Blacklist

“ Flint and Herzog will be sure to put Slade and the Cosmos people after me. Blacklisting will be the least of what they'll try to do. They'll use slugging tactics, sure, if they get a chance, or railroad me to some Pen or other, if possible. My one best bet is to keep out of their way; and I figure I'm ten times safer on the open road, with a few dollars to stave off a vagrancy charge, and with two good fists and this stick to keep 'em at a distance, than I would be on the railroads or in cheap dumps along the way. ”

“ In no country do I find any specific legislation as to boycotts, except the English statute already referred to, repealing the common law of conspiracy, both civil and criminal, in industrial disputes. Germany and Austria have blacklisting laws. The matter of riots, etc., is generally left to the criminal law to control. ”

“ Moreover, officially prepared and proclaimed governmental blacklists possess almost every quality of bills of attainder, the use of which was from the beginning forbidden to both national and state governments. U.S.Const. Art. I, §§ 9, 10. It is true that the classic bill of attainder was a condemnation by the legislature following investigation by that body, see United States v. ”

“ The police courts had taught him the amazing ingenuity of the criminal mind, as well as something of the plots and devices by which the unwary are beguiled into the dark places where blackmail may be levied with impunity. New York, as a matter of fact, just at that time was literally undermined with the secret ways of the blackmailers, the green-goods men, and other police-protected abominations; and the only weak point in the supposition that this was part of some such proceeding was the selection of himself—a poor newspaper reporter—as a victim. ”

“ Someone, someone with connections, is apparently using computers as a blackmail tool. The FBI is investigating domestically, and, well, it's our job, to look outside. So, I figure, call Alex. That's why I'm here. ”

“ A mixed brand of terrorism would soon show its evil head, a mixed brand that would bring every decent citizen [27] to shudder at the mention of BLACK BOLSHEVISM.
In looking into the motives of the men who represented the Sicilian Mafia, or "Black-Hand" Society, in this country, I was fortunate to elucidate not a few particulars that go to show how these criminals actually operate.
The Black-Handers here would terrorize their less courageous countrymen from the provinces of Southern Italy. They had been at this form of blackmail for some years. ”

“ Even the commissioned Watch companies, who were the nucleus of our famous Highland regiments, had the repute of being somewhat discriminating in their protective service. But a “high-toned” blackmailer like Rob Roy made it a point of honour to carry out his contract with subscribers, if sometimes he turned aside to give non-subscribers a plain hint of what they might gain by employing him. They had nothing but his honour to depend upon, a contract of blackmail being strictly illegal—indeed, by an act of the sixteenth century, declared a capital crime in the case of both parties. ”

“ It was just through this love of adventure that cattle-raiding continued during the first half of the eighteenth century, and that is why people on the border line paid ‘blackmail.’ In modern life one of the most valuable resolves to make is never, under any circumstances, to pay blackmail; never, that is, to allow freedom of action or will to pass into the hands of another person. Payment of blackmail once, invariably means payment for always. ”

“ From time to time a sergeant came in to report about men being posted. Now and then some detective telephoned rumors and information he had gathered.
"The streets are jammed," the chief said, after one of these telephone calls. "The blamed newspapers are out with big stories of how the Black Star telephoned them that he would start his campaign of crime at midnight. Well, somebody in the mob might get hurt, but it helps us, in a way. It has been easier for us to get our men placed without some of the crook's gang reporting the fact to him." ”

“ He uses then the arm of only social scandal. But very widely in Europe, the blackmailer has now in his power not merely a man that will be thought disgraced, depraved; for in Great Britain and its Colonies, in Germany, in the United States of America, in the Austria-Hungary States, in the Scandinavian Monarchies, in some parts of the Swiss Confederation, and under certain circumstances or pretexts even in France, Italy, Russia, Spain, Portugal, Belgium Holland, Luxemburg and other tolerant lands, the victim—as shown early in this book—is a felon. ”

“ The profession of the blackmailer in London is perhaps one of the most lucrative of criminal callings, and also one of the safest for the criminal. A demand can cleverly insinuate without making any absolute threat, and the blackmailer is generally a perfect past-master of his art. The general public can conceive no idea of the widespread operations of the thousands of these blackguards in all grades of society. ”

“ The police see the letter, a newspaper print-a big long story about Italian society which have the Black-a Hand for its sign, and saying that much recent murders was done. Everybody become-a frightened, and the Mafia and the Camorra right away both begin-a to use Black Hand. So you see when I say there is no Black-a Hand society, no chief, no place-a to meet, no meetings, no plan-a to share money, no oath, it is quite true, but if I say there is a society which used the Black-a Hand that is true, too. ”

“ Where the Latin blackmailer has not the leverage of law or of public decorum, he will threaten public social opinion; especially if the stranger be English or American. The victim's name will be printed—will be telegraphed to his native town. In all such cases, the victim's stout personal resistance, or threats of calling up the nearest policeman, will nearly always get rid promptly of the blackmailer. A favourite trick of this blackmailer is an accusation to the victim of pederasty with an "innocent" minor youth. ”

“ In our issue for May last we published an authoritative article setting forth the methods and crimes of the "Black Hand," a secret society organized for the purpose of blackmail and murder, which has caused a veritable reign of terror amongst Italian residents in America. ”

“ These people are all outlaws; they deserve what they get, whatever it is.” But the net of the New York police was exceeding wide, and the mesh was exceeding fine, and no class of the community escaped. As the sun riseth upon the evil and the just, so the blackmailer of the Police Department marked as his prey the honest and virtuous as well as the vicious and criminal. The Lexow Committee report:—
The evidence of blackmail and extortion does not rest alone on the evidence of criminals or persons accused of the commission of crime. ”

