Word: makeing
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Dates: during 1950-1950
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...Harvard Square, as the result of some 20 arrests in the last year, the bookies have wised up. They seldom write down a number or horse's name, or keep any other scrap of evidence which might be used against them. To make an arrest the police need only find a slip of paper in a suspect's pocket bearing at least a dozen numbers. Depending on the judge and the number of previous arrests, the defendant may get probation, a suspended sentence, a stiff fine ($50-$1000), or a jail sentence--sometimes coupled with another fine...
While Harvard Square is one of Greater Boston's cleanest, it nevertheless sustains a handful of punks who make their living exclusively on bookmaking. Police assert that a certain "gentleman" operates openly from a table in a large cafeteria on Massachusetts Avenue. Plainclothesmen have kept an eye on him for a long time, but they can't touch this pimply-faced operator because he uses the prevalent "telephone" system. This means that he either stands outside or sits inside the cafeteria with a pocketfull of nickels, and phones in bets as soon as they are given to him. The mere...
This system makes it almost impossible for the police to pin anything on Square bookies. Nevertheless they go on making arrests on the chance that they can occasionally nab somebody carrying evidence. An investigation of city ordinances against loitering and sauntering is currently in progress. Application of such laws may soon make it easier for police to prevent this type of operator from contacting his clients...
...their friend, you know how they figure "it's tough to make an honest living." You know how they have been approached by agents of the big Boston syndicate. You know how they are being paid a certain percentage of their rent to allow a pick-up man to meet his bettors in their shops at certain times. You know how some of them clear between 10 and 15 percent of all the money bet with them, if they phone in the bets and work "on the up-and-up" with the bigger agents...
Maybe WBMS can continue its new popular music programs and make enough money to pay off its staggering debt. More probably it will sink. If it does, the reputedly cultured Boston listeners will be largely to blame. Obviously WBMS did not have as tolerant and intelligent a body of listeners as Martin Bookspan thought...