The following abbreviations are used for frequently cited sources:
| AS | An unpublished, undated, typed, autobiographical sketch produced by Anna Scutellaro with the help of an unknown “ghost writer”; quoted with permission of Marie Scutellaro Werts |
| DN | Daily News (New York) |
| DOJ | Department of Justice |
| HD | Hudson Dispatch |
| HOB | Hudson Observer |
| JJ | Jersey Journal |
| JO | Jersey Observer |
| NACP | National Archives at College Park, Maryland |
| NYP | New York Post |
| NYT | New York Times |
| PIA | Il Progresso Italo-Americano |
| SVJS | State v. Joseph F. Scutellaro, indictment 313, December term 1937, Hudson County Court of Oyer & Terminer, case file, courtesy Hudson County Prosecutor’s Office, Jersey City, New Jersey |
1. The map of Hoboken appeared in Federal Writers’ Project of the Works Progress Administration for the State of New Jersey, New Jersey: A Guide to Its Present and Past (New York: The Viking Press, June 1939), 267. The book was later reprinted in a revised edition as The WPA Guide to 1930s New Jersey (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1986).
1. Autopsy performed at Hoffman’s Morgue, Hoboken, NJ, February 25, 1938, by Doctors Arthur P. Hasking, William P. Braunstein, Manuel Hernandez, and Thomas S. Brady on the body of Harry Ludwig Barck Jr., who died at city hall, Hoboken, NJ, on February 25, 1938, SVJS.
1. Relief Client List prepared by Harry Barck, February 25, 1938, Hoboken, NJ, in SVJS. Newspaper accounts differ on number of waiting aid applicants; Barck’s list indicates twenty-three. Nineteen were noted prior to Scutellaro, who is not listed. Three men were waiting outside when Scutellaro entered the office. Estimated number of destitute Americans in 1933 varies from twelve to eighteen million; see Richard Lowitt and Maurine Hoffman Beasley, eds., One Third of a Nation: Lorena Hickok Reports on the Great Depression (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1981), xvii. For comparison of “the first month of 1938” and “the depths of 1933”: Nick Taylor, American-Made: The Enduring Legacy of the WPA; When FDR Put the Nation to Work (New York: Bantam Books, 2008), 318. For background on “Roosevelt recession” 1937-38: Alan Brinkley, The End of Reform: New Deal Liberalism in Recession and War (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1995), passim.
2. Relief Client List prepared by Harry Barck, February 25, 1938.
3. “Jobless Man Kills Hoboken Overseer,” NYT, February 26, 1938, regarding Barck’s “usual way of dismissing one client and summoning another” and stationing of Carmody. “Confession Introduced in Evidence at Trial Here,” JJ, January 11, 1939, reporting trial testimony of Ralph Corrado. Statement of Ralph Corrado to Hoboken Police, February 25, 1938, SVJS.
4. Barck’s appearance, actions, and remark, trial testimony of Nicholas Russo: “Scutellaro Takes the Stand,” JO, January 12, 1939. See also “Confession Introduced.” I have added the word “bread” for greater comprehension, as in today’s usage “tickets” might suggest a parking violation or entertainment admission.
5. Politician extolling a poormaster’s cuts, example: Hoboken Mayor George Gonzales’s message to council, January 1, 1911, Council Minutes: City of Hoboken 1911–12 (Hoboken, NJ: n.d.), 8. Hopkins remarks from his book: Harry Hopkins, Spending to Save: The Complete Story of Relief (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1936), 100. Attitudes of poormasters prior to Great Depression: Michael B. Katz, In the Shadow of the Poorhouse: A Social History of Welfare in America (New York: Basic Books, 1986), 148-49; Paul Tutt Stafford, Government and the Needy: A Study of Public Assistance (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1941), 3. See also Frances Fox Piven and Richard A. Cloward, in Regulating the Poor: The Functions of Public Welfare (New York: Vintage Books, 1993), 47-48.
6. Millions jobless, see Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970, Part 1 (Washington: US Department of Commerce, September 1975), section D, 6. Unemployment estimates were prepared by a number of organizations. For partial list of organizations and varying estimates: Hopkins, Spending to Save, 13-14. Hickok remarks: Lowitt and Beasley, eds., One Third of a Nation, 37, 67.
7. Forms used by Barck: New Jersey Commission on Defective, Delinquent and Dependent Children and Their Care, 1908, Exhibits, 1308-9, collection of the New Jersey State Archives. Few soup kitchens: “Franciscan Sisters Feeding Hoboken’s Unfortunates,” editorial, HOB, January 10, 1929, and James A. Weschler, “Hoboken: Story of a Sick City,” PM, vol. 1, no. 40 (August 12, 1940): 16, on continuing shortages. Fusco’s encounter with Barck and her family’s circumstances: “Relief Client Kills Poormaster,” NYP, February 25, 1938.
8. On working-class Americans’ overwhelmingly positive view of President Roosevelt until “well into 1934”: Robert S. McElvaine, ed., Down & Out in the Great Depression: Letters from the “Forgotten Man” (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1983), 13. Overwhelmed aid offices: Irving Bernstein, The Lean Years: A History of the American Worker, 1920–1933 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1966), 301. Piven and Cloward, Regulating the Poor, 74-75, note that twenty million “were on the dole” by winter 1934, about one-sixth of the population.
9. Piven and Cloward, Regulating the Poor, 94.
10. McElvaine, Down & Out, 25: “at its peak in 1936,” the Works Progress Administration “gave jobs to only about one-fourth of those counted as unemployed.” Piven and Cloward, Regulating the Poor, 109: “some 7 or 8 million” were still without jobs when work relief was at its height. On work relief, see: Katz, In the Shadow, 235-36. Donald S. Howard, The WPA and Federal Relief Policy (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1943), 622, cites November 1937 census of New Jersey relief cases indicating just over 74 percent of the total were considered “employable” but did not receive WPA jobs. Conditions in other states: ibid., 73-85.
11. New Jersey’s abolition of its direct relief program: Stafford, Government and the Needy, 111. The federal government withdrew from direct relief in 1935 and 1936. Without federal finances, New Jersey’s Emergency Relief Program was reconsidered. The state legislature enacted a law in 1936 that abolished the New Jersey State Emergency Relief Administration and returned control of emergency relief to municipalities. On New Jersey poormasters, see Douglas H. MacNeil, Seven Years of Unemployment Relief in New Jersey, 1930–1936 (Washington: Committee on Social Security, Social Science Research Council, 1938), 100-103, and “Plight of N.J. Idle Stressed in New Report,” JJ, July 3, 1936. Federal Writers’ Project of the Works Progress Administration for the State of New Jersey, “New Jersey: The General View, History” in New Jersey: A Guide to Its Present and Past (New York: The Viking Press, June 1939), 53, on study that determined the average New Jersey family on relief lived on an amount nearly half the minimum standard for subsistence. “Chiselers” and number of people cut from relief by Barck: Russell B. Porter, “Hoboken Slashes Its Relief Cases from 2,000 to 90 in a Few Weeks,” NYT, May 24, 1936.
12. On New York’s and New Jersey’s emergency relief administrations: Josephine C. Brown, Public Relief, 1929–1939 (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1940), 89-94. New Jersey’s post-FERA plan: James Leiby, Charity and Correction in New Jersey: A History of State Welfare Institutions (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1967), 280-82. Hudson County Supervisor’s comments: “Says Nobody ‘Is Starving in Hoboken,’ “ HD, May 26, 1936.
13. Porter, “Hoboken Slashes Its Relief Cases.”
14. Piven and Cloward, Regulating the Poor, 63-64.
15. Mauritz A. Hallgren, Seeds of Revolt: A Study of American Life and the Temper of the American People During the Depression (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1933), passim, and MacNeil, Seven Years, passim, detail organized actions by unemployed in Washington, DC, Trenton, and other locations. See also Helen Seymour, When Clients Organize (Chicago: American Public Welfare Association, 1937), passim. For a description of nonviolent action by protestors during Hunger March to Washington: Dorothy Day, The Long Loneliness: An Autobiography (San Francisco, CA: Harper & Row, 1952) 162-66. Day uses the word “jeering” to describe the policemen.
16. MacNeil, Seven Years, 216, compares relief authorities and nineteenth-century industrialists. See also Marilynn S. Johnson, Street Justice: A History of Police Violence in New York City (Boston: Beacon Press, 2003), 149-80. “Bleeding heads”: Bernstein, The Lean Years, 427. Role of political unrest in government’s decision to expand aid: Piven and Cloward, Regulating the Poor, 45-79. See also Hallgren, Seeds of Revolt, 192-95, and Seymour, When Clients Organize, passim, for background on organizing by leftists.
17. Power of Edward McFeely during his brother’s mayoralty: Paul Samperi, interview by Pat Samperi, April 27, 2006, transcript, Hoboken Oral History Project, Hoboken History Collection, Hoboken Public Library, Hoboken, NJ. On urban bosses: Blaine A. Brownell and Warren E. Stickle, eds., Bosses and Reformers: Urban Politics in America, 1880–1920 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1973), 56. See also Vilas J. Boyle, “Hoboken: A Look at McFeely, the Man,” NYP, April 9, 1938.
18. Alfred Steinberg, The Bosses (New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., 1972), 1-9.
19. “Arrest Distributors of Circulars Laying Couple’s Death to Hoboken Mayor,” JJ, December 29, 1932.
20. See chapter 9 for detailed accounts of harassment and violence by McFeely supporters against Herman Matson and members of the Workers Defense League.
21. Observations about being watched and jobs lost for speaking up, from author interview with Marie Scutellaro Werts in Toms River, NJ, September 17, 2008. For example of McFeely administration’s retribution against opponents, see chapter 10, regarding Herman Matson’s lawyer, Edward Stover. For details of a McFeely campaign to cause the collapse of an opponent’s business, see John T. Madigan, FBI agent, Newark, NJ, office, report “Regarding Bernard N. McFeely, Alias Barney McFeely; Edward McFeely; Frank Romano, Civil Rights and Domestic Violence,” filed June 6, 1939, box 17313, 4th folder (1/25/39-7/26/39), DOJ Central Files, Classified Subject Files, Correspondence, Records of the DOJ (RG 60), NACP; and Ann Harper to Attorney General Frank Murphy, February 10, 1939, box 4402, folder section 1 (1/2/39-2/15/39 236400), Records of the DOJ (RG 60), NACP. For additional allegations of McFeely administration refusal to allow political opponents to speak in public parks, and allegations by his political opponents of false charges and arrests, see telegram from Jean Louis D’Esque, campaign manager, Fusion Commission Government League, Hoboken, to Hon. Frank Murphy, Attorney General, DOJ, April 21, 1938, box 17593, folder 144-48-0, section 1 (4/5/39-9/5/39), DOJ Subject File 144-48-0, Records of DOJ (RG 60), NACP.
22. “Scutellaro Takes the Stand,” reporting trial testimony of Thomas Carmody. Thomas H. Reed and Doris D. Reed, The Government of Hoboken: A Report of an Administrative and Financial Survey of the City of Hoboken, New Jersey (New York: National Municipal League, January 1948), 3-7, describes disrepair of public buildings under McFeely reign.
23. “Scutellaro Held Without Bail to the Grand Jury,” JO, February 26, 1938.
24. Relief Client List prepared by Harry Barck, February 25, 1938, and typed statements to Hoboken Police signed by Galdi, Russo, Corrado, and Scutellaro, SVJS.
25. Hoboken city directory listings for Frank Scutellaro, 1899-1911, change from carpenter to contractor. Frank’s prior position as a “prosperous building contractor and owner of real estate” described in “Relief Check Arrived Hour After Scutellaro Left, Wife Reveals,” JJ, February 25, 1938. New Jersey’s construction boom and bust: Douglas H. MacNeil, Supplementary Relief Study (Trenton, NJ: New Jersey Emergency Relief Administration, May 1936), 19. Joseph Scutellaro’s role in his father’s company: author interview with Marie Scutellaro Werts. See also “When Barck Slain, $8 Reaches Wife as He Stabs File into Heart,” HD, February 26, 1938, and Vilas J. Boyle, “Leibowitz Takes Relief Murder,” NYP, February 26, 1938. Background on Frank’s work for city and McFeely’s reaction to his support of Bartletta: author’s interview with Marie Scutellaro Werts; see also Quentin Reynolds, Courtroom: The Story of Samuel S. Leibowitz (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York: 1950), 163-64. For distress among workers in building trades: MacNeil, Seven Years of Unemployment Relief in New Jersey, 35; and Lowitt and Beasley, eds., One Third of a Nation, 354.
26. Multiple newspaper reports stress Joseph Scutellaro’s small stature, pallor, frailty, and glazed expression. See, for example: “M’Feelys Kept Off Record at Slaying Trial,” NYP, January 9, 1939; and “Scutellaro Takes the Stand.”
27. “Scutellaro Says Death Was Accident,” JJ, January 12, 1939, includes Scutellaro’s trial testimony as to Corrado’s comment.
28. “Relief Client Kills Poormaster,” for description of Scutellaro’s suit; see also front page JJ photo (February 25, 1938). Regarding death of Harry L. Barck: statement of Dr. Lawrence J. Kelly of St. Mary Hospital, Hoboken, New Jersey, as provided to Hoboken Police, February 26, 1938, SVJS.
1. Judge Charles DeFazio Jr. interviews by Nora Jacobson, 1988 and 1992, as collected in: Charles DeFazio, Hoboken: Circus Maximus at All Times; Recollections of Judge Charles DeFazio, Jr. (Hoboken, NJ: Hoboken Historical Museum and Friends of the Hoboken Public Library, 2002), 6, 13.
2. Photograph Hoboken Meadows, ca. 1890, Historical Photographs Collection, Hoboken Public Library, Hoboken, NJ.
3. G. Waring, comp., The Tenth Census of the United States, Report on the Social Statistics of Cities, part 1 (Washington, 1886), 690; Geoffrey W. Clark, “An Interpretation of Hoboken’s Population Trends, 1856-1970,” in Hoboken: A Collection of Essays, ed. Edward Halsey Foster and Geoffrey W. Clark (New York: Irvington Publishers, 1975), 47-62.
4. Irish population: Clark, “An Interpretation of Hoboken’s Population Trends,” 50. The phrase “near-subsistence wages” is Clark’s. Dangerous trades: Federal Writers’ Project of the Works Progress Administration for the State of New Jersey, “New Jersey: The General View, Racial and National Groups,” in New Jersey: A Guide to Its Present and Past (New York: The Viking Press, June 1939), 120. “The Men Who Perished in the Hudson Tunnel Disaster,” Evening Journal, July 21-23, 1880, describes worksite disaster that claimed the lives of many Irish American workers.
5. Christoph Lohmann, trans., Radical Passion: Ottilie Assing’s Reports from America and Letters to Frederick Douglass (New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 1999), 90-93.
6. Selling the docks: Geoffrey W. Clark, History of Stevens Institute of Technology, A Record of Broad-Based Curricula and Technologies (Jersey City, NJ: Jensen/Daniels, 2000), 18-19. John Maxtone-Graham, The Only Way to Cross (New York: The MacMillan Company, 1972), passim, describes North German Lloyd and Hamburg America’s ocean liners. Michael La Sorte, La Merica, Images of Italian Greenhorn Experience (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1985), 37, 50-54, describes Castle Garden and debarking in Hoboken to be loaded into barges destined for Ellis Island.
7. Clark, “An Interpretation of Hoboken’s Population Trends,” 50; La Sorte, La Merica, 117; and Pete Hamill, Why Sinatra Matters (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1998), 37-39.
8. Clark, “An Interpretation of Hoboken’s Population Trends,” 51; “immobilized” is Clark’s phrase. German ships seizure and outcome: Howard B. Furer, “Heaven, Hell or Hoboken,” Hoboken History (1994): 3-10.
9. In “An Interpretation of Hoboken’s Population Trends,” 60, Clark points out that “census criteria for categorizing the foreign born and their offspring differed with every decennial census,” making it difficult to precisely state Hoboken’s ethnic changes. However, he does cite 1920 figures regarding the three largest “foreign white stock” groups (either “foreign-born” or native whites with both parents or one parent foreign-born): Italian 16,007, German 13,230, and Irish 8,744, from the Fourteenth Census of the United States Taken in 1920, Population (Washington, 1923), 952-53. Italians were therefore the city’s largest ethnic group by war’s end.
10. Needlework: James A. Weschler, “Hoboken: Story of a Sick City,” PM, vol. 1, no. 40 (August 12, 1940): 12-19.
11. 1930 U.S. Federal Census Index for Hoboken, on Ancestry.com CD. Neumann Leathers, 1939 company records and photographs, Hoboken Historical Museum collection, Hoboken, NJ; and Philip S. Foner, The Fur and Leather Workers Union: A Story of Dramatic Struggles and Achievements (Newark, NJ: Nordan Press, 1950), 537-38, 562, for background on 1930s-era work conditions and brief mention of the Neumann Leathers strike in 1939. Ferry Street was later renamed Observer Highway.
12. Federal Writers’ Project of the Works Progress Administration for the State of New Jersey, New Jersey: A Guide to Its Present and Past, 262, lists all ten lines that docked in Hoboken. Seven were devoted exclusively to freight; the others carried passengers as well as freight. Day labor: see Marjory Collins and Wilfrid Zogbaum, “Hoboken: The Photographers’ Forbidden Paradise,” U.S. Camera (August 1941): 39-54. List of Italian villages is based on predominant origins of populations that built three Hoboken churches: St. Francis Italian Church (Genoa), St. Ann’s Roman Catholic Church (Monte San Giacomo), and the private chapel built by the Societá di Mutuo Soccorso Santa Febronia Patti e Circondario (Patti). For background on St. Francis, see www.stfrancishoboken.com; for St. Ann’s, www.st-annchurch.com, and Santa Febronia, Margo Nash, “Retaining Devotion to a Saint and Her Private Chapel,” NYT, August 27, 2000.
13. Downtown markets: “With Thousands in Closed Bank, Steneck Depositors Have to Beg,” JJ, October 15, 1932, and 1926 Hoboken city directory listing Italian poultry market owners. At least half, located downtown, carry Italian American surnames. “Poor Box Will Feed Starving: Hoboken Grocers, Faced by Too Many Demands, to Ask Customers’ Aid,” JO, May 29, 1936.
14. Goats: Vilas J. Boyle, “Hoboken: City Could Be Rich; It’s Held Down Now,” NYP, April 12, 1938; and Collins and Zogbaum, “Photographers’ Forbidden Paradise,” 39-54. On architecture: Federal Writers’ Project of the WPA for the State of New Jersey, New Jersey, A Guide to Its Present and Past, 262-64.
15. Carrying beer: Albert Hegetschweiler, interview by Jane Steuerwald and Robert Foster, January 31, 1989, reproduced in Albert Hegetschweiler, Everybody Seems to Know Me by the Paper Hat (Hoboken, NJ: Hoboken Historical Museum and Friends of the Hoboken Public Library, 2003), 4-5.
16. Blaine A. Brownell and Warren E. Stickle, eds., Bosses and Reformers: Urban Politics in America, 1880–1920 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1973), x, 2.
17. David M. Kennedy, The American People in the Great Depression: Freedom from Fear, pt. 1 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 145.
18. Ibid., 253. For a complete analysis of Roosevelt’s bolstering of preferred city bosses through federal patronage: Lyle W. Dorsett, Franklin D. Roosevelt and the City Bosses (Port Washington, NY: Kennikat Press, 1977), passim. Not only Democrats were favored. Independent Republican Fiorello LaGuardia was one of Roosevelt’s preferred city powerbrokers—and Tammany, the out-of-power Democratic Party organization of New York County, was left with nothing.
19. Get-out-the-vote efforts or tithes: Kennedy, American People in the Great Depression, 253. Jobs on city payroll: Thomas H. Reed and Doris D. Reed, The Government of Hoboken: A Report of an Administrative and Financial Survey of the City of Hoboken, New Jersey (New York: National Municipal League, January 1948), 3-7.
20. Regarding starved budget: Russell B. Porter, “Hoboken Slashes Its Relief Cases from 2,000 to 90 in a Few Weeks,” NYT, May 24, 1936, which notes Hoboken was only one of twelve Hudson County municipalities that had not continued relief on about the same scale as under ERA, and Vilas J. Boyle, “Hoboken: McFeely Tottering; Citizenry Aroused,” NYP, April 15, 1938, estimating Hoboken’s per-capita relief expenditures at less than thirty cents. The workings of Hoboken’s relief budget are discussed in detail later in this text. “E. McF” on Relief Client List prepared by Harry Barck, February 25, 1938, SVJS.
21. Joseph Scutellaro’s date of birth, February 18, 1902: Social Security Death Index, accessed via Ancestry.com. On political dynasties: Reed and Reed, The Government of Hoboken, passim.
22. Elmer E. Cornwell Jr., “Bosses, Machines, and Ethnic Groups,” in Bosses and Reformers: Urban Politics in America, 1880–1920, ed. Blaine A. Brownell and Warren E. Stickle (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1973), 6-22.
23. “Defense Hints Death of Barck Accidental,” JO, January 11, 1939, notes statement by Ralph Corrado to Scutellaro’s counsel regarding their meeting on February 25, 1938; it was read into the trial record. Insufficient funding for WPA jobs: Paul Tutt Stafford, Government and the Needy: A Study of Public Assistance (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1941), passim.
24. Scutellaro’s job history: “Investigation for Out Door Relief,” application by Joe Scutellaro, February 1, 1938, SVJS. The General Electric Vapor Lamp Company operated its Grand Street plant in Hoboken from 1911 to 1939. Scutellaro’s physical and psychological complaints: Jersey City Medical Center records, January 1938, included in case file. Scutellaro’s view of WPA as “almost shameful”: AS, 8-9. “Pampered poverty rats”: James T. Patterson, America’s Struggle Against Poverty in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000), 45.
25. Joe and Anna Scutellaro’s meeting with Harry Barck: “Scutellaro Says Death Was Accident,” JJ, January 12, 1939, and “Scutellaro Quits Stand,” HD, January 13, 1939.
26. “Scutellaro Quits Stand.”
27. Jumble of papers depicted in crime scene photographs, SVJS.
28. Rarity of home ownership in Hoboken: Boyle, “Hoboken: City Could Be Rich,” citing WPA survey. Thirty dollars rent listed for Joseph Scutellaro, Fifteenth Census of the United States, 1930, Population Schedule, Hoboken, Hudson County, NJ, enumeration district 272, sheet 7A.
29. On begging for aid: “Scutellaro Hits Stand, Collapses,” HD, January 13, 1939.
30. “Slayer’s Wife Tells of Fight Against Poverty,” JO, February 26, 1938; “Scutellaro Says Death Was Accident”; “Scutellaro Takes the Stand,” JO, January 12, 1939; John R. Bott, “Scutellaro on Stand Tells Story of Killing, NYP, January 12, 1939; and “Scutellaro Quits Stand” offer accounts of Joseph Scutellaro’s morning preparation.
31. Walk to city hall: “Confession Introduced in Evidence at Trial Here,” JJ, January 11, 1939; “Scutellaro Says Death Was Accident”; Bott, “Scutellaro on Stand”; “Scutellaro Quits Stand”; “Jury Hearing Scutellaro Case,” JJ, January 13, 1939; “Scutellaro Collapses,” JO, January 13, 1939; and Ralph Corrado, statement to Hoboken Police, February 25, 1938, SVJS, provide background on Corrado and their meeting. See “Jury Hearing Scutellaro Case” for Scutellaro’s testimony regarding Corrado, his criminal record, and the prospect of their partnership: “when a person is down and out, he’ll do anything to make a dollar,” and, when asked by the prosecutor what he meant by “anything,” his response, which I have paraphrased here: “To get something to eat for my family.”
