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Poultry Strike Called in War on Racketeers

The possibility of New York City minus its customary supply of kosher poultry loomed yesterday as the wholesale and retail slaughter houses went “on strike” against the racket of exorbitant cartage and coop charges. At a late hour yesterday the seventeen cars which came into the Sixtieth street yards of the New York Central railroad with live poultry stood untouched, and the strikers showed no slackening of their determination.

Both Commissioner of Public Markets William Fellowes Morgan Jr., and Leroy Peterson, code supervisor for the live poultry industry, at a press conference in the Department of Public Markets, voiced their approval of the strike, which, it was hoped, would break up the monopoly of those who have been enforcing the excessively high charges, and loosen the hold which labor and other racketeers have been exerting.


In a message which the commissioner sent through Deputy Commissioner Alexander Hamilton to the wholesale and retail slaughter house men, at their meeting in the Broadway Central Hotel Tuesday evening, he declared: “Fight these issues in any way you see fit and I will back you up.” He also pleaded that no compromise be allowed.

The three principal evils aggravating the situation as Commissioner Morgan sees it, are:

1. “Exceedingly high wages paid to union labor,” and he specifically mentioned that the $65 paid to the schochtim “is more than the industry can stand.”

2. “Extra handling charges and duplication of operations.”

3. “Unnecessary tolls and exactions levied on industry through racketeering methods.”