --> 00:41:08,440
Speaker 2: know is that all the conventional wisdom we have today

674
00:41:08,680 --> 00:41:13,240
Speaker 2: about how vice works and how anti vice laws work.

675
00:41:14,000 --> 00:41:17,160
Speaker 2: For instance, we know today you can have laws against narcotics,

676
00:41:17,480 --> 00:41:19,880
Speaker 2: but those laws are going to have nothing to do

677
00:41:19,920 --> 00:41:23,960
Speaker 2: with the demand for narcotics. The demand remains, and it

678
00:41:24,000 --> 00:41:27,799
Speaker 2: gets supplied in a new, more dangerous way by marginalized

679
00:41:27,840 --> 00:41:31,200
Speaker 2: people who are willing to take the risk. That sort

680
00:41:31,239 --> 00:41:34,680
Speaker 2: of wisdom didn't exist back then because there had been

681
00:41:34,800 --> 00:41:38,160
Speaker 2: really no anti vice laws. One of the important political

682
00:41:38,239 --> 00:41:41,160
Speaker 2: movements that's happening in the background of the story is

683
00:41:42,000 --> 00:41:46,320
Speaker 2: this movement against vice itself, and the very first laws

684
00:41:46,360 --> 00:41:50,520
Speaker 2: against vice are just starting to come into existence. For instance,

685
00:41:50,600 --> 00:41:54,680
Speaker 2: up until about nineteen ten, you can walk into your

686
00:41:54,719 --> 00:41:59,200
Speaker 2: corner pharmacy and by pretty much any narcotic you could

687
00:41:59,239 --> 00:42:02,720
Speaker 2: think of, you know, opium and heroin would be sold

688
00:42:02,800 --> 00:42:06,360
Speaker 2: a dozen different ways, you know, into it's like like

689
00:42:06,360 --> 00:42:10,880
Speaker 2: a dispensary today, but more so. And then these anti

690
00:42:11,440 --> 00:42:14,440
Speaker 2: drug laws start to come into being, first of the

691
00:42:14,440 --> 00:42:17,200
Speaker 2: state level than at the federal level. The first anti

692
00:42:17,360 --> 00:42:22,279
Speaker 2: sex work law comes into being in nineteen ten. That's

693
00:42:22,320 --> 00:42:25,439
Speaker 2: the Man Act, which we still have today. So these

694
00:42:25,480 --> 00:42:30,000
Speaker 2: things were just starting to exist, and it was the

695
00:42:30,040 --> 00:42:33,239
Speaker 2: anti vice movement. Obviously that kind of helps Abe do

696
00:42:33,400 --> 00:42:36,800
Speaker 2: what he ends up doing because he has this legal

697
00:42:37,040 --> 00:42:38,680
Speaker 2: power now behind him as well.

698
00:42:39,080 --> 00:42:43,040
Speaker 1: Does AB's job with NYPD and leading this squad. Does

699
00:42:43,040 --> 00:42:45,680
Speaker 1: it stretch into prohibition time period?

700
00:42:45,840 --> 00:42:53,719
Speaker 2: It stretches into the very earliest months of prohibission nineteen

701
00:42:53,960 --> 00:43:00,280
Speaker 2: eighteen nineteen nineteen, before it's really even officially taken effect.

702
00:43:00,719 --> 00:43:07,280
Speaker 2: And by then Abe is now ten years older, he's

703
00:43:07,360 --> 00:43:11,879
Speaker 2: thirty years old. He's starting to look back and he's like, Oh,

704
00:43:12,600 --> 00:43:17,000
Speaker 2: all these laws that we had once cheered on that

705
00:43:17,280 --> 00:43:21,040
Speaker 2: helped us clean our neighborhoods were now going to be

706
00:43:21,239 --> 00:43:26,719
Speaker 2: bad for society because he'd seen how when you move

707
00:43:26,840 --> 00:43:29,200
Speaker 2: the law from the local or the state level to

708
00:43:29,280 --> 00:43:33,279
Speaker 2: the federal level, it just becomes a law enforcement industry

709
00:43:33,840 --> 00:43:37,400
Speaker 2: that's going to feed on itself. So again, this is

710
00:43:37,520 --> 00:43:41,720
Speaker 2: conventional wisdom we have today, but Abe sort of learned

711
00:43:41,880 --> 00:43:44,279
Speaker 2: this in real time, and he kind of learned it

712
00:43:44,400 --> 00:43:46,799
Speaker 2: the hard way, and in a way, I think he

713
00:43:47,000 --> 00:43:51,320
Speaker 2: regretted having been part of that movement.

