Gang Pulp

Gangland Stories, August-September 1930

YOU CAN’T WIN.

That notice has been printed in every street car, subway, and elevated train for the past three years. For the criminal, from the big diamond in the shirt kind down to the little petty larceny crook, finds that in the parlance of the upper world that “Business is falling off.” That it is true. YOU CANT WIN.

At first the police did not know how to cope with these new rackets.

They were used to two-story men and safe crackers, not the kind of people that had the guts to work rackets that would tax the finest of brains, to say nothing of brawn — men that had gangs and worked with machine guns. But now all that is changed. The police of every town, large and small, knows how to cope with these people, and so today the pickings are not easy, for every place is guarded and for every machine gun that the gangster has, the police have three.

A great deal has to be said in regard to the gangster cooking his own goose and spoiling what might have been a swell feed for him. He fought with his partners in crime, they murdered right and left. Taking a life was nothing more to them after a while than licking a postage stamp. They fought among themselves and killed each other. The ones that they killed off were generally the ones with the brains, and, as it happens in every game that is not on the up and up, they began by losing ground. The minute that happened the police, always on the jump for a break, came in, and the gangster, the racketeer and the petty crook found that the little subway signs were right.

YOU CANT WIN.

Faithfully yours,

Harold Hersey