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To begin with, the broiler's raiser is often told to what wholesaler he may sell. The truck and the very crate in which the broiler rides to town may be under criminal control. The food the broiler gets is sold by racketeers, and in the middle of the day or night he may be surprised to find his crate broken open, himself dumped out to squawk and flap in brief freedom until a predatory child or housewife captures him from his rightful owners.

Ninety per cent of all New York poultry is consumed by Jews, who eat two pounds of kosher fowl per capita per week (see p. 24) and pay an estimated $16,000,000 a year to racketeers thereby. A swarthy man will say a blessing over the broiler when his end finally comes, and pass a sharp knife across his knotted gullet. This man will be a shochet (ritual slaughterer), and he will probably belong to an association ruled by gangsters. Even dressed and plucked, the broiler is not yet free of violence, for if his owner does not string along with the corrupt kosher poultry "trust"' (two who did not were shot down last year in Brooklyn and Queens), the broiler may have poison or kerosene sprinkled over him by a band of "the Boys," ex-convicts and plug-uglies who police the trust. Even the butcher on the quiet street who finally sells the broiler, should he escape all his other criminal hazards, probably has his district and his customers and his wholesaler assigned him by poultry racketeers. In The Bronx, one night early last month, police caught seven hoodlums vigorously banging sawed-off billiard cues against plate glass and fixtures, hurriedly releasing crates of fowl at the market of S. S. & B. Poultry Corp. The hoodlums were arrested, arraigned for trial last week. Soon the S. S. & B.'s proprietors — Hyman Blank, Samuel Shipper and Samuel Weiner, whose business had already been chased out of the Manhattan poultry market by gangster terrorism — went to District Attorney Samuel Foley of Bronx County, told him they preferred to have the case dropped. Clearly they had been intimidated by the racketeers.

From Time in 1933.