Joe Bruno's Mobsters - Six Volume Set (37 page)

Dalton turned to a gang member next to him and said, “Hey dis game's a pip! We ought to learn 'ow to play.”

And that they did, but not very well.
Not that it made any difference. Dalton and his gang had other ideas up their sleeves.

The Midnight Terrors tried to join a local baseball league, but were told they could not play in the league unless they wore proper uniforms, which cost a considerable amount of cash to
dress an entire team.

So a fast crime spree was required to raise the money to buy the uniforms.

In short order, The Midnight Terrors robbed Fredrick England's Barber Shop at 4 Coenties Slip, Stephen Pyle's Restaurant at 19 Coenties Slip, Charles Steckler's Restaurant at 74 Pearl Street, and Meyer's Saloon at 89 Broad Street. In addition, numerous individuals were robbed in the streets, sometimes even during the daylight hours. All the cash derived from these escapades were put directly into “The Midnight Terror Uniform Fund.”

Now resplendent in their sharp new uniforms, The Midnight Terrors were admitted into a baseball league, which played thro
ughout the borough of Manhattan and even in nearby Brooklyn. To make up for their lack of baseball ability, The Midnight Terror's baseball team played a brand of baseball that could rightfully be called criminal. All the team members sharpened their spikes, and they did not slide directly into a base, but rather, right into the legs and chest of the opponent who was covering the base. As a result, countless fights broke out during games between The Midnight Terrors and their opponents, some of which became quite bloody. During these battles, baseball bats were used for other tasks besides hitting a baseball.

To make sure they got the upper han
d in these on-the-field-fights,The Midnight Terrors positioned dozens of their non-baseball-playing gang members in the stands. As soon as an on-field ruckus occurred, their cohorts would run onto the field, wielding bats, pipes, bricks, brass knuckles, and anything else they could get their hands on. The police were called in many times to break up these fights, but no arrests were ever made. The general feeling among the fuzz was that “boys will be boys,” and as long as no one was dead, or crippled – no harm, no foul.

Fighti
ng on the field was one thing, and as long as The Midnight Terrors concentrated their robberies and muggings in the First Ward, the First Ward police, most of whom were on the Midnight Terrors' payroll anyway, looked the other way. However, “Chief” Dan Dalton's plan all along was to expand his operations, by having his non-baseball-playing gang members rob the people sitting in the stands during the game. Since these games took place in several neighborhoods outside the First Ward, the police in those neighborhoods would have none of The Midnight Terrors' shenanigans. Besides, the cops had their own street gangs to worry about.

Spurred on by the police captains in other precincts, the First Ward cops rounded up as many of The Midnight Terrors that they could find, including “Chief” Dan Dalton. When The Midnight Terrors were arrested, the police found dozens of knives and guns in their possession. Dalton, sure he would be back on the streets in no time, told the police captain in charge of their arrests, “Say
jes keep an eye on doze guns and keys for us, Cap, will yer. 'Cause we'll soon be back.”

However, the roof fell in on The Midnight Terrors, when the prosecuting attorney asked for, and received from the judge, a $500 bail amount for each member of the gang, which was a kingly sum in the Gay Nineties. It was also an impossible amount of money for any of the gang members to raise, since they had spent all their ill-gotten gains on their spiffy new baseball uniforms.

Since they could not hit the streets and jump bail, Dalton and all his top gang members had no choice but to go to trial. When Dalton took the witness stand, he was asked by Judge Voorhis what he had done with all the money he and his gang had stolen. Dalton replied, “We eat almost everythin' and wot we culdn't eat we sold. Dat's the way we wuz to get de uniforms fer de ball club.”

The trial of The Midnight Terrors was a slam-dunk for the prosecution. Dalton and his gang were convicted of numerous
crimes and sent to the slammer for long periods of time. This effectively ended the reign of the Midnight Terrors in Lower Manhattan.

And the game of baseball, as we presently know it, was saved.

