Gang Pulp

Gangster Stories, Racketeer Stories, April 1930

The criminal must be curbed. He is running rampant over the country.

Not a day passes but that the daily newspapers feature on their front pages the intimate details of some exploit of an underworld character. It is obvious that the public is sincerely interested in these accounts; otherwise the daily press would not be so intent upon the giving over of its columns to crime and criminals.

The stories in this magazine are superbly done, but they are not the real thing as published in the newspapers. They are but dreams and figments of our writers’ imaginations. Yet, in spite of this, they are moving lessons that should help us guard our homes and our dear ones from these modern desperadoes.

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?

The police and the secret service are working day and night to protect our fireside from these beasts of a jungle that come to our very hearthstones — a jungle where the cries of the lost are like the drone of a myriad tropical insects humming through the menace of a fungus darkness.

In the pages of this magazine the criminal cannot win, any more than he can in real life. Death, or Fate or Justice overcomes him in the end. There is no escaping the net of human law and order that is spread for the criminal.

Truth is power, whether in story or in fact. Here, in these pages, the underworld excites like a fairy-tale spun for grown-up entertainment — a glittering series of yarns selected each issue with infinite care on the part of our editors.

We aim to please you, but at the same time we are glad to serve as a guide to warn you against hidden pitfalls that are on every side.

Faithfully yours,

Harold Hersey