He was the inspiration for the character of Meyer Wolfsheim in The Great Gatsby, and Nathan Detroit in Guys and Dolls. He was rumored at the time and is now generally accepted by historians to be the mastermind of the "Black Sox" scandal, the fixing of the 1919 World Series by professional gamblers. He financed and had some interest in virtually ever major bootlegging operation during Prohibition, with the exception of the bloody gangster scene in Chicago, which was too wild for even him to control. He is the father of modern narcotics trafficking, and in some chroniclers' opinion the real father of the Cosa Nostra despite not being Italian. Arnold Rothstein was gambling, and Arnold Rothstein was money. He was Mr. Broadway and had his own booth at Lindy’s restaurant in Manhattan where he held court. He was quite possibly the most completely amoral human being who ever lived.

Arnold Rothstein was born in a brownstone on East 47th Street in Manhattan in 1882, the second of five children. His parents, Abraham and Esther, were middle class when he was born and his father grew fairly wealthy on his own later in life through "legitimate" business.

He wanted all his sons to be rabbis, but apparently old Abe noticed from a very young age that Arnold was a weird kid. Young Arnold spent many hours alone in cellars and closets choosing dark places in which to play. At the age of three he had already taken a disliking to his older brother Harry. One night Abraham entered the boy’s bedroom to find Arnold standing over the sleeping Harry with a knife in his hand. When the father pleaded for an explanation, Arnold simply replied, "I hate Harry."

Later on his parents found that they could not trust Arnold with small amounts of money to go to the store; their son would come back and sullenly tell them he had lost the money pitching pennies or playing craps with bigger kids down the street. What was worse was when old Abe found out that more often than not, his son was actually WINNING--even in his early days Arnold was incredibly lucky at gambling--but he lied about having lost his parents' dime or quarter bread and milk money so he could keep that too.

Years later Rothstein told a psychologist that when he was young his mother took Harry and his younger sister, Ethel, on an extended trip to San Francisco to visit her relatives. The first night she was gone Abraham found Arnold hidden away in a closet weeping uncontrollably. "You hate me," cried Arnold. "She hates me and you hate me, but you all love Harry. Nobody loves me." It was the only time Rothstein showed any deep emotion during his childhood. Well, jeez. They didn't love him because he was a rotten kid who stole and lied, but that presumably never occurred to the boy.

Arnold fell two years behind in grade school and found himself a classmate of his younger brother Edgar. Edgar would later recall, "I’d do all the homework and Arnold would copy it and remember it. Except in arithmetic. Arnold did all the arithmetic. He loved to play with numbers." When Harry Rothstein was thirteen he informed his parents that he wanted to study to become a rabbi. This decision delighted Abraham. Arnold, who had shunned his religious studies even more than his regular schooling, was chided by his father, "You should be proud of being a Jew."

Arnold quit school for good in 1898, went onto the streets, and never looked back. So far as is known, he never in his life held a legitimate job. He began shooting dice and playing the Jewish card game stuss for a living, almost always rising a winner. Arnold frequented pool halls, which in the early days of their existence were places where bets were placed and lotteries played. As gamblers waited around for the results there was usually a billiards table to occupy their time. Rothstein earned a reputation as pool shark.

Rothstein became a regular at Hammerstein's Victoria Theatre where a craps game was always in action every Monday. The popular game drew the likes of Monk Eastman and Herman "Beansie" Rosenthal. (See Jewish History Series passim, The Bowery Gorilla and Croaking Beansie.) He soon began lending money to several of the players and launched a lifelong career as a loan shark. For every four dollars he lent he collected five in return. If any problems arose in collecting the loans, Rothstein would turn to his newly found friend Monk Eastman. The bullet-headed thug, with a broken nose and cauliflower ears, met little resistance when trying to retrieve payments due Rothstein.

Building a reputation as a gambler and shylock while still only sixteen, Rothstein began to cultivate a friendship with Timothy D. Sullivan, Tammany Hall's East Side political boss. Sullivan, known as "Big Tim," gained his powerful political standing by delivering the Democratic vote on Election Day. In return, Sullivan looked out for the people in his district, delivering coal and food for the needy, and helping others get jobs or legal assistance when necessary. Rothstein became a regular at Sullivan's headquarters. He ran errands for Big Tim and served as a Yiddish translator for Sullivan's Jewish constituents. Sullivan soon realized that Rothstein was a young man with a future.

With Big Tim's backing, in 1902 Rothstein began working on his own. He booked bets on baseball games, elections, horse races and prizefights. In addition, he gambled on his own – shooting craps, playing pool and participating in poker games. Rothstein had a simple philosophy, "Look out for Number One. If you don't, no one else will. If a man is dumb, someone is going to get the best of him, so why not you? If you don't, you're as dumb as he is."

Rothstein's new home was the Broadway Central Hotel and his new "profession" was that of a cigar salesman, which gave him an official reason for hanging around gambling houses, hotels and saloons. During this period Rothstein developed his lifelong habit of carrying a big bankroll. He believed that by carrying a large sum of money, and flashing it, that it helped gauge his prominence. "Money talks," Rothstein told a reporter. "The more money the louder it talks."

In 1907, he met a 19 year-old Irish Catholic girl named Carolyn Greene. (As mentioned before, for some reason Jewish criminals always gravitate to Irish or at least Gentile women. Rothstein is never known to have had a single Jewish wife or mistress; his relationship with Fanny Brice was purely financial and narcotics-related.) He courted Carolyn through the simple and direct method: he took her to dinner and spread his money out over the table. "This is going to make me important," he told her. "I know how much money means. I'm going to have more and more of it. Nothing is going to stop me."