714
00:43:51,960 --> 00:43:54,440
Speaker 1: If we go back to when the first few years

715
00:43:54,440 --> 00:43:57,560
Speaker 1: where he's doing this as kind of a practical matter,

716
00:43:57,719 --> 00:44:01,640
Speaker 1: he's eliminating a lot of jobs. I mean, he's shutting

717
00:44:01,680 --> 00:44:05,120
Speaker 1: down gambling and sex work and I'm sure raising hell

718
00:44:05,239 --> 00:44:09,400
Speaker 1: in the gormt industry too. So is there a negative

719
00:44:09,680 --> 00:44:12,160
Speaker 1: to what's happening and let's take out the morals and

720
00:44:12,200 --> 00:44:15,279
Speaker 1: the hurt that comes with all of these industries. Are

721
00:44:15,280 --> 00:44:18,120
Speaker 1: we leaving people unemployed at this point? Or again, it

722
00:44:18,160 --> 00:44:19,800
Speaker 1: sounds like a vast amount of people it's going to

723
00:44:19,880 --> 00:44:21,160
Speaker 1: affect in the Lower East Side.

724
00:44:21,600 --> 00:44:24,960
Speaker 2: It's that's more of a personal view. I guess every

725
00:44:25,320 --> 00:44:27,919
Speaker 2: you know, reader of the book is going to walk

726
00:44:27,960 --> 00:44:31,319
Speaker 2: away with a different view on that. It depends, you know,

727
00:44:31,760 --> 00:44:35,360
Speaker 2: do you feel that sex work should be free and

728
00:44:35,480 --> 00:44:38,920
Speaker 2: clear and uninhibited. Do you feel that gambling should be open?

729
00:44:39,800 --> 00:44:43,279
Speaker 2: But those were those were multimillion dollar industries, and that's

730
00:44:43,400 --> 00:44:47,600
Speaker 2: multi million in nineteen twelve. You have to multiply multimillion

731
00:44:47,680 --> 00:44:50,480
Speaker 2: by about twenty five to get them to get the

732
00:44:50,520 --> 00:44:53,600
Speaker 2: modern day dollars. So yeah, he was putting a ton

733
00:44:53,640 --> 00:44:58,000
Speaker 2: of people out of a job. And the fact that

734
00:44:58,040 --> 00:45:00,160
Speaker 2: he didn't get killed, I mean, the fact that that

735
00:45:00,239 --> 00:45:02,359
Speaker 2: he ended up living through. This was one I think

736
00:45:02,400 --> 00:45:06,280
Speaker 2: of the great miracles of the story.

737
00:45:05,480 --> 00:45:07,920
Speaker 1: To eighty seven. I was trying to do the math.

738
00:45:08,120 --> 00:45:10,200
Speaker 1: I mean, I think that's Howlid he was. So it

739
00:45:10,320 --> 00:45:13,480
Speaker 1: just seems like for somebody with a normal life, you know,

740
00:45:13,560 --> 00:45:17,960
Speaker 1: living through the early nineteen hundreds seems you know, pretty

741
00:45:17,960 --> 00:45:20,760
Speaker 1: impressive to begin with. So is that what he would

742
00:45:20,760 --> 00:45:22,960
Speaker 1: consider looking back, even though I know you say that

743
00:45:23,000 --> 00:45:25,920
Speaker 1: he probably had some regrets about some of this. Is

744
00:45:26,000 --> 00:45:30,120
Speaker 1: that his heyday then nineteen twelve two or nineteen ten,

745
00:45:30,160 --> 00:45:33,520
Speaker 1: whenever he started, until you know, the eighteen nineteen, eighteen,

746
00:45:33,600 --> 00:45:34,880
Speaker 1: nineteen nineteen.