R
yan, Joseph P. – President of the International Longshoremen Association - Port of New York

In 1892, the International
Longshoremen Association (ILA) started out as a legitimate labor union in the Great Lakes area to help the dockworkers get a fair shake from their employers. The ILA expanded to the East Coast, and by 1914 the ILA's New York District Council was created. Almost immediately, the ILA became a mob stronghold, manipulated by the most vicious Irish mobsters of that era. The most prominent of whom was Joseph P. Ryan. But we'll get to Ryan later

To understand ho
w the mob manipulated the docks and the ILA you must grasp the manner in which dockworkers were hired daily. The method for hiring was not who was the most qualified, the strongest, or the most industrious person available. The only thing that mattered is that you paid tribute to the hiring boss, who ran the docks like the Gestapo ran Hitler's Germany.

The way it worked was like this: t
wice a day, all able-bodied men who were looking for work lined up in front of the loading dock. Then a stevedore (hiring boss) stood smugly in front of the dock, and one-by-one he selected the men who he deemed lucky enough to get a day's work. Of course, you had no chance of getting picked if you didn't give the stevedore a percentage of your day's pay. If you were known as somebody who had given the ILA trouble in the past, you might as well have stayed home, because there was no way the stevedore would even look at your face.

The stevedore would then kick up the cash collected from the workers to the head stevedore, who would in turn kick it up to the ILA bosses. With this blood money from the dock workers, the ILA bosses would then grease the palms of politicians and cops, and anyone else who needed to get paid, to keep the money rolling into the pockets of the big shots who ran the ILA.

Joseph P. Ryan first burst on the scene around 1917, when he organized the ILA New York District Council: a branch of the nationwide ILA. In 1918, Ryan became president of the ILA's Atlantic Coast District. It was during this time that the power began shifting from the Great Lakes to the Port of New York, which was closer to Europe where many of the ships that were unloaded on the docks originated. During this time, the ILA was facing strict competition from the West Coast-based Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). The ILA was attempting to draw the IWW into their organization, and in 1919 they succeeded.

In 1921, ILA P
resident T.V. O'Connor resigned and his place was taken by Anthony Chlopek, who turned out to be the last ILA President based in the Great Lakes. It's not clear if he was appointed by Chlopek, or elected by the membership, but Joe Ryan served as the First Vice President of the ILA for all six years of Chlopek's presidency.

In 1927, Ryan's time finally had come. Ryan was elected President of the ILA, whose power base was now firmly entrenched in the Port of New York.

Ryan's journey from basically a nobody to the President of the ILA had not been an easy one. Ryan was born on May, 11, 1884, in Babylon, Long Island. His parents were Irish immigrants, and Ryan suffered a severe blow at the age of nine when his parents died within a month of each other. Ryan was put into an orphanage, but he was eventually adopted by a woman who brought Ryan to live with her in the Chelsea section of Manhattan, a few blocks south of the lawless Hell’s Kitchen area.

Ryan did menial jobs in the neighborhood, before he got a job loading and unloading on the Chelsea Piers. In 1917, Ryan purchased his union book for the sum of two dollars and fifty cents.
Within a few weeks, Ryan hurt his foot while unloading a freighter, and when he was released from the hospital, and not being able to work on the docks again, Ryan was somehow appointed to the job of secretary of ILA Local 791. From that point on, there was no stopping Joe Ryan's meteoric rise.

“Boss Joe,” as Ryan came to be known, was a ruthless fighter, who elevated the shape/payback system on the docks to an art form. To
enforce his vice-like grip on the ILA membership, Ryan hired the worst men imaginable, some of whom had lost their jobs as bootleggers when Prohibition ended in 1933. Ryan also hired men who had just been released from prison, where they had been sentenced for committing the most violent of crimes. These were the perfect men for Ryan to employ, since cracking a few heads, or legs, and maybe even killing a person once in a while, was certainly not adverse to these men's nature.

Ryan's power was so absolute, he organized
fundraisers (his men were compelled to contribute, or else) for the politicians who were on Ryan's pad; one of whom was Mayor Jimmy “Beau James” Walker. When Walker was forced to resign in 1932, Ryan, with tears dripping from his pen, issued a statement supporting the disgraced Walker.

