The Racketeer's Progress

Abstract

This article considers urban crime and the origins of the term racketeering in the United States during the 1920s. The etymology of this muddled concept can help historians separate facts from the ideologically charged rhetoric of that period. The noun racketeering emerged in Chicago amidst Prohibition-era debates about gang violence, labor unions, and competition. In 1927, Gordon Hostetter, an antiunion activist, promoted the term to describe unions and associations in trades like construction, laundry, and kosher foods, which governed prices and wages through strikes, boycotts, and violence. He sought not to expose gang influence in the labor movement but rather to direct public concern about bootleggers like A1 Capone against organizations he saw as extortionate. Union officials fought this definition, eventually convincing the public that they were victims of blackmail, not its perpetrators. But Hostetter's language significantly shaped the legal status of collective action before and after the New Deal.