The majority of peace-loving citizens are seemingly at loss as to how to cope with these desperadoes.
The situation is alarming. We need knowledge of the facts involved, and we need steady concerted action.
This magazine welcomes opinions from its readers. The best letters will be printed from time to time. Who knows but that we might discover some simple method to tackle crime and criminals that would be of great assistance to the authorities?
Even though the stories we publish are only intended for your entertainment, and are of course but the creations of our writers from pure fancy, still there is no reason why we should not do our bit to protect the home from this army of the underworld.
Sit down and write us today. Give us your opinion, and any suggestion you may have toward the betterment of conditions.
Faithfully yours,
Harold Hersey
Racketeer Stories, May 1930
The Army of the Underworld Is Legionate
They march through the pages of the biggest and the smallest newspapers, their frayed banners waving in a wind of words. Their pitiful faces, warped with disease, would strike pity in our hearts were it not for the terror they arouse in the innocent by-stander.
Editorial writers, throughout the United States, fulminate against this army of the underworld. The police of a thousand cities work day and night to capture them and to guard our homes and property.
Many of the secret service lay down their lives. Reporters risk everything to get to the end of the trouble, so that we may know of the disease that is eating civilization and, through true knowledge, hope to eliminate them. For knowledge is power. It is only by knowing the truth that we can face the truth. Ignorance is weakness.
That is why a great good comes from the screaming headlines and detailed reports of the underworld that come to us daily in newspapers.
But these swarming masses of evil that twist and warp the crust of society are destined to an end so terrible that their very souls are shriveled by the death they know will overtake and snatch them suddenly.
Asleep, awake, walking the streets or conducting their so-called business — sooner or later it will reach out its bony hand and snatch them. In every breath, in every word, the gangster utters a moan of terror that must needs wring an involuntary cry of pity from our hearts.
For the gangster cannot win.
Gangland Stories, June-July 1930
The crook is a menace to society. He is running amuck. He has become an octopus, whose tentacles are reaching over the country, drawing within its slimy folds our people — our very families, smothering them within his death-clasp.
Day by day he grows bigger and bigger. His huge form is towering over us, shutting out even the light and warmth of the sun. The menace of his toils is surrounding us, cutting off our very lives.
He is a gigantic parasite, feeding on the life blood of our society.
Every day the newspapers are full of accounts of his doings. Every day some innocent citizen is deprived of his right to make an honest living or even of his right to live! For the criminal is ruthless in his desires. He kills — and kills without thought or pity for his victim, to gain his own ends. And the small shop keeper, the independent manufacturer, is wiped out so that an individual can add one more notch to his boot-leg gun.
Many of our stories are written about the criminal. But they are merely for your entertainment, and in no way attempt to depict the criminal as he really is. In escaping from the humdrum reality of everyday life, you read these stories written by men whose one idea is to entertain you, to excite your imagination.
They are but incidents in the life of the criminal. We do not show you his menace. We do not show you his inevitable end.
But death is leering over the shoulder of the crook. Every breath he draws may be his last.
And he knows it.
Gangster Stories, June-July 1930
Word comes to me that some editorial writer in a distant state, has referred to GANGSTER STORIES as the house organ of the gangster industry, or some such sarcastic phrase.
Although I did not read this editorial in a great newspaper, I am willing to bet that the writer failed to realize one thing. Did he take note of the moral value of this magazine? Surely he would admit that knowledge is power. And knowledge of the dangers that beset our paths in life can do no harm. Particularly is this so when we know and realize that these stories and the characters therein are but figments of the imagination.
It is true that even the front page of the stately New York Times is often filled with gangster news: deaths on the spot: trials with lurid details; executions, and jailbreaks. But these are only snatches out of the whole system of gangland. Whereas in this magazine we tell the stories of gangsters for your entertainment in complete form. We follow them from their beginnings to their crimson deaths. We know that what we read is not true, but we know it teaches us as well as entertains.
Knowledge is power — the power to give us strength to combat these forces of evil.
Faithfully yours,
Harold Hersey
Racketeer Stories, June-July 1930
This is the day of progress. Progress in all ways, not the least of which is the ease of living. The small details that at one time kept us busy the better part of the day, can now be finished in a few minutes.
No more do we spend hours going about the house cleaning and filling oil lamps. No more do we take a whole day every week to drive Dobbin to the market to get the supplies for the week.
One might go on indefinitely, enumerating examples of the changes that have made the business of living a simple one.
But, unfortunately, the honest citizen, the man who represents the American public all over our country is not the only one who benefits by the great strides we have taken in science and invention.
The criminal has been turned from a large, beery, rough-neck, throwing bricks around aimlessly, breaking store windows and occasionally blackjacking some dandy behind the ear and removing his portables, into a menace that looms over our civilization like a cloud of doom. Machine guns, pineapples, poison gas, high powered cars, and all the newest chemicals have enabled the criminal to wipe out hundreds of not only his kind, but innocent people as well, and then vanish — so quickly that he eludes even the most cunning minds of the police.
Progress is for the greater comfort, the greater safety, the greater wellbeing of nations. Not for their destruction.
Let us see that the criminal, rather than using progress for his own diabolical ends, is eventually obliterated by it.
Faithfully yours,
Harold Hersey
Blood Thirst
By Tim Dunn
Gangland Stories, June-July 1930
Kate wanted the stench of blood and the reek of death... and she got what she wanted — in a way that she didn’t expect!
A long, low-hung motor, maroon color, drew up to the subdued entrance lights of an exclusive Sutton Place apartment. A man in livery hurried out under the pavement awning, and opened the gold monogrammed door of the car. The broad shoulders of a gentleman in evening dress appeared. J. F. McCann stepped out of his Pierce Arrow, nodded to the obsequious attendant, and crooked his elbow invitingly to the woman within the car.