CORRUPTION: Scranton's Jermyn

To county jail for a year last week went one of Scranton, Pa.'s most wealthy and politically potent citizens. He was Edmund Beson Jermyn, scion of one of those old Scranton families whose farms were found to cover coal. Now more than 60, he had respectably acquired banks, hotels, real estate. Twice (1914-18, 1926-30) he was mayor of Scranton. The citizens were proud of him, suspected nothing until his last year in office when ugly stories of graft and corruption began to seep from City Hall. A grand jury investigated, found that racketeers were paying City Hall officials for police protection for certain gambling slot-machines. Scrantonians could not understand why Mayor Jermyn, already possessed of ample means, should stoop to racketeer graft.

Last Spring a Lackawanna County jury convicted him, his cousin Harry C. Friend and others of conspiracy as a result of the slot machine graft. Edward Miller, racketeer, had testified that he paid $4 per slot machine for protection, that Friend kept $1 and passed the balance on to "City Hall," that his monthly payments averaged $3,000.

Last week, while his lawyers scurried about in vain to get a stay of execution pending appeal, Jermyn got into his automobile, drove blithely off to Walton, N. Y. where he had racehorses running, returned in time to begin his sentence.