32. Fallen prices: David E. Kyvig, Daily Life in the United States, 1920–1940 (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2002), 227.
33. Streetcar fare, buildings, and layout of Washington Street: Federal Writers’ Project of the WPA for the State of New Jersey, New Jersey: A Guide to Its Present and Past, 262-63. Proliferation of FOR RENT signs: Collins and Zogbaum, “Photographers’ Forbidden Paradise,” 45-46.
34. Established poormaster office hours: Robert L. Stevens Fund for Municipal Research in Hoboken, Directory of Public Officials, Education, Civic and Charitable Organizations, Churches and Religious Congregations of the City of Hoboken (Hoboken, NJ: 1911). On Cerutti: “Saw Barck Slain, Woman Asserts,” NYP, January 10, 1939; “Confession Introduced”; photo caption, front page, JO, January 11, 1939, describes Cerutti and her job. Office workers’ conversations with policemen: “Barck Jurors Get Confession of Death Blow,” NYP, January 11, 1939; and “Scutellaro Takes the Stand.” The Fifteenth Census of the United States, 1930, Population Schedule, Ward 5, Hoboken, Hudson County, NJ, block 161, sheet 3B, lists Josephine Shea as twenty-six years old; in 1938 she would have been thirty-four years old. She had no occupation listed in 1930. Hiring dates of Barck’s secretaries: see statements of Josephine Shea, Romayne Mullin, and Adeline Cerutti to the Police Department, City of Hoboken, February 25, 1938, SVJS. “Mother Says Dead Child Ate Paint Because of Lack of Food in Home” JJ, July 16, 1936, includes Barck’s claims he had “no need for trained social workers in this business” and a high school education was all that was needed.
35. For Hickok quotes: Richard Lowitt and Maurine Hoffman Beasley, eds., One Third of a Nation: Lorena Hickok Reports on the Great Depression (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1981), 8, 47-48. Kennedy, American People in the Great Depression, 253, notes New York Mayor LaGuardia’s receipt of Washington largesse. See also Dorsett, Roosevelt and the City Bosses, 58-59, detailing patronage in New York.
36. Donald S. Howard, The WPA and Federal Relief Policy (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1943), 82-83, from findings of 1938 survey of “43 representative areas in 28 states,” which concluded that such practices were found “throughout the country, different only in degrees.”
37. Porter, “Hoboken Slashes Its Relief Cases.”
38. The spelling of Eleonore Hartmann’s name varies on official documents and in newspaper accounts. Partial trial transcripts for State v. Joseph F. Scutellaro spell her name Eleonore Hartmann, and I have used that spelling. Per Social Security Death Index, Eleonore Hartmann was born July 26, 1892; she would have been forty-five in February 1938. The Hoboken City Directory 1910–1911 lists Harry L. Barck Jr., overseer, at 621 Bloomfield Street. Eleonore Hartmann’s address, 631 Bloomfield Street, appears on her statement to Hoboken Police, February 25, 1938, SVJS.
39. “Poormasters for Uniformity of Laws for Them,” HOB, December 16, 1912; “Poormasters of State Decide,” HD, December 16, 1912; “Hoboken May Out for Charity Job,” Trenton Evening Times, January 15, 1915. “Barck Veteran of War of 1898,” HD, February 26, 1938, describes Harry Barck’s career and his activities as “a staunch Democrat,” including regular reelection as president of the Hoboken Rumson Club. For society page references, see, for example, “Gossip of Long Branch,” NYT, May 10, 1903. For a history, see “Rumson Country Club,” Rumson Borough Bulletin (Summer 2008): 1-4. For Hartmann’s descriptions of her boss: “State Hopes to Complete Side Tonight,” JJ, late edition, January 11, 1939. Autopsy report, February 25, 1938, performed at Hoffman’s Morgue in Hoboken by Doctors Arthur P. Hasking, William P. Braunstein, Manuel Hernandez, and Thomas S. Brady, SVJS, states Barck’s body was seventy-one and a half inches in length (five feet, eleven and a half inches) and weighed more than 215 pounds.
40. “Saw Barck Slain” and photographs published on front pages of HOB and HD, January 11, 1939; JJ, January 14, 1939. Hartmann’s view of Barck and her lack of secretarial skills: “Eye-Witness Gives Story of Murder,” JJ, January 10, 1939. Polk’s Jersey City and Hoboken Directory, 1925–1926 lists Hartmann’s occupation as “artist.” Hartmann’s work at No. 7 School: statement by Eleonore Hartmann to Hoboken Police, February 25, 1938, SVJS. Regarding Barck’s regular secretary: “Harry Barck Stabbed by Relief Client, Seize Slayer of Hoboken Official at the City Hall,” JO, February 25, 1938. Handwritten notes by interviewer: Joseph Scutellaro, Investigation for Out Door Relief, application, February 1, 1938, SVJS. Barck sometimes chose to see clients himself: SVJS, partial trial transcript, January 10, 1939, testimony of Eleonore Hartmann, 37.
41. Barck excused Hartmann: “Harry Barck Stabbed.” “Relief trust” comment: “No One Goes Hungry, Says Poormaster,” HOB, January 10, 1938.
42. New Jersey poormasters blocking change and doing what taxpayers demanded: Stafford, Government and the Needy, 100, 162. On the latter, he quotes Child Welfare in New Jersey, Part 4 (US Department of Labor, Children’s Bureau, publication no. 180, 1927), 22.
43. “Barck’s Death Violently Ends Relief Storm,” HD, February 26, 1938, quoting remarks Barck made at meeting of State Association of Overseers of the Poor. See also Josephine C. Brown, Public Relief, 1929–1939 (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1940), 277, regarding development of social-work personnel standards under New Jersey’s Emergency Relief Administration.
44. Barck often criticized New Jersey ERA; see, for example, Porter, “Hoboken Slashes Its Relief Cases.” After Barck regained control over local aid and publicly criticized the federally financed state program, the former director for Hudson County Emergency Relief, John F. O’Neil, countered that Barck had been the one to sign off on Hoboken aid under the program.
45. Ibid., and Harry Hopkins, Spending to Save: The Complete Story of Relief (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1936), 101-2.
46. On Barck’s attitude toward Herman Matson: “No One Goes Hungry”; on his attitude toward “foreigners,” see Porter, “Hoboken Slashes Its Relief Cases.”
47. “Poormaster Barck Punched by Relief Client,” JJ, February 7, 1938; “Is Jailed for Barck Assault,” HOB, February 8, 1938.
48. See “Is Jailed for Barck Assault” for Barck’s use of the word “spitfire” to describe Rose Zitani. This article also refers to her as “slender” and a “comely young matron.”
49. “Zitani Offers Apology, Freed,” HOB, February 12, 1938; “Zitani Released on Parole in Attack on Poormaster, HD, February 12, 1938; and “Attacker of Poormaster Is Released,” JJ, February 12, 1938.
50. Scutellaro’s account of what happened in the poormaster’s office: “Scutellaro Says Death Was Accident”; “Scutellaro Takes the Stand.” See also Bott, “Scutellaro on Stand”; “Barck Trial Halts as Prisoner Faints,” NYT, January 13, 1939; and “Scutellaro Quits Stand.”
51. Report prepared by Dr. Laurence M. Collins for Prosecutor’s Office, November 5, 1938, SVJS, states Scutellaro was five feet, five and a half inches in height and, after gaining weight during nine months of incarceration, weighed 127 pounds. Appearance of poormaster’s office from forensic photographs, SVJS.
1. Condition of Hoboken Jail cells: Thomas H. Reed and Doris D. Reed, The Government of Hoboken: A Report of an Administrative and Financial Survey of the City of Hoboken, New Jersey (New York: National Municipal League, January 1948), 3-7; Building Conservation Associates, Hoboken City Hall, Exterior Preservation Plan, Appendix D: Jail Documentation (New York: January 2003), 69-73, History Collection, Hoboken Public Library.
2. Lack of glasses: “Scutellaro Says Death Was Accident,” JJ, January 12, 1939. “That son of a bitch”: statement of John Galdi to Hoboken Police, February 25, 1938, SVJS. Galdi claimed Joe muttered the phrase as he left Barck’s office.
3. “Scutellaro Trial Gets Underway,” JJ, January 10, 1939 and “Scutellaro Takes the Stand,” JO, January 12, 1939, are among numerous accounts of Joe being moved to tears at the mere mention of his children.
4. The Italian family as “a stronghold in a hostile land”: Luigi Barzini, The Italians (New York: Athenaeum, 1964), 190. Years Joe knew Anna before they married, and date of their anniversary, February 3, 1939: report prepared by Dr. Laurence M. Collins for Prosecutor’s Office, November 5, 1938, SVJS.
5. Author’s interview with Marie Scutellaro Werts in Toms River, NJ, September 17, 2008.
6. AS, 2.
7. Barck as “a big politician”: AS, 3. Barck role in supervising Christmas gift giving: Vilas J. Boyle, “Leibowitz Takes Relief Murder,” NYP, February 26, 1938. See “McFeely Flayed for Blocking Christmas Charity in Hoboken,” JJ, November 24, 1928, for complaint by United Italian-American Societies and Clubs of Hoboken that City distribution of Christmas baskets was politically based, did not “reach the poor,” and did not include necessities like food.
8. “The vote-winning generosity of politicians”: AS, 3.
9. See David M. Kennedy, The American People in the Great Depression: Freedom from Fear, pt. 1 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 24-25, for discussion of Robert S. and Helen Merrell Lynds’ 1925 study of Muncie, Indiana (later published as Middletown: A Study in Modern American Culture), which showed employment insecurity demarcated one’s position as “working class.” Caroline Bird, The Invisible Scar (New York: David McKay Company, 1966), 40, notes there were always more poor people in America than recognized. The Depression made them visible.
10. Biographical background on Frank Scutellaro: Fifteenth Census of the United States, 1930, Population Schedule, Ward 3, Hoboken, Hudson County, NJ, block 75, sheet 7A, line 12; the 1899-1900 Hoboken City Directory, and the following: “Relief Check Arrived Hour After Scutellaro Left, Wife Reveals,” JJ, February 25, 1938; and “When Barck Slain, $8 Reaches Wife as He Stabs File into Heart,” HD, February 26, 1938. Leaving on his bicycle: Author interview with Marie Scutellaro Werts. Hereafter, biographical details about the Scutellaro family, unless otherwise noted, are from this source. Biographical background on Marie (Thomas) Scutellaro: Fifteenth Census of the United States, 1930, Population Schedule, Ward 3, Hoboken, Hudson County, NJ, block 75, sheet 7A, line 12, which notes she arrived in America in 1887, at age four.
11. For vivid accounts of the vicious treatment of Italian immigrants arriving on the Hoboken piers, see Michael La Sorte, La Merica, Images of Italian Greenhorn Experience (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1985), 50-52.
12. Ibid., 63, on majority untrained Italian immigrants; on Italian and Irish conflict, 148-52. La Sorte notes: “Some eight of every ten Italians who came to the United States between 1871 and 1910 were from the rural and urban laboring classes, and had no job specialties.”
13. For images of downtown Hoboken celebrations in the early twentieth century, see Hoboken Historical Museum collections, www.hobokenmuseum.org. For descriptions, see also Pete Hamill, Why Sinatra Matters (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1998), 49-50. Description of backyard communal table based on Hoboken photographs from 1920s, author’s collection.
14. In 1900 the most common household size in the United States was seven or more people: Frank Hobbs and Nicole Stoops, Demographic Trends in the 20th Century, US Census Bureau, Census 2000 Special Reports, CENSR-4 (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, November 2002), 137.
15. “Harold Lloyd”: AS, 1. Joe’s courting of Anna: author’s interview with Marie Scutellaro Werts.
16. “Sunny little smile”: AS, 8; Joe Jr.’s small size and sickliness are noted on pp. 9 & 10 of same.
17. See Irving Bernstein, The Lean Years: A History of the American Worker, 1920–1933 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1966), 331, for references to multiple reports of deaths by starvation in 1931 and 1932, and “Hoboken Child Dies of Starvation: Family of 5 Stricken Off Relief in April; Have Existed on $5 Food Order Every Two Weeks Since,” HD, July 15, 1936.
18. “Hoboken Child Dies of Starvation.” See also front-page photos, JJ and HOB, July 16, 1936, depicting the grieving parents and others beside Donald’s coffin. Bird, The Invisible Scar, 38, on inability of poor to afford newspapers during the Depression.
19. Author interview with Marie Scutellaro Werts.
20. The Hastie story dominated front pages of local newspapers, Observer, HD, and JJ, from July 15 to July 17, 1936, and involved persons in city hall (including the poormaster’s office), the local hospital, police, and at least one church congregation. Quote from First Baptist minister C. Robert Pedersen: “Hoboken Child, Suffering from Lead Poison, Dies,” JJ, July 15, 1936.
21. “Mother Says Dead Child Ate Paint Because of Lack of Food in Home” JJ, July 16, 1936.
22. From caption under photo, front page JJ, July 16, 1936.
23. See Douglas H. MacNeil, Seven Years of Unemployment Relief in New Jersey, 1930–1936 (Washington: Committee on Social Security, Social Science Research Council, 1938), 113, regarding municipalities’ payment of indigents’ hospital bills, as authorized under state’s poor relief law. Surviving City records indicate longstanding City appropriations to St. Mary Hospital for care of the poor. See, for example, Financial Statement of the City of Hoboken, May 1, 1911 to May 6, 1912, noting payment of $25,000. Police report is no longer available; references appear in “Hoboken Child Dies of Starvation”; “Mother Says Dead Child Ate Paint”; and “Boy’s Funeral Draws Crowd to Tenement,” HD, July 17, 1936. The report’s content was never contested, though the final “cause of death” differed.
24. “Hoboken Child, Suffering from Lead Poison, Dies.”
25. See “Mother Says Dead Child Ate Paint.”
26. “Simple Service for Dead Child,” JO, July 17, 1936.
27. “Mother Lays Child’s Fatal Paint Eating to Starvation,” HD, July 16, 1936.
28. “Mother Lays Child’s Fatal Paint Eating to Starvation” and “Child’s Death Causes Storm,” JO, July 16, 1936.
29. “Boy’s Funeral Draws Crowd.” See also front-page photograph, JO, July 16, 1936, captioned “Destitute Parents Near Collapse at Child’s Casket.”
30. More than a dozen journalists: “Boy’s Funeral Draws Crowd.” “Widespread publicity” in “Child’s Death Causes Storm.”
31. “Relief in Hoboken Found Deplorable,” NYT, January 8, 1938. Also, see State of New Jersey Financial Assistance Commission, 1937 Relief Report (Trenton, NJ: 1937). Hoboken is included in charts indicating inadequate relief allowances; the city is not mentioned specifically in the text.
32. “We did all we humanly could”: “Jobless Man Kills Hoboken Overseer,” NYT, February 26, 1938. “Poormaster Barck Murdered,” JJ, February 25, 1938. “Administration is a local matter”: “Relief Check Arrived.”
1. Anna had stayed in bed: “Scutellaro Takes the Stand,” JO, January 12, 1939, and John R. Bott, “Scutellaro on Stand Tells Story of Killing,” NYP, January 12, 1939. On learning to stay in bed to stay warm: Caroline Bird, The Invisible Scar (New York: David McKay Company, 1966), 38.
2. Nick Taylor, American-Made: The Enduring Legacy of the WPA; When FDR Put the Nation to Work (New York: Bantam Books, 2008), 29; Richard Lowitt and Maurine Hoffman Beasley, eds., One Third of a Nation: Lorena Hickok Reports on the Great Depression (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1981), 10.
3. “Barck Slayer to Face Court,” Newark Evening News, February 26, 1938.
4. Descriptions of Anna, Marie, and Joseph Scutellaro Jr.’s physical appearance and attire from newspaper photographs accompanying “Figures in Hoboken Tragedy,” Newark Evening News, February 26, 1938; “Principals in Hoboken Relief Tragedy,” HD, February 26, 1938; and “Husband Held as Slayer,” NYP, February 25, 1938.
5. Author interview with Marie Scutellaro Werts in Toms River, NJ, September 17, 2008.
6. David E. Kyvig, Daily Life in the United States, 1920–1940 (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2002), 57, 64.
7. SVJS includes postmarked envelope and its contents. Three short typed statements are on the reverse; each statement closes with the signature of Edward J. McFeely, chief of police. The first statement, signed by Anna Scutellaro, attests to her receipt of the letter from her mother-in-law “about 10:15AM, Friday, Feb. 25, 1938.” The second statement, signed by Adeline Cerutti, certifies that the typist mailed the letter “about lunch time” the previous day. The final statement details the receipt of the letter by Edward J. McFeely and notes the envelope contained a grocery order and a book of bread coupons. Additional letter in SVJS from Hoboken Post Office city carrier 12, Allen Brusco, dated February 25, 1938, certifies he delivered the letter “some time between 10.00 and 10.20 AM” on that day. Brusco stated he placed the letter “on top of the mail box in the vestibule at 611 Monroe Street at the request of Mrs. Marie Scutellaro, due to the fact that the mail boxes were out of order.”
8. “Relief Check Arrived Hour After Scutellaro Left, Wife Reveals,” JJ, February 25, 1938, quotes Anna: “My husband used to go all the time […] and Barck told him to fill out an application. We didn’t want applications, we wanted food. How can anyone live on $5.70 for five weeks?” As the first check was received on January 28, 1938, and the second on February 25, 1938, and I have not presented the information as a direct quote, I have changed the number of weeks from five to four. Reference to candles is a direct quote from Anna: “Barck Slayer to Face Court.”
9. From a comment attributed to Anna, as reported in “Slayer’s Wife Tells of Fight Against Poverty,” JO, February 26, 1938.
10. Unless otherwise noted, Anna’s encounter with reporters, their use of flash, and failure to explain what had happened to Joe comes from “Slayer’s Wife Tells of Fight.” The reporter notes “over a score [twenty] of reporters and news photographers.” AP photographs show Anna and her children, sometimes weeping, inside the house, so she must have allowed them entry.
11. 1922 Hoboken city directory notes Joseph Scutellaro’s acquisition of a license, listing his occupation as “chauffeur.” Digging ditches: author interview with Marie Scutellaro Werts.
12. Anna’s comments about Joe’s “nervous condition” and treatment at Jersey City Medical Center: “Relief Check Arrived.” See also trial testimony of Dr. John J. Mackin, who saw Scutellaro on January 3 and February 1, 1938: “Jury Gets Scutellaro Case This Afternoon,” HD, January 14, 1939. In “Out of Work, Two Children Ill,” HD, February 26, 1938, Anna explains Joe left every day between 6 and 7 AM to look for work.
13. Three relatives identified as Anna’s father-in-law, a cousin, and an aunt: AS, 16.
14. According to the Manual of the Legislature of New Jersey, 1938, the Jersey Observer, with offices at 111 Newark Street, was published every afternoon in Hoboken. From 1911 to 1924, it was called the Hudson Observer; from January 31, 1924 to November 16, 1951, the Jersey Observer. Numerous city reports during the 1920s to 1940s bear the Observer’s imprint. Its espousal of the administration’s point of view becomes clear when its coverage is compared to articles published in other area dailies, including the Jersey Journal (which had its own bloody contest with Jersey City mayor Frank Hague) and the Union City-based Hudson Dispatch. The Observer’s reliance on its printing contract: Vilas J. Boyle, “Hoboken: McFeely Tottering; Citizenry Aroused,” NYP, April 15, 1938.
15. Report of Hartmann’s testimony at Scutellaro trial, “Accident May Be Defense in Barck Slaying,” JO, January 11, 1939: “She had talked with those men [relief clients], she added, and also with one Jersey Observer reporter who she knew, immediately after the fatal stabbing.” Signed statement of Eleonore A. Hartmann, cosigned by typist/patrolman 16, Bernard Walker, February 25, 1938, 4:40 PM, SVJS.
16. The Observer’s first article, “Harry Barck Stabbed by Relief Client, Seize Slayer of Hoboken Official at the City Hall,” JO, February 25, 1938, introduces Eleonore Hartmann (misidentified as Mrs. Eleanor Hartmann) as a relief worker who “witnessed the actual killing of her superior, and went to his aid as Scutellaro sought to escape.” There was another “eye-witness” claim much later: In his 1955 self-published memoir, Halo over Hoboken: The Memories of John Perkins Field as Told to John Leroy Bailey (New York: Exposition Press, 1955), 86-87, Field claimed he’d been first on the scene after hearing noises in Barck’s office. Field worked nearby in the Water Department. His name, however, does not appear on any witness lists prepared by police, defense, or prosecution.
17. See: “When Barck Slain, $8 Reaches Wife as He Stabs File into Heart,” HD, February 26, 1938.
18. Photographs appeared in JO, February 26, 1938. Article describing Hartmann’s adjusted account of the crime, “Scutellaro Held Without Bail to the Grand Jury,” begins p. 1
19. “Relief Client Kills Poormaster,” NYP, February 25, 1938, 1. NYP exposé appeared in April 1938.
20. Ibid.
1. Jail description: Building Conservation Associates, Hoboken City Hall, Exterior Preservation Plan, Appendix D: Jail Documentation (New York: January 2003), passim, History Collection, Hoboken Public Library. “Leibowitz to Defend Barck Killer, Plans Probe of Relief,” HD, February 28, 1938.
2. Leibowitz’s early cases: Diana Klebanow and Franklin L. Jonas, People’s Lawyers: Crusaders for Justice in American History (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 2003), 159, 176. An entire chapter in their book is devoted to Leibowitz’s career, 155-201; Jonas cited as chapter’s author. See also Robert Leibowitz, The Defender: The Life and Career of Samuel S. Leibowitz, 1893-1933 (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1981), passim; New Yorker magazine’s two-part profile by Alva Johnston, “Let Freedom Ring,” pt. 1, June 4, 1932, 21-24, and “Let Freedom Ring,” pt. 2, June 11, 1932, 18-23; and Fred D. Pasley, Not Guilty! The Story of Samuel S. Leibowitz (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1933), 118-20. On Scottsboro: James Goodman, Stories of Scottsboro (New York: Vintage Books, 1995), 103-4, 152.
3. For synopsis of Scottsboro case with Leibowitz as chief counsel, see Klebanow and Jonas, People’s Lawyers, 173-85.
4. Author interview with Marie Scutellaro Werts in Toms River, NJ, September 17, 2008.
5. “Grudging release”: Klebanow and Jonas, People’s Lawyers, 184. Was “the man to call”: Goodman, Stories of Scottsboro, 101.
6. Leibowitz, physical appearance: Pasley, Not Guilty!, 120-21; Leibowitz, The Defender, 5, 22. Photographs of Leibowitz from late 1920s and 1930s, inset in The Defender, invariably show him wearing a three-piece suit. Quentin Reynolds, Courtroom: The Story of Samuel S. Leibowitz (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux: 1950), 155 (“a relentless eye,” noted by a Bridgeport Herald reporter). Murray Schumach, “Samuel S. Leibowitz, 84, Jurist and Scottsboro Case Lawyer, Dies,” NYT, January 12, 1978, cites Leibowitz’s birth date, August 14, 1893.