“ Radio cops, telco people, whatever—they’re going to try to discredit us. I want to know what they’re liable to say.”
“Christ, you’re dragging me out for that? I can tell you what they’ll say. They’ll drag out the Four Horsemen of the Infocalypse: kiddie porn, terrorists, pirates, and the mafia. They’ll tell us that any tool for communicating that they can’t tap, log, and switch off is irresponsible. They’ll tell us we’re stealing from ISPs. It’s what they say every time someone tries this: Philly, New York, London. All around the world same song.”
Alan nodded. ”

“ There the different members of the gang get their orders and stations, and perhaps a few dollars advance wages. It is naturally quite impossible to guess the number of successful and unsuccessful attempts at blackmail among Italians, as the amount of undiscovered crime throughout the country at large is incomputable. No word of it comes from the lips of the victims, who are in mortal terror of the vendetta—of meeting some casual stranger on the street who will significantly draw the forefinger of his right hand across his throat. ”

“ As I understand it, you received your first communication from this mysterious blackmailer—what did you say he calls himself?"
"'The Man in the Black Mask,'" answered Grimes.
"His first letter came several days ago, as I understand it, warning you of what to expect. Three days ago you received a second communication demanding the sum of fifty thousand dollars, payment to be made in a manner to be designated later. If you agreed, you were to run up a small, white flag on the flag pole. If not, the factory was to be slightly damaged as a proof that he is able to carry out his threats. ”

“ This species of black-mail is not so uncommon as it would seem, even the fathers of young and prepossessing girls are partners in these affairs.
As a fact there is nothing that devilish ingenuity can devise to entice men and women into committing every kind of crime that is not practiced by the blackmailers of this city, and many are the fish that are landed and great the booty that is secured. ”

“ In this land money counts, so that if you kill any one and have money you will get out of it. Morello knows how much money he has given to detectives to get out free out of three or four cases in which he was implicated. Even now he is supposed to be watched by the police who do not care to watch him because they know that they will receive their bit. The government always holds him under suspicion as the head of the Black-Handers. When anything happens Morello is always in danger of arrest, but the same policeman he feeds tips him off and so Morello goes into hiding. ”

“ As blackmail in France—but not as to England, Germany, America, etc.—the law is so adjusted that the question of the relations of the blackmailed to the blackmailer are not of obligation to be defined clearly in the trial of a blackmailer, no matter how clear ”

“ The police, meanwhile, who had bought appointment or promotion, and the politicians back of them, extended the blackmailing to include about everything from the pushcart peddler and the big or small merchant who wished to use the sidewalk illegally for his goods, up to the keepers of the brothel, the gambling-house, and the policy-shop. The total blackmail ran into millions of dollars. New York was a wide-open town. The big bosses rolled in wealth, and the corrupt policemen who ran the force lost all sense of decency and justice. ”

“ Blackleg, a rascal, swindler, or card cheat. The derivation of this term was solemnly argued before the full Court of Queen’s Bench upon a motion for a new trial for libel, but was not decided by the learned tribunal. Probably it is from the custom of sporting and turf men wearing black top-boots. Hence BLACKLEG came to be the phrase for a professional sporting man, and thence for a professional sporting cheat. The word is now in its worst sense diminished to “leg.”
Black Maria, the sombre van in which prisoners are conveyed from the police court to prison. ”

“ It's more than likely that the letters had been arriving for some time previous to that, because one of the beauties of any blackmailing scheme—such as this one appeared to be—is that 90 per cent of the victims fear to bring the matter to the attention of the law. They much prefer to suffer in silence, kicking in with the amounts demanded, than to risk the exposure of their family skeletons by appealing to the proper authorities. ”

“ A friend of mine suffered long imprisonment because the secret police searched his house and there pretended to find compromising papers which they themselves had forged. It is scarcely necessary to add that vile people availed themselves of the system to levy blackmail by threatening denunciation. ”

“ Again, if the police find a dead body, they drag it about for a fortnight—the frost makes this possible—through the Finnish villages. In each village they declare that they have just found the corpse and mean to start an inquest; and the people pay blackmail.
Some years before I went to Vyatka, a rural inspector, a famous blackmailer, brought a dead body in a cart into a large village of Russian settlers, and demanded, I think, 200 roubles. ”

“ For their deeds military commanders of posts would hold defenseless communities responsible, levy black-mail upon them, sometimes to the full value of their property, and institute a system of espionage that would put an eavesdropper under nearly every man’s window and a detective in every social circle and public assembly. Property and life were thus put at the mercy of unprincipled detectives and spies, selected often from the lowest and most unscrupulous classes of men and women. ”

“ Much had been made of that scheme of protection in the newspapers. When that current was turned on, any person touching one of the paintings would be rendered unconscious immediately. Moreover, an alarm would be sounded in the building, another flashed to police headquarters, another to the sheriff's office.
"The Black Star will never tackle this place," said one of the policemen to a guard. "He's going after something else. His gang couldn't get near the building without the men outside spotting them, and we could put up a scrap and keep them out until help came from headquarters." ”

“ There were few persons in that particular section of the city at the time, but those who were on the street saw the automobiles filled with robed and masked men. They knew what that meant—that the Black Star's band was working in the vicinity. Their terror kept them dumb until the automobiles had disappeared, and then they gave the alarm. They knew that there was but one thing in that section that would attract the master crook—and that was the vault of the old First National. The alarm went to police headquarters. ”