Without a Song

As long ago as 1933, Cleveland's County Prosecutor Frank Cullitan tried to prove that Don Campbell, president of the Painters District Council, and his crony John McGee, president of the Laborers District Council, were actually racketeers who used their labor affiliation to screen a series of more or less dignified burglaries. Prosecutor Cullitan did not have much luck. When two plain-clothes men were assigned to follow them, Messrs. Campbell & McGee donned frock coats and silk hats, hired an accordion player, a saxophonist and two cars, had the band play Me and My Shadow while they paraded through the streets trailed by the humiliated detectives. Last autumn the tide turned. About the time Mr. McGee was being literally thrown out of his union job, Cleveland's Safety Director Eliot Ness, after a four-month investigation, got the cronies indicted on a charge of extorting $1,200 from a Cleveland restaurant owner by holding up the installation of plate-glass windows.

Last week, the Campbell-McGee parade reached its logical destination. After a trial, in the course of which the judge announced that he had foiled a plot whereby a woman juror was to receive a $25,000 bribe for holding out for acquittal, a jury, sequestered in the Statler Hotel, found Messrs. Campbell & McGee guilty as charged. Same day, accompanied by policemen but not by their musicians, Messrs. Campbell & McGee motored to Ohio Penitentiary, to start serving one-to-five-year sentences.

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