7. “Italians Raise Barck Slayer Defense Fund,” JJ, February 28, 1938.
8. From photograph of Recorder’s Court taken May 27, 1920, Hoboken Historical Photographs Collection, Hoboken Public Library, Hoboken, NJ.
9. Identical reports: David E. Kyvig, Daily Life in the United States, 1920–1940 (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2002), 190. See Ancestry.com database; newspapers carrying the story on February 25, 1938, included Dunkirk Evening Observer (Dunkirk, New York), The Gettysburg Times (Gettysburg, Pennsylvania), Abilene Reporter News (Abilene, Texas), Ogden Standard Examiner (Ogden, Utah); on February 26, 1938, publications included Albuquerque Journal, Gazette Bulletin (Williamsport, Pennsylvania), Kokomo Tribune (Kokomo, Indiana), North Adams Transcript (North Adams, Massachusetts), San Antonio Light, and Hammond Times (Hammond, Indiana).
10. “Italians Raise Barck Slayer Defense Fund.” See also “Il Capo Del Relief non era che l’oppressore dei poveri,” PIA, February 28, 1938, in which a neighbor speculates anti-Italian feeling may have contributed to Barck’s hostility toward Scutellaro, translated for author by Elisa Varano.
11. “Defense Fund Reported Under Way for Slayer,” JO, February 28, 1938; “Leibowitz to Defend Barck Killer.”
12. Supporters helped the Scutellaros with fuel and electric bills and bought milk for the children: “Speeds Defense of Barck Slayer, Leibowitz Visits Scutellaro–1,000 Attend Funeral,” HD, March 1, 1938. SVJS includes postmarked envelope from the poormaster’s office and its contents. Three short typed statements are on the reverse; each statement closes with the signature of Edward J. McFeely, chief of police. The final statement details the return of the letter to Edward J. McFeely and the following note on its contents: “Contents order No. 7546-E185 dated Feb. 24, 38. book containing 30 salmon color cupons [sic] for bread, Continental Baking Co.”
13. Set the stage: Klebanow and Jonas, People’s Lawyers, 171. “Leibowitz Makes Three-Hour Appeal to Save Scutellaro,” JO, January 16, 1939, includes references to attempts to curry anti-New York feeling. “Jew from New York”: F. Raymond Daniell, “New York Attacked in Scottsboro Trial,” NYT, April 8, 1933. Leibowitz’s office was at 225 Broadway, next to the Woolworth Building and within a few blocks of a station for “the Tubes” connecting New York and New Jersey by commuter rail. Ferries also ran from downtown Manhattan to Hoboken, and motorists could drive from Manhattan, through the Holland Tunnel, to reach Hoboken.
14. Fifteenth Census of the United States, 1930, Population Schedule, Hoboken, Hudson County, NJ, roll 1349, p. 5B, enumeration district 288, image 771.0, estimates Frank Romano’s date of birth as 1907, which would make him around 31 in 1938. Physical description of Romano derived from a photograph accompanying “Romano Made Hoboken Judge,” JJ, May 21, 1935. Photograph of Recorder’s Court, History Collection, Hoboken Public Library.
15. Accounts of arraignment: “Defense Fund Reported Under Way”; “Italians Raise Barck Slayer Defense Fund”; and “Leibowitz to Defend Barck Killer.”
16. Frank Schlosser was Judge Recorder of Hoboken from 1930 to 1934, when he became Prosecutor of Pleas for Hudson County. See A. N. Marquis, ed., Who’s Who in New Jersey 1939 (Chicago: A. N. Marquis Co., 1939), 777.
17. Photograph accompanying “Romano Made Hoboken Judge.” “Defense Fund Reported Under Way.”
18. “Lawyer Guild in Hague Slap,” JJ, December 10, 1937. The Guild’s Judiciary Committee recommended placing stenographers in all courts.
19. “Recorder of Hoboken Under Lawyers’ Fire,” JJ, November 19, 1937. On McFeely’s disagreement with former employee: “McFeely Battler Fails to Appear in Court,” JJ, October 25, 1937, and “Mayor McFeely’s Sparring Partner Still Missing as Police Search,” JJ, October 26, 1937.
20. “Recorder of Hoboken Under Lawyers’ Fire.”
21. See “Second Police Group” photograph accompanying “Hoboken’s Finest Has Proud History,” JO, February 7, 1942.
22. Gray-green eyes: Leibowitz, The Defender, 5. Skillful reading: Pasley, Not Guilty!, 127-28, quoting Leibowitz.
23. Physical description and age from Edward John McFeely, U.S. World War II Draft Registration Cards, 1942, roll WWII_2372200, Hudson County, NJ, via Ancestry.com. All but the swagger is depicted in a photograph of Edward McFeely in “End of a Boss,” Life, May 26, 1947, 40. See also photographs accompanying “PBA Cheers McFeely as It Honors 12 Retired Men,” JO, April 25, 1939, and “Hoboken’s Finest Has Proud History.”
24. “Cop-fighter” from Johnston, “Let Freedom Ring,” pt. 2, 22. Discrediting police: Marilynn S. Johnson, Street Justice: A History of Police Violence in New York City (Boston: Beacon Press, 2003), 3, 114, 122, 125, and Johnston, “Let Freedom Ring,” pt. 1, 21.
25. Exchange reported in “Defense Fund Reported Under Way.”
26. Ibid.; “Overseer’s Slayer Maps His Defense, Jobless Man Who Stabbed Hoboken Relief Official May Plead Temporary Insanity,” NYT, February 27, 1938.
27. “The chances are”: “Leibowitz to Defend Barck Killer” and “Service Held for Barck,” NYT, February 28, 1938.
1. “Throng Present at Barck Rites,” JO, March 1, 1938; “Service Held for Barck,” NYT, February 28, 1938; “Hundreds at Services Held by Hoboken Elks for Barck,” HD, 28 February 1938; “Speed Barck Murder Case,” JJ, March 1, 1938.
2. Pension File, Harry L. Barck Jr. Spanish American/Philippine Insurrection, 4 Regiment, NJ Infantry Co. M, volunteer, shows he mustered-in July 11, 1898, Jersey City, and was stationed in Sea Girt, New Jersey, and Greenville, South Carolina, until October 18, 1898, when his resignation was accepted and he was honorably discharged. Fifteenth Census of the United States, 1930, Population Schedule, Ward 2, Hoboken, Hudson County, New Jersey, sheet 11B, lines 60 & 61, for Harry and Augusta Barck, cites 1887 as year they married; “Client Kills Relief Head at Hoboken,” Daily Record, February 25, 1938, noted they “celebrated their golden wedding anniversary recently.” However, photostatic copy of marriage certificate of Harry Barck and Augusta Hoth, First Methodist Episcopal Church of Hoboken (appended to an April 2, 1938 Veterans Administration application for widow’s benefits) states they married December 31, 1886. For birth dates of Barck’s children, see Thirteenth Census of the United States, 1910, Population Schedule, Ward 2, Hoboken, Hudson County, NJ, sheet 1B; and information from Ancestry.com, including Social Security Death Index, Master File listing for William (October 15, 1887), Eleanor (April 19, 1891 in California Death Index), and Catharine (December 26, 1900).
3. “Throng Present at Barck Rites.”
4. Architectural walking tour, www.hobokenmuseum.org, provides background on glass window, imported from Europe in 1913. “Throng Present at Barck Rites.”
5. Oldest man: “Today’s News in Pictures,” JJ, February 26, 1938.
6. Coyle’s position as boulevard superintendent: “Coyle, Maloney Killed in Crash,” JJ, February 13, 1941. Appointment by commissioners: Free Public Library of Jersey City, A Brief Outline of the Government of Hudson County (Jersey City, NJ: Free Public Library, 1914), 9. More than 60 percent of county electorate: George C. Rapport, The Statesman and the Boss: A Study of American Political Leadership Exemplified by Woodrow Wilson and Frank Hague (New York: Vantage Press, 1961), 74-75. The birthplace of Harry Barck’s parents was variously recorded in censuses as the United States or Germany. Barck’s death record, issued by the Board of Health and Vital Statistics of the City of Hoboken, lists Germany as the birthplace of his father and mother (the former Katherine Brandenburg).
7. David M. Kennedy, The American People in the Great Depression: Freedom from Fear, pt. 1 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 24, referring to pre-Depression era findings on role of employment insecurity in lives of working-class people.
8. Jersey City—Hoboken Directory, 1889-90 and 1891-93, list Harry L. Barck Jr. as a shoe salesman, 67 First Street; also mentioned in his obituary, HD, February 28, 1938. Barck’s identification as liquor salesman: Jersey City—Hoboken Directory, 1893-94 and 1894-95. Barck listing as “Executive”: Fifteenth Census of the United States, 1930, Population Schedule, Ward 2, Hoboken, Hudson County, NJ, sheet 11B, line 60. Chronic poverty: Harry Hopkins, Spending to Save: The Complete Story of Relief (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1936), 111.
9. Abstaining from alcohol and tobacco: Stephen Gottschalk, The Emergence of Christian Science in American Religious Life (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973), 241. Barck’s enjoyment of a cigar in his office: “Check in Mail as Man Kills Relief Official,” Newark Evening News, February 25, 1938. Christian Science belief that people create their own world through thought: Beryl Satter, American Women, Sexual Purity, and the New Thought Movement, 1875–1920 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 3 (my italics). Critics’ charges that Christian Scientists were unconcerned with social problems, did not spend money on orphanages, and were focused on “quickly improved … economic standing”: Gottschalk, Emergence of Christian Science, 219, 269-70. Depression-era editorials in the Christian Science Monitor make clear, however, that the church did not oppose publicly funded work relief or direct cash relief. See, for example, “Meeting the Relief Need,” Christian Science Monitor, February 10, 1938.
10. Twelfth Census of the United States, 1900, Population Schedule, Ward 1, Hoboken, Hudson County, NJ, sheet 231A, line 3.
11. Irish roots of Coyle and Davis: T. F. Fitzgerald, Legislative Reporter, Legislative Manual, State of New Jersey, 1892 (Trenton, NJ: T. F. Fitzgerald, 1892), 235-36. “Benevolent despot”: Ransom E. Noble Jr., New Jersey Progressivism Before Wilson (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1946), 10. See also Rapport, Statesman and the Boss, 29-31. Saloons and political machines: Madelon Powers, Faces Along the Bar: Lore and Order in the Workingman’s Saloon (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 3.
12. German clubs: “Barck Veteran of War of 1898,” HD, February 26, 1938, and “Barck Murder,” JJ, February 26, 1938. Davis’s paternal approach: Rapport, Statesman and the Boss, 31.
13. Description of young Harry Barck: Pension File, Harry L. Barck Jr., Company Muster-in Roll for 1898, when he was 33. Review of Barck family photos, circa 1923-35. For two examples of Harry Barck’s way with words and sarcasm, see “Minister Challenges Statement That No One Is Starving,” JO, May 27, 1936, and “Barck Claims Cleric Erred,” JO, May 28, 1936.
14. Barck’s occupations: Jersey City—Hoboken Directory, 1893-94 and 1894-95. Precise figures on number of bars in Hoboken during that period are unavailable. For a later story on Hoboken bars: “284 of Hoboken’s 328 Saloons Are Under U.S. Ban,” JJ, October 1, 1917. Davis as permissive county sheriff: Rapport, Statesman and the Boss, 31.
15. “Hundreds at Services”; Robert L. Stevens Fund for Municipal Research in Hoboken, Directory of Public Officials, Education, Civic and Charitable Organizations, Churches and Religious Congregations of the City of Hoboken (Hoboken, NJ: 1911), notes that “according to statute” the overseer of the poor has “exclusive charge of the poor.”
16. The Evening Journal (Jersey City) Almanac (Evening Journal, 1900), n.p., lists members of executive committee of the Michael J. Coyle Association, including Harry L. Barck. Coyle Association: Alfred Steinberg, The Bosses (New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., 1972), 40-41.
17. “Smart politics”: Vilas J. Boyle, “Leibowitz Takes Relief Murder,” NYP, February 26, 1938. See Souvenir, 50th Anniversary of the Exempt Fireman, 1860–1910 (April 9, 1910), History Collection, Hoboken Public Library, Hoboken, for example of Barck’s political ads.
18. “Deserving poor”: Paul Tutt Stafford, Government and the Needy: A Study of Public Assistance (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1941), 83-85. Text of 1935 Social Security Act, www.ssa.gov/history/35actinx.html; Frances Fox Piven and Richard A. Cloward, in Regulating the Poor: The Functions of Public Welfare (New York: Vintage Books, 1993), 92, 116.
19. See “Resents Barck Statement Says the United Aid, Declares Poormaster Reflected on Society’s Work,” JO, December 13, 1928, for statement issued by president of private local charities association protesting “arbitrary and unsympathetic attitude” of the poormaster’s office; she pointedly noted her organization extended aid to persons “without consideration of their political affiliation.” Poor people’s preference for machine representatives over welfare officials: Stephen Pimpare, A People’s History of Poverty in America (New York: New Press, 2008), 152.
20. Lyle W. Dorsett, Franklin D. Roosevelt and the City Bosses (Port Washington, NY: Kennikat Press, 1977), 6. New Jersey Commission on Defective, Delinquent and Dependent Children and Their Care, Public Hearing Transcripts, 1908, testimony of Harry L. Barck, 1303, in collection of New Jersey State Archives, Trenton; Douglas H. MacNeil, Seven Years of Unemployment Relief in New Jersey, 1930–1936 (Washington: Committee on Social Security, Social Science Research Council, 1938), 85, 86-89.
21. “Speed Barck Murder Case”; “Throng Present at Barck Rights”; “Speeds Defense of Barck Slayer, Leibowitz Visits Scutellaro–1,000 Attend Funeral,” HD, March 1, 1938.
22. “Throng Present at Barck Rights” includes phrase “demand of others for respect of the dead.”
23. “Check in Mail as Man Kills Relief Official,” Newark Evening News, February 25, 1938, includes portions of a January 11, 1938, interview, during which Barck discussed retirement.
24. “Two Women Can’t Forget Poor Office Slaying Tragedy, Relatives Shield Barck Widow in Dover: Mrs. Scutellaro Won’t Reveal Feelings,” HD, January 16, 1939.
25. Fourteenth Census of the United States, 1920, Population Schedule, Ward 2, Dover, Morris County, NJ, sheet 3B, indicates Peter Vanderwolf (Eleanor’s husband) was born in Holland, immigrated to the United States in 1915, and was naturalized in 1919. The author was unable to locate records for his brother, who married Catharine. Both described as Dover, New Jersey, residents in “Barck Veteran of War” and “Throng Present at Barck Rites.” “Camp Hoboken” reference from an undated family photo postcard, ca. 1925-35.
26. Author interview with Marie Scutellaro Werts in Toms River, NJ, September 17, 2008.
27. “Speeds Defense of Barck Slayer,” and Fairview Cemetery, Fairview, New Jersey, regarding Harry L. Barck’s purchase of plot 21, block 22, section E on April 13, 1911. As of 2005, seven family members had been buried there, including Harry L. Barck Jr. and, in 1945, his wife, Augusta.
28. “Barck’s Successor Named,” JJ, February 28, 1938, and “Tighe Appointed as Poormaster, Expected to Open Office for Relief Clients Today,” HD, March 1, 1938. Report of Commission Appointed to Investigate, Codify and Revise the Laws Relating to the Settlement and Relief of the Poor, Pursuant to Joint Resolution, No. 3, Approved March 11th, 1922, to the Legislature, Session of 1923 (Trenton, NJ: MacCrellish & Quigley, Co., State Printers, 1923), 9, and Stafford, Government and the Needy, 162.
1. “Jobless Man Kills Hoboken Overseer,” NYT, February 26, 1938; “The Shape of Things,” Nation, March 5, 1938, 258-59.
2. “Relief in Hoboken Found Deplorable,” NYT, January 8, 1938; “Hoboken Relief Is Flayed Again,” JO, January 8, 1938; “Hoboken Relief Is ‘Deplorable’ Says State Aid,” HD, January 8, 1938; “Hoboken Poor Chief Is Scored,” JJ, January 8, 1938.
3. “When Barck Slain, $8 Reaches Wife as He Stabs File into Heart,” HD, February 26, 1938.
4. Diana Klebanow and Franklin L. Jonas, People’s Lawyers: Crusaders for Justice in American History (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 2003), 171.
5. Defense of mobsters: Alva Johnston, “Let Freedom Ring,” pt. 1, New Yorker, June 4, 1932, 21; Alva Johnston, “Let Freedom Ring,” pt. 2, New Yorker, June 11, 1932, 19. “Long lavender sedan”: Robert Leibowitz, preface to The Defender: The Life and Career of Samuel S. Leibowitz, 1893–1933 (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1981).
6. Fred D. Pasley, Not Guilty! The Story of Samuel S. Leibowitz (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1933), 122.
7. Leibowitz as super tactician: Klebanow and Jonas, People’s Lawyers, 159. Seemingly spontaneous: Johnston, “Let Freedom Ring,” pt. 2, 18. Use of notebook: Leibowitz, The Defender, 16.
8. Author interview with Marie Scutellaro Werts in Toms River, NJ, September 17, 2008.
9. Signed statement by 1932 relief officer, Harold J. Butler, produced February 26, 1938, for Hoboken Police Department, SVJS, included: typed “Record of Arrest” form stating, “Prisoner is charged with striking the complainant [Harold Butler] about the face with his hands”; October 19, 1932, waiver signed by Joseph Scutellaro and recorder Frank Schlosser allowing Scutellaro to be tried immediately (waiving indictment and trial by jury); and a complaint for assault and battery with handwritten notes (“Pleads not guilty—signs waiver. 90 days County Jail. October 19—Recons. & sp.”). See also SVJS, partial trial transcript, January 12, 1939, testimony of Joseph Scutellaro, 7, 9, 14, 26.
10. AS, 14.
11. Ibid., 9.
12. US Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970 (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1975), 126, reports in 1932, 12,060,000 Americans were unemployed, or 24.1 percent. Bank collapse: Tracy Brown Collins, ed., Living Through the Great Depression (Farmington Hills, MI: Greenhaven Press, 2004), 8. On Steneck Bank closure: “State Officials and Hudson Bank Men Confer 7 Hours Before Course Is Determined,” JJ, June 27, 1931, and “With Thousands in Closed Bank, Steneck Depositors Have to Beg,” JJ, October 15, 1932. The City of Hoboken was a depositor at Steneck, too, but it was able to borrow to make payroll. “Mitchell Acquittal Blow to Steneck Delay Pleas: N.Y. Verdict Gainsays Defense’s Contention That ‘No Banker Could Get a Fair Trial Now’—Review of Case Continued,” JJ, June 24, 1933.
13. “With Thousands in Closed Bank.”
14. Caroline Bird, The Invisible Scar (New York: David McKay Company, 1966), 38; David E. Kyvig, Daily Life in the United States, 1920–1940 (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2002), 221.
15. Joe hiding lack of income from Anna: AS, 7. Joe’s application for relief to pay rent: SVJS, partial trial transcript, testimony of Joseph Scutellaro, 9, 14, 26.
16. Paul Tutt Stafford, Government and the Needy: A Study of Public Assistance (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1941), 164.
17. Douglas H. MacNeil, Seven Years of Unemployment Relief in New Jersey, 1930–1936 (Washington: Committee on Social Security, Social Science Research Council, 1938), 66-67, notes professionally trained social workers usually claimed possession of limited capital assets was not a barrier to relief if one needed it to maintain the family. New Jersey poormasters traditionally declined to give aid to those who owned real estate or an automobile, even after passage of a 1924 poor law that allowed one to own a home and to receive $200 per annum. The law applied to the person in whose name the title was held. MacNeil, Seven Years, 75, notes 1933 Emergency Relief Administration announcement that home/auto ownership was not a legal bar to relief. The bank actually held the mortgage to the Scutellaro home, but they had paid down some of it. See SVJS, partial trial transcript, testimony of Joseph Scutellaro, 12.
18. Both quotes: Quentin Reynolds, Courtroom: The Story of Samuel S. Leibowitz (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1950), 409. Italics in original.
19. Author interview with Marie Scutellaro Werts. Courthouse description: “Tour Notes: The Hudson County Courthouse, Jersey City, N.J., May 9-10, 1975,” in collection of the New Jersey Room, Jersey City Public Library, and the Hudson Vicinage, “Brennan Court House” section of www.njcourtsonline.com, New Jersey Judiciary’s website.
20. “Thomas F. Tumulty,” obituary, NYT, December 29, 1953, and details in biographical note about Tumulty’s son: Josephine A. Fitzgerald, Fitzgerald’s Legislative Manual, State of New Jersey, 1944 (Trenton, NJ: J. A. Fitzgerald, 1944), 291. Comments on lavish Courthouse versus poverty, see “Leibowitz Makes Three-Hour Appeal to Save Scutellaro,” JO, January 16, 1939. Marble floor: “Brennan Court House” section of www.njcourtsonline.com.
21. Closing argument: “Leibowitz Makes Three-Hour Appeal.” Number unemployed: US Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics, 126.
22. “Barck Slayer Arraigned: Is Refused Bail, Samuel Leibowitz Makes Earnest Plea to Court,” JO, March 25, 1938. See also William G. McLoughlin, Court Houses and Court Rooms, United States and New Jersey: Their History and Architecture (Jersey City, NJ: John Marshall College, 1937), 16; “Hudson County’s New Court House: Handsome Building to Be Formally Opened Tomorrow,” JJ, September 19, 1910.
23. “Courtesy of the court”: “Barck Slayer Arraigned”; “Thomas F. Tumulty,” obituary; background on Meaney derived from “Thomas Meaney, Ex-Judge, Is Dead,” NYT, May 18, 1968.
24. “Thomas Meaney, Ex-Judge, Is Dead”; “Meaney Rejection Is Urged by Edison,” NYT, May 19, 1942.
25. “Barck Slayer Arraigned.” All other quotes from Leibowitz at second arraignment are from this source.
26. “Counsel to Ask Early Trial for Barck’s Slayer,” JJ, May 12, 1938.
27. There were six floors to the jail, but several were two stories high, with ceiling heights that allowed for mezzanines: “Visitors Impressed with Features of New Jail,” JJ, January 4, 1929. Two hundred and fifty was the maximum number of men the jail was designed to hold. Joseph Scutellaro’s mental and physical state while in the county jail: report prepared by Dr. Laurence M. Collins for Prosecutor’s Office, November 5, 1938, SVJS.
28. “Jury Gets Scutellaro Case This Afternoon,” HD, January 14, 1939; report prepared by Dr. Collins, SVJS.
29. Report prepared by Dr. Collins, SVJS.
30. Interview with Marie Scutellaro Werts.
31. See Jon Byrne, “A Trip Through the County Jail,” JJ, January 10, 1941. Samples of Joe’s penciled letters to his lawyer, SVJS.
32. On Leibowitz’s deep research: See Alva Johnston, “Let Freedom Ring,” pt. 2, New Yorker, June 11, 1932, 22; Pasley, Not Guilty!, 34, 118-26; Klebanow and Jonas, People’s Lawyers, 171; and Leibowitz, The Defender, 182.
33. Klebanow and Jonas, People’s Lawyers, 159-60.
34. See “Defense Fund Reported Under Way for Slayer,” JO, February 28, 1938, in which the reporter (unnamed) asserts Leibowitz planned to call “many of the city’s poor who claimed they had suffered at Barck’s hands.”
