Portland Is Such a Nice Quiet Town/
Or, 'Who Looks Good in the]\Fifth?'
Organized gambling, prostitu
tion and bootlegging in Port
land? Yes, says the report sub
mited by the Portland City club.
No, says Mayor Earl Riley. Ul
timately the decision will be left
to the city’s citizens. We have
certain bits of information which,
now, seem timely. They are pre
sented herewith.
In its first issue of 1948 the
Emerald carried a column in
which an expose of conditions in
Portland was predicted. Anyone
reading either the Journal or
Oregonian lately must be well
aware that such an expose is now
in progress. As yet names, fig
ures, dates and locations have
not been made public. Perhaps
they won't be. Threats of re
prisals have already been made
to the persons responsible for the
report. Because of the publicity,
most of Portland’s well known
clip-joints are closed tighter than
a grader’s heart.
Portland may lay claim to one
of the most elaborate “horse
book” organizations west of Chi
cago. Despite protestations by
city officials it is well known
that many clubs have been func^
tioning, uninterrupted, for the
past nine years. The bookies in
Vancouver, Wash., get their in
formation piped directly from the
“shops” in Portland. There are
other places, more private, which
specialize in "out-of-town-action”
for larger sums.
Anyone acquainted with Port
land could tell a grand jury that
it’s merely a matter of knowing
where to go, and having enough
money to spend once there, to
find a place to gamble, drink or
buy bottles after hours, or com
mune with the scarlet ladies.
How many places there are
where prostitution is an import
ant sideline, we aren’t prepared
to say. The City club report,
without naming names, says
there are 284.
If it’s a “pickup” you’re after,
they headquarter at clubs where
managers seldom discourage
them. They’re good for business.
Other places where you can get
a double-shot for 75 cents and
count on it being two-thirds wa
ter, are common as grass. Bless
your innocent little cheeks Port
land!
Booked Solid
City officials have protested
that they have done everything
in their power to stamp out pros
titution. Perhaps they and the
police just aren’t aware of entire
sections like Cherry Court in the
Williams district, where every
house for three complete blocks
carries a red porch light.
Mayor Earl Riley said Monday
that the vice charges were an ex
aggeration, and that “they did
not represent a true picture of
conditions as they exist in Port
land today. Arrest records will
support my contention that while
vice conditions have been carried
on to a small degree, they have
been suppressed.”
We have a letter, written to us
by a leading Pacific Coast edu
cator in response to queries dir
ected to him over a year ago, on
this same subject. Because he and
his family were threatened, he
left Portland and is now on the
faculty of a leading California
university.
R-G Okay
We asked our friend to name
the paper or papers in the state
of Oregon that were uncontrolled
and could be counted on to give
a fair and impartial account of
the facts. We are proud to say
that the Eugene Register-Guard
and its cautious, but fearless ed
itor, Bill Tugman, rated No. 1
on the list . . “Ask Tugman about
control in Oregon. He knows
about it, and in the school fight,
named names but no other paper
dared to quote him. Tugman is
for good government and good
schools but wants to be sure of
his facts and needs to be cer
tain of the judgement of the
people with whom he deals.”
The bookie shops in Portland
are open to the general public.
Occasionally you see prominent
Portlanders there. Their infor
mation comes direct from the
tracks, via the Northwest News
Service. Racing Forms and other
pertinent data are given to the
patrons free of charge. Each
“book” pays $180 per day for the
service.
Football, basketball and base
ball, under the direction of Geo
rge Story, are big business for
cigar counters with bets ranging
from $1 to $10,000. Points (in
football and basketball) are spot
ted either way and the bettor
can take his choice, (after ac
cepting the short end of 6-5
odds).
“The boys” were much inter
ested in moving this type of bus
iness into the Eugene area, but
reported they couldn't budge ex
police-chief Pittinger. Interesting
sidelight is that a prominent Eu
gene dentist, with offices in the
Miner building, has his name and
phone number pasted on the waH
of a private office in Portland’s
largest “book”.
Meadows
Interesting indeed is the inside
dope on the harness races at
Portland Meadows this past
summer. The harness boys were
losing money hand over fist. As
a result many times during the
summer the various horse shops
were closed at noon (they open at
10) and the patrons were given
free passes and urged, by micro
phone, to go out and enjoy the
afternoon at the harness races.
Closing the “books” at noon, we
were told, costs a lot of money.
Evidently it fitted into the grand
scheme to give them a much
needed transfusion, even at the
expense of the regular books.
Orders for the shut-down came
“from above.”
We were with Johnny Monroe,
an Oakland fight promoter, this
summer in an after-hour joint on
Broadway run by a huge ex-pug
called “Tiny.” Tiny boasted
throughout the evening that he
was king of Portland’s under
world, and that he was looking
for “mechanics” (men who can
deal any desired card hand while
looking very innocent) for the
new card joints opening up all
over the city. One of his hirelings
whispered in his ear that we
might be “fluff” (spies, report
ers, etc.). Tiny roared with
laughter and indicated with a bit
By LARRY LAU
of choice profanity that he did
n’t think the district attorney
could or would do anything about
it anyhow.
Grand Jury Possible
We heard this summer that
any grand jury in Portland
could be easily rigged, and that
“any group of holier-than-thous”
would be sorry if they started
anything. Multnomah county dis
trict attorney John B. McCourt
was quoted Monday as saying
that he would investigate the evi
dence and might call a grand
jury “if the evidence warrants
it”. With all this in mind, the
selection of such a jury should
prove interesting.
There is still some puzzlement
over the part federal men in
Portland will play in the proceed
ings. Why have the “feds” work
ing in the Portland area failed to
substantiate repeated claims of
organized vice within the city?
