Lethal Mudballs

During a political campaign charges of "crime and corruption" are favorite missiles of contending candidates. Last week in polyglot, steelmaking northern Indiana, candidates for the coming election were given charged grenades to throw. A Federal "cleanup" campaign produced grand jury indictments against 299 residents of East Chicago, Gary, South Bend, Ft. Wayne, on charges of violating liquor, white slave, narcotic and automobile theft laws. In East Chicago, Mayor Raleigh P. Hale, Republican candidate for reelection, and the Chiefs of Police and Detectives were all arrested for multifarious violations of Prohibition laws.

No safe pastime is it to expose transgressions of city officials and gangsters in the Chicago neighborhood. Samuel Goldberg, East Chicago grocer, had told the Federal grand jury "too much." Uneasily he confided to Federal officials that he had been threatened by members of the East Chicago police force. Then a Negro friend of his persuaded him to go for a stroll. He was "put on the spot," plugged full of gangster bullets. There armed citizens stood guard night and day to prevent a general witness massacre.

Unterrorized. U. S. District Attorney Oliver M. Loomis, prosecutor of the accused 299, began an investigation of suspected election frauds in violent and corruptible northern Indiana.