35. Report of Commission Appointed to Investigate, Codify and Revise the Laws Relating to the Settlement and Relief of the Poor, Pursuant to Joint Resolution, No. 3, Approved March 11th, 1922, to the Legislature, Session of 1923 (Trenton, NJ: MacCrellish & Quigley, Co., State Printers, 1923), 9. Barck’s fellow commissioners acknowledged his influence in their final report. “No One Goes Hungry, Says Poormaster,” HOB, January 10, 1938.
36. See Stafford, Government and the Needy, 81, 94-95.
37. “No money for unemployment relief”: “Pastor Claims Hoboken Poor Are Starving,” HD, May 27, 1936. Hoboken only Hudson County municipality that did not continue relief on the same scale as the state: Stafford, Government and the Needy, 106-11; “Relief in Hoboken Found Deplorable.” There are no precise figures on the number of poor persons in Hoboken during this period. But see “Death of Child, 3, Stirs Relief Row,” NYT, July 16, 1936, which estimates the number of Hoboken residents who had previously received relief as “almost 10,000.” This is an increase from 7,870 cited in Russell B. Porter, “Hoboken Slashes Its Relief Cases from 2,000 to 90 in a Few Weeks,” NYT, May 24, 1936. Earlier figures based on number of Hoboken residents receiving aid from the state in April 1936. See Emergency Relief Administration, Emergency Relief in New Jersey, October 13, 1931—April 15, 1936: Final Report to the Governor and to the Senate and General Assembly, State of New Jersey (Trenton, NJ, July 31, 1936), Appendix A-Z, Municipalities in Hudson County, Total Persons Receiving Relief, Hoboken, March 1936. Records indicate the state counted an entire family as a “case.” The 7,870 figure is likely an estimate based on actual number of cases (2,308) multiplied by an “average” family of four, with some reduction to reflect individual relief recipients. The average family was likely larger than four, however, and the later Times article may have increased the figure to reflect that understanding. State of New Jersey Financial Assistance Commission Relief Report (Trenton, NJ: 1937), 38.
38. “To satisfy political private debts”: “Serious Charges Made Against Hudson Officials,” Trenton Times, October 3, 1905. No one accusing Barck of enriching himself during the 1930s: Reynolds, Courtroom, 163. Returning surpluses: “Mother Says Dead Child Ate Paint Because of Lack of Food in Home” JJ, July 16, 1936.
39. Rotting buildings: Alexander L. Crosby, “The Bosses Leave Town,” New Republic, March 22, 1948, 18; Thomas H. Reed and Doris D. Reed, The Government of Hoboken: A Report of an Administrative and Financial Survey of the City of Hoboken, New Jersey (New York: National Municipal League, January 1948), 3-7.
40. Rug quote: Vilas J. Boyle, “Hoboken: McFeely Tottering; Citizenry Aroused, NYP, April 15, 1938; author telephone interview with Daniel Matson, April 8, 2009, indicating Herman may have been the source for the rug revelation, received from an outraged McFeely secretary.
1. On alleged McFeely wrongdoing, see, for example, Vilas J. Boyle, “Hoboken: Symbol of Civic Shame; A City Rots as Its Mayor Waxes Rich,” NYP, April 5, 1938. Leibowitz’s strategy, see, for example, Quentin Reynolds, Courtroom: The Story of Samuel S. Leibowitz (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1950), 165-69.
2. “Barney McFeely’s Death Recalls an Earlier Hoboken,” editorial, JJ, August 10, 1949. McFeely’s appearance and background, see “End of a Boss,” Life, May 26, 1947, 40; Vilas J. Boyle, “Hoboken: A Look at McFeely, the Man,” NYP, April 9, 1938; “The McFeely,” Time, May 26, 1947, www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,793712,00.html.
3. McFeely’s alleged beating of a school janitor with an ashtray: “McFeely Battler Fails to Appear in Court,” JJ, October 25, 1937. McFeely’s use of “physical force” to eject opponent Frank Bartletta from his office, with resulting cuts to the mayor’s hands: “The Rise and Fall of Ambition,” HD, February 11, 1928.
4. Boyle, “Hoboken: Symbol of Civic Shame.” The NYP series was introduced on April 5, 1938, and concluded on April 15, 1938.
5. Absence of civil service protections on the East Coast: George C. Rapport, The Statesman and the Boss: A Study of American Political Leadership Exemplified by Woodrow Wilson and Frank Hague (New York: Vantage Press, 1961), 186. Hoboken voters did not approve the civil service system until November 1946; see Alexander L. Crosby, “The Bosses Leave Town,” New Republic, March 22, 1948, 18. Mark Wasserman, “Great Depression,” Encyclopedia of New Jersey, ed. Maxine N. Lurie and Mark Mappen (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2004). Comparison of relief budget and City pay to McFeely kin: Vilas J. Boyle, “Hoboken: McFeely Tottering; Citizenry Aroused, NYP, April 15, 1938. See also Boyle, “Hoboken: Symbol of Civic Shame,” reporting that as many as seventy-nine of “the McFeely kin” were being supported by Hoboken taxpayers.
6. Amounts paid to McFeely kin listed in: Crosby, “The Bosses Leave Town”; Boyle, “Hoboken: Symbol of Civic Shame.”
7. Thomas H. Reed and Doris D. Reed, The Government of Hoboken: A Report of an Administrative and Financial Survey of the City of Hoboken, New Jersey (New York: National Municipal League, January 1948), 3. The legislative committee that investigated countywide political corruption was named after its first chair, New Jersey State Senator Clarence E. Case. Final report: Journal of the Eighty-fifth Senate of the State of New Jersey (Trenton, NJ: MacCrellish & Quigley, Co., 1929), 1098-1151. Page 1117 refers to collection of at least 3 percent of the annual salary of Hoboken’s public employees; the demand did not cover law department employees—probably because they could be disbarred, as the system was in violation of the Election Law—and was said to exclude all those “holding appointive offices.” McFeely’s bank accounts: “Boss Rich in 3 Years,” JJ, September 21, 1928.
8. “Alleged loss”: Journal of the Eighty-fifth Senate of the State of New Jersey, 1145. “Milton Also to Be Quizzed,” JJ, July 13, 1928, on Case Committee findings. “Griffin Dead,” JJ, January 15, 1931, states courts valued Griffin’s fortune in 1927 at more than $1 million. McFeely’s fortune: “The McFeelys as ‘Go-Getters,’ “ editorial, JJ, September 21, 1928. See “With McFeely New Leader, Griffin to Stay Out of Hoboken,” JJ, September 30, 1925; “P.R. Griffin to Be Buried on Saturday,” JJ, January 15, 1931; and “Milton Also to Be Quizzed,” regarding Griffin’s illness and permanent institutionalization in an asylum, which also put him out of the reach of the state legislative commission’s investigation into county corruption.
9. Estimate of McFeely’s wealth: Boyle, “Hoboken: Symbol of Civic Shame.” Article about garbage contracts: Vilas J. Boyle, “Hoboken: There’s Gold in That Garbage,” NYP, April 6, 1938.
10. Ibid. Boyle cites mandated dimensions for the plot: “The bidder must own, have under lease, the right to control or possess the contract for the purchase of … a plot of ground of the dimensions of 100 by 200 feet located with the city of Hoboken, west of Harrison Street, between Second and Sixth Streets, or west of Jackson Street, between Fifth and Ninth Streets, or west of Madison Street, between Ninth and Jackson Streets.” See “Milton Also to Be Quizzed,” citing the Walsh Act, Chapter 221 of the Laws of 1911, which prohibits official self-dealing on city contracts.
11. Horse-drawn garbage wagons: Reed and Reed, The Government of Hoboken, 137. Details of 1923 bidding war for City of Hoboken garbage contract: Journal of the Eighty-fifth Senate of the State of New Jersey, 1136-38; Boyle quotes this source in “Hoboken: There’s Gold in That Garbage.” See also “Milton Also to Be Quizzed.”
12. “Story of Hoboken—Truck Racket, Too,” NYP, April 7, 1938. See also “Commissioner Clark and Mayor McFeely in Break,” JJ, May 3, 1934.
13. “Speeds Defense of Barck Slayer, Leibowitz Visits Scutellaro—1,000 Attend Funeral,” HD, March 1, 1938; interview with Marie Scutellaro Werts in Toms River, NJ, September 17, 2008.
14. Author interview with Marie Scutellaro Werts. Leibowitz at home: Fred D. Pasley, Not Guilty! The Story of Samuel S. Leibowitz (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1933), 215; Robert Leibowitz, The Defender: The Life and Career of Samuel S. Leibowitz, 1893–1933 (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1981), 51.
15. Leibowitz’s concerns about jury bias: “Tilts Mark Selection of Barck Jurors,” JO, January 10, 1939. Ethnic animosity was common in Hoboken prior to World War II; see Louis LaRusso II interview by Chris O’Connor, as collected in The Simple Dialogue of My People: Recollections of Hoboken Playwright Louis LaRusso II (Hoboken, NJ: Hoboken Historical Museum and the Friends of the Hoboken Public Library, 2006), 3. “Guinea town” reference: Agnes Carney Hannigan, quoted in Kitty Kelley, His Way: The Unauthorized Biography of Frank Sinatra (New York: Bantam Books, 1986), 23. Leibowitz’s familiarity with ethnic sparring: Pasley, Not Guilty!, 64.
16. Background on Frank Scutellaro derived from author interview with Marie Scutellaro Werts and family photographs she shared. See also photographs in Daily News archive (www.dailynewspix.com).
17. Testimony during 1928 Case Commission investigation revealed McFeely thwarted Italians out of political pique and economic rivalry; they were competing with him for the City garbage contract. See Journal of the Eighty-fifth Senate of the State of New Jersey, 1098-1151; and Vilas Boyle, “Hoboken: The Rackets Bloom in the McFeely Garden,” NYP, April 8, 1938, which quotes from commission findings. See also copies of “The Hoboken Citizen,” circa 1938-39, a weekly newsletter, in English and Italian, distributed by the Hoboken Independent Citizens Committee, which negatively compares McFeely’s rule with the “live and let live” philosophy of his predecessor, Patrick Griffin, box 17594, folder 144-48-1, DOJ Subject File 144-48-1, Records of the DOJ (RG 60), NACP.
18. See transcript of interview by author and Robert Foster with Jack O’Brien for Hoboken Oral History Project, July 15, 2004, p. 5, in which he describes Our Lady of Grace as “an Irish parish,” transcript in history collection, Hoboken Public Library. St. Francis Italian Church was completed in 1889 and St. Ann’s Church (originally St. Anna) in 1900-1903. Online histories of St. Francis Church (www.stfrancishoboken.com) and St. Ann’s (www.st-annchurch.com/history.asp) cite Italians’ need for their own churches.
19. See, generally, Stefano Luconi, “Forging an Ethnic Identity: The Case of Italian Americans,” Revue francaise d’etudes americaines, vol. 2, no. 96 (2003): 89-101, www .cairn.info/revue-francaise-d-etudes-americaines-2003-2-page-89.htm.
20. Draft registration card, Frank Scutellaro, World War I Draft Registration Cards, 1917–1918, roll 1712109, Hudson County, NJ, draft board 2, via Ancestry.com. Frank, born on December 20, 1874, registered on September 12, 1918; this last of three waves of registration included men born between September 11, 1872 and September 12, 1900. Regarding effect of World War I on Hoboken’s German community, see generally, Howard B. Furer, “Heaven, Hell or Hoboken: The Effects of World War I on a New Jersey City,” New Jersey History, vol. 92 (1974): 147-69.
21. “284 of Hoboken’s 328 Saloons Are Under U.S. Ban,” JJ, October 1, 1917; “Uncle Sam Closes 385 Hoboken Saloons,” JJ, November 21, 1917; “Army Raiders Find Whiskey in ‘Tea’ Pots,” JJ, March 30, 1918.
22. Author interview with Marie Scutellaro Werts. Location of Scutellaro’s bar and dates of operation could not be confirmed. According to City Council Minutes for May 26, 1909, Frank was then a petitioner for a retail liquor license.
23. “Hoboken ‘Wettest Spot in the U.S.’ Anti-Saloon League Superintendent Slams Gov. Larson,” JJ, March 17, 1930. “Hoboken Police Seen Drinking at Bar,” JJ, April 26, 1930.
24. Vulnerable East Coast cops: Rapport, Statesman and the Boss, 186. Hoboken firefighters and patrolmen who served McFeely: Boyle, “Hoboken: The Rackets Bloom,” which draws upon Case Commission reports.
25. David E. Kyvig, Daily Life in the United States, 1920–1940 (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2002), 20; “Allows Home Brew over Half Per Cent,” NYT, July 25, 1920.
26. See, for example, “120 Agents in Dry Army Make Raid on Hoboken,” JJ, June 12, 1930. Mark Edward Lender and James Kirby Martin, Drinking in America: A History, The Revised and Expanded Edition (New York: The Free Press, 1987), 154, notes many states were unwilling to pay the bill for enforcement and “were inclined to surrender their enforcement responsibilities to the federal Prohibition unit.” The author has found no published statements revealing Griffin’s or McFeely’s position on enforcement responsibilities.
27. See Charles DeFazio, Hoboken: Circus Maximus at All Times; Recollections of Judge Charles DeFazio, Jr. (Hoboken, NJ: Hoboken Historical Museum and Friends of the Hoboken Public Library, 2002), 11-12.
28. Douglas H. MacNeil, Supplementary Relief Study (Trenton, NJ: New Jersey Emergency Relief Administration, May 1936), 19, regarding 1920s building boom in New Jersey and “the entire country,” with attendant employment. Amount Joe made: AS, 5.
29. Author interview with Marie Scutellaro Werts; Boyle, “A Look at McFeely.”
30. Luconi, “Forging an Ethnic Identity,” www.cairn.info/revue-francaise-d-etudes-americaines-2003-2-page-89.htm.
31. Joseph A. J. Dear, ed. The Book of New Jersey (Jersey City, NJ: Jersey City Printing Co., 1929), 180; “McFeely in Panic over Desertion of 6,000 Italians,” JJ, October 25, 1928; and Social Security Death Index, citing Frank Bartletta’s date of birth, August 20, 1898, via Ancestry.com. “Hoboken Police Continuing Lottery Probe,” HD, February 13, 1928.
32. Bartletta’s home address, 913 Hudson Street, and work history: Dear, ed., The Book of New Jersey, 180. Address of Bartletta’s Association, 508 Fourth Street, appears in numerous articles, including “McFeely Flayed for Blocking Christmas Charity in Hoboken,” JJ, November 24, 1928. Additional background on Bartletta: “The Rise and Fall of Ambition”; “Bartletta Enjoins Police,” JO, February 15, 1928; “Bartletta ‘Alias Luke Adams,” JO, February 11, 1938. See also Kelley, His Way, 26, regarding surreptitious support of Bartletta, a Republican, by Frank Sinatra’s mother, Dolly, then a ward heeler for McFeely: “He [Bartletta] was an Italian, and that was more important to Dolly than his political affiliation.”
33. “The Rise and Fall of Ambition”; “Boss Rich in 3 Years.” On United Italian-American Societies: “McFeely in Panic over Desertion of 6,000 Italians.”
34. On raids: “Bartletta Aide Raided in Hoboken,” HD, February 15, 1928; “Bartletta Expected to Visit Prosecutor,” JO, February 27, 1928; “Wine Seizure Case Taken to Higher Court,” JJ, March 29, 1928; “McFeely Slings Mud as Italians Plan Suit to Get Bazaar Permit,” JJ, December 4, 1928; “Testimony Taken in Fight for Dance Hall Permit, HD, December 21, 1929; and Vilas J. Boyle, “Hoboken: The Police Are Disgusted,” NYP, April 8, 1938, citing Joseph Clark’s testimony before a Supreme Court commissioner. During their raid of Finizio’s home, police seized three barrels of wine: “Bartletta Aide Raided in Hoboken.”
35. Pete Hamill, Why Sinatra Matters (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1998), 75-76, regarding Hoboken Italian Americans’ belief, after their participation in the World War, that they “had earned the right to be called Americans,” and also regarding their views on wine and Prohibition.
36. “Parade Features Celebration of Columbus Day in Hoboken,” HD, October 13, 1928.
37. “Italian Parade Is McFeely Bolt,” JJ, October 12, 1928.
38. “Parade Features Celebration”; for descriptions of McFeely’s general demeanor: “The McFeely,” Time.
39. “The waning power of Leader ‘Barney’ McFeely and his machine” and “the bands played the Italian and American national anthems”: “Italian Parade Is McFeely Bolt.”
40. Biographical background on Clark: “Joseph A. Clark Dead,” NYT, October 11, 1960. See Boyle, “Hoboken: The Police Are Disgusted,” for a reprinted portion of Clark’s testimony before a Supreme Court commissioner, after he was removed without cause or compensation from his city hall position. Clark viewed this as punishment for breaking politically with McFeely. Italics added by author. See also “Clark’s Bolt Causes Change In 1935 Lineup,” HD, May 4, 1934; “Ouster Witness Charges Drinking Impeded Clark,” JJ, July 26, 1934; and “Clark Trial Adjourned After Lively Session,” JJ, July 30, 1934.
41. Author interview with Marie Scutellaro Werts.
42. “McFeely Flayed”; “Ask High Court to Stop McFeely War on Italians,” JJ, December 19, 1928.
43. Caroline Bird, The Invisible Scar (New York: David McKay Company, 1966), 28.
1. Recommendations to increase funding for WPA and other relief agencies and to provide new funding for public works projects were two items on a longer list Roosevelt presented to Congress. See “The Text of President Roosevelt’s Recovery Program Message to Congress,” NYT, April 15, 1938. Despite warnings: Nick Taylor, American-Made: The Enduring Legacy of the WPA; When FDR Put the Nation to Work (New York: Bantam Books, 2008), 346. Roosevelt received this advice from Hopkins, economic advisor Leon Henderson, and, most strongly, from Federal Reserve Board chairman Marriner Eccles. By early 1938, other advisors joined in support of public spending increases to “stimulate mass consumption”; see Alan Brinkley, The End of Reform: New Deal Liberalism in Recession and War (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1995), 24-28, 82-101. “Address of the President Delivered by Radio from the White House, Thursday, April 14, 1938, (about 10:30 PM),” www.mhric.org/fdr/chat12.html. The request for new relief-related expenditures totaled $2.062 billion; $950 million was requested in federal loans: see also Brinkley, End of Reform, 100-101.
2. Herman Matson was born on July 10, 1900; he was three months shy of his thirty-eighth birthday when he heard the April 1938 radio address. See Herman Matson, Connecticut Department of Health, Connecticut Death Index, 1949–2001, Ancestry.com. Further background: Morris Milgram, statement to John T. Madigan, FBI agent, Newark, NJ, office, report dated May 4, 1939, file 7-77, p. 22, box 15205, folder 109-286, section 1 (3/25/39-5/4/39), DOJ Central Files, Classified Subject Files, Correspondence, Records of the DOJ (RG 60), NACP. On the Leviathan, formerly the Vaterland, see www.atlanticliners.com/vaterland_home.htm. On Matson’s work: Herman Matson, statement to John T. Madigan, FBI agent, Newark, NJ, office, report dated June 30, 1939, file 44-2, p. 12, box 17593, folder 144-48-0, section 1 (4/5/39-9/5/39), DOJ Subject File, Records of the DOJ (RG 60), NACP. “Relief in Hoboken Found Deplorable,” NYT, January 8, 1938; “No One Goes Hungry, Says Poormaster,” HOB, January 10, 1938. During this period the Matsons resided at 812 Willow Avenue. Description of apartment’s close quarters from author’s telephone interview with Herman’s daughter, Evelyn Olsen, April 1, 2009. Recollection of Herman listening to Roosevelt’s “Fireside Chats” on the family radio from author’s telephone interview with one of his sons, Raymond Matson, April 15, 2009.
3. Background on Matson’s positive outlook and focus on the well-being of others from author telephone interviews with his son Daniel Matson, March 31, 2009; grandson Scott Matson, April 13, 2009; son Raymond Matson, April 15, 2009; and daughter Evelyn Olsen, April 1, 2009. See also Dorothy Dunbar Bromley, “Strike a Balance,” NYP, September 22, 1938. For background on and successes of organizations of able-bodied unemployed, see Frances Fox Piven and Richard A. Cloward, in Regulating the Poor: The Functions of Public Welfare (New York: Vintage Books, 1993), 64, 104-11; Mauritz A. Hallgren, Seeds of Revolt: A Study of American Life and the Temper of the American People During the Depression (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1933), 192-95; and Franklin Folsom, Impatient Armies of the Poor: The Story of Collective Action of the Unemployed, 1808–1942 (Niwot, CO: University Press of Colorado, 1991), 341-87. On hope, along with desperation and fury, as driving forces for some Depression-era protestors, see T. H. Watkins, The Great Depression: America in the 1930s (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1993), 15.
4. Poor’s support of Roosevelt: Richard Lowitt and Maurine Hoffman Beasley, eds., One Third of a Nation: Lorena Hickok Reports on the Great Depression (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1981), 10. Matson’s admiration for Roosevelt from author interview with Evelyn Olsen.
5. “Woman Who Spat at Barck Is Free from County Jail,” JJ, March 3, 1938.
6. Donald S. Howard, The WPA and Federal Relief Policy (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1943), 247. On WPA employment as an uneasy “hybrid” of “public relief and public employment,” see especially, Chad Alan Goldberg, Citizens and Paupers: Relief, Rights, and Race, from the Freedmen’s Bureau to Workfare (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), 109-14.
7. Certification process and reapplication: Howard, WPA and Federal Relief, 368-72. List shared with Matson: Herman Matson, statement to John T. Madigan, FBI agent, Newark, NJ, office, report dated May 4, 1939, file 7-77, p. 43, box 15205, folder 109-286, section 1 (3/25/39-5/4/39), DOJ Central Files, Classified Subject Files, Correspondence, DOJ (RG 60), NACP.
8. Local variability regarding determinants for eligibility: Howard, WPA and Federal Relief, 271.
9. “Employment Record of Mr. Herman Matson, 812 Willow Avenue, Hoboken, New Jersey,” produced by the WPA, box 1878 (NJ I-R 1937-38), folder 641 (NJ Ma-Mc), Central Files, State 1935-1944, Records of the Works Project Administration 1922-1944 (RG 69), NACP. Also, Herman Matson, statement to Madigan, May 4, 1939, file 7-77, p. 43.
10. “Relief in Hoboken Found Deplorable”; “Hoboken Relief Is Flayed Again,” JO, January 8, 1938.
11. Author interviews with Raymond Matson and Evelyn Olsen. See also Bromley, “Strike a Balance.” On traditional poormaster’s view that disagreeableness and inadequacy of public aid was “good,” see Lowitt and Beasley, eds., One Third of a Nation, 36.
12. “No One Goes Hungry.”
13. Lowitt and Beasley, eds., One Third of a Nation, 5, quoting Hickok about the Unemployed League she encountered in Pennsylvania, “a sort of union of the unemployed.” On Unemployed Leagues: Frances Fox Piven and Richard A. Cloward, in Regulating the Poor: The Functions of Public Welfare (New York: Vintage Books, 1993), 105-8. During this period the Leagues had about 450,000 supporters in eight states, including New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania. See Matt Perry, Bread and Work: Social Policy and the Experience of Unemployment, 1918–39 (London: Pluto Press, 2000), 155. “Unemployed Hit Hoboken Relief,” JO, June 3, 1936, states county headquarters for New Jersey State Unemployed League was 630 Palisade Avenue, Union City. “Even at the risk of arrest”: “Jobless Unit for Hoboken Is Their Aim,” JO, June 5, 1936.
