Stench

Who has not seen, and marked suspiciously, a monster, oldtime touring car--a traffic-scarred 1915 Winton or an even older Fierce-Arrow, whose tarnished brass and torn leather adumbrated a bygone respectability--rolling heavily but with sinister smoothness through his city's streets, the big tonneau jammed to the guards with a lounging, ill-favored crew of foreign-blooded males whose pull-down caps and brooding faces caused the beholder to murmur: "Lordy, what a bunch of yeggs!"

Metropolitan newspapermen sent out to Canton, Ohio, to cover the now national Mellett murder case (TIME, July 26, POLITICAL NOTES), last week discovered and described just such an automobile, in the garage of one James ("Jumbo") Crowley, gigantic onetime monarch of the Canton underworld. There were five cars in this Crowley's garage, but of the five the reporters noted specially the vehicle whispered of by timorous Cantonese as "Jumbo's Box Car." It would readily hold nine men, and considerable tools or luggage be- sides. It had extra high gears. It was battered, dented and per- forated with the marks of a hundred unguessable expeditions. Ac- tually quite innocent, it seemed to symbolize the spirit of what the Ohio underworld casually refers to as "the Mellett job."

Publisher Don Mellett of the Canton Daily News fought Canton vice and police corruption fearlessly, openly. He was shot dead after midnight in his own backyard by two patient, coldblooded, doubtless well paid slaves to crime, who aimed their rifles from behind a rosebush and made their getaway in a waiting automobile with a Canton license. The incident has led the nation to picture Canton, an ugly enough industrial town at best, as one of the largest stagnant backwaters of the Midwest's underground currents. This it may or may not be. There is a broad-beaten route between Canton and Pittsburgh along which bootleggers, white slavers and "reindeers" (dope-peddlers) have plied their flourishing trades. But the same route extends to many another Ohio city. To quote a civic-proud Canton Chamberman of Commerce: "If something similar should happen to rip the lid off, say, Youngstown or Akron, a much worse stench than we have here would come out."

Nevertheless, many agencies have rushed investigators to Canton. Last week the Pittsburgh police held one "George the Greek" Psialias, alleged "reindeer," who was shown to have been near Canton at the hour of the shooting, but who eluded detention before Canton's sleuths could pin direct suspicion upon him. Canton's citizenry, abashed by their own past political indifference and by a week of unproductive sleuthing, forced the suspension of their local police chief, Seranus Lengel, who had been one of Mellett's prominent targets. There was even talk of changing Canton's form of city government. Canton's leading citizen, Manufacturer H. H. ("Roller Bearings") Timken, fumed over the unemotional attitude of the Citizens' Cleanup Committee, vowing he would "get some damned action" or resign.

But the murderers remained at large and newsgatherers had nothing better to do than enlarge upon Jumbo Crowley and the Canton "Jungle," for local color. Jungle gangsters had their heads together, muttering. Jungle women were pawning their trinkets and leaving town, shrewd rats leaving a wreck.

The Jungle stretches southwest out of the business section. Here are factories, dirty alleys, frame hovels and a population of Negroes and foreign-born toilers who cluster at eventide in Greek restaurants and poolrooms. Here, for 25 years, Jumbo Crowley held sway, sending his cosmopolitan children to the polls to vote as he thought best; dispensing protection, advice or instructions, to henchmen in whose doings he never was implicated--until lately, when he was arrested for directing certain alcohol operations, and since when-- they say--he has completely reformed.

"Now he is an ideal citizen," reported the New York Times correspondent, diplomatically introducing Jumbo's rare philosophy and some of his "twinkling humor." Huge chested, hard as nails physically, Jumbo is fond of hunting, fishing, boxing. "Liquor isn't made to drink," he has said. "It's made to sell." No one has ever seen him down a glass of intoxicant. In the Jungle, Jumbo has taught the survival of the fittest. "If a man walks down the street with $100 in his pocket and some one knocks him over the head and takes it, that's his fault,"