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The mob was not just a sideshow for tourists. Mobsters have expanded into money laundering, large-scale drug dealing, and more legitimate businesses.34 Wall Street has been invaded by gangsters.35 Small-scale mobsters are involved in more prosaic activity. In New York City “legitimate tenants were …

By December 1948 “the book finally was closed” on the lockout, with the levying of fines totaling $9,650 on thirty-two of the picketers and jail sentences for five others. In October 1949 the “last victim” of the lockout, Emil Freed—a Communist—was released after serving a one-year jail term; he ha…

But a month later he had retreated swiftly. In late November 1947 the moguls, through Johnston’s trade association, announced that they would suspend the screenwriters and directors who came to be called the Hollywood Ten until they declared “under oath” that they were not Reds; the industry, it wa…

Ralph Peckham, a CSU member, expressed the sentiments of many when he exclaimed, “I’m tired of dealing with lawyers. I want to go back to painting.”163 Happily, it was reported, the “first break in the solidarity of the defendants” came as five decided to plead guilty and were fined a meager $25 ea…

Weeks after this contretemps involving redwood workers, “three masked men broke into the strike headquarters of the printing trade unions…. Don Steep, the lone occupant at the time was said to have been beaten into a state of unconsciousness and securely tied.” The office was wrecked. After that an…