14. “Nice fellow” quote in Bromley, “Strike a Balance.”
15. On the CIO’s and WDL’s early 1938 battles to distribute circulars in Jersey City, see: “No License Needed to Pass Circulars,” NYT, March 29, 1938; “Jersey City Ends Ban on Circulars,” NYT, April 1, 1938; and “Limitless Leaflets,” Time, April 11, 1938. “Haguetown”: McAlister Coleman, “Hague’s Army Falls Back,” Nation, November 26, 1938, 557. On formation of Workers Defense League: Harry Fleischman, Norman Thomas: A Biography (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1964), 159. Norman Thomas, national chairman of the Socialist Party, was one of WDL’s founders, along with friends in the labor movement.
16. Joseph Shaplen, “Socialists Move to Restore Unity,” NYT, May 28, 1936, regarding WDL and WAA’s formation of a joint committee. On WAA’s activities on behalf of WPA workers: Goldberg, Citizens and Paupers, 107-52; Piven and Cloward, Regulating the Poor, 106-10.
17. Piven and Cloward, Regulating the Poor, 108n64.
18. Lauren D. Lyman, “Jobless Assembly in Trenton Votes State of ‘Revolt,’ “ NYT, April 26, 1936.
19. Ibid.; see also “Jobless to Picket Assembly Members,” JJ, April 23, 1936; “Jobless Force Assembly Meet Tomorrow,” JJ, April 24, 1936; “Jobless, in Uproar, Start New Party,” JJ, April 28, 1936; “Jobless Army Ousted,” JJ, April 30, 1936.
20. Registered Democrat: Matson, statement to Madigan, June 30, 1939. “Fighting for free speech”: “Matson Denies Red, Criminal Accusations,” JJ, October 18, 1940. WDL assistance to Scutellaro family: “Barck Murder Trial Postponed to Nov. 14,” Workers Defense League of New Jersey News Bulletin, October 1938, in the Workers Defense League Collection, box 130, folder 7, Archives of Labor and Urban Affairs, Wayne State University, and “Speeds Defense of Barck Slayer,” HD, March 1, 1938. Matson’s membership in WDL: “Matson Denies Red.” Hague’s bare-knuckles campaign, beginning in late 1937, to suppress a Congress of Industrial Organizations’ drive to organize workers in Jersey City and to prevent circulation of literature for same: Alfred Steinberg, The Bosses (New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., 1972), 55-58; Coleman, “Hague’s Army Falls Back.” In 1939, the US Supreme Court affirmed, in Hague v. Congress of Industrial Organizations, that parks and streets were public forums protected by the First Amendment. ACLU counsel Morris L. Ernst successfully argued for the respondent. Matson’s initial contact with WDL: Morris Milgram, WDL of NJ state secretary, statement to John T. Madigan, FBI agent, Newark, NJ, office, report dated June 30, 1939, file 44-2, p. 6, box 17593, folder 144-48-0, section 1 (4/5/39-9/5/39), DOJ Subject File, Records of the DOJ (RG 60), NACP.
21. Matsons’ apartment, 812 Willow Avenue: Herman Matson, statement to Madigan, June 30, 1939, file 44-2, p. 12.
22. Ibid.
23. “Distributor of Circulars Shifts to Hoboken,” JJ, April 5, 1938. See also “Employment Record of Mr. Herman Matson,” produced by the WPA, box 1878 (NJ I-R 1937-38), folder 641 (NJ Ma-Mc), Central Files, State 1935-1944, Records of the WPA 1922-1944 (RG 69), NACP.
24. Background on Matson’s birthplace: Author interview with Raymond Matson, and Connecticut Department of Health, Connecticut Death Index, 1949–2001. Searches for a birth certificate have been fruitless. References to length of Matsons’ residency in Hoboken vary, but see “Now Matson’s Counsel Queries Him on His Belief in God,” JJ, June 5, 1940, in which Matson describes himself as “a resident of Hoboken for more than 12 years.” US Supreme Court decision and Hoboken police promise to abide by it: Herman Matson, statement to Madigan, June 30, 1939, file 44-2, p. 21. Regarding 1938 Supreme Court decision, Lovell v. City of Griffin, Georgia, see “No License Needed” and “Limitless Leaflets,” Time Magazine, April 11, 1938. The WDL filed an amicus curiae brief in the case.
25. “Distributor of Circulars Shifts to Hoboken.”
26. Joseph A. Clark to John T. Madigan, FBI agent, Newark, NJ, office, report dated June 2, 1939, file 7-77, p. 82, box 15205, folder 109-286, section 2 (6/2/39), DOJ Central Files, Classified Subject Files, Correspondence, Records of the DOJ (RG 60), NACP; and “On Hoboken Police Force 43 Years,” NYT, March 13, 1933.
27. Description of Matson’s interrogation: Herman Matson, statement to Madigan, June 30, 1939, file 44-2, pp. 22–23.
28. Vilas J. Boyle, “Hoboken: Symbol of Civic Shame; A City Rots as Its Mayor Waxes Rich,” NYP, April 5, 1938.
29. See “Fifth Warders Uphold McFeely,” JJ, April 13, 1938, and “Hoboken Groups Assail the Post,” NYP, April 7, 1938. Fred M. DeSapio, a McFeely club founder and later head of the Good Government ticket that unseated McFeely, offered the Lion’s Club resolution. Charles DeFazio Jr., then a city payroller and later a DeSapio campaigner, seconded the resolution.
30. WDL flyer, “Mayor McFeely and His Charlie McCarthies,” box 1877 (NJ C-H 1937-38), folder 641 (NJ He-Hz), Central Files, State 1935-1944, Records of the Works Progress Administration 1922-1944 (RG 69), NACP.
31. “Punishing assignments”: letter from Pierson Ostrow, Elizabeth, New Jersey, to David K. Niles, Assistant Administrator, WPA, Washington, DC, May 17, 1938, arguing for an investigation into Herman Matson’s layoff from the WPA, box 1878 (New Jersey I-R 1937-38), folder 641 (NJ Ma-Mc), Central Files, State 1935-1944, Records of the Works Progress Administration 1922-1944 (RG 69), NACP.
32. Herman Matson’s appearance: author interviews with Raymond Matson and Scott Matson; and a full-length mugshot taken by the Hoboken Police Department on September 15, 1938, now in the Hoboken Historical Museum archives, Hoboken, NJ, Hoboken Police Collection, 2002.0008.2000. The average height of a native-born American man, who was born in 1900 (as Matson was), was 66.9 inches: Richard H. Steckel, “A History of the Standard of Living in the United States,” EH.net Encyclopedia, Robert Whaples, ed., July 21, 2002. http://eh.net/encyclopedia/article/steckel.standard.living.us. Matson described himself as five feet, eight inches tall, a slight exaggeration: Herman Matson to the Editor of Time Magazine, October 31, 1938, The Workers Defense League Collection, box 130, folder 19, Archives of Labor and Urban Affairs, Wayne State University.
33. Tool house incident: Harold Grouls, WDL attorney and counsel to Herman Matson, statement to John T. Madigan, FBI agent, Newark, NJ, office, report dated June 30, 1939, file 44-2, pp. 2–3, box 17593, folder 144-48-0, section 1 (4/5/39-9/5/39), DOJ Subject File, Records of the DOJ (RG 60), NACP.
34. See, for example, “Giant Tribute Paid McFeely,” JJ, November 4, 1935, and “Mayor M’Feely Hailed by 5,000,” JJ, May 4, 1936.
35. Federal Writers’ Project of the Works Progress Administration for the State of New Jersey, New Jersey: A Guide to Its Present and Past (New York: The Viking Press, June 1939), 262, cites a population of 59,261 in Hoboken; “McFeely Hailed by 8,000 at Ball,” JJ, May 3, 1938.
36. Protests sent on Matson’s behalf include: letter from Harold Grouls, attorney, to Nels Anderson, Deputy Administrator for Labor Relations, WPA, Washington, DC, May 4, 1938; letter from Channa Tanz, attorney, to Nels Anderson, May 12, 1938; and Western Union telegram from Morris Milgram, secretary, Workers Defense League of New Jersey, to Nels Anderson, May 4, 1938. Decision to reinstate Matson on a Jersey City WPA project: letter to David K. Niles, Assistant Administrator, Works Progress Administration, Washington, DC, from Robert W. Allan, acting state administrator, Newark, NJ, October 27, 1938. All in box 1878 (New Jersey I-R 1937-38), folder 641 (NJ Ma-Mc), Central Files, State 1925-1944; Records of the Works Progress Administration 1922-1944 (RG 69), NACP.
37. Amount of Matson’s WPA wages: Bromley, “Strike a Balance.”
38. Author interview with Evelyn Olsen.
39. Elizabeth Matson biographical details: author interviews with Raymond Matson and Evelyn Olsen; listing in the Connecticut Department of Health, Connecticut Death Index, 1949–2001, Ancestry.com. Elizabeth’s support of Herman’s activism: Elizabeth Matson, typed statement to John T. Madigan, FBI agent, Newark, NJ, office, report dated June 30, 1939, file 44-2, pp. 30–34, box 17593, folder 144-48-0, section 1 (4/5/39-9/5/39), DOJ Subject File, Records of the DOJ (RG 60), NACP. “Picketing Resumed,” Corpus Christi Times, May 17, 1938 (a syndicated article carried in papers nationwide), via Ancestry.com.
40. Author interview with Evelyn Olsen.
41. Matson’s recollection of Church Square Park meeting (except imprecise dates): Herman Matson, statement to Madigan, May 4, 1939, file 7-77, pp. 26–27. The meeting was held May 10, 1938; see “Eggs Thrown as Hoboken Relief System Is Scored,” JJ, May 11, 1938.
42. Demarest High School and Hoboken Stevens Academy, a grade and high school, bordered the park. American Lead Pencil Company’s Hoboken union: “Pencil Company Stays Closed,” NYT, June 29, 1937, and “Pencil Concern Signs with C.I.O.,” NYT, July 8, 1937.
43. Nicholas Piracci, statement to John T. Madigan, FBI agent, Newark, NJ, office, report dated June 30, 1939, file 44-2, p. 37, box 17593, folder 144-48-0, section 1 (4/5/39-9/5/39), DOJ Subject File, Records of the DOJ (RG 60), NACP. “Eggs Thrown as Hoboken Relief System Is Scored.” Nicholas Piracci is incorrectly identified as Viracci in this article.
44. Known as “one of McFeely’s ‘collectors’ “: Clark to Madigan, June 2, 1939, file 7-77, p. 82. See also “Eggs Thrown as Hoboken Relief System Is Scored”; and Herman Matson, statement to Madigan, May 4, 1939, file 7-77, p. 26.
45. Author interviews with Raymond Matson, Evelyn Olsen, and Daniel Matson. Herman Matson, statement to Madigan, June 30, 1939, file 44-2, p. 12. New York’s “Hell’s Kitchen”: Norval White and Elliot Wilensky, eds., AIA Guide to New York City (London: Collier-MacMillan Ltd., 1969), 100-101, and Richard O’Connor, Hell’s Kitchen (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Company, 1958), 55.
46. Author interview with Evelyn Olsen. Elizabeth and Herman’s last child, Daniel Matson, was born in 1946, after they had moved from Hoboken to the Bronx. Herman’s identification as “a father of six”: See, for example, “WPA in Hoboken Accused,” NYT, October 24, 1938.
47. Author interview with Evelyn Olsen.
48. “Barck Trial Lawyer Is Put Under Arrest,” HD, August 2, 1938.
49. “Two Thugs Guilty in Police Killing,” NYT, June 30, 1938, regarding the trial that would command Leibowitz’s attention until early July 1938. Leibowitz’s sleep patterns during trials: Diana Klebanow and Franklin L. Jonas, People’s Lawyers: Crusaders for Justice in American History (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 2003) 171. Belle’s initiation of outings: Robert Leibowitz, The Defender: The Life and Career of Samuel S. Leibowitz, 1893-1933 (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1981), 154. The names of Sam Leibowitz, his wife, Belle, and 18-year-old twin sons Robert and Lawrence appear on the passenger list for the S.S. Vulcania, sailing from Trieste on August 22, 1938, and arriving at the Port of New York on September 5, 1938; New York Passenger Lists 1820-1957, microfilm serial T715, microfilm roll T715_6211, line 26, via Ancestry.com. Leibowitz’s comfortable home life: Fred D. Pasley, Not Guilty! The Story of Samuel S. Leibowitz (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1933), 215.
50. New York City and Northern New Jersey weather during the final days of July: “Lightning Kills Farmer During Storm in Jersey,” NYT, July 28, 1938; “Freak Storm Halts Subway Line,” NYT, July 29, 1938; “Mercury Hits 90 degrees, Record for Year,” NYT, July 30, 1938.
51. “Weather Nearer Normal with Temperature at 84 degrees,” NYT, July 31, 1938.
52. “Barck Murder Trial Lawyer Held for Jury,” HD, August 3, 1938; “Lawyer Held for Talking to Witness, New York Bar Member Is Under Bail in Quest of Barck Case Proof,” JO, August 3, 1938.
53. Impellitteri biographical facts: Robert D. McFadden, “Vincent Impellitteri Is Dead: Mayor of New York in 1950s,” NYT, January 30, 1987. On Impellitteri’s association with New York’s local Democratic Party organization: Warren Moscow, The Last of the Big-Time Bosses: The Life and Times of Carmine DeSapio and the Decline and Fall of Tammany Hall (New York: Stein and Day, 1971), 91-93. “A nod or a handshake”: Bernard Glick, attorney, Hoboken, NJ, statement to John T. Madigan, FBI agent, Newark, NJ, office, report dated May 4, 1939, file 7-77, p. 72, box 15205, folder 109-286, section 1 (3/25/39-5/4/39), DOJ Central Files, Classified Subject Files, Correspondence, Records of DOJ (RG 60), NACP.
54. “Leibowitz Aide Held for Jury in Barck Case,” JJ, August 3, 1938.
55. “Barck Trial Lawyer Is Put Under Arrest.”
56. “Lawyer Held for Talking to Witness”; see also photo of Romayne Mullin and Eleonore Hartmann on the cover of the JJ, January 14, 1939.
57. Quoted passages are a reporter’s description: “Barck Murder Trial Lawyer Held for Jury.” On December 9, 1938, a Hudson County grand jury determined there was insufficient evidence for a full hearing and no-billed the Peterfreund case (returning no bill of indictment): “White card” No. 12060 for “Peterfreund, Joshua,” defendant, “obstruction of justice” charge, Office of the Hudson County Prosecutor.
58. Impellitteri quote: “Barck Murder Trial Lawyer Held for Jury.”
59. “Angry Mob Beats, Routs Red Orator in Hoboken: Workers Defense League Representative Pulled from Stand Before Crowd of 2,000, Finally Rescued by Police; Herman Matson Jailed on Charge of Inciting to Riot—Had Sought Before to Rouse Longshoremen,” HD, September 16, 1938; and “Speaker Arrested Following Attack by Longshoremen,” JO, September 16, 1938.
60. Alleged kickback scheme and local’s corruption, as related by WDL-associated longshoremen: Milgram, statement to Madigan, May 4, 1939, file 7-77, pp. 16–18; and Herman Matson, statement to Madigan, May 4, 1939, file 7-77, p. 39. See also, as part of an ongoing effort to democratize Local 867, copy of “Hoboken Shape Up Rank & File” mimeograph, December 22, 1938, urging men to “use the shape up to tell the men things they should know,” box 17594, folder 144-48-1, DOJ Subject File 144-48-1, Records of the DOJ (RG 60), NACP.
61. Matson’s inability to secure local meeting hall: Herman Matson, statement to Madigan, May 4, 1939, file 7-77, pp. 25–26, 87-89. “Now Matson’s Counsel Queries Him on His Belief in God,” JJ, June 5, 1940; the location of Matson’s platform is described in “Hoboken Mob Beats and Kicks ‘Red’ Speaker: His Wife Also Injured; Attack on Administration Is Cut Short When Police Break Through Crowd of 1,500,” JJ, September 16, 1938.
62. Herman Matson, statement to Madigan, May 4, 1939, file 7-77, pp. 27–28. Elizabeth Matson, statement to Madigan, June 30, 1939, file 44-2, pp. 30–31, noted warning by supportive longshoreman, “Mr. Arcediano.”
63. Morris Milgram, statement to Harold Grouls, attorney, September 15, 1938, regarding the beating of Herman Matson, submitted to John T. Madigan, FBI agent, Newark, NJ, office, June 30, 1939, file 44-2, p. 10, box 17593, folder 144-48-0, section 1 (4/5/39-9/5/39), DOJ Subject File, Records of the DOJ (RG 60), NACP; Elizabeth Matson, statement to Madigan, June 30, 1939, file 44-2, 31; Nicholas Piracci, statement to Madigan, June 30, 1939, file 44-2, p. 38. Sunset was at 7:06 PM that evening; see NYT, September 15, 1938.
64. Milgram’s City College protest: Lawrence Van Gelder, “Morris Milgram, 81: Built Interracial Housing,” obituary, NYT, June 26, 1997. As state secretary of the WDL of New Jersey he was quoted repeatedly; see, for example, “Circulars Again Barred,” NYT, March 31, 1938. Grace Milgram’s role as observer: Herman Matson, statement to Madigan, June 30, 1939, file 44-2, p. 21. Matson’s assertion that Milgram’s protests helped him regain his WPA position: Herman Matson, statement to Madigan, May 4, 1939, file 7-77, p. 44.
65. Milgram, statement to Grouls, September 15, 1938, file 44-2, p. 10; Herman Matson, statement to Harold Grouls, attorney, September 15, 1938, submitted to John T. Madigan, FBI agent, Newark, NJ, office, June 30, 1939, file 44-2, p. 13, box 17593, folder 144-48-0, section 1 (4/5/39-9/5/39), DOJ Subject File, Records of the DOJ (RG 60), NACP; Grace Piracci, Aurora Piracci, and Antoinette De L’Aquila, group statement to Harold Grouls, attorney, September 21, 1938, submitted to John T. Madigan, FBI agent, Newark, NJ, office, June 30, 1939, file 44-2, pp. 16–17, box 17593, folder 144-48-0, section 1 (4/5/39-9/5/39), DOJ Subject File, Records of the DOJ (RG 60), NACP; Michael Lemonie (age twelve), statement to Harold Grouls, attorney, September 20, 1938, submitted to John T. Madigan, FBI agent, Newark, NJ, office, June 30, 1939, file 44-2, pp. 15–16, box 17593, folder 144-48-0, section 1 (4/5/39-9/5/39), DOJ Subject File, Records of the DOJ (RG 60), NACP.
66. Milgram, statement to Madigan, May 4, 1939, file 7-77, p. 18 .
67. Milgram, statement to Grouls, September 15, 1938, file 44-2, p. 10.
68. “Angry Mob Beats, Routs Red Orator in Hoboken”; see also, for a lower estimate, “Hoboken Mob Beats and Kicks ‘Red’ Speaker.” Officer seemed to be ignoring the growing swarm: Herman Matson, statement to Madigan, May 4, 1939, file 7-77, p. 29.
69. Description of start of meeting: Milgram, statement to Madigan, May 4, 1939, file 7-77, p. 18; Grace Piracci, Aurora Piracci, and Antoinette De L’Aquila, group statement to Grouls, September 21, 1938, file 44-2, pp. 16–17. Description of Matson’s suit based on full-length mugshot taken by Hoboken Police Department, September 15, 1938, Hoboken Historical Museum archives, Hoboken, NJ, Hoboken Police Collection, 2002.0008.2000. Matson’s lack of suits: author interview with Evelyn Olsen.
70. Herman Matson, statement to Madigan, May 4, 1939, file 7-77, p. 29.
71. Nicholas Piracci, statement to Madigan, June 30, 1939, file 44-2, p. 38.
72. Milgram, statement to Madigan, May 4, 1939, file 7-77, p. 19; and Herman Matson, statement to Madigan, May 4, 1939, file 7-77, p. 29.
73. Elizabeth Matson, statement to Madigan, June 30, 1939, file 44-2, p. 31.
74. Milgram, statement to Grouls, September 15, 1938, file 44-2, p. 11; Herman Matson, statement to Madigan, May 4, 1939, file 7-77, p. 29. See also Joseph F. McDonald, Fifteenth Census of the United States, 1930, Population Schedule, Hoboken, Hudson County, NJ, roll 1348, enumeration district 257, sheet 9B, via Ancestry.com.
75. “Hoboken Mob Beats and Kicks ‘Red’ Speaker.”
76. Matson’s plans to speak about relief and to call for a trial for Scutellaro: “McFeely Critic Beaten and Jailed for Hoboken Speech,” NYP, September 16, 1938.
77. Milgram, statement to Grouls, September 15, 1938, file 44-2, p. 11.
78. “Speaker Arrested Following Attack by Longshoremen”; “Angry Mob Beats, Routs Red Orator in Hoboken”; “Hoboken Mob Beats and Kicks ‘Red’ Speaker.” Orestes Cerruti, statement to Harold Grouls, attorney, September 21, 1938, regarding beating of Herman Matson, submitted to John T. Madigan, FBI agent, Newark, NJ, office, June 30, 1939, file 44-2, p. 15, box 17593, folder 144-48-0, section 1 (4/5/39-9/5/39), DOJ Subject File, Records of the DOJ (RG 60), NACP.
79. Herman Matson, statement to Madigan, May 4, 1939, file 7-77, p. 30; “Speaker Arrested Following Attack by Longshoremen.”
80. Elizabeth’s shoes: Herman Matson, statement to Madigan, May 4, 1939, file 7-77, p. 30; physical description of Elizabeth Matson from author interview with Evelyn Olsen. On Elizabeth’s pregnancy: Elizabeth Matson, statement to Madigan, June 30, 1939, file 44-2, p. 33.
81. Elizabeth Matson, statement to Madigan, June 30, 1939, file 44-2, pp. 31–32; “Hoboken Mob Beats and Kicks ‘Red’ Speaker”; “Kicked, Says Mrs. Matson on Stand,” JJ, June 6, 1940; David Knoll, statement to Harold Grouls, attorney, n.d., regarding beating of Herman Matson, submitted to John T. Madigan, FBI agent, Newark, NJ, office, June 30, 1939, file 44-2, pp. 17–18, box 17593, folder 144-48-0, section 1 (4/5/39-9/5/39), DOJ Subject File, Records of the DOJ (RG 60), NACP.
82. “Angry Mob Beats, Routs Red Orator in Hoboken”; “Speaker Arrested Following Attack by Longshoremen” reported the assailants were “grimly purposeful in their work.”
83. Milgram, statement to Madigan, May 4, 1939, file 7-77, pp. 19–20; Dr. Harry Arons, statement to John T. Madigan, FBI agent, Newark, NJ, office, report dated August 1, 1939, file 44-2, pp. 1–2, box 17594, folder 144-48-1, DOJ Subject File, Records of the DOJ (RG 60), NACP.
84. Herman Matson, statement to Madigan, May 4, 1939, file 7-77, p. 30; Herman Matson, statement to Grouls, n.d., file 44-2, p. 12.