747
00:45:35,160 --> 00:45:37,919
Speaker 2: I think it was his heyday. And I think as

748
00:45:37,960 --> 00:45:41,840
Speaker 2: he got older and aged through the twentieth century, he

749
00:45:42,000 --> 00:45:44,680
Speaker 2: looked back on that time period with it with a

750
00:45:44,760 --> 00:45:49,080
Speaker 2: special fondness and a pride because he could see how

751
00:45:49,160 --> 00:45:53,279
Speaker 2: it was getting forgotten. He could see how all these

752
00:45:53,320 --> 00:45:56,719
Speaker 2: incredible events of the twentieth century that he himself was

753
00:45:56,800 --> 00:46:01,239
Speaker 2: living through with just eclipsing knowledge about what happened in

754
00:46:01,280 --> 00:46:04,520
Speaker 2: the US prior to World War One. You know, I

755
00:46:04,600 --> 00:46:07,160
Speaker 2: think there's a reason that historians call the First World

756
00:46:07,200 --> 00:46:10,560
Speaker 2: War the comma of the twentieth century. It's that point

757
00:46:10,600 --> 00:46:15,280
Speaker 2: on which everything turns and the world was just totally different.

758
00:46:16,760 --> 00:46:20,040
Speaker 2: Up until nineteen thirteen, it was one thing, and then

759
00:46:20,120 --> 00:46:23,400
Speaker 2: nineteen fourteen fifteen comes along and we move into a

760
00:46:23,440 --> 00:46:27,040
Speaker 2: totally different era. And on top of that, the story

761
00:46:27,080 --> 00:46:32,040
Speaker 2: that he himself was involved in was also itself secretive

762
00:46:32,160 --> 00:46:35,680
Speaker 2: when it was going on. So I think that's maybe

763
00:46:35,719 --> 00:46:38,759
Speaker 2: where the impetus for this memoir came is, I have

764
00:46:38,800 --> 00:46:41,160
Speaker 2: to put this down somewhere. It was secretive when it

765
00:46:41,239 --> 00:46:44,799
Speaker 2: happened and kind of later buried by later events.

766
00:46:45,160 --> 00:46:47,759
Speaker 1: Tell me what you think the impact was. Can you

767
00:46:47,800 --> 00:46:49,399
Speaker 1: paint a picture me. I think we had a pretty

768
00:46:49,400 --> 00:46:53,040
Speaker 1: clear picture of the Lower east Side and certainly people

769
00:46:53,080 --> 00:46:55,520
Speaker 1: living in poverty, and as you said, sixteen hundred people

770
00:46:55,560 --> 00:47:00,960
Speaker 1: crammed into one block. After he has done effectively with

771
00:47:01,200 --> 00:47:04,080
Speaker 1: you know, this sort of this really big sweep and

772
00:47:04,160 --> 00:47:06,960
Speaker 1: trying to achieve what he has in his head is

773
00:47:07,200 --> 00:47:10,880
Speaker 1: for the better of his people in the Lower east Side,

774
00:47:10,920 --> 00:47:13,120
Speaker 1: What does lower the Lower east Side look like when

775
00:47:13,120 --> 00:47:13,760
Speaker 1: he's done?

