Theoretically, we could read stories from multiple issues and determine the dateline that separates pre- and post-censorship issues. Fortunately, we don’t have to do that — fortunately, because the differences between pre- and post- stories are sufficiently ambiguous to provoke a lot of head scratching. There are clearer indications in the magazines. In the February 1930 issue of Gangster, Hersey ran a one-page feature titled, “Editorial by the Publisher,” which justified the stories, and spoke about them in elevated terms:
In the pages of this magazine you meet a cruel race of humans; people who move through the dark alleys of crime and terror. They are but the creations of the writers’ minds, however, and are only reflections of actuality. One has but to pick up any newspaper in order to read the actual accounts of gangsters and racketeers. This magazine would indeed be of little worth were it to portray the racketeer as “he isn’t.” We must show him in his true colors, in his real environment. We must go to the depths of his twisted heart and soul. Yet, in spite of all this, these pages are but figments of the imagination. They are only true in their balance of actuality and fancy. The characters you meet are only a continuation of the imaginative line of literature produced by such masters of underworld life as Balzac and Charles Dickens.
You can gain much from these pages in truth; you can guard your own hearthstone from these modern brigands by understanding them and their ways. Knowledge is power, power is truth, and the truth will set you free. Knowing of these crooked byways of crime, and the people who walk there in darkness, you will be forearmed and forewarned about the pitfalls that are on all sides. But look only upon these pages as stories — the creations of our writers’ fancies — and if you gain valuable knowledge through entertaining reading, then indeed we have fulfilled a real purpose in publishing this periodical.
Not only was Gangster Stories in a class with the classics, it was educational, and might even protect the reader from denizens of the underworld! The February Racketeer had a similar editorial titled, “A Page From the Publisher’s Notebook.” featuring this passage:
Many of the characters seem to triumph in crime, but if we could go on with them beyond the ends of these stories, we would read of their eventual downfall. Glittering as they seem crime can never pay, in the long run.
Crime is the product of weakness. And weakness is a disease of the mind and body. Therefore, in reading of the underworld, one must remember always that these pitiful children of evil are only red shadows in the shadowy realm of unreality. Let us read of them, but believe in them — no!
It’s clear that this editorial was written after the one in Gangster. First, Hersey zeroes in on Sumner’s objection — the triumph of the criminal — and addresses it. The earlier editorial in Gangster suggests that Hersey knew trouble was brewing, and anticipated that merely depicting racketeers and gangsters was the problem. Second, all issues of Hersey gang pulps into the late summer carried an editorial titled “A Page From the Publisher’s Notebook.” That the first entry in Gangster carried a generic title suggests a feature in embryo.[2]
In general, a pulp, like most magazines, would come out with a cover date from one of the two following months, so that they would never appear outdated on the newsstand. Good Story had nine titles with February dates (three titles were already defunct). But Hersey would have issued the nine over several weeks, so the precise date a particular title came out is almost impossible to determine without access to the publisher’s or distributor’s records which, needless to say, we don’t have. The timing is critical because Sumner’s threat to prosecute hit the newspapers on February 20.
The March issue of Gangster did, in fact, address Sumner’s objections, as we would expect:
The glittering people about whom you read in these rapid-action stories are a weird lot...
A forlorn yet fantastic army of the underworld!
To believe in their reality would be stupid...
These characters are along the fringe of things. They live in shining splendor for a short time. They appear healthy. However behind them always are shadows sinister and weird: Death, Disease and Retribution!
Sooner or later, mostly sooner, their fantastic hours arc over. They go forth to rot in prison cells. They are shot down by their enemies, their bodies left in alleyways and open lots. Their wealth is lost by gambling and reckless living. The haunts they once knew, no longer know them — in fact they are completely forgotten.
They pay dearly for their moments of high speed. Let us read of them but bear in mind that this army of the underworld is only a shell that glitters under the spotlight, but which is being crushed like a giant worm as it winds through the spotted darkness.
Going by plausible dates, Hersey had to have reacted in advance of the actual problem. In Pulpwood Editor, he confirms he’d been warned ahead of time. So, putting it all together, this may be what happened: Hersey caught wind of the trouble coming in January. He added the editorial to the February Gangster at the last minute, not only to head off Sumner, but to inoculate the magazines against potential copycat complaints in other states (though laws like New York’s proved to be rare). He learned what Sumner’s objections were in time to add the modified editorial to the February Racketeer. He withdrew both pulps from distribution in New York until the crisis was resolved, which it was not on February 20, according to the news coverage. He entered into negotiations with Sumner. Sumner does not prefer a court battle since he, too, has a budget, and bigger fish to fry. He may even have shown flexibility, allowing Hersey to use up his purchased inventory of stories in return for a good-faith promise to comply with the law thenceforth. Under this scenario, both titles would have missed at least one month of New York distribution, and there will be no distinct line separating the pre- and post-censorship stories.
Hersey’s editorials became increasingly melodramatic in tone, such as this passage from Racketeer, March 1930:
Tinsel children of the darkness are the characters in these stories — wayward children — yet spawn of the Devil himself!
They dance — marionettes in dazzling finery — in the white spotlight our authors throw upon them. They dance the dance of death. Their thin faces smile, but it is only a set grin of pain when you examine them closely.
Their finery is as gay as their laughter sounds, yet we see that there are patches; their jewels only paste. Their lives are rapidly being snuffed out; they soon pay their debts to nature and to Humanity in full.
At times he sounded more Catholic than the Pope in his distaste for gangland (Gangster Stories, April 1930):
The restless army of the underworld waves its tattered banners in a wind of newspaper words. The world stands aghast as this terrible cavalcade goes by our front doors. What can be done about it?
2
We reprint the majority of Hersey’s editorials in this book. That wouldn’t have been necessary to demonstrate his response to the censorship, but the editorials proved to be as lurid as the stories, and entertaining in their own right.