85. Herman Matson, statement to Madigan, May 4, 1939, file 7-77, p. 30.
86. Ibid.; also Lemonie, statement to Grouls, September 20, 1938, file 44-2, pp. 15–16.
87. Milgram, statement to Madigan, May 4, 1939, file 7-77, pp. 19–20; Milgram, statement to Grouls, September 15, 1938, file 44-2, p. 11; Herman Matson, statement to Grouls, n.d., file 44-2, p. 14.
88. Milgram, statement to Grouls, September 15, 1938, file 44-2, p. 11.
89. “Speaker Arrested Following Attack by Longshoremen”; Herman Matson, statement to Grouls, n.d., file 44-2, p. 14; and Herman Matson, statement to Madigan, May 4, 1939, file 7-77, p. 32.
90. Herman Matson, statement to Madigan, May 4, 1939, file 7-77, p. 32. On police brutality during the 1920s, see Marilynn S. Johnson, Street Justice: A History of Police Violence in New York City (Boston: Beacon Press, 2003), 122-35.
91. Herman Matson, statement to Madigan, May 4, 1939, file 7-77, p. 32.
92. “Angry Mob Beats, Routs Red Orator in Hoboken” and “Speaker Arrested Following Attack by Longshoremen.” See also “Matson Convicted in Hoboken Trial,” NYT, October 8, 1938.
93. See previously cited articles from New York and New Jersey newspapers. For additional New York coverage see “Hoboken Jails Speaker After Mob Beats Him,” Herald Tribune, September 16, 1938. For coverage in other states: “Workers Defense Speaker Beaten,” The Lowell Sun (Lowell, Massachusetts), September 16, 1938; and a variously titled syndicated column by Westbrook Pegler, “Neither Reds nor Nazis Will Save Civil Rights,” Appleton Post Crescent (Appleton, Wisconsin), September 20, 1938; and “Fair Enough!” Mansfield News-Journal (Mansfield, Ohio), September 20, 1938. All via Ancestry.com. Nolan quoted in “Angry Mob Beats, Routs Red Orator in Hoboken”; “Speaker Arrested Following Attack by Longshoremen.”
94. Harold Grouls, WDL attorney and counsel to Herman Matson, statement to John T. Madigan, FBI agent, Newark, NJ, office, June 30, 1939, file 44-2, p. 4, box 17593, folder 144-48-0, section 1 (4/5/39-9/5/39), DOJ Subject File, Records of the DOJ (RG 60), NACP.
95. “McFeely Critic Beaten”; Milgram, statement to Madigan, May 4, 1939, file 7-77, pp. 20–21; Morris Shapiro, attorney for the Worker’s Defense League, to Grenville Clark, New York representative of the American Bar Association, September 24, 1938, regarding Matson case, included in WDL national office file shared with FBI agent John T. Madigan and quoted in his report dated April 11, 1939, file 7-77, pp. 24–25, box 17313, 4th folder (1/25/39-7/26/39), DOJ Central Files, Classified Subject Files, Correspondence, Records of the DOJ (RG 60), NACP; Grouls, statement to Madigan, June 30, 1939, file 44-2, pp. 4–6.
96. Herman Matson, statement to Madigan, May 4, 1939, file 7-77, pp. 32–33; Elizabeth Matson, statement to Madigan, June 30, 1939, file 44-2, pp. 32–33. In her statement, Elizabeth misrembers the date of the miscarriage, putting it on the first night of Herman’s incarceration instead of the second. See also “Matson Case Off to Oct. 7: Defendant’s Wife, Chief Witness, Too Ill to Appear in Court,” JJ, September 21, 1938.
1. “McFeely Critic Beaten and Jailed for Hoboken Speech,” NYP, September 16, 1938.
2. Morris Milgram to Harry Hopkins, Administrator, Works Progress Administration, Washington, DC, October 20, 1938, box 1878 (NJ I-R 1937-1938), folder 641 (NJ Ma-Mc), Central Files, State 1935-1944, Records of the Works Progress Administration 1922-1944 (RG 69), NACP. Employment Record of Herman Matson produced by the WPA, box 1878 (NJ I-R 1937-38), folder 641 (NJ Ma-Mc), Central Files, State 1935-1944, Records of the WPA 1922-1944 (RG 69), NACP.
3. Ragged hands: Author telephone interview with Evelyn Olsen, April 1, 2009. Surviving on charity and WDL assistance: Milgram to Hopkins, WPA, Washington, DC, October 20, 1938.
4. Babysitter: David Clendenin, Workers Defense League, to Laura B. Woodbridge, a donor to the Matson Defense Fund, October 1, 1938, The Workers Defense League Collection, box 130, folder 18, Archives of Labor and Urban Affairs, Wayne State University. “Had to submit to an operation”: Elizabeth Matson, typed statement to John T. Madigan, FBI agent, Newark, NJ, office, report dated June 30, 1939, file 44-2, p. 33, box 17593, folder 144-48-0, section 1 (4/5/39-9/5/39), DOJ Subject File, Records of the DOJ (RG 60), NACP.
5. Author interview with Evelyn Olsen. Herman and Elizabeth’s statements to FBI agent John T. Madigan contain many accounts of joint leafleting; for newspaper account of same, see “Defense League Head Distributes More Fliers in Hoboken,” JJ, April 6, 1938.
6. Regarding the poll: Chad Alan Goldberg, Citizens and Paupers: Relief, Rights, and Race, from the Freedmen’s Bureau to Workfare (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), 126.
7. On pauper’s oath and exclusion laws, see Douglas H. MacNeil, Seven Years of Unemployment Relief in New Jersey, 1930–1936 (Washington: Committee on Social Security, Social Science Research Council, 1938), 38-39; Goldberg, Citizens and Paupers, 125-26.
8. Ten million unemployed by the winter of 1937-38: David M. Kennedy, The American People in the Great Depression: Freedom from Fear, pt. 1 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 350. “Conservative countermobilization” against WPA and Workers Alliance of America: Goldberg, Citizens and Paupers, 132-34, 139-52. Committee chairman Congressman Martin Dies’s charge the Civil Liberties Union was a unit in the “ ‘united front’ of the communistic movement”: Luther A. Huston, “Dies Inquiry Shaping Laws,” NYT, August 28, 1938.
9. “Hoboken Mob Beats and Kicks ‘Red’ Speaker: His Wife Also Injured; Attack on Administration Is Cut Short When Police Break Through Crowd of 1,500,” JJ, September 16, 1938; “Angry Mob Beats, Routs Red Orator in Hoboken,” HD, September 16, 1938.
10. Herman Matson, statement to John T. Madigan, FBI agent, Newark, NJ, office, report dated May 4, 1939, file 7-77, p. 33, box 15205, folder 109-286, section 1 (3/25/39-5/4/39), DOJ Central Files, Classified Subject Files, Correspondence, DOJ (RG 60), NACP.
11. “Matson Denies Red, Criminal Accusations,” JJ, October 18, 1940.
12. “Basis in reality” and account of “campaign against Communism”: Goldberg, Citizens and Paupers, 139-40.
13. George’s request for a struck jury: “Struck Jury in Barck Slaying,” JO, September 19, 1938; “Grants Struck Jury in Killing of Poormaster,” HD, September 20, 1938.
14. Leibowitz’s antipathy to “blue ribbon juries”: “Blue Ribbon Juries Debated in Albany,” NYT, February 23, 1938, and Robert Leibowitz, The Defender: The Life and Career of Samuel S. Leibowitz, 1893–1933 (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1981), 44.
15. For more on Leibowitz’s reading of faces to select jurors: Fred D. Pasley, Not Guilty! The Story of Samuel S. Leibowitz (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1933), 128-29.
16. Before 1947 the “county prosecutor” was known as the “prosecutor of the pleas of the county”; I have used the shorter designation for clarity. On William George: Isaac Undermine, DCL, PhD, Jewish Personalities of Hudson County: Graphic Portraits and Character Sketches (privately printed booklet, 1930), 77-79, from the collection of the New Jersey Room, Jersey City Public Library, Jersey City, NJ; Social Security Death Index for William George, establishing his birth date as July 18, 1890, number 136-32-1432, New Jersey, 1956-1958, via Ancestry.com; “Official on Trial in Jersey Tuesday,” NYT, January 24, 1949, regarding allegiance to Hague and election to state assembly; “Job Created for Hague Aide,” NYT, June 23, 1944, regarding Hague support; “Official from Jersey, Hissed Here, Retorts with Attack on New York,” NYT, May 18, 1938, regarding public defense of Hague’s anti-civil liberties actions; U.S. World War II Draft Registration Cards, 1942, roll WWII_2372038, Hudson, NJ, via Ancestry.com, reporting George’s physical appearance, and photograph accompany “Barck Murder: George to Claim Slaying Planned,” HD, January 9, 1939. On Hague’s inclusion of representatives of ethnic groups in his administration, see Richard J. Connors, A Cycle of Power: The Career of Jersey City Mayor Frank Hague (Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1971), 95-97.
17. Physical description of Robert Kinkead from photograph and article, “Kinkead Takes New Post Today,” HD, February 3, 1939, and U.S. World War II Draft Registration Cards, 1942, roll WWII_2372161, Hudson County, NJ, via Ancestry.com.
18. For biographical facts on Kinkead, see “Robert Kinkead, 83, Jersey Judge, Dead,” obituary, NYT, June 18, 1975, and “Silzer Sends Nominations,” NYT, February 13, 1923, which contains the description “a Democratic lawyer.” On Governor George S. Silzer’s connections to Frank Hague, see Alfred Steinberg, The Bosses (New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., 1972), 34-35. On Robert Kinkead’s appointment as a way for Hague to draw close “former intra-party opponents,” and Eugene Kinkead’s opposition to Hague, see Connors, A Cycle of Power, 51-52, and “Eugene Kinkead, Banker, 84, Dies,” NYT, September 7, 1960.
19. See Steinberg, The Bosses, 43-44, regarding Hague opponents James “Jeff” Burkitt and John R. Longo; Robert A. Ambry to the American Civil Liberties Union board, December 27, 1938, American Civil Liberties Union Records, Roger Baldwin Years, roll 177, vol. 2135, Public Policy Papers, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Library; “Hague’s Control Extends Even to Jury System,” NYP, May 24, 1938; “Burkitt, Bail Denied, Wins Court Review,” April 26, 1938; “Bail for Longo Denied, Kinkead Refuses to Release Hague Foe Pending Appeal,” NYT, July 2, 1938.
20. “Struck Jury in Barck Slaying.”
21. Complaint dated September 21, 1938, and signed by Joseph R. Scott, swearing Herman Matson “did indulge and utter aloud indecent and offensive language” and directed obscenities at Lt. Scott and Sergeant Arthur Marotta, submitted by Edward Stover to John T. Madigan, FBI agent, Newark, NJ, office, report dated June 2, 1939, file 7-77, p. 63, box 15205, folder 109-286, section 2 (6/2/39), DOJ Central Files, Classified Subject Files, Correspondence, Records of the DOJ (RG 60), NACP. On surprise of Matson and his lawyers at the new charge and their preparation for a different defense, see Morris Milgram, statement to John T. Madigan, FBI agent, Newark, NJ, office, report dated May 4, 1939, file 7-77, p. 21, box 15205, folder 109-286, section 1 (3/25/39-5/4/39), DOJ Central Files, Classified Subject Files, Correspondence, Records of the DOJ (RG 60), NACP.
22. Harold Grouls, WDL attorney and counsel to Herman Matson, statement to John T. Madigan, FBI agent, Newark, NJ, office, report dated June 30, 1939, file 44-2, p. 6, box 17593, folder 144-48-0, section 1 (4/5/39-9/5/39), DOJ Subject File, Records of the DOJ (RG 60), NACP; Frank Romano, statement to John T. Madigan, FBI agent, Newark, NJ, office, report dated November 1, 1939, file 44-2, p. 11, box 17594, folder 144-48-1, DOJ Subject File, Records of the DOJ (RG 60), NACP.
23. Statements taken by Harold Grouls regarding September 15, 1938, incident in Hudson Square Park, submitted to John T. Madigan, FBI agent, Newark, NJ, office, file 44-2, pp. 9–18, box 17593, folder 144-48-0, section 1 (4/5/39-9/5/39) DOJ Subject Files, Records of the DOJ (RG 60), NACP. Biographical background, Harold Grouls: Grouls, statement to Madigan, June 30, 1939, file 44-2, p. 2; “Jersey Law School Awards 164 Degrees,” NYT, June 8, 1932; “Wide Shake-Up Hits Police in Hoboken,” NYT, May 28, 1947; “John H. Grouls Dies Suddenly,” unidentified newspaper clipping, ca. 1935, collection of the Hoboken Historical Museum, catalog no. 20021110007.
24. Biographical background Edward Stover: Edward Quinton Keasbey, The Courts and Lawyers of New Jersey, 1661–1912 (New York: Lewis Historical Publishing Co., 1912), 309; Edward Stover, 1920 United States Federal Census, Ward 2, Hoboken, Hudson County, NJ, roll T625_1042, p. 1B, enumeration district 72, image 128, via Ancestry.com. On motives for entering the case, see Edward Stover to David L. Clendennin, National Treasurer for the WDL, October 14, 1938, submitted with statement by Clendennin to John T. Madigan, FBI agent, Newark, NJ, office, report dated April 11, 1939, file 7-77, pp. 22–24, box 17313, 4th folder (1/25/39-7/26/39), DOJ Central Files, Classified Subject Files, Correspondence, Records of the DOJ (RG 60), NACP. For Stover’s self-identification as “anti-McFeely” see Stover to Madigan, June 2, 1939, file 7-77, p. 63.
25. “Matson Baby’s Death Laid to Hoboken Mob,” New York Herald-Tribune, September 22, 1938.
26. “Workers Defense Speaker Beaten,” The Lowell Sun, September 16, 1938, via Ancestry.com.
27. Articles reprinted by WDL for publicity campaigns, see Milgram to Hopkins, October 20, 1938. Clippings include the undated Post headline “Baby Born Dead to Beaten Mother: Matson Trial Off.”
28. Thomas’s and Baldwin’s role in establishing precursor to American Civil Liberties Union: Robert C. Cottrell, Roger Nash Baldwin and the American Civil Liberties Union (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000), 51, 121. Norman Thomas’s failed attempt to secure bail: Milgram, statement to Madigan, May 4, 1939, file 7-77, p. 20; also “Thomas Wants Cummings to Watch Hoboken Trial,” NYT, September 20, 1938.
29. Milgram, statement to Madigan, May 4, 1939, file 7-77, p. 20; “Thomas Wants Cummings to Watch Hoboken Trial,” NYT.
30. Dorothy Dunbar Bromley, “Strike a Balance,” NYP, September 22, 1938. Biographical background on Bromley, see “Dorothy Dunbar Bromley, 89, A Writer on Women’s Issues,” [obit] NYT, January 6, 1986.
31. Telegram from Arthur Garfield Hays, General Counsel, American Civil Liberties Union, to Mayor Bernard J. McFeely, September 16, 1938, American Civil Liberties Union Records, Roger Baldwin Years, roll 165, vol. 2094, Public Policy Papers, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Library. Hays’s telegram was released to the press and reprinted in several newspapers. On Thomas’s advocacy, see: Donald S. Howard, The WPA and Federal Relief Policy (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1943), 650, describing an appeal Thomas and other notables made to President Roosevelt on behalf of the National Unemployment League.
32. “Hague Is Attacked in Free Speech Ban,” NYT, May 18, 1934. On his battles with Hague generally: Arthur Garfield Hays, City Lawyer: The Autobiography of a Law Practice (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1942), 197-99; on 1939 Supreme Court ruling in Hague v. Congress of Industrial Organizations, see Cottrell, Roger Nash Baldwin and the American Civil Liberties Union, 168.
33. Thomas’s anti-Communism: Cottrell, Roger Nash Baldwin and the American Civil Liberties Union, 124. On the Jersey City “kidnapping” charge, see “Thomas’s Charges Go to Grand Jury,” NYT, September 29, 1938; Dayton David McKean, The Boss: The Hague Machine in Action (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1940), 236; Harry Fleischman, Norman Thomas: A Biography (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1964), 159-60.
34. Hague’s recognized ability to bring in votes: Kennedy, American People in the Great Depression, 253; Steinberg, The Bosses, 62; Lyle W. Dorsett, Franklin D. Roosevelt and the City Bosses (Port Washington, NY: Kennikat Press, 1977), 10, 35, 101, 107. Norman Thomas, “Last Night in Jersey City” (New York: Workers Defense League, 1938), 4, booklet reproducing Thomas’s May 8, 1938, speech, author’s collection.
35. “Thomas Wants Cummings to Watch Hoboken Trial.” The two men hated each other: Vilas J. Boyle, “Hoboken: A Look at McFeely, the Man,” NYP, April 9, 1938.
36. Boyle, “A Look at McFeely.”
37. Listed resolutions, except Methodist ministers’: box 17313, 3rd folder, DOJ Central Files, Classified Subject Files, Correspondence; Records of the DOJ (RG 60), NACP. Herman Matson’s flyer announcing his October 7, 1938, trial features ministers’ resolution, box 1878 (NJ I-R 1937-38), folder 641 (NJ Ma-Mc), Central Files, States, 1935-1944, Records of the Works Progress Administration 1922-1944 (RG 69), NACP.
38. For background on trial of Herman Matson: “Court Finds Matson Guilty,” JJ, October 7, 1938; “Court Hears Accounts of Park Affray,” JO, October 7, 1938; “Matson Convicted, Sentence Stayed,” New York World-Telegram, October 7, 1938; “Matson Convicted in Hoboken Trial,” NYT, October 8, 1938; “Matson Convicted in Hoboken Riot,” Philadelphia (Pennsylvania) Record, October 8, 1938; “Matson Guilty, Hays Rebukes Hoboken Court,” New York Herald-Tribune, October 8, 1938; “Matson to Appeal Conviction,” JO, October 9, 1938. See also “Hays Threatens Civil Suit Against Hoboken After Defying Court on Matson Conviction,” Bronx (New York) Home News, October 8, 1938.
39. For height and weight of Stover and Hays: Edward J. D. Stover, U.S. World War II Draft Registration Cards, 1942, roll WWII_2372590, Hudson County, NJ, via Ancestry.com. Arthur Garfield Hays, U.S. World War II Draft Registration Cards, 1942, roll WW2_2283915, New York City, NY, via Ancestry.com. See also photo of Hays accompanying article, “Hague Speech Ban Is Defied by Hays,” NYT, May 20, 1938. Stover’s frugality is mentioned in “Matson to Appeal Conviction.”
40. Background on Arthur Garfield Hays, generally: Hays, City Lawyer; biographical sketch, Arthur Garfield Hays Papers, Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library, Princeton University Library; and Cottrell, Roger Nash Baldwin and the American Civil Liberties Union, 123-24. Hays’s and Darrow’s involvement with NAACP on “Scottsboro Boys” case: James Goodman, Stories of Scottsboro (New York: Vintage Books, 1995), 37-38, and Kevin Tierney, Darrow: A Biography (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Publishers, 1979), 403-5.
41. “Matson to Appeal Conviction”; and Arthur Garfield Hays, statement to John T. Madigan, FBI agent, Newark, NJ, office, report dated April 11, 1939, file 7-77, pp. 17–18, box 17313, 4th folder (1/25/39-7/26/39), DOJ Central Files, Classified Subject Files, Correspondence, Records of the DOJ (RG 60), NACP.
42. Quoted in Bernard Glick, attorney, Hoboken, NJ, statement to John T. Madigan, FBI agent, Newark, NJ, office, bureau, report dated May 4, 1939, file 7-77, p. 72, box 15205, folder 109-286, section 1 (3/25/39-5/4/39), DOJ Central Files, Classified Subject Files, Correspondence, Records of DOJ (RG 60), NACP. “Bar Association Picks Seven to Investigate Hoboken Police Court,” JO, November 19, 1937.
43. “Matson Guilty, Hays Rebukes.”
44. Years Allen served in City Law Department, see: “Horace Allen Dies: New Jersey Lawyer,” obituary, NYT, January 7, 1940; Horace L. Allen, 1930 United States Federal Census, Hoboken, Hudson County, NJ, roll 1349, p. 10A, enumeration district 267, image 189.0.
45. From an application for a writ of certiorari to review conviction of Herman Matson, provided by Harold Grouls to John T. Madigan, FBI agent, Newark, NJ, office, report dated August 1, 1939, file 44-2, p. 7, box 17593, folder 144-48-0, section 1 (4/5/39-9/5/39), DOJ Subject File, Records of the DOJ (RG 60), NACP.
46. “Matson Guilty, Hays Rebukes”; Stover to Clendennin, October 14, 1938, file 7-77, pp. 22–23.
47. Ibid.
48. Matson’s assertions he did not use indecent language appear in various accounts of the trial; see “Court Finds Matson Guilty.”
49. “Matson to Appeal Conviction.”
50. Ibid.
51. Ages listed in group statement of Grace Piracci, Aurora Piracci, and Antoinette De L’Aquila, group statement to Harold Grouls, attorney, September 21, 1938, submitted to John T. Madigan, FBI agent, Newark, NJ, office, June 30, 1939, file 44-2, p. 16, box 17593, folder 144-48-0, section 1 (4/5/39-9/5/39), DOJ Subject File, Records of the DOJ (RG 60), NACP.
52. “Matson Guilty, Hays Rebukes.”
53. “Matson to Appeal Conviction.” See also “Court Finds Matson Guilty.”
54. “Matson to Appeal Conviction.”
55. Ibid., “Matson Guilty, Hays Rebukes.”
56. “Matson to Appeal Conviction.”
57. Ibid.
58. “Court Hears Accounts of Park Affray”; Morris Milgram, State Secretary, Workers Defense League of New Jersey, to Mrs. Margery Newhall Robinson, October 12, 1938, soliciting funds to send Elizabeth to a convalescent home, Workers Defense League Collection, box 130, folder 10, Archives of Labor and Urban Affairs, Wayne State University. Morris Milgram to Dorothy Dunbar Bromley, October 26, 1938, noting WDL’s support of the Matsons and Elizabeth’s admission to Theresa Grotta Convalescent Home, Caldwell, Workers Defense League Collection, box 130, folder 11, Archives of Labor and Urban Affairs, Wayne State University.
59. Nicholas Piracci, statement to John T. Madigan, FBI agent, Newark, NJ, office, report dated June 30, 1939, file 44-2, p. 39, box 17593, folder 144-48-0, section 1 (4/5/39-9/5/39), DOJ Subject File, Records of the DOJ (RG 60), NACP.
60. Stover to Clendennin, October 14, 1938, file 7-77, pp. 22–23.
61. Untitled news clippings, JO, October 22, 1938, and October 25, 1938, provided by Workers Defense League to John T. Madigan, FBI agent, Newark, NJ, office, and detailed in his report dated April 11, 1939, file 7-77, pp. 21–22, box 17313, 4th folder (1/25/39-7/26/39), DOJ Central Files, Classified Subject Files, Correspondence, Records of the DOJ (RG 60), NACP.
62. Herman Matson, statement to Madigan, May 4, 1939, file 7-77, pp. 38–39.
63. Stover to Clendennin, October 14, 1938, file 7-77, pp. 23–24.
64. Milgram letter to Hopkins, October 20, 1938. But even Milgram, who knew better because of his involvement in local politics, could not resist slanting his appeal by mentioning “the Hague machine.” His letter to Hopkins became the basis of a news report headlined “WPA in Hoboken Accused: Workers’ Group Says Anti-Hague Man Cannot Get Job,” NYT, October 24, 1938. On Milgram’s awareness of local politics, including McFeely’s control over Hoboken: Milgram, statement to Madigan, May 4, 1939, file 7-77, p. 23.