776
00:47:14,200 --> 00:47:17,680
Speaker 2: Lower east Side looks much different. There is still crime,

777
00:47:18,080 --> 00:47:20,759
Speaker 2: there's still vice, of course that didn't go away, but

778
00:47:21,080 --> 00:47:25,400
Speaker 2: the neighborhood itself had definitely been elevated. You had people

779
00:47:25,480 --> 00:47:30,879
Speaker 2: moving uptown more and more out of the ghetto. So

780
00:47:31,320 --> 00:47:35,680
Speaker 2: it did have a big impact at the time. Interestingly,

781
00:47:36,160 --> 00:47:40,400
Speaker 2: Abe was never satisfied though, And that was another lesson

782
00:47:40,640 --> 00:47:46,160
Speaker 2: to be taken away from these sort of anti vice missions,

783
00:47:46,480 --> 00:47:49,680
Speaker 2: that that that would come to define the century. That

784
00:47:50,160 --> 00:47:54,719
Speaker 2: once you become a revolutionary against vice, and once once

785
00:47:54,760 --> 00:48:00,160
Speaker 2: you become a moral revolutionary, just like other kinds of revolution,

786
00:48:00,440 --> 00:48:04,160
Speaker 2: it's hard to know when to stop. You get your gains,

787
00:48:04,480 --> 00:48:07,400
Speaker 2: but you want more, and you want more. And Abe

788
00:48:07,520 --> 00:48:09,920
Speaker 2: himself was a young man when this was going on,

789
00:48:10,239 --> 00:48:12,560
Speaker 2: full of to some extent, full of piss and vinegar

790
00:48:13,080 --> 00:48:15,640
Speaker 2: and and and he wanted it to keep going. He

791
00:48:15,760 --> 00:48:18,719
Speaker 2: was he was begging these German Jewish uptowners, just give

792
00:48:18,760 --> 00:48:22,200
Speaker 2: me another, give me another twenty five thousand dollars, I

793
00:48:22,239 --> 00:48:25,040
Speaker 2: can run, you know, the alcohol out of the neighborhood.

794
00:48:25,280 --> 00:48:27,960
Speaker 2: You know, up until the very end, he wanted it

795
00:48:28,000 --> 00:48:31,360
Speaker 2: to continue and continue. And so that was that was

796
00:48:31,400 --> 00:48:33,200
Speaker 2: an interesting part of the story as well.

797
00:48:33,800 --> 00:48:36,799
Speaker 1: So did he feel like he ever got the acknowledgment

798
00:48:37,160 --> 00:48:39,000
Speaker 1: that he should have gotten or could have gotten. I

799
00:48:39,000 --> 00:48:42,160
Speaker 1: know you said this was a secretive operation and dangerous.

800
00:48:42,320 --> 00:48:44,280
Speaker 1: I know you also said that he wrote this memoir

801
00:48:44,480 --> 00:48:46,520
Speaker 1: as a I got to get on the page before

802
00:48:46,560 --> 00:48:50,600
Speaker 1: I die, so somebody knows something. Was he left fairly satisfied,

803
00:48:50,600 --> 00:48:53,640
Speaker 1: though I know he's tinkering. But is he left like

804
00:48:53,800 --> 00:48:56,200
Speaker 1: with the feeling like I could I could finally sort

805
00:48:56,239 --> 00:48:58,200
Speaker 1: of move to what you had said would be a

806
00:48:58,200 --> 00:48:59,120
Speaker 1: new career for him.

807
00:48:59,520 --> 00:49:04,640
Speaker 2: I think think by and large, Abe didn't care about

808
00:49:04,880 --> 00:49:08,399
Speaker 2: the credit, but he was still a human being who

809
00:49:08,440 --> 00:49:13,560
Speaker 2: had an ego, and he did feel that because of

810
00:49:13,640 --> 00:49:16,960
Speaker 2: the nature of what they were doing, in the secrecy

811
00:49:17,080 --> 00:49:20,480
Speaker 2: of it, that these other folks who ran crime crusades

812
00:49:20,560 --> 00:49:23,880
Speaker 2: later later in the century had gone down in history

813
00:49:23,880 --> 00:49:27,120
Speaker 2: books for doing things that were nearly as impressive as

814
00:49:27,160 --> 00:49:30,319
Speaker 2: what he had done. So I think there was there

815
00:49:30,400 --> 00:49:33,600
Speaker 2: was a little bit of that, But Abe went on

