Letters: Dec. 29, 1930

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Whence "Racket" Sirs:

Very fine and praiseworthy your insistence that ''racket" be kept a word undefiled by loose usage. But why not, while you were at it, tell the origin and specific applications of the word so that we can know how to use it properly. . . .

JACOB TINSMAN

Providence, R. I.

"Racket" seems to have come originally from the vaudeville world, where it connoted the form of entertainment in which a performer specialized. "His racket is mammy songs." "She's got a good racket —clog-dancing and trained poodles." From this it entered general circulation to connote any method, especially an easy one, a hackneyed one, or a smart new one with an element of trickery, by which people got along in the world. Its later, criminal adaptation has two shades of meaning: 1) the whole general ''Racket" of preying on society by any and all illegal means, especially by selling dope, liquor, women, gambling; 2) the specific racket, as perfected by Chicago's underworldlings with many variations, of making tradesmen join a "union" and pay "dues" for protection from the gangster's "mob," who smash florist windows, overturn laundry wagons, bomb grocery stores, burn unfinished buildings.—ED. P. 52,600

Sirs: You will have incurred the wrath of all border readers of TIME, by your reference to the -'Scotch city of Carlyle" (TIME, Nov. 17, p. 22, col. 3). The gazetteer gives: "Carlyle. co. bor. Cumberland, Eng., on River Eden; important railway centre, anc. castle and cathedral, p. 52,600; also t. Penn. U. S. A." In spite of this TIME remains the best of weeklies. W. D. PUGH

Sheffield, England

Before receipt of this letter from England, TIME had been faithfully corrected by 62 eagle-eyed U. S. geographers.—ED. Pop Corn, Cashier, Governor Sirs: Your issue of Dec. 1 carries a TIMEworthy account of the recent election—accurate and to the point. Except perversely enough your illustration was the likeness of Frank ("Chief") Haucke and not that of Governor-elect Woodring. Also Elk City, Kans. rather than Neodesha, Kans. [about ten miles away] was the Woodring birthplace. His early activities with a pop corn stand attracted the attention of the Elk City banker which resulted in young Woodring's choosing that vocation [banking] at an early age. His present home is Neodesha. L. E. SMITH

Madison, Kans.

Sirs:

Candidate Haucke is a fine looking chap, but it would have been more appropriate to have shown Harry Woodring's picture over the caption "Governor-elect of Kansas. . . ."

Should you want it, I can loan you a photo of Cashier Woodring taken when he was a lieutenant in the U. S. Tank Corps.

WALTER H. BLAKE

West Haven, Conn.