I stand before you this afternoon as a refugee from service on the most exclusive grand jury in the nation – the jury known as the United States Senate. According to our critics, we jurors are consistently ignoring our instructions – overlooking important evidence – subjecting ourselves to pressure from newspapers and other outside parties – and never achieving unanimity. But worst of all, we are empanelled from January to September. Nevertheless, although there are many public-spirited citizens who want to serve on our jury, none of the present members ever want to be excused from service.
As a matter of fact, service on a Congressional investigating committee does parallel in many ways the activities in which you are constantly engaged in the grand jury rooms and other courtrooms of America. A legislative committee must never usurp the functions of judge, jury, or prosecutor. Neither, on the other hand, is it a substitute for the traditional and Constitutional procedures of the courtroom. But service on the McClellan Rackets Committee for the past two and one-half years has given me some understanding, I believe, of the problems which confront you every day – evasive witnesses, conflicting testimony, the abuse of Constitutional safeguards, questionable coaching by counsel, and – most important of all – the pattern and character of criminal activity in this country.
The picture of labor-management racketeering which has unfolded before the McClellan Committee during these two and one-half years has fortunately been only a very small part of the total labor-management picture – but it has been a very sorry part indeed. Violence, extortion, embezzlement, bribery, and fraud have unfortunately been made the tools of a few so-called labor leaders and management representatives. Rank and file union members have learned how their rights were ignored – their interests sold out – and their funds embezzled, wasted, or otherwise misappropriated. Graduates of some of our penal institutions, we found, had gone directly from their cells to positions as union officers. Respectable employers were shown by the Committee to have been engaged in the worst kind of collusion with the worst kind of racketeers, as a means of suppressing honest unions and honest competition.
The Congress, I am confident, is going to do something about this scourge of labor-management racketeering. The Senate, by a vote of 90 to 1, has passed a responsible, workable, fair, and effective labor-management reform bill. The House Labor Committee has reported a similar bill – and I am hopeful that it will pass next week, without being taken off the track in favor of a bill which is more anti-labor than it is anti-racketeering.
If the Kennedy-Ervin bill or something similar to it passes the Congress this year – if we do not become bogged down in a dispute between the two Houses, or in arguments over controversial matters of labor relations instead of racketeering – if such a bill can be signed into law and put into effect – then I sincerely believe that we will have taken a major step against this kind of improper activity in the United States.
We would be deceiving ourselves, of course, if we thought that Congress, by passing a law, could eliminate the problem. That law must be effectively administered – and, more importantly, all state and local laws against violence, extortion, theft and similar crimes must be vigorously enforced by you who serve on the local level. I know that we can count on you to do that. I know that, with cooperation from union members and the general public, we shall be able to join forces on the Federal and local levels to wage an all-out war against racketeering in the labor and management fields.
But we shall also be deceiving ourselves if we believe that this covers the subject of racketeering in this country. Labor racketeering is a serious problem – but it is only a small part of the problem. We have been much alarmed about racketeers who have operated under the guise of labor leaders – we must be equally concerned about racketeers who have operated under the guise of businessmen.
Organized Crime in Legitimate Business
From time to time, when those engaged in racketeering in the labor-management field were linked with other underworld figures, those of us who served on the McClellan Committee realized that we were only catching a glimpse of one small part of the criminal network which covers this country. I am not talking about juvenile delinquency or petty thievery. I am talking about the real heart of the matter: the growing power of the organized underworld – the criminal syndicates which have achieved control over an increasing number of legitimate business enterprises.
Too many of these criminal leaders are not directly associated with forbidden commodities and services – narcotics, organized gambling, prostitution, and extortion. These illicit activities are now concealed by or associated with legitimate commercial enterprises, which in turn become the subject of murder and extortion: the building trades, the trucking business, the motion picture industry, the coin machine business, garment manufacturing, and export-import trade.
Frequently, the nature of a legitimate business serves to assist these illicit operations. Narcotics smugglers, posing as importers, conceal drugs in barrels of olive oil or in the heart of huge cheeses. Those posing as garment manufacturers have access to acetic anhydride, which is used to treat rayon but can also be used to convert raw opium into a morphine base for heroin. Those engaged in trucking operations have access to the water-front, to facilitate their smuggling.
Other legitimate businesses – such as jukeboxes, laundries and bars, make available large amounts of coin and cash which cannot be traced. Consequently it is not surprising that, of the 58 known hoodlums in attendance at the famous Apalachin, New York meeting in November of 1957, 9 had been in the coin-operated machine business; 16 were involved in garment manufacturing or trucking; 10 owned grocery stores or markets; 17 owned taverns or restaurants; 11 were in the olive oil-cheese importing or exporting business; 9 were in the construction business; and others were involved in automotive agencies, coal companies, entertainment, funeral homes, ownership of horses and racetracks, linen and laundry enterprises, trucking, waterfront activities and bakeries, and one was a conductor of a dance band.