816
00:49:34,239 --> 00:49:37,279
Speaker 2: to just have this incredible career that you could not

817
00:49:37,560 --> 00:49:40,960
Speaker 2: make up. Because what happens is, you know, the nineteen

818
00:49:41,080 --> 00:49:46,000
Speaker 2: thirties arrived, which is this ugly, ugly period in American

819
00:49:46,120 --> 00:49:53,840
Speaker 2: history where Nazism and bigotry is seeping into American culture

820
00:49:53,920 --> 00:49:57,240
Speaker 2: and American thinking in a way that we don't really

821
00:49:57,280 --> 00:50:04,080
Speaker 2: acknowledge today. And by the late nineteen thirties or even

822
00:50:04,080 --> 00:50:06,480
Speaker 2: a little bit earlier than the late nineteen thirties, there

823
00:50:06,520 --> 00:50:11,120
Speaker 2: was a very real concern about all these state side

824
00:50:12,040 --> 00:50:15,640
Speaker 2: kind of Nazi organizations that were It was a lot

825
00:50:15,680 --> 00:50:20,680
Speaker 2: of white supremacists and KKK types coalescing into sort of

826
00:50:21,040 --> 00:50:26,280
Speaker 2: Nazi type type organizations, and there was a big movement

827
00:50:26,480 --> 00:50:32,200
Speaker 2: to recruit spies who could kind of root this stuff out.

828
00:50:33,239 --> 00:50:37,840
Speaker 2: And I believe the number that I've seen is that

829
00:50:37,920 --> 00:50:42,160
Speaker 2: approximately eight thousand people during the late thirties and into

830
00:50:42,160 --> 00:50:47,600
Speaker 2: the forties, about eight thousand Americans worked as spies here

831
00:50:47,680 --> 00:50:53,080
Speaker 2: at home to try to infiltrate these what we could

832
00:50:53,080 --> 00:50:59,520
Speaker 2: call white supremacist organizations. And Abe was again part part

833
00:50:59,560 --> 00:51:03,480
Speaker 2: of that, and that was a job that he had

834
00:51:03,560 --> 00:51:07,080
Speaker 2: for I think he signs onto that in nineteen thirty

835
00:51:07,120 --> 00:51:09,360
Speaker 2: eight and I think he retires from that in nineteen

836
00:51:09,440 --> 00:51:10,200
Speaker 2: sixty four.

837
00:51:10,400 --> 00:51:11,480
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh.

838
00:51:11,480 --> 00:51:13,960
Speaker 2: So that was really the bulk of his life was

839
00:51:14,000 --> 00:51:17,520
Speaker 2: fighting anti Semitism, begatry racism at home.

840
00:51:17,800 --> 00:51:21,680
Speaker 1: So you're talking about a Jewish man from Eastern Europe

841
00:51:21,680 --> 00:51:24,640
Speaker 1: who's embedded with white supremacists here in America.

842
00:51:24,960 --> 00:51:27,560
Speaker 2: Yeah. So he would have been the son of Hungarian

843
00:51:27,719 --> 00:51:31,680
Speaker 2: Jewish immigrants. He was born in the Lower East Side,

844
00:51:32,360 --> 00:51:37,360
Speaker 2: born in America. But yeah, he was a prolific spy,

845
00:51:37,480 --> 00:51:39,840
Speaker 2: which is really what he started out as when you

846
00:51:39,880 --> 00:51:41,759
Speaker 2: think about it, he was kind of a spy of

847
00:51:42,440 --> 00:51:46,080
Speaker 2: on a much more local level. He's a spy of

848
00:51:46,160 --> 00:51:49,640
Speaker 2: the underworld, trying to report to the folks with the money.

849
00:51:50,360 --> 00:51:54,160
Speaker 2: What is what? And that's really what he did with

850
00:51:54,760 --> 00:51:57,200
Speaker 2: the neo Nazis or whatever we want to call him.

