# Kefauver Part 5, Exhibit 40: staff summary of evidence on Continental Press, with Annex A ownership dates (December 1950)

Canonical: https://mobfiles.org/items/kefauver-p5-exhibit-40-continental-summary-1950-12-18/

A committee staff memorandum, printed at pp. 1386-1390 of the Part 5 appendix, on how Continental was formed after Annenberg left the wire business in 1939, its distributors, the 1946-47 contest with Trans-America, and a dated list of its changes of ownership.

Exhibit 40, a "Summary of Certain Evidence Now in Committee Records Prior to December 18, 1950," was received at the hearing of 18 December 1950 and printed in the appendix to Part 5 (pp. 1386-1390). It says it was "prepared from evidence before the committee in hearings" and "also from examination of books and records in the committee's possession." It is a staff memorandum. It is not testimony and not the finding of a court.

It opens by stating that "Continental Press Service was formed after M. L. Annenberg went out of the wire-service business in 1939," and that "It was originally organized by Arthur B. McBride as an individual proprietorship." It says Continental "owns the houses which overlook the race tracks" and several thousand dollars' worth of telescopes, that some distributors "are apparently completely independent operations" while others are "dummies," and it describes the 1946-47 competition with the Trans-America Publishing & News Service in Chicago, Kansas City, East St. Louis, Las Vegas and Miami. Its labels for some distributors and their owners, such as "mob" and "gangster controlled," are the staff's characterizations and are not repeated here as fact.

Annex A lists the changes of ownership. It begins: "November 20, 1939.—Arthur B. McBride organizes a new and original Continental Press Service as sole owner. Invests $20,000." It ends with E. J. McBride's purchase "from estate of J. M. Ragen, Sr., and from James M. Ragen, Jr.," for $215,000 to the estate and $130,000 to Ragen, Jr., with a separate noncompetition contract. Several years in the OCR of the annex are garbled, among them the year of the sale to Ragen, Jr. and the year of E. J. McBride's first one-third purchase (printed "19-^3"). Counsel's questions to E. J. McBride place that purchase in 1943, though the OCR of his answer reads 1948. Only the legible entries are given here.

## Sources

- U.S. Senate Special Committee to Investigate Organized Crime in Interstate Commerce, printed hearings, Part 5: Illinois, via Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/investigationofo05unit
- Full text of the volume (Internet Archive, OCR): https://archive.org/download/investigationofo05unit/investigationofo05unit_djvu.txt