Mob FilesPublic-domain archive of American organized crime
Typed title page reading Address by Honorable J. Howard McGrath, Attorney General of the United States, at the Attorney General's Conference on Law Enforcement Problems, February 15, 1950, 10.30 A.M., with a triangular Department of Justice Library stamp
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Attorney General J. Howard McGrath, address to the Attorney General's Conference on Law Enforcement Problems (15 February 1950)

McGrath told the conference that "the mobsters of the 1930's have not been entirely eliminated" and that gambling as a private business "cannot operate on its present gigantic scale without corrupting what it touches."

Date
1950-02-15
Kind
case-file
Source
National Archives Catalog
Retrieved
2026-10-12
NAID
179029088
Rights
A record of the Department of Justice held by the National Archives (Record Group 60), a federal work in the public domain under 17 U.S.C. § 105. The National Archives catalog records the use restriction status as "Unrestricted."

The catalog title is “Address by J. Howard McGrath, at the Attorney General’s Conference on Law Enforcement Problems, February 15, 1950.” It is in the series Attorney General Speeches, file unit Attorneys General Addresses, 1950, in the General Records of the Department of Justice. The stored image is the typed title page, with the stamp of the Department of Justice Library and the time 10.30 A.M.

McGrath told the conference: “The mobsters of the 1930’s have not been entirely eliminated. But their leadership is being supplanted.” He described a modern version that used violence and corruption to win monopolies over bookmaking, slot machines, policy or the numbers game, and other commercialized gambling, and concluded that “gambling as a private business cannot operate on its present gigantic scale without corrupting what it touches.”

The OCR of the typescript is rough, and only clean phrases are quoted here. McGrath’s address of August 1951 refers to an “Attorney General’s Conference on Organized Crime” that drafted the gambling-device bill; the text read here does not say whether that is this conference.

itemAttorney General J. Howard McGrath, address on the gambling-device act and the wire service, Highland Park, Illinois (10 August 1951)Prepared for the first annual meeting of the National Association of County and Prosecuting Attorneys: McGrath reported 126 registered manufacturers and dealers under the gambling-device law and called the wire service "the lifeblood of nationwide, illegal bookmaking activities."itemH. Rept. 81-3111, Transportation of Gambling Devices: conference report on S. 3357 (19 September 1950)The House-Senate conference report on the bill that became the Johnson Act of 2 January 1951: the Senate accepted all eight House amendments, among them a narrower definition of "gambling device" and a way for a State to exempt itself.itemJohnson Act (gambling devices): 64 Stat. 1134-1135 (Chapter 1194, Public Law 906), 2 January 1951"An Act To prohibit transportation of gambling devices in interstate and foreign commerce." It barred knowingly shipping slot machines and similar devices into a State unless that State had exempted itself by law, and required makers and dealers to register with the Attorney General.