Pop Account

Arraigned in Brooklyn last week charged with possessing a single lottery slip in New York City's celebrated Numbers game was one James Hines, Negro.

"Is Hines your real name?" asked Magistrate Sylvester Sabbatino. The defendant said it was.

"Well," remarked Magistrate Sabbatino, "this is one case where Jimmy Hines gets a break. Go home." Meantime, Harlem's smart gamblers had shifted from Numbers to betting on the outcome of New York's trial-of-the-year, of Tammany Leader Jimmy Hines as the political fixer of the Numbers racket (TIME, Aug. 29, et ante). Mr. Hines was getting no more breaks than ambitious young Republican Prosecutor Thomas Edmund Dewey could help. Highlight of the trial's third week was a detailed account of Defendant Hines's connections with the racket told by nosey State Witness George Weinberg.

Hard of hearing and inclined to mumble, Witness Weinberg, who was business manager for the racket's late boss, Arthur ("Dutch Schultz") Flegenheimer, told how charges for "Pop," averaging $750 a week which appeared on the racket's books, were payments to Jimmy Hines,--* said that in addition the racket put up $32,000 to warm the Tammany political wigwam in the city campaign of 1933. Under cross-examination Witness Weinberg admitted he had been a burglar, a gangster, gunman, perjurer, but he denied that it was he who murdered Dutch Schultz. At one point. Defendant Hines, who had been keeping up his spirits by reading his fan mail in court, lost his temper when Weinberg told of conferring with him, cried: "You know you lie!" Thereafter, two respectable witnesses told of seeing Jimmy Hines in company with Dutch Schultz.

If Tom Dewey can make the Hines indictment stick, he will be the biggest Republican in New York. Accepted as final last week were Republican plans to "draft" him for the gubernatorial nomination at the party convention which meets September 28. This plum was originally contingent on Jimmy Hines's conviction but Republicans, convinced that the trial will not be finished before the convention, were reported willing to take the gamble. Result: Democratic leaders tried to persuade either Governor Herbert Lehman or Senator Robert Wagner to abandon his Senatorial campaign, and stand for Governor against Jimmy Hines's prosecutor.

--*Charges for "Ice" were payments made to Dutch Schultz.

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