NEW YORK: Artichoke Emergency

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In the icy darkness just before one dawn last week an automobile sped into that part of New York City which lies north of the Harlem River, ground to a halt at the great Bronx Terminal Market. Foodhandlers, working under arc lights, stopped to stare and pound their frozen hands together, as out of the car emerged a small, swart Napoleonic figure wrapped in a greatcoat. The man mounted, with assistance, the tailboard of a truck, took a paper from his pocket. Two shivering policemen braced their shoulders, put bugles to their chapped lips, sounded assembly. Half way through the call one bugle gave a despairing wail, froze tight. Provision men came running from all sides to see the show. The man in the greatcoat began to read in an enormous voice from the paper in his hands:

"Whereas a serious and threatening emergency exists in the traffic, transportation, sale and resale of ... a staple commodity of food, universally sold in all public markets of the City of New York, and

"Whereas . . . wholesale marketing . . . has been restrained. . . . Whereas . . . wholesale dealers, jobbers and retailers are threatened and intimidated. . . .

"Now, therefore, I, Fiorello H. LaGuardia, Mayor of the City of New York, by virtue of the statutes and established customs in such case made and provided, do proclaim that an emergency exists which threatens the peace and good order of the City of New York, and do hereby prohibit from and after the 26th day of December, 1935, the sale, display and possession of artichokes. . . ."

There was a round of applause. Police cars dashed forth carrying copies of the proclamation to every public market in the city. Well pleased with his early morning's work, Mayor LaGuardia went off to have some hot breakfast.

The artichoke racket is supposed to have collected $1,000,000 annual tribute for the last ten years from New York City artichoke-eaters.