"Respectable" Criminals and the Family
Fifty of these men, as you no doubt know, had criminal records. But many of them were not ordinary criminals. They have surrounded themselves with respectability – with lawyers and accountants and political connections. They have their own elaborate organizations, their own systems of discipline and sanctions – their own code of rules and their own hired executioners. They are hard to find, hard to accuse and very hard to convict.
It is this element of the criminal community that concerns me most when we talk about "crime and the family." I share the concern of those who are disturbed by the increasing rate of juvenile delinquency – by the fact that almost one-half of all offenses are committed by those under the age of 18 – by the rapid increase of more than 50 percent of serious juvenile offenses in the last five years. But let us bear in mind the condition which influence the younger generation – the example which is set for them. They see power and wealth accruing to members of a criminal syndicate. They hear about illicit activities on the part of prominent businessmen, respectable citizens – men like John Charles Montana, voted "man of the year" in Buffalo in 1956 for his civic good works, the head of a far-flung business empire, and a man whose star was high until he was caught on a barbed wire fence by the police closing in on the Appalachian meeting.
Organized crime affects the family directly in other ways as well. For, whatever funds it may accumulate through extortion and theft, the basic financial strength of organized crime comes in the last analysis from the voluntary support of basically honest families in communities all over the country. The individual who places an illegal bet, who enters the after-hours club, or who voluntarily participates in other syndicate-sponsored activities may feel that his own role is a very small offense indeed. But it is nevertheless his action, and the actions of millions like him, who make it possible and profitable for these criminal syndicates to exist, and to bring with them all the violence and corruption the basically honest individual never intended to encourage.
A National Problem
This is no small problem we are discussing. We are talking about a national crime rate that continues to increase – that drains this nation of an estimated $20 billion a year – that is obtaining an even stronger grip on the American economy. It is a family problem, as I have said. It is a local problem, as you know. And it is a national problem, as I have tried to make clear today.
Primarily and properly, the real burden will continue to rest with you. Despite the common cry for the FBI investigation whenever state lines are involved, the facts of the matter are that less than 10% of all crimes violate Federal law. The basic task of meeting this challenge is up to you – and I have complete confidence in your ability to fulfill that task.
Nevertheless, we in Congress can help expose this evil, so that the American people will realize how dangerous it has become. We can fill in whatever legislative gaps arise as the result of the interstate activities of organized crime. And finally, we can facilitate a nationwide approach to the problem of criminal intelligence. Much better interchange of intelligence is necessary if we are to have sufficient information on the top criminal leaders of this country and their activities – and have that information sufficiently disseminated to local and state law enforcement agencies.
Special police units on the local level already do an admirable job of coping with racketeers and criminal syndicates – but they are not equipped to meet a nationwide menace. We cannot fight organized crime on a piecemeal basis. I look forward to hearing the result of your deliberations as to how we may best assist you in the coordination and dissemination of this information.
Congress and the Conditions that Breed Crime
There are, of course, other areas of concern to the Congress which affect this nation's crime rate. We have talked here today about crime and the family, about the influence on our youngsters of seeing the wealth and success obtained by criminal leaders. How much difference it makes if the youngster comes from one of those five million urban homes which still lack plumbing of any kind – from one of the seven million homes which need to be totally replaced – or from one of the thirteen million homes which the last housing census judged to be substandard, unsafe or unsanitary.
The Congress can do something about these problems. We can do something about the children who have no parks or playgrounds – who have no adequate medical, psychological, or psychiatric facilities. We can do something for those millions of boys and girls whose diet is below the minimum standards of nutrition – or millions more who attend overcrowded classrooms where the teachers are unable to give them sufficient individual attention. And we can do something about the nearly seven million families, in this the richest land on earth, still trying to get by on less than $2,000 a year – about the millions of Americans who do not even receive a $1 an hour minimum wage – or the millions of unemployed workers who do not receive enough income while looking for a job to keep them beyond the reach of temptation.
There is much that we in the Congress can do. There is much that our schools and churches and homes must to – to toughen up our moral fiber – to reappraise our basic values of life – to create a climate of pride and fidelity in which concentrated criminal activity cannot flourish.
One hundred and fifty years ago a member of the British Parliament described that nation's inhabitants as "the most lawless, corrupt, and criminally disposed race in the whole of the civilized world." Organized crime had swept over the country. Dealing in stolen goods was one of London's most prominent sources of income. Organized mobs periodically looted large sections of British cities. And corruption had spread to officials in every branch of government, at the highest and lowest levels.
But the British overcame this trend to build a tradition of honesty, integrity, and scrupulous administration of criminal justice. And we in this country can reverse our ominous trends as well. It will require an extraordinary effort on the part of Federal and local officials. It will require a real revitalization of public opinion. It will require the personal dedication for a better country on the part of each every one of us.
But it can be done. In the words of Woodrow Wilson: "This is the high enterprise of the new day: to lift everything that concerns our life as a nation to the light that shines from the hearth fire of every man's conscience."
Source: Papers of John F. Kennedy. Pre-Presidential Papers. Senate Files, Box 904, "District Attorneys' Convention, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 31 July 1959." John F. Kennedy Presidential Library.