Even in this story, virtue comes out on top — the crook who has ruled a city is defeated, his gang is broken up, the corrupt politicians who have made his career possible are swept out of office by the voters... If you have read this story, or will read it, you will agree with me, I am sure, that publication of it, and of all stories like it, is a public service. Not until the general public realizes that modern crime, modern gangs, cannot exist without the collusion of corrupt and equally criminal police and public officials, will it be possible to cure what is undoubtedly one of the most serious illnesses, to put it mildly, that our body politic has ever suffered from.
Black Mask never has and never will make money or attempt to make money by appealing to the appetite for stories which present crime and criminals in a prepossessing and alluring light: our policy is and always will be the exact opposite — to appeal to those who hate crime and criminals and who get pleasure from reading stories in which they can identify themselves with the detective or other officers who are solving crimes, and capturing criminals.
Another pulp that eschewed the pure gang story was The Shadow, as revealed by this excerpt from a May 1933 Writer’s Digest solicitation blurb: “Gangster stories are not wanted — that is, stories which center about gangsters themselves. The officers can match their wits against gangsters, but the gangsters must always be shown up for unlawful citizens, and fittingly punished.”
The paucity of examples demonstrates how difficult it is to get a clear picture of behind-the-scenes editorial policy.
On April 4, 1930, while on a cross-country trip to check up on business, Hersey stopped in Denver to visit his friend, Willard E. Hawkins, editor of Author & Journalist, which had published a number of articles by Hersey in 1927 and ’28. Soon after arriving, his hotel room was accosted by reporters asking about the Gangster Stories controversy. Hersey later visited the A & J offices, then attended a luncheon where he addressed a gathering of local writers. His talk was interrupted by two officials from the District Attorney’s office who determined that he was the publisher of Gangster Stories, then whisked him away, ostensibly to see the D.A. Instead, he was taken to the jail, stripped, searched, and put into a cell. A deeply regretful Hawkins came to visit him, and offered to procure a lawyer. After three hours of incarceration, Hersey was ushered into a courtroom. The judge charged him with publishing magazines that corrupted the young. Gangster Stories was the evidence. Witnesses testified to damage inflicted upon youthful readers in their charge. As a result, Hersey was held over for trial with bail set at $25,000. As he left the courtroom, he was approached by western pulpster, Ray Humphries, whose day-job was in the D.A.’s office. Upon his greeting the assemblage burst into laughter. It had all been an elaborate practical joke planned by Humphries. Court officers, the D.A.’s office, the jail warden, were all in on it, though many of the spectators were not. The complete story is far more detailed; Hersey recounts it in Chapter XIII of Pulpwood Editor. It’s all part of Hersey’s brief notoriety.
The gang pulp era continued several years for Hersey. After he added
The Author & Journalist, November 1930
Gangland Stories and Mobs, he inaugurated Prison Stories with the November 1930 issue. It lasted six issues. Compete Gang Novel Magazine was introduced in March 1931. It produced ten issues over little more than a year. Another gang-variant was Speakeasy Stories, “strictly on the side of the law but laid in the haunts of the underworld,” inaugurated April-May 1931. It lasted four issues. In November-December 1931 came New York Stories, which was not about gangsters but marginally in the same class, featuring the same authors as the gang pulps. Three issues. In 1932, two of the pulps merged to form Racketeer and Gangland Stories — the beginning of the end. Starting in May, it lasted three issues. Gangster’s last issue was November 1932, but that followed a four-month gap. In February 1933, Hersey issued Greater Gangster Stories, which reprinted old Gangster stories before returning to original material. It lasted thirteen issues, its last dated May 1934.
Other publishers got into the act. Popular Publications, as promised, issued Gang World. They published 25 issues from October 1930 to November 1932. Eventually, another company published it for seven issues spanning 1933 and ’34. In late ’31, Popular experimented with Underworld Romances, “clean stories of love and adventure in the world of crime.” It only produced four issues. Gun Molls Magazine, from Real Publications, zeroed in on what really mattered in its choice of subject matter. It lasted 19 issues, from October 1930 to April 1932. There were other stragglers in ensuing years, but they fall out of the late-Prohibition gang-pulp era. Prohibition was officially repealed in 1933. This is often blamed for the demise of the gang pulps, but they’d really run their course as a viable entertainment medium before then. As in any narrowly-defined genre, the challenge is in maintaining variety, and the gang pulps certainly didn’t attract the most creative writers.
Even as the gang pulps slowly became irrelevant, opposition reared up on occasion. In the May 1931 editorial, “Gangster Stories of Today Are Successors of the Dime Novels” (cited above re: Chicago sundaes), columnist Frederic J. Haskin shares his disdain for the form:
The successor to the dime novel of the Nineties and the Nineteen Hundreds... is found blazoned forth on all news stands, publicly displayed and in the unashamed hands of the boys and girls of the hour... Scores and scores of magazines are being published; some weekly, some monthly, and some bi-monthly, but all of which have taken up the torch once borne by the relatively inoffensive dime novels.
...currently, [there is] a periodical publication the very title of which is Speakeasy Stories... the leading story, heralded on the magazine cover, was entitled “Gangsters’ Poorhouse.”... [In] the Nineties... none but the wildest dreamer could have conceived the idea of such a magazine or such a story. The idea of a poorhouse was an idea of an institution, eleemosynary in character, maintained for the benefit of the under-privileged. The idea of a gangster was an idea of an absolute outlaw, an enemy of society, universally condemned. That a poorhouse should be maintained for gangsters would have been considered, in the Nineties, by a wide margin, too wild for even a fiction magazine editor... The very title... assumes violation of the law to constitute a normal part of every day American life.
...Today’s maid may step out to any news stand and pick up a copy of Gun Molls, for instance. These publications are found in the hands of youthful readers, not hidden behind sheltering copies of the Youth’s Companion or a geography book, but openly read on street cars, busses, subway trains. [The news stand]... displays literally dozens of magazines devoted to the glorification of the underworld. The characters in the tales are lawbreakers and the settings unthinkable in terms of what was regarded as polite literature only yesterday. Why there is a magazine called Underworld!