851
00:51:57,520 --> 00:52:00,680
Speaker 1: Did some very brave woman end up mary him and

852
00:52:00,760 --> 00:52:03,719
Speaker 1: having kids with him, knowing what what the hell he

853
00:52:03,760 --> 00:52:04,280
Speaker 1: gets into?

854
00:52:04,520 --> 00:52:07,560
Speaker 2: He did get married a little bit later in life.

855
00:52:07,640 --> 00:52:10,200
Speaker 2: I mean it was especially for that time period, it

856
00:52:10,200 --> 00:52:12,040
Speaker 2: would have been considered late. I think he got married

857
00:52:12,040 --> 00:52:14,600
Speaker 2: to he's in this late thirties, to a woman named

858
00:52:14,600 --> 00:52:17,640
Speaker 2: Annie Evans, and they never had kids. They lived on

859
00:52:17,719 --> 00:52:21,800
Speaker 2: Central Park South for decades and they never had kids.

860
00:52:21,800 --> 00:52:24,200
Speaker 2: And she died in the late sixties and he died

861
00:52:24,239 --> 00:52:25,200
Speaker 2: in the late seventies.

862
00:52:25,800 --> 00:52:28,080
Speaker 1: Now, we did not end up getting to I think

863
00:52:28,080 --> 00:52:30,719
Speaker 1: your other characters, right, did we even talk about your

864
00:52:30,800 --> 00:52:34,280
Speaker 1: great gats We didn't talk about Arnold at all, Rostein

865
00:52:34,480 --> 00:52:35,040
Speaker 1: or the woman.

866
00:52:35,760 --> 00:52:39,920
Speaker 2: The young woman. Her name is Antonia Rolnick. Her underworld

867
00:52:40,000 --> 00:52:44,880
Speaker 2: nickname was Tony the tough. Yes, and she to me

868
00:52:45,120 --> 00:52:47,640
Speaker 2: is is you know, one of the most or the

869
00:52:47,760 --> 00:52:52,600
Speaker 2: most compelling figure in the story. She has not been

870
00:52:52,600 --> 00:52:56,520
Speaker 2: written about before. She's not a famous criminal of the

871
00:52:56,560 --> 00:53:02,200
Speaker 2: Lower east Side. She was someone that emerged from my research.

872
00:53:02,360 --> 00:53:05,440
Speaker 2: She came out of the archives. She had been written

873
00:53:05,480 --> 00:53:09,799
Speaker 2: about by Abe as he had fallen in love with her.

874
00:53:10,160 --> 00:53:13,080
Speaker 2: She was a pretty classic immigrant. She came here from

875
00:53:13,120 --> 00:53:16,479
Speaker 2: the pale of settlement when she was thirteen. Like other

876
00:53:17,280 --> 00:53:23,480
Speaker 2: junior high age people, especially the girls. She left school

877
00:53:23,800 --> 00:53:27,000
Speaker 2: in seventh or eighth grade and worked in the garment industry.

878
00:53:27,800 --> 00:53:32,000
Speaker 2: That was grueling. Didn't last for long, and she gets

879
00:53:32,080 --> 00:53:36,040
Speaker 2: lured into sex work, and that's kind of when her

880
00:53:36,080 --> 00:53:39,279
Speaker 2: story really picks up. Abe falls in love with her,

881
00:53:39,760 --> 00:53:44,280
Speaker 2: she leaves him. They later hook up again as essentially

882
00:53:44,480 --> 00:53:49,959
Speaker 2: partners in the crime fighting business. But Antonia Tony the tough,

883
00:53:50,280 --> 00:53:53,000
Speaker 2: She kind of goes back and forth throughout the story,

884
00:53:53,120 --> 00:53:57,839
Speaker 2: crossing the line from the underworld to the overworld, and

885
00:53:58,080 --> 00:54:03,719
Speaker 2: her her journey was very emblematic of the experiences of

886
00:54:03,800 --> 00:54:06,400
Speaker 2: young women on the Lower east Side. The types of

887
00:54:06,440 --> 00:54:09,000
Speaker 2: young women on the Lower east Side that we have