Ryan wrote, “The labor movement in the city of New York regrets that political expedience has deprived them of a mayor whose every official act has been in conformity with the Americanistic (Ryan invented that word himself) policies of organized labor.

Ryan's plan was to control all dockworkers in the United States, but in fact, his power hardly extended outside the boundaries of New York City. When Franklin D. Roosevelt ascended to the Presidency in 1933, he enacted his New Deal, which solidified Ryan's total control of the ILA. “The Norris-LaGuardia Act,” which limited the use of injunctions to prevent strikes and picketing, helped Ryan assert his muscle on the docks. And the Wagner Act of 1935 guaranteed the rights of workers to vote for their own representation.

And who controlled those votes? Why Joseph P. Ryan, of course.

Ryan's biggest problem in uniting all ILA workers in America was the resistance he received from the West Coast contingent, which was led by radical left-winger Harry Bridges. In 1934, Bridges organized a strike of the West Coast ILA, in rebellion over a contract Ryan had negotiated on their behalf.

Ryan, incensed at the West Coast insurrection, traveled extensively all over the West Coast of America: to San Francisco, Portland, Tacoma, and Seattle. In each location, Ryan argued the main sticking point
of the negotiations: the shape-up form of employment. Ryan and his New York pals were for it. Everyone on the West Coast was against it, saying it was unfair to the workers. The West Coast ILA wanted to implement a “hiring-hall” system, in which “time in the hold” and “seniority” were the main factors in men getting work. Of course, the hiring hall system would put an end to the stevedore-graft-machine, and Ryan wanted no part of that.

Ryan's West Coast trip was a complete failure. In each ILA location he visited, his recommendations were shot down, emphatically. The president of the Tacoma ILA local announced to the press, “No body of men can be expected to agree to their own self-destruction.”

Things were so bad for Ryan in San Francisco, there were physical confrontations in the streets, between the West Coast strikers, the strikebreakers Ryan had brought in from the East Coast, and the local police. The riots were so violent, the National Guard was called in to end the disturbances.

Chalk that up as another loss for Joe Ryan.

When Ryan returned home to the Port of New York, he was not a happy camper. He denounced his West Coast opponents as “malcontents” and “communists,” and he strove to become even more strident in exercising his absolute power over the New York ILA.

One of Ryan's most effective tools in keeping his men in line was the fact he was able to issue union charters to whomever he saw fit. The men who received these charters were then able to form their own union locals. After these locals were created, the individual local bosses would kick back a substantial part of the member's dues to the Joseph P. Ryan Retirement Fund, of which, of course, there were no written records.

One such local that Ryan had in his back pocket was Local 824, which was run by Ryan crony Harold Bowers. Local 824 was particularly prestigious and quite profitable because it presided over the Hell’s Kitchen piers, where luxury liners like the
Queen Mary
and the
Queen Elizabeth
were docked.

Local 824 soon became known as the “Pistol Local
,” because it was almost completely comprised of Irish gangsters who had long criminal records. Local 824's boss Bowers, an ex-con, had a criminal record as long as a giraffe's neck. Bowers had been arrested for numerous crimes, including robbery, possession of a gun, grand larceny (twice), and congregating with known criminals. Bowers was also suspected in dozens of waterfront murders, but no murder charges could ever be pinned on him.

Harold's cousin
, Mickey Bowers, as murderous a bloke as Harold, was also instrumental in running Local 824. Mickey was a suspect in the murder of Tommy Gleason, an insurgent in Local 824 who tried to wrest control of Local 824 from the Bowers family. Gleason was filled with lead while he was visiting a deceased pal in a Tenth Avenue funeral parlor. Mickey Bowers was suspected of Gleason's murder, and he was brought in for questioning. However, with no concrete evidence, Mickey Bowers was released. There is no record of the Gleason murder having been solved, nor it is clear if Gleason was laid out in the same funeral parlor in which he had been shot.