Record
Hearing
1950-10-07
U.S. Senate Special Committee to Investigate Organized Crime in Interstate Commerce, printed hearings, Part 5: Illinois, via Internet Archive
Kefauver Part 5: testimony of Edward J. McBride, owner of Continental Press (7 October 1950), pp. 437-447
A 26-year-old law student testified "I own the Continental Press Service," that his uncle Tom Kelly ran it as general manager, and that he had bought it in stages from the Ragens.
- Date
- 1950-10-07
- Kind
- hearing
- Retrieved
- 2026-10-12
- Rights
- A hearing print of the United States Senate, published by the Government Printing Office. A work of the United States Congress, public domain under 17 U.S.C. § 105. The scan is the Internet Archive copy of the Boston Public Library's printed volume.
Edward John McBride testified in Chicago on Saturday, 7 October 1950, represented by Walter Gallagher and William Dempsey (Part 5, pp. 437-447; pp. 437-441 were read). He said “I own the Continental Press Service,” that he was studying law at the University of Miami, and that he had given control of the business to “My uncle, Tom Kelly”: “He is the general manager, Mr. Halley. He manages it.”
He said he bought a third of the business from James Ragen, Sr., with about $16,000 borrowed from his father, and the rest in May 1947 “From the Ragen estate and Ragen, Jr.,” paying “$215,000 to the Ragen estate” and $130,000 to Ragen, Jr. over ten years, with a separate noncompetition contract. The OCR prints the year of the one-third purchase in his answer as 1948; counsel’s next questions put it in 1943, and the staff’s Exhibit 40, Annex A, dates it November 1 of a garbled year that reads like 1943.
Counsel Rudolph Halley summarized: “you are a complete figurehead and dummy; is that right?” McBride answered that counsel could “put it that way” if he wanted to, and his counsel objected. The characterization is counsel’s.