888
00:54:09,120 --> 00:54:13,479
Speaker 2: heard about before are usually these really exceptional ones who

889
00:54:14,120 --> 00:54:16,359
Speaker 2: were at the head of the labor movement and who

890
00:54:16,400 --> 00:54:18,400
Speaker 2: put their life on the line and the strikes, the

891
00:54:18,480 --> 00:54:22,160
Speaker 2: Clara Lemlicks and the people the people like that, taking

892
00:54:22,200 --> 00:54:26,480
Speaker 2: nothing away from them. They're amazing young women. But my

893
00:54:27,600 --> 00:54:31,320
Speaker 2: research seemed to indicate that most of the young women

894
00:54:32,520 --> 00:54:35,400
Speaker 2: on the Lower East Side that was not their experience.

895
00:54:35,440 --> 00:54:41,040
Speaker 2: Their experiences were more of a complicated one. So yeah,

896
00:54:41,200 --> 00:54:46,719
Speaker 2: Tony is an amazing figure. Arnold Rothstein is important to

897
00:54:46,840 --> 00:54:52,480
Speaker 2: the book because he helps us understand the implications of

898
00:54:53,000 --> 00:54:56,120
Speaker 2: trying to fight vice. So Abe is off, on the

899
00:54:56,160 --> 00:55:00,080
Speaker 2: one hand, going to war with the underworld, using the

900
00:55:00,000 --> 00:55:03,680
Speaker 2: the new anti vice laws to their maximum effect. And

901
00:55:03,760 --> 00:55:06,720
Speaker 2: what we see happen is as these anti vice laws

902
00:55:06,840 --> 00:55:10,919
Speaker 2: come into being, a new industry is created, because, as

903
00:55:10,960 --> 00:55:15,040
Speaker 2: we say, the demand doesn't go away. So Arnold Rostein

904
00:55:15,280 --> 00:55:20,040
Speaker 2: had become expert at trying to find the opportunities, finding

905
00:55:20,080 --> 00:55:26,160
Speaker 2: the opportunities in the anti vice laws. So as Abe

906
00:55:26,280 --> 00:55:30,400
Speaker 2: is going to war with the underworld, Arnold is capitalizing

907
00:55:30,680 --> 00:55:36,960
Speaker 2: on it. So those a in a nutshell, Abe, Antonia, Arnold,

908
00:55:37,040 --> 00:55:39,319
Speaker 2: the three A's. Those are the three main figures in

909
00:55:39,360 --> 00:55:43,040
Speaker 2: the book. There are many other figures in the book,

910
00:55:43,080 --> 00:55:45,359
Speaker 2: but those are those are the three who we kind

911
00:55:45,400 --> 00:55:47,080
Speaker 2: of follow from the beginning to the end.

912
00:55:47,560 --> 00:55:50,400
Speaker 1: I sometimes get asked, why are you telling this story

913
00:55:50,520 --> 00:55:53,319
Speaker 1: right now? Like why is it relevant right now? So

914
00:55:53,600 --> 00:55:57,080
Speaker 1: why would this story resonate with readers in twenty twenty five?

915
00:55:57,680 --> 00:56:00,320
Speaker 2: Well, I don't know. Over the weekend we had millions

916
00:56:00,360 --> 00:56:06,759
Speaker 2: of people marching because immigrants were being villainized, and there

917
00:56:06,920 --> 00:56:10,920
Speaker 2: that seems to be a just a perennium for us.

918
00:56:11,320 --> 00:56:14,960
Speaker 2: I'm not saying that this particular period was the beginning

919
00:56:15,040 --> 00:56:18,880
Speaker 2: of that. The nativist movement obviously goes back much much further,

920
00:56:19,520 --> 00:56:24,120
Speaker 2: but we do see an incredible example of it, and

921
00:56:24,160 --> 00:56:30,360
Speaker 2: we see something happen that wouldn't I don't think happened today.