We were talking to one old
timer (who we think was nos
talgic for the Capone era) who
claims Chicago in the roaring 20s
couldn’t hold a candle to Portland
in the furious 40s, the big differ
ence being the fact that Portland
is better and more thoroughly or
ganized, and that control ex
tends out over large areas of the
entire state.
We pass all this along, not at
tempting to take sides. Certainly
there is evidence available that
will call for a more complete de
fense by Portland city officials.
It will be up to the citizens of
the fair Rose city to decide what
they want done about it. We
hope they make a wise choice.
Failures in American Foreign Policy
Charged to Basic Errors in Thinking
Walter Lippmann of the New York Herald Tribune is a
great man for fundamentals. The original “pundit” has a
knack of wading through the extraneous matter and getting to
the heart of a problem in a very few words—as political
writers go. His Phi Beta Kappa address at the College of
William and Mary is no exception. It appears as "The Ri
valry of Nations” in the 'February issue of The Atlantic.
He finds something fundamentally wrong with American
diplomacy. It doesn’t seem to work, he observed, commenting
that:
On the crucial issues our diplomacy has thus far always miscarried.
It has been unable to prevent war. It has been unable to avoid war.
It lias not prepared us for war. It has not been able to settle the wars
when they have been fought and won.
He points to a series of glorious, half-hearted attempts at
American leadership. He sees Wilson's neutrality, the hour
teen points, the Covenant of the League of Nations, the Wash
ington disarmament treaties, the Kellogg pact, the Dawes
plan, the Young plan, the Neutrality act. FDR's quarantine
speech, the Four Freedoms, the Atlantic charter, and the
[Yalta declaration. lie is struck by the “contrast between our
capacity as a people to develop national power, and our abil
itv to use it and to manage it successfully."
Part of this diplomatic incapacity he attributes to a national
"collection of stereotyped prejudices and sacred cows and
wishful conceptions, which misrepresent the nature of things,
which falsify our judgments of events, and which inhibit the
formation of workable policies by which our available means
can be devoted efficiently to realizable ends.”
As an example he cites "our efforts to deal with events, as
if thev conformed or could be made to conform with our
ideological picture of what they ought to be." This, he says,
"has been rather like using a map of Utopia to find your way
around New York City."
More serious however, is his observation that “we find an
overwhelming disposition to regard the choices before us not
as relative but as absolute.”
We are disposed to think that the issue is either this or that, either
all or nothing, either isolationism or globalism, either total peace or
total war, either one world or no world, either disarmament or absol
ute weapons, either pious resolutions or atomic bombs, either disarm
ament or military supremacy, either nonintervention or a crusade,
either democracy or tyranny, either the abolition of war or a preven
tive war, either appeasement or unconditional surrender, either non
resistance or a strategy of annihilation.
We have worked ourselves into a box, he charges, by our
view of the balance of power as “power politics,” and of
spheres of influence as “appeasement.” But, “a diplomacy for
the world as it is, which is not to extend itself in verbal dec
larations on the one hand, and on crusades of annihilation on
the other, must deal with the balance of power and the deter
mination of spheres of influence.”
Power exists. Rivalry exists, but America closes its eves.
“We do not regulate the rivalries because we hold that the
rivalries ought not to exist.”
wringing his address down to concrete problems of our
own day, lie applies the above principles to our relations with
the Soviet Union, urging us:
To recognize the historic fact that the division between eastern
and western Europe, the rivalry between Russia and the nations of
the West, did not begin with Marx, Lenin, and Stalin, nor would it end
if the Soviet regime were overthrown or defeated. The cultural and
ideological division of Europe is as old as the division of Christendom
between Rome and Byzantium. The imperial rivalry with Russia in
the Baltic, in eastern and central Europe, in the Danube valley, in the
Balkans, in the Middle East, and in the Far East did not begin with
the Communists and will not end with Communism. It was one of
the great fields of diplomacy under the Czars as it is under the Com
munists. Rivalry with Russia is a new problem for the United States.
But the British Foreign Office has been preoccupied with it for a
hundred and fifty years. We had better make up our minds that we
shall now be preoccupied with it for a very long time to come.
Mr. Lippmann sees no hope of settling the Russian problem
once and for all. but he does see hope of a satisfactory settle
ment in this generation. But he sees the settlement, not as
the ideal settlement but as a "truce in the cold war, a modus
vivendi" during which the world can recover from the war.
Such a truce is difficult to achieve even by wise use of power
and compromise, the classic weapons of diplomacy. But he
warns, "if we will not or cannot use the classic procedures of
diplomacy which is always a combination of power and com
promise—then the best we can look forward to is an era of
disintegration in the civilized world, followed perhaps bv a
war which, once it began, would be savage, universal, and
indecisive.”
Side Patter
By SALLEE TlMMENS
The Black Death, Plague, or
whatever nasty you want to call ■
it, has hit the campus again. The
procession of DPs to the pill pal- ^
ace is increasing daily, and the
sale of Kleenex must be up about
600 per cent. This is personal ob- j
servation, of course, but I advo
cate the higher board of educa- t
tion should think seriously of an- ■
nexing our moth-eaten establish
ments to a state hospital or rest •
ho/ne.
The weekend was busy, but
not scandalous. As one fair maid- ,
en commented: “How can you ex
pect scoops when everyone was
dating fathers?” ie., their own.*
Fathers really ought to come
more often. They’d be amazed
how much good they do the col-T
legians. Many a lad and lassie
was seen dragging the parental^
hand into buildings that he never,
knew existed, looking bewildered
to find there was such a place as'
the oriental museum and art li-"
brary.
King of Hearts Ken Bargelt
who rooms at the Phi Delt house
(Please turn to page six) V