1. “Barck Slayer Awaits Trial, Scutellaro Due to Face Murder Charge Next Monday,” JJ, January 6, 1939.
2. “Tilts Mark Selection of Barck Jurors,” JO, January 10, 1939. “Relief Murder Trial Put Off,” NYT, November 13, 1938. Joe’s physical state while in county jail from report prepared by Dr. Laurence M. Collins for Prosecutor’s Office, November 5, 1938, SVJS. The November 1938 trial that returned Leibowitz to New York was The People v. Irwin (Court of General Sessions, Manhattan). Leibowitz’s goal was not to free his client but to establish the man’s insanity: Robert Irwin believed he had been decreed by God to kill three people. After a week’s trial, Irwin pleaded guilty to second-degree murder, was officially declared insane, and was sent to a state facility for the criminally insane. On Irwin case: Diana Klebanow and Franklin L. Jonas, People’s Lawyers: Crusaders for Justice in American History (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 2003), 197; Quentin Reynolds, Courtroom: The Story of Samuel S. Leibowitz (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux: 1950), 107-50.
3. On Congressional conservatives, see David M. Kennedy, The American People in the Great Depression: Freedom from Fear, pt. 1 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 348-50; Arthur Krock, “Taxpayers Revolt,” NYT, November 10, 1938; Turner Cat-ledge, “Relief to Confront Congress at Start,” NYT, December 28, 1938. Comments of Senator Carter Glass: “Relief Proposals ‘Shocking’ to Glass,” NYT, December 24, 1938.
4. “Relief Dimes Defend Poormaster Slayer,” DN, January 9, 1939; “Barck Murder, George to Claim Slaying Planned,” HD, January 9, 1939; “Barck Slayer Put on Trial for His Life,” JO, January 9, 1939.
5. “Vivo interesse per il processo Scutellaro che si inizia stamane,” PIA, January 9, 1939. On Il Progresso Italo-Americano’s coverage generally, see: The Italians of New York: A Survey Prepared by Workers of the Federal Writers’ Project, Works Progress Administration in the City of New York (New York: Arno Press and the New York Times, 1969 ed.), 123-24. “La causa di Giuseppe Scutellaro e la causa di tanti e tanti poveri,” PIA, March 2, 1938; and “Due testi smentiscono che Miss Hartman [sic] vide Scutellaro ferire Barck,” PIA, January 12, 1939. Italian-language articles translated for author by Elisa Varano.
6. On number of publications supported by Italian American readers: Ibid, 123. For leftist and centrist Italian language coverage of Scutellaro case, see for example, “Le rivolte della fame,” L’Adunata Dei Refrattari, March 12, 1938; “Hague vuol mandar lo alla sedia elettrica,” Il Popolo, January 14, 1939; “Chi sono i responsabili,” Il Popolo, January 14, 1939.
7. “Chi sono i responsabili,” Il Popolo.
8. Ibid.
9. McAlister Coleman, “Study in Relief,” Nation, January 28, 1939, 119-21; “Killing and Suicide Mark Poverty Scene,” The Catholic Worker, March 1938, 2.
10. See, for example, Associated Press reports “Seek to Free Relief Client,” San Antonio Light, January 10, 1939; “On Trial in Poormaster’s Slaying,” Kingston Daily Freeman (Kingston, New York), January 10, 1939; “Relief Client Faces Manslaughter Term,” Oakland Tribune (Oakland, California), January 16, 1939. And from the International News Service: “Escapes Chair, But Near Collapse,” San Antonio Light, January 15, 1939. All via Ancestry.com.
11. “Top-paid African-American entertainer in the world” and biographical facts: Jim Haskins and N. R. Mitgang, Mr. Bojangles: The Biography of Bill Robinson (New York: William Morrow & Co., 1988), 192-194, 213, 215-16, 225, 241, 248. “A hundred-dollar bill”: Author interview with Marie Scutellaro Werts.
12. Author interview with Marie Scutellaro Werts in Toms River, NJ, September 17, 2008.
13. “Barck Slayer Awaits Trial”; “May Ask Chair in Barck Case,” JJ, January 7, 1939; and “Barck Murder, George to Claim Slaying Planned.”
14. “Client of Leibowitz Dies in the Chair,” JO, January 6, 1939; Klebanow and Jonas, People’s Lawyers, 158.
15. “Trophy room”: Klebanow and Jonas, People’s Lawyers, 159; on Leibowitz’s office, see Fred D. Pasley, Not Guilty! The Story of Samuel S. Leibowitz (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1933), 118-20. “So-called record”: “Policeman’s Slayers Fail to Win Appeal,” NYT, November 23, 1938.
16. Background on Gati case, see: “Policeman’s Slayers Fail to Win Appeal”; Reynolds, Courtroom, 347-59; “Two Thugs Guilty in Police Killing,” NYT, June 30, 1938; Klebanow and Jonas, People’s Lawyers, 185.
17. Leibowitz’s concern he would be remembered “only for the Gati case”: Klebanow and Jonas, People’s Lawyers, 173; Reynolds, Courtroom, 357.
18. Size of crowd waiting for Scutellaro: “Cheered as Slayer of Overseer of Poor,” NYT, January 10, 1939; “Barck Slayer in Court Room As Quiz Opens,” JJ, January 9, 1939; and “Poormaster’s Killer Goes on Trial as Hero,” DN, January 10, 1939. See also photo “La prima udienza del processo di Scutellaro,” PIA, January 10, 1939. The courthouse incorporated Italian Renaissance features, as well as elements of Greek and Roman style. See William G. McLoughlin, Court Houses and Court Rooms, United States and New Jersey: Their History and Architecture (Jersey City, NJ: John Marshall College, 1937), 15-16, in collection of New Jersey Room, Jersey City Public Library.
19. Two lines: “Tilts Mark Selection of Barck Jury.”
20. “Barck Slayer in Court Room As Quiz Opens”; “Poormaster’s Killer Goes on Trial as Hero.”
21. Pasley, Not Guilty!, 127.
22. Information from struck jury cards: SVJS.
23. “Tilts Mark Selection of Barck Jurors”; Pasley, Not Guilty!, 128-29.
24. Pasley, Not Guilty!, 127.
25. Norris v. Alabama as a “landmark”: see Klebanow and Jonas, People’s Lawyers, 159.
26. Seating: “Barck Slayer in Court Room As Quiz Opens.”
27. “Tilts Mark Selection of Barck Jurors.”
28. Springlike temperatures, see “Mercury 24 Degrees Above Normal in January Thaw,” NYT, January 7, 1939; “The Weather over the Nation and Abroad,” NYT, January 8-10, 1939; and “Springlike Temperature Gives Way to Freezing Weather,” HD, January 14, 1939. Marie’s attire: “Confession Introduced in Evidence at Trial Here,” JJ, January 11, 1939; “Tilts Mark Selection of Barck Jurors”; photograph of Anna, Marie, and little Joseph accompanying article, “Poormaster’s Killer Goes on Trial as Hero”; author interview with Marie Scutellaro Werts.
29. “Cheered As Slayer of Overseer of Poor.”
30. Longest “could ever recall”: “Barck Slayer in Court Room As Quiz Opens.” Six hours: “Tilts Mark Selection of Barck Jurors.” Used a week: Klebanow and Jonas, People’s Lawyers, 170. “Frequently judges”: Pasley, Not Guilty!, 127.
31. “Hangers” and “let-livers” philosophy: Pasley, Not Guilty!, 127-28.
32. Ibid.
33. Leibowitz query regarding “testimony of a police officer”: “Cheered as Slayer of Overseer of Poor.” Leibowitz query regarding McFeely family: “M’Feelys Kept Off Record at Slaying Trial,” NYP, January 9, 1939.
34. Foreman selected: “Tilts Mark Selection of Barck Jurors”; “Barck Slayer in Court Room As Quiz Opens.”
35. Ibid.
36. “Dole Killer Hero on Trial in Jersey,” DN, January 10, 1939.
37. “Tilts Mark Selection of Barck Jurors.”
38. See for example, “Relief Client on Trial for Murder,” Newark Evening News, January 9, 1939; ibid.
39. Struck jury cards, SVJS.
40. Harold D. Tompkins, 1930 United States Federal Census, Jersey City, Hudson County, NJ, roll 1354, p. 22B, enumeration district 114, image 92.0, via Ancestry.com; “George G. Tennant, Retired Jurist, 79,” NYT, February 4, 1948; “Harold D. Tompkins,” obituary, NYT, November 28, 1951. Joseph C. Darrell, 1930 United States Federal Census, Jersey City, Hudson County, NJ, roll 1252, p. 7A, enumeration district 84, image 807.0, via Ancestry.com. Henry A. F. Kelm, 1930 United States Federal Census, Jersey City, Hudson County, NJ, roll 1356, p. 11B, enumeration district 180, image 796.0, via Ancestry.com. William Lindquist, 1930 United States Federal Census, Bayonne, Hudson County, NJ, roll 1346, p. 4B, enumeration district 188, image 517.0, via Ancestry.com. Peter Nolan, 1930 United States Federal Census, Jersey City, Hudson County, NJ, roll 1352, p. 37B, enumeration district 82, image 658.0, via Ancestry.com. Robert H. Sinclair, 1930 United States Federal Census, Jersey City, Hudson County, NJ, Roll 1360, p. 13B, enumeration district 433, image 864.0, via Ancestry.com. Thomas Hamilton, 1930 United States Federal Census, Bayonne, Hudson County, NJ, roll 1347, p. 15A, enumeration district 211, image 31.0, via Ancestry.com.
41. Tompkins, 1930 United States Federal Census, Jersey City, NJ, Department of Revenue and Finance, Tax Assessment for Block 1814, Lot 9A-10, 132 Bentley Avenue, Jersey City, owner Harold D. Tompkins, inspected April 12, 1939, Tax Assessors’ Office, City Hall, Jersey City. Cornell Alumni News, vol. 15, no. 36 (June 11, 1913): 436, notes inauguration of Tompkins’s employment with Smooth-On Manufacturing, iron cements manufacturer in Jersey City.
42. Tompkins graduated from Cornell in 1910. See Cornell Alumni News, vol. 37, no. 23 (March 28, 1935): 11. On Leibowitz’s years at Cornell University Law School, see Robert Leibowitz, The Defender: The Life and Career of Samuel S. Leibowitz, 1893–1933 (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1981), 7. On Tompkins’s father-in-law, see: “George G. Tennant, Retired Jurist, 79.”
43. “Clashes Mark Scutellaro Jury Choice,” HD, January 10, 1939.
44. Hotel Plaza background: “Jersey City, Past and Present, Hotel Plaza,” www.njcu.ed/Programs/jchistory; “Hague Begs Nation to Ban C.I.O. Reds,” NYT, January 13, 1938.
45. “Burkitt Watches ‘King’ Hague Fete,” NYT, January 3, 1938.
46. “Clashes Mark Scutellaro Jury Choice.”
47. Lining hallway: “Dole Killer Hero.”
1. Photographers pushing: “Confession Introduced in Evidence at Trial Here,” JJ, January 11, 1939; author interview with Marie Scutellaro Werts in Toms River, NJ, September 17, 2008.
2. Quentin Reynolds, Courtroom: The Story of Samuel S. Leibowitz (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1950), x; “Scutellaro Trial Gets Underway,” JJ, January 10, 1939.
3. Excluding officers: “Scutellaro Trial Gets Underway.” On Edward McFeely’s ruddy complexion: Edward John McFeely, U.S. World War II Draft Registration Cards, 1942, roll WWII_2372200, Hudson County, NJ, via Ancestry.com. Leibowitz’s awareness of police officers in the courtroom, see SVJS, partial trial testimony, January 10, 1939, Leibowitz cross-examination of Eleonore Hartmann, 8.
4. “Defense Hints Death of Barck Accidental,” JO, January 11, 1939. See also Rudolph V. Magnus, U.S. World War II Draft Registration Cards, 1942, roll WWII_2372199, Hudson County, NJ, via Ancestry.com.
5. Braunstein: “Eye-Witness Gives Story of Murder,” JJ, January 10, 1939; “Defense Hints Death”; autopsy report, February 25, 1938, performed at Hoffman’s Morgue in Hoboken by Doctors Arthur P. Hasking, William P. Braunstein, Manuel Hernandez, and Thomas S. Brady, SVJS.
6. “Defense Hints Death.”
7. Courtroom hat, see photograph of “Miss Eleanor Hartman [sic]” accompanying “Hint Fall on Spindle Fatal to Poormaster,” HD, January 11, 1939; “Una teste d’accusa contro Scutellaro si contraddice,” PIA, January 11, 1939. Hartmann as “star witness,” see, for example: “Scutellaro Case to the Jury,” JO, January 14, 1939. Unless otherwise noted, William George’s direct examination of Hartmann is derived from SVJS, partial trial transcript, January 10, 1939, testimony of Eleonore Hartmann, 2-16. Hartmann’s courtroom behavior and appearance: “Eye-Witness Gives Story of Murder”; “Saw Barck Slain, Woman Asserts,” NYP, January 10, 1939.
8. Fred D. Pasley, Not Guilty! The Story of Samuel S. Leibowitz (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1933), 123. SVJS, partial trial transcript, testimony of Eleonore Hartmann, 16-75.
9. Hartmann’s reddening face under cross-examination, see: “Una teste d’accusa contro Scutellaro si contraddice.”
10. Photograph accompanying “Hint Fall on Spindle Fatal to Poormaster.”
11. Pasley, Not Guilty!, 37.
12. “To go outside”: “Eye-Witness Gives Story of Murder.”
13. See especially Leibowitz’s cross-examination: SVJS, partial trial transcript, testimony of Eleonore Hartmann, 38, 58-59.
14. Desk spindle in evidence: “Defense Hints Death”; and “Confession Introduced.” Cerutti’s date of birth: Adaline [sic] Cerutti, 1920 United States Federal Census, Ward 1, Hoboken, Hudson County, NJ, roll T625_1041, p. 16A, enumeration district 66, image 1063, via Ancestry.com. “Hint Fall on Spindle Fatal to Poormaster.”
15. “Defense Hints Death” and “Saw Barck Slain.”
16. “Defense Hints Death.”
17. He asked Romayne Mullin: “Hint Fall on Spindle Fatal to Poormaster.”
18. “Hint Fall on Spindle Fatal to Poormaster”; statement of Josephine Shea to the Police Department, City of Hoboken, February 25, 1938, SVJS; “Confession Introduced”; “Defense Hints Death.”
19. “Defense Hints Death.” Ralph Corrado, 1920 United States Federal Census, Ward 3, Hoboken, Hudson County, NJ, roll T6125_1042, p. 3B, enumeration district 83, image 540, via Ancestry.com. Ralph Corrado statement to Detective Sergeant Edward Fitzgerald, Police Department, City of Hoboken, February 25, 1938, 7:45 PM; “Confession Introduced.”
20. Unless otherwise indicated, Corrado’s direct examination, testimony, and cross-examination: “Una teste d’accusa contro Scutellaro si contraddice.”
21. “Defense Hints Death.”
22. “Confession Introduced.”
23. Likely to call Impellitteri: “Defense Hints Death.”
24. Headlines announcing cuts and lack of state relief funds included: Turner Cat-ledge, “Voters Urge Curb,” NYT, January 10, 1939; “Moore Lists Relief as Most Urgent Task for New Legislature Meeting Tomorrow,” NYT, January 9, 1939; “Legislators Open Session in Jersey,” NYT, January 11, 1939. See also Hudson County papers likely offered to jurors: “Congress to Take Up Future WPA Spending,” and “ ‘Cut Out Relief Chiselers’—Muir,” JJ, January 9, 1939; “Committee Decide Today on Relief Cut,” JJ, January 10, 1939; “Roosevelt Job Funds Slashed by 150 Million,” HD, January 10, 1939.
25. Police presence: “Confession Introduced.” On waiting spectators and applause, see: “Due testi smentiscono che Miss Hartman [sic] vide Scutellaro ferire Barck,” PIA, January 12, 1939.
26. Statement of John Galdi to Hoboken Police, February 25, 1938. John Galdi, 1930 United States Federal Census, Hoboken, Hudson County, NJ, roll 1349, p. 8B, enumeration district 288, image 777.0, via Ancestry.com.
27. Barck had the power: See Paul Tutt Stafford, Government and the Needy: A Study of Public Assistance (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1941), 67-68, 172-73; and State Charities Aid and Prison Reform Association of New Jersey, Poor Relief, A Manual for Overseers of the Poor, 1913, passim.
28. Statement of John Galdi to Hoboken Police; “Confession Introduced”; “Barck Jurors Get Confession of Death Blow,” NYP, January 11, 1939.
29. “Scutellaro Takes the Stand,” JO, January 12, 1939.
30. Biographical background on Nicholas Russo: Russo statement to Hoboken Police Department, February 25, 1938, SVJS; and Nick Russo, 1930 United States Federal Census, Hoboken, Hudson County, NJ, roll 1349, p. 3A, enumeration district 274, image 381.0, via Ancestry.com. Courtroom testimony: “Scutellaro Takes the Stand”; “‘Confession’ Is Used in Trial,” Newark Evening News, January 11, 1939; “Barck Jurors Get Confession.”
31. Diana Klebanow and Franklin L. Jonas, People’s Lawyers: Crusaders for Justice in American History (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 2003), 167. See also Reynolds, Courtroom, 81-82, regarding case of Alvin Dooley.
32. “Confession Introduced.”
33. See, generally, Alva Johnston, “Let Freedom Ring,” pt. 1, New Yorker (June 4, 1932): passim; Alva Johnston, “Let Freedom Ring,” pt. 2, New Yorker (June 11, 1932): passim; Pasley, Not Guilty!, passim; Klebanow and Jonas, People’s Lawyers, 162, 164. George’s knowledge of Leibowitz’s tactics: “State Summation Strikes at Accident Defense in Killing,” JO, January 16, 1939.
34. On Leibowitz charging police brutality: Johnston, “Let Freedom Ring, pt. 1, 21. On public awareness of it: Marilynn S. Johnson, Street Justice: A History of Police Violence in New York City (Boston: Beacon Press, 2003), 114, 125, 132-33.
35. Asked officers to be excluded: “Confession Introduced.” For Scott’s physical description: Joseph R. Scott, U.S. World War II Draft Registration Cards, 1942, roll WWII_2372588, Hudson County, NJ, via Ancestry.com.
36. Ibid. Facing jury: “Scutellaro Takes the Stand”; statement, typed by Hoboken Police Department patrolman and signed by Joseph F. Scutellaro, February 25, 1938, SVJS.
37. “Barck Jurors Get Confession.”
38. “State Rests in Surprise Move,” HD, January 12, 1939.
39. “Looking at the girls”: “Barck Jurors Get Confession.”; “Scutellaro Takes the Stand.”
40. “It was a matter of slipping your lieutenant’s coat on”: “Scutellaro Takes the Stand.”
41. “Poormaster Slaying Confession Disputed,” DN, January 12, 1939. Well-used strategy: Johnston, “Let Freedom Ring,” pt. 1, 24. Tailor it for Scutellaro case: “State Rests in Surprise Move.”
42. “Hot” courtroom: “Due testi smentiscono che Miss Hartman [sic] vide Scutellaro ferire Barck.”
43. “Scutellaro Takes the Stand.”
44. “State Rests in Surprise Move”; “Barck Jurors Get Confession.”
45. McAlister Coleman, “Study in Relief,” Nation, January 28, 1939, 120; “Scutellaro Takes the Stand.”
46. “Scutellaro Takes the Stand.”
1. “Pastor Claims Hoboken Poor Are Starving,” HD, May 27, 1936. Other prominent locals would also gain seats in court. See “Tilts Mark Selection of Barck Jurors,” JO, January 10, 1939.
2. “The Weather over the Nation and Abroad,” NYT, January 13, 1939, records previous day’s weather: 39 degrees and partly cloudy, as a winter storm moved in. Final witnesses: “State Rests in Surprise Move,” HD, January 12, 1939. Leibowitz’s earlier accusations of coached testimony: Diana Klebanow and Franklin L. Jonas, People’s Lawyers: Crusaders for Justice in American History (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 2003), 190-91.
3. Joe’s appearance: “Una teste d’accusa contro Scutellaro si contraddice,” PIA, January 11, 1939; and “ ‘Poor’ Killer Faces 1 Year,” DN, January 16, 1939.
4. “Scutellaro Takes the Stand,” JO, January 12, 1939.
5. John R. Bott, “Scutellaro on Stand Tells Story of Killing,” NYP, January 12, 1939.
6. “Scutellaro Quits Stand,” HD, January 13, 1939.
7. Mentions illness, “funny ideas”: “Scutellaro Case to the Jury,” JO, January 14, 1939. On encephalitis: www.bbc.co.uk/health/conditions/encephalitislethargical1.shtml. See also, generally, on epidemics of the 1920s, Molly Caldwell Crosby, Asleep: The Forgotten Epidemic That Remains One of Medicine’s Greatest Mysteries (New York: Berkeley Books, 2010).
8. Average American worker’s family described as two parents with three children, living in an industrial city. Reports by Bureau of Labor Statistics and Labor Research, Inc., published in late 1928, see Mauritz A. Hallgren, Seeds of Revolt: A Study of American Life and the Temper of the American People During the Depression (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1933), 18-20.
9. “Scutellaro to Know His Fate by Tomorrow,” JJ, January 13, 1939.
10. “Scutellaro Case to the Jury.”
11. Scutellaro’s difficulty in speaking at trial: “Scutellaro giura che la morte di Barck fu causata da un accidente,” PIA, January 13, 1939; Bott, “Scutellaro on Stand”; and “Barck Trial Halts as Prisoner Faints,” NYT, January 13, 1939.
12. “Scutellaro Says Death Was Accident,” JJ, January 12, 1939.
13. See: Fred D. Pasley, Not Guilty! The Story of Samuel S. Leibowitz (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1933), 37, 121-22, 280. On his years at Cornell University Law School and theatricality of criminal law, see Robert Leibowitz, The Defender: The Life and Career of Samuel S. Leibowitz, 1893–1933 (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1981), 7; Klebanow and Jonas, People’s Lawyers, 161.
14. Use of props: Pasley, Not Guilty!, 55; “Scutellaro Says Death Was Accident.”
15. Pasley, Not Guilty!, 55; “Scutellaro Says Death Was Accident;” “Scutellaro Quits Stand.”
16. Bott, “Scutellaro on Stand”; “Scutellaro Says Death Was Accident.”
17. Bott, “Scutellaro on Stand.”
18. “Scutellaro Says Death Was Accident.”
19. SVJS, partial trial transcript, January 12, 1939, testimony of Joseph Scutellaro, 31-32.
20. SVJS, partial trial transcript, testimony of Joseph Scutellaro, 18.
21. “Scutellaro Collapses,” JO, January 13, 1939.
22. SVJS, partial trial transcript, testimony of Joseph Scutellaro, 35.
23. “Scutellaro Quits Stand”; “Scutellaro to Know His Fate by Tomorrow.”
24. “Scutellaro to Know His Fate by Tomorrow.”
25. See, generally, SVJS, partial trial transcript, January 12, 1939, testimony of Dr. Lawrence J. Kelly, 1-23.
26. SVJS, partial trial transcript, testimony of Dr. Kelly, 11. “Scutellaro Quits Stand.”
27. SVJS, partial trial transcript, testimony of Dr. Kelly, 4.
28. Ibid., 5.
29. “Scutellaro Collapses.”