922
00:56:30,960 --> 00:56:34,560
Speaker 2: But maybe we can learn from it, which is about

923
00:56:34,880 --> 00:56:41,680
Speaker 2: local politics and trying to improve your own neighborhood. Focus

924
00:56:41,800 --> 00:56:44,399
Speaker 2: on what is going on in your backyard and how

925
00:56:44,440 --> 00:56:47,560
Speaker 2: can we improve our neighborhood. While I was working on

926
00:56:47,600 --> 00:56:50,440
Speaker 2: the book, I often thought, would any of this happened today?

927
00:56:51,280 --> 00:56:55,200
Speaker 2: Would you have wealthy people who have an interest in

928
00:56:55,239 --> 00:56:59,759
Speaker 2: the ghetto try to wage a war on the underworld.

929
00:57:00,200 --> 00:57:02,840
Speaker 2: Maybe it does happen in some ways, you just don't

930
00:57:02,880 --> 00:57:06,160
Speaker 2: hear about it. The other reason I think it may

931
00:57:06,200 --> 00:57:10,120
Speaker 2: be relevant or resonance today is because we now do

932
00:57:10,280 --> 00:57:14,080
Speaker 2: take for granted all these anti vice laws that we have,

933
00:57:14,560 --> 00:57:17,600
Speaker 2: and I know that a lot of people feel negatively

934
00:57:17,680 --> 00:57:21,920
Speaker 2: about them. A lot of people feel that the whole purpose,

935
00:57:22,000 --> 00:57:24,160
Speaker 2: or at least the effect of the war on drugs

936
00:57:24,640 --> 00:57:29,040
Speaker 2: is to warehouse black and brown bodies in a prison.

937
00:57:29,960 --> 00:57:34,120
Speaker 2: An extremely compelling and persuisive argument can be made on

938
00:57:34,240 --> 00:57:38,200
Speaker 2: behalf of that viewpoint. The story I'm telling is the

939
00:57:38,240 --> 00:57:40,480
Speaker 2: origins of that larger story.

940
00:57:52,120 --> 00:57:55,040
Speaker 1: If you love historical true crime stories, check out the

941
00:57:55,080 --> 00:57:58,120
Speaker 1: audio versions of my books The Sinners, All About the

942
00:57:58,160 --> 00:58:01,640
Speaker 1: Ghost Club, All that Is Wicked, American Sherlock, and Don't

943
00:58:01,680 --> 00:58:04,919
Speaker 1: Forget There are twelve seasons of my historical true crime

944
00:58:05,000 --> 00:58:09,200
Speaker 1: podcast Tenfold More Wicked right here in this podcast feed,

945
00:58:09,440 --> 00:58:12,160
Speaker 1: scroll back and give them a listen if you haven't already.

946
00:58:12,600 --> 00:58:16,080
Speaker 1: This has been an exactly right production. Our senior producer

947
00:58:16,160 --> 00:58:21,040
Speaker 1: is Alexis Amerosi. Our associate producer is Christina Chamberlain. This

948
00:58:21,160 --> 00:58:25,240
Speaker 1: episode was mixed by John Bradley. Curtis Heath is our composer.

949
00:58:25,520 --> 00:58:30,640
Speaker 1: Artwork by Nick Toga. Executive produced by Georgia Hardstark, Karen Kilgarriff,

950
00:58:30,720 --> 00:58:34,560
Speaker 1: and Danielle Kramer. Follow Wicked Words on Instagram and Facebook

951
00:58:34,640 --> 00:58:38,200
Speaker 1: at tenfold more Wicked and on Twitter at tenfold more.

952
00:58:38,480 --> 00:58:40,360
Speaker 1: And if you know of a historical crime that could

953
00:58:40,440 --> 00:58:43,240
Speaker 1: use some attention from the crew at tenfold more Wicked,

954
00:58:43,360 --> 00:58:47,560
Speaker 1: email us at info at tenfoldmore wicked dot com. We'll

955
00:58:47,600 --> 00:58:57,760
Speaker 1: also take your suggestions for true crime authors for Wicked Words.

956
00:59:00,040 --> 00:59:00,080
Speaker 2: E