30. SVJS, partial trial transcript, testimony of Joseph Scutellaro, 9, 17-18.
31. “Barck Trial Halts.”
32. “Scutellaro Quits Stand”; SVJS, partial trial transcript, testimony of Joseph Scutellaro, 77.
33. Pedersen first mentions an unnamed, needy “family of five” in “Pastor Claims Hoboken Poor Are Starving.” Articles thereafter mention the Hasties by name—see, for example, “Hoboken Families in Dire Need Specifically Cited by Clergyman,” HD, May 28, 1936.
34. “Pastor Claims Hoboken Poor Are Starving”; “Scutellaro in Collapse,” JJ, January 13, 1939; “Barck Trial Halts”; “Scutellaro Collapses”; “Scutellaro Quits Stand.”
35. “Scutellaro sviene mentre rende l’interrogatorio,” PIA, January 13, 1939, translated for the author by Elisa Varano: “he was stiff, as if in a state of catalepsy.”
36. Ibid.; “Barck Trial Halts.”
37. SVJS, partial trial transcript, testimony of Joseph Scutellaro, 79-82.
38. “Scutellaro Case Goes to Jury At 2 PM,” JJ, January 14, 1939; “Jury Gets Scutellaro Case This Afternoon,” HD, January 14, 1939; report prepared by Dr. Laurence M. Collins for Prosecutor’s Office, November 5, 1938, SVJS.
39. “Scutellaro to Know His Fate by Tomorrow.”
40. “Scutellaro Case to the Jury.”
41. Pedersen’s recent arrival in Hoboken: “Barck Claims Cleric Erred,” JO, May 28, 1936. Years of Pedersen’s service as Pastor (1935-39): First Baptist Church, Hoboken, 100th Anniversary Program, Sunday, December 9, 1945, catalog number 2002.028.0003, Collection of the Hoboken Historical Museum, Hoboken, NJ.
42. Exchanges between Barck and Pedersen: “Says Nobody ‘Is Starving in Hoboken,’ “ HD, May 26, 1936; “Pastor Claims Hoboken Poor Are Starving”; “Hoboken Families in Dire Need”; “Barck Claims Cleric Erred”; “Barck Denies Relief Asked,” HD, May 29, 1936.
43. “Clark’s Bolt Causes Change In 1935 Lineup,” HD, May 4, 1934; “Scutellaro to Know His Fate by Tomorrow”; “M’Feely Dance Tonight to Be Without Clark,” HD, May 5, 1934.
44. “Closest friend”: Mayor Bernard N. McFeely, statement to John T. Madigan, FBI agent, Newark, NJ, office, report dated November 1, 1939, file 44-2, p. 4, box 17594, folder 144-48-1, DOJ Subject File, Records of DOJ (RG 60), NACP. “Clark Trial Adjourned After Lively Session,” JJ, July 30, 1934.
45. “Scutellaro to Know His Fate by Tomorrow”; “Jury Gets Scutellaro Case This Afternoon,” HD, January 14, 1939.
46. “Jury Gets Scutellaro Case”; “8-Inch Snow Blankets the City,” NYT, January 14, 1939.
1. “Winter’s Second Heaviest Snowfall Brings Out Plows,” HD, January 14, 1939; “8-Inch Snow Blankets the City,” NYT, January 14, 1939.
2. “Jersey’s Assembly Bars Relief Protest,” NYT, January 14, 1939. On Newark’s claim: “Cut in Relief Cost Is Voted in Jersey,” NYT, February 6, 1939.
3. Two hundred and seventy-one of New Jersey’s 567 municipalities received no state relief funds in 1938. New Jersey’s relief formula and distribution: Donald S. Howard, The WPA and Federal Relief Policy (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1943), 54.
4. Men outside: “Jury Is Long Out in Barck Slaying,” NYT, January 15, 1939.
5. Unless otherwise noted, details of Leibowitz’s summation were derived from the following articles: “Leibowitz Makes Three-Hour Appeal to Save Scutellaro,” JO, January 16, 1939; and “Scutellaro Will Be Sentenced on Thursday for Manslaughter,” JO, January 16, 1939. For background on the Greenfield case, see: “Kills Imbecile Son As ‘Act of Mercy,’ “ NYT, January 13, 1939; “Father on Trial as ‘Mercy Killer,’ “ NYT, May 9, 1939; “Father Acquitted in Mercy Killing,” NYT, May 12, 1939.
6. Fred D. Pasley, Not Guilty! The Story of Samuel S. Leibowitz (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1933), 122.
7. “Scutellaro Faces 10-Year Prison Term,” JJ, January 16, 1939. The rest of the sentence, represented by ellipsis, is “and be told to have his wife become a prostitute.”
8. “A man inured to suffering”: “Jury Is Long Out in Barck Slaying.” “Scutellaro Faces 10-Year Prison Term.” Parents escape from tyranny: Pasley, Not Guilty!, 64-67. “Convict Scutellaro of Manslaughter,” HD, January 16, 1939.
9. “Ask any American”: “Jury Is Long Out in Barck Slaying.” See Quentin Reynolds, Courtroom: The Story of Samuel S. Leibowitz (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1950), 153-54, regarding Leibowitz’s use of the “hand of God” defense to describe “tragedies … caused by forces outside the comprehension of man”; quote on p. 169.
10. “Convict Scutellaro of Manslaughter”; “Scutellaro Faces 10-Year Prison Term.”
11. See: “Scutellaro Will Be Sentenced on Thursday for Manslaughter.”
12. “Scutellaro Faces 10-Year Prison Term.”
13. Ibid.
14. “Convict Scutellaro of Manslaughter.”
15. Physical description of Louis Messano: Louis James Messano, U.S. World War II Draft Registration Cards, 1942, roll WWII_2372201, Hudson County, NJ, via Ancestry.com. In 1942, when Messano registered, he was five foot seven and weighed 190 pounds.
16. “State Summation Strikes at Accident Defense in Killing,” JO, January 16, 1939.
17. “Convict Scutellaro of Manslaughter.”
18. “State Summation Strikes at Accident Defense in Killing.”
19. “ ‘Poor’ Killer to Cheat Chair,” Sunday (Daily) News, January 15, 1939; “Convict Scutellaro of Manslaughter”; “Scutellaro Faces 10-Year Prison Term.”
20. “Scutellaro Faces 10-Year Prison Term” and “State Summation Strikes at Accident Defense in Killing.” On Scutellaro’s crying: “Jury Is Long Out in Barck Slaying.”
21. “Convict Scutellaro of Manslaughter”; “Scutellaro Faces 10-Year Prison Term.” “An upright man”: Leibowitz statement to Kinkead after verdict was announced and jury excused; see “Scutellaro Will Be Sentenced on Thursday for Manslaughter.”
22. “Convict Scutellaro of Manslaughter”; “Scutellaro Faces 10-Year Prison Term”; “La giuria indecisa sul fato di Giuseppe Scutellaro,” PIA, January 15, 1939; “Scutellaro Will Be Sentenced on Thursday for Manslaughter.”
23. “La giuria indecisa sul fato di Giuseppe Scutellaro”; “Scutellaro Will Be Sentenced on Thursday for Manslaughter.”
24. “Scutellaro Faces 10-Year Prison Term.”
25. “Convict Scutellaro of Manslaughter.”
26. “Scutellaro Guilty of Manslaughter: Slayer of Hoboken Poormaster is Calm as Jury Reports After Ten Hours,” NYT, January 16, 1939; “Scutellaro Faces 10-Year Prison Term”; “Barck’s Slayer Awaits Sentence,” NYP, January 16, 1939.
27. The act of manslaughter, explained by Judge Kinkead: “Jury Is Long Out in Barck Slaying”; “Convict Scutellaro of Manslaughter.”
28. “Agreed at the outset”: “Convict Scutellaro of Manslaughter.” “Pig-headed” juror: “Viva attesa fra gli Italiani per la sorte di G. Scutellaro,” PIA, January 16, 1939, identified as Lyon. See however, PIA article published the day before, “La giuria indecisa sul fato di Giuseppe Scutellaro,” which names Tompkins as the holdout. A report by the DN confirmed Tompkins as such; see “Poormaster’s Slayer Guilty, Faces a Year,” DN, January 16, 1939.
29. “Scutellaro Will Be Sentenced on Thursday for Manslaughter”; “ ‘Poor’ Killer Faces 1 Year”; “Scutellaro Guilty of Manslaughter.”
30. “Scutellaro Faces 10-Year Prison Term”; “Scutellaro Will Be Sentenced on Thursday for Manslaughter”; “Weigh Appeal by Scutellaro,” JO, January 17, 1939.
31. “Un commento della difesa di Scutellaro sul verdetto che fu emesso domenica dai giurati,” PIA, January 18, 1939.
32. “The Shape of Things,” Nation, January 21, 1939.
33. McAlister Coleman, “Study in Relief,” Nation, January 28, 1939, 121.
34. “Convict Scutellaro of Manslaughter.”
35. “Two Women Can’t Forget Poor Office Slaying Tragedy, Relatives Shield Barck Widow in Dover: Mrs. Scutellaro Won’t Reveal Feelings,” HD, January 16, 1939.
36. “Scutellaro condannato a due anni,” PIA, February 3, 1939.
37. “Kinkead Hints He May Be Lenient with Scutellaro,” JO, January 20, 1939; “Scutellaro to Hear His Sentence Today,” HD, February 2, 1939; “Scutellaro condannato a due anni.”
38. “Could provoke a wave of rebellion”: “Scutellaro condannato a due anni”; “Scutellaro Gets 2 to 5 Years,” JJ, February 2, 1939.
39. “Billions are spent for roads and bridges”: “Given Two Years in Barck Killing,” Newark Evening News, February 2, 1939. New Jersey State Legislature consideration of bill to offset Newark’s relief reimbursement with its highway construction debt: “Cut in Relief Cost Is Voted in Jersey” and “Jersey Bill Seen Forcing Needy to ‘Eat Route 21,’ “ NYT, February 8, 1939.
40. “Jersey Relief Tax Urged in Program,” NYT, January 17, 1939.
41. Would be well rid: “Scutellaro Gets 2 To 5 Years.” Leibowitz taking cases to win: Pasley, Not Guilty!, 268, 272. “A scapegoat”: “Scutellaro condannato a due anni.”
42. “Scutellaro Gets 2 To 5 Years.”
43. “Scutellaro condannato a due anni.”
44. “Scutellaro Gets 2 To 5 Years.”
45. “Scutellaro Gets 2 Years in Killing,” NYP, February 2, 1939.
46. Ibid.; “Given Two Years in Barck Killing.”
47. “Scutellaro Gets 2-5 Year Term,” HD, February 3, 1939; “Scutellaro condannato a due anni.”
48. Transcript of telegram from Cary Euwer, Office of Attorney General to Morris Milgram, Executive Secretary, Workers Defense League of NJ, February 2, 1939, and Morris Milgram to Attorney General Frank Murphy, January 25, 1939, box 17313, 4th folder (1/25/39-7/26/39), DOJ Central Files, Classified Subject Files, Correspondence, Records of the DOJ (RG 60), NACP. See also “Labor Group Asks Hague Indictment,” NYT, February 12, 1939.
1. Richard Lowitt and Maurine Hoffman Beasley, eds., One Third of a Nation: Lorena Hickok Reports on the Great Depression (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1981), 330. “3rd Ward Club Hails McFeely, Aids at Affair: Father of Joseph Scutellaro Bespeaks Friendship for Mayor at Rally,” HD, April 3, 1939.
2. In interview with author in Toms River, NJ, September 17, 2008, Marie Scutellaro Werts noted contracts restoration but had no firm date.
3. Obituary for Mrs. Augusta Barck, Daily Record, November 25, 1945.
4. “Matson to Appeal Conviction”; Arthur Garfield Hays, statement to John T. Madigan, FBI agent, Newark, NJ, office, report dated April 11, 1939, file 7-77, pp. 17–18, box 17313, 4th folder (1/25/39-7/26/39), DOJ Central Files, Classified Subject Files, Correspondence, Records of the DOJ (RG 60), NACP. See also ACLU minutes of the Board of Directors, October 10, 1938, American Civil Liberties Union Records, Roger Baldwin Years, roll 165, vol. 2044, Public Policy Papers, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Library.
5. Herman Matson, statement to John T. Madigan, FBI agent, Newark, NJ, office, report dated May 4, 1939, file 7-77, pp. 34–35, box 15205, folder 109-286, section 1 (3/25/39-5/4/39), DOJ Central Files, Classified Subject Files, Correspondence, DOJ (RG 60), NACP.
6. “Pair Accused by Matson Freed,” JJ, November 8, 1938; Morris Milgram, statement to John T. Madigan, FBI agent, Newark, NJ, office, report dated May 4, 1939, file 7-77, pp. 21–22, box 15205, folder 109-286, section 1 (3/25/39-5/4/39), DOJ Central Files, Classified Subject Files, Correspondence, Records of the DOJ (RG 60), NACP.
7. ACLU pamphlet, The Bill of Rights, 150 Years After, the Story of Civil Liberty, 1938-39 (New York, June 1939): 11, 32, in author’s collection. Herman Matson’s speech at WDL meeting in Newark: “Matson Attacks Hoboken Relief,” JJ, October 7, 1938. WDL flyer announcing Mass Meeting, Wednesday, November 30 (1938) at the YCLA Auditorium, NYC, The Workers Defense League Collection, box 33, folder 14, Archives of Labor and Urban Affairs, Wayne State University; another WDL flyer announcing Matson as a speaker at a Friday, September 8, 1939 WDL-related meeting to prevent “deportation” from NJ of relief clients who had not attained residency: The Workers Defense League Collection, box 95, folder 7, Archives of Labor and Urban Affairs, Wayne State University. Flogging of Joseph Shoemaker: Robert P. Ingalls, “The Tampa Flogging Case, Urban Vigilantism,” Florida Historical Quarterly, vol. 55, no. 1 (July 1977): 13-27.
8. Mimeographed, undated flyers of Hoboken Independent Citizens Committee: “Stop This Relief Hoax!” “The Hoboken Citizen,” “Ai cittadini di Hoboken,” “McFeely Silent on Relief Funds,” box 17594, folder 144-48-1, DOJ Subject File 144-48-1, Records of the DOJ (RG 60), NACP. Flyers were stamped, noting receipt by Office of the Attorney General, December 21, 1939.
9. See “Labor Group Asks Hague Indictment,” NYT, February 12, 1939. In addition to Herman Matson and Morris Milgram, the WDL of NJ delegation included others known for civil liberties activism: Episcopal minister William C. Kernan; progressive journalist McAlister Coleman; Socialist Party activist Clara Handelman; and outspoken Hague opponent Robert Ambry. Miss Kate Small, Hoboken, NJ, to Henry Schienhaupt [sic], DOJ, December 29, 1939, box 17594, folder 144-48-0, section 2 (9/8/39-6/26/40), DOJ Subject File 144-48-0, Records of the DOJ (RG 60), NACP.
10. Dorothy Dunbar Bromley, “Strike a Balance: Matson, Jersey’s Persecuted WPA Worker,” NYP, May 12, 1939. Memorandum for acting assistant attorney general Hopkins from J. Edgar Hoover, director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Washington, DC, May 24, 1939, box 17313, 4th folder (1/25/39-7/26/39), DOJ Central Files, Classified Subject Files, Correspondence, Records of the DOJ (RG 60), NACP.
11. David Clendenin, Workers Defense League, to Henry Schweinhaut, Bureau of Civil Liberties, DOJ, May 8, 1939, The Workers Defense League Collection, box 37, folder 22, Archives of Labor and Urban Affairs, Wayne State University. “Charges Against Matson Dropped,” JJ, May 18, 1939.
12. Mrs. Florence Keator, Hoboken, NJ, to Mr. Henry Schweinhaupt [sic], DOJ, Washington, DC, January 6, 1940, box 17594, folder 144-48-0, section 2, 9/8/39-6/26/40, DOJ Subject File 144-48-0, Records of the DOJ (RG 60), NACP. On Clark’s arrest and its aftermath: “Armed Groups, McFeely Critic Held,” JJ, May 9, 1939; “Clark on Stand in Trial for Poll Fracas,” JJ, May 22, 1939; “Clark Found Guilty, Fined for Poll Row,” JJ, May 23, 1939, lists Mrs. Elizabeth Matson as one of the witnesses to Clark’s beating: “Clark Appeals in Poll Case,” JJ, May 31, 1939; “Clark Drops Damage Suit Against Cops,” JJ, April 5, 1940, stating Clark dropped his damage suit after his disorderly conduct conviction was set aside.
13. City hall protests, late spring-summer 1939: “Matson Pickets,” JJ, May 15, 1939; “Hoboken Relief Standards Low, Matson Holds,” JJ, July 12, 1939; “Matson Again Speaks on Steps of City Hall,” JJ, July 22, 1939.
14. US Attorney General’s speech: “Murphy, In Jersey, Denounces Hague,” NYT, June 22, 1939. James A. Hagerty, “Big Cities Drop Boss Rule: With Pendergast Under Sentence, Only Hague Is Left with Dictatorial Power,” NYT, May 28, 1939.
15. “Kicked, Says Mrs. Matson on Stand,” JJ, June 6, 1940; “Suit Against Hoboken by Matson Fails,” JJ, June 8, 1940.
16. Author interviews with Raymond Matson, April 15, 2009, and Evelyn Olsen, April 1, 2009. “Ex-Commissioner Clark Leaves Hoboken for North Bergen,” JJ, October 7, 1940.
17. Author interview with Evelyn Olsen; e-mail communication from Raymond Matson Jr. to author, March 19, 2010. “Brooklyn Navy Yard” is popular, colloquial name of officially titled (1801-1966) New York Naval Shipyard.
18. Author interview with Daniel Matson, April 8, 2009; “The McFeely,” Time, May 26, 1947, www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,793712,00.html.
19. Background on testimony of rebel police officers and resulting indictments: “Common-Law Criminal Conspiracy as a Weapon Against Corrupt Political Organizations,” University of Chicago Law Review, vol. 15, no. 4 (Summer 1948): 939-44. “Mayor of Hoboken, 10 Others Indicted,” NYT, October 16, 1946; “Hoboken Officials Deny Conspiracy,” NYT, October 26, 1946. Role of rebel officers in forming 1947 opposition slate: Alexander L. Crosby, “The Bosses Leave Town,” New Republic, March 22, 1948, 17-18; Richard J. Connors, A Cycle of Power: The Career of Jersey City Mayor Frank Hague (Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1971), 150-51; “End of a Boss,” Life, May 26, 1947, 40-41. The indictments went nowhere; see: “Mayor of Hoboken Will Go on Trial,” NYT, April 30, 1947; “McFeely Dies in Hoboken,” JJ, August 9, 1949; “Court Finally Gets 1946 Hoboken Case,” NYT, November 2, 1954; “All Charges Ended Against E. J. M’Feely,” NYT, December 8, 1954; “Edward M’Feely Dies,” NYT, November 24, 1956.
20. Bartletta quote: “Ask High Court to Stop McFeely War on Italians,” JJ, December 19, 1928. “The McFeely”; “30-Year McFeely Rule over Hoboken Closes,” Joplin Globe, May 21, 1947, accessed via Ancestry.com; “10,000 In Hoboken Hail New Regime,” NYT, May 31, 1947.
21. Thomas H. Reed and Doris D. Reed, The Government of Hoboken: A Report of an Administrative and Financial Survey of the City of Hoboken, New Jersey (New York: National Municipal League, January 1948), 140.
22. “Chief Quits on Eve of Hoboken Trial,” NYT, May 16, 1947. Director of Welfare in Department of Public Welfare: Reed and Reed, The Government of Hoboken, 49.
23. Diana Klebanow and Franklin L. Jonas, People’s Lawyers: Crusaders for Justice in American History (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 2003), 185.
24. “Sentencing Sam”: “Jurist Before the Bar,” Time, November 15, 1963, 71. “Leibowitz Envisions Death Penalty Here,” NYT, January 12, 1970. Forty men sent by Leibowitz to electric chair: Martin Arnold, “Parole in Capital Offenses Less Likely, Officials Say,” NYT, June 30, 1972. For “A Brief History of the Death Penalty in New York,” see: Joseph Lentol, Helene Weinstein, and Jeffrion Aubry, A Report on Five Public Hearings on the Death Penalty in New York Conducted by the Assembly Standing Committees on Codes, Judiciary and Correction, December 15, 2004—February 11, 2005, 12-13. http://assembly.state.ny.us/comm/Codes/20050403/deathpenalty.pdf, accessed March 31, 2010.
25. Author interview with Marie Scutellaro Werts; unless otherwise noted, all personal details about the Scutellaro family are from this source.
26. Relief clients dropped for “talking politics”: James A. Weschler, “Hoboken: Story of a Sick City,” PM, vol. 1, no. 40 (August 12, 1940): 16. Quoted chairman is William Haber of the National Resources Planning Board’s Committee on Relief Policy: Donald S. Howard, The WPA and Federal Relief Policy (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1943), 51.
27. Chad Alan Goldberg, Citizens and Paupers: Relief, Rights, and Race, from the Freedmen’s Bureau to Workfare (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), 149-50; Josephine C. Brown, Public Relief, 1929–1939 (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1940), 391-92; and Howard, WPA and Federal Relief, 631-32.
28. Goldberg, Citizens and Paupers, 161; Larry W. DeWitt, Daniel Beland, and Edward D. Berkowitz, Social Security: A Documentary History (Washington, DC: CQ Press, 2008), 93, 131-39; Mimi Abramovitz, Regulating the Lives of Women: Social Welfare Policy from Colonial Times to the Present (Boston: South End Press, 1996), 253-54, 265, 315-17; Michael B. Katz, In the Shadow of the Poorhouse: A Social History of Welfare in America (New York: Basic Books, 1986), 254-55; David M. Kennedy, The American People in the Great Depression: Freedom from Fear, pt. 1 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 270-72; Frances Fox Piven and Richard A. Cloward, in Regulating the Poor: The Functions of Public Welfare (New York: Vintage Books, 1993), 92, 117.
29. Hoboken’s impoverished state, summer of 1940: Weschler, “Story of a Sick City,” 13, 16. Joe’s earnings from August 1940 to March 1941: “Poormaster’s Killer Is Now a Landlord: His Wife Buys Tenement, but Denies Using Defense Fund,” NYT, March 9, 1941.
30. Quotes from: “Man Convicted in Poormaster Slaying Buys Apartment,” JJ, March 10, 1941. Identical quotes appear in “Poormaster’s Killer Is Now a Landlord.”
31. Hoboken’s decline, including its population: Weschler, “Story of a Sick City,” 13; Crosby, “The Bosses Leave Town”; Federal Writers’ Project of the Works Progress Administration for the State of New Jersey, New Jersey: A Guide to Its Present and Past (New York: The Viking Press, June 1939), 262-64.
32. “Man Convicted in Poormaster Slaying Buys Apartment.”
33. Scutellaro’s comments on being “a sick man” and concerns about being too ill to survive imprisonment: “Weigh Appeal by Scutellaro,” JO, January 17, 1939. Work at shipyard: Hoboken Historical Museum, Bethlehem Steel Shipyard Employee Archive, 2001.002.003.
34. Author interview with Marie Scutellaro Werts, as is reference below to the morning routine of Joe and Anna.