She was convinced and she married Rothstein in 1909. His long-suffering father Abraham cast him out of the family and sat shiva for him, making him legally dead according to Jewish religious law. Lying, stealing, gambling, and maybe a little maiming and murder on the side was fine, so long as it was over money. Marry a Gentile and you're done here, kiddo.

Rothstein's idea of settling down was to diversify his gambling and become "the house," opening a series of very high-class gambling joints with plush decor, restaurants with haute cuisine, and evening dress required for all the high rollers. He started with a brownstone on West 46th Street, outfitted with roulette wheels, dice pits, faro and poker tables. Over the years Rothstein moved way upmarket, eventually managing several of the most high-end casinos in the country out of huge mansions he bought in Long Island and Saratoga. His clientele included Tammany Hall politicians, governors and U.S. Senators, silent film stars, writers like F. Scott Fitzgerald, Damon Runyon, Eugene O'Neill and the Bohemian crowd from Greenwich Village, captains of industry, drunken flappers and jazz babies from the East Coast's social register, anyone with money the throw away. Plus, of course, a leavening of gun-toting gangsters like Legs Diamond, Bugsy Siegel, Meyer Lansky, Owney Madden, Lucky Luciano, and Dutch Schultz. Rothstein took advantage of what he termed "snob appeal" for his gambling den. "People like to think they're better than other people," Rothstein once told the writer Damon Runyon. "As long as they're willing to pay to prove it, I'm willing to let them."

In his adult years Rothstein routinely carried as much as $25,000 in a roll in his pocket, which in those days was more money than many working-class families ever saw in their lives. No one ever tried to rob him, knowing if they did they'd have to deal with some of the King's associates, charming gents like Monk Eastman and later on Legs Diamond, Owney "Killer" Madden, and the psychopathic Bugsy Siegel.

The one time someone did try to stick him up, a down-and-out former schoolteacher named Will Davis who thought he had a foolproof betting system for horse racing and needed a stake, Rothstein gently talked him out of it. When he wanted to, Rothstein could charm the birds out of the trees. More than one observer described Rothstein's personal magnetism with his marks as "like a bird with a snake." He took away Davis's gun, took him home and gave him a meal, listened to his system which sounded like it might work, took him onto the payroll briefly, and made over $100,000 at the track before firing Davis and putting him on a train back to California, after having him beaten bloody by some of Diamond's gangsters. But he did stick a $50 bill in Davis' pocket as the train was pulling out.

En passant, ripping off a Gentile in some especially slick and egregious manner like this is called by the Jews a korban. Rothstein's many korbans were one of the things that contributed to his elevated reputation among his people. But he could be just as ruthless with his fellow Jews. When his childhood friend Herman Rosenthal (see Croaking Beansie) finally realized that his big mouth was about to get him whacked, he ran to his old buddy Rothstein on July 5th, 1912 and begged for $500 to get out of town. "Forget it, Beansie," said Rothstein. "You waited too late. You're not worth $500 to anybody any more." Rosenthal was murdered in front of the Hotel Metropole that same night by three Jews and an Italian, on orders from a Jewish-born corrupt police lieutenant, Charles Becker.

Becker and his hired guns were eventually fried in the electric chair, and to make a long story short, Rothstein stepped into Becker's place as the main liaison between New York City's corrupt political establishment and the underworld. From then on he had it made. Rothstein took cash for everything he did. Soon he and Carolyn moved to an apartment at the corner of Broadway and 52nd Street. Their new home had eight rooms and two baths, as well as separate quarters for a butler and a maid.

With Tammany Hall in his corner, Rothstein could get away with murder, ar attempted murder, anyway. On January 19th, 1919 Rothstein was rolling the bones in a floating crap game at 301 West 57th Street. Most of Rothstein's games were "protected," but every now and then snafus occurred, and the police actually raided this one. As they were smashing in the door, to everyone's amazement Rothstein, who was usually left the rough stuff to his gangster buddies, pulled out a revolver and opened fire, wounding three police officers, albeit slightly. Rothstein was arrested with the smoking gun in his hands, literally. It looked like an open and shut case. WRONG...

Rothstein was booked for assault with a deadly weapon, then provided bail money for all the gamblers who had been arrested. An overzealous inspector, Dominic Henry, having somehow acquired the peculiar notion that Jews should obey the law like everyone else and refrain from taking pot shots at the cops, refused to let the matter quietly go away and pushed for an indictment, although it took him six months and the intervention of the U. S. Attorney's office for the District of New York to get one.

When the case was called Rothstein’s attorney simply got up and requested a dismissal, which the judge readily agreed to. Scuttlebutt was that Rothstein had paid $32,000 to get the case quashed. Rothstein then used his political contacts to get Inspector Henry indicted for perjury, convicted and sentenced to five years in prison, as a lesson to any other stroppy goyim who might get ideas above their station.

Arnold Rothstein's most famous exploit, one which was later immortalized by Hollywood in the movie Eight Men Out, was the fixing of the 1919 World Series. Rothstein biographer Leo Katcher claims, "He did not fix the Series. Rothstein’s name, his reputation, and his reputed wealth were all used to influence the crooked baseball players. But Rothstein, knowing this, kept apart from the actual fix. He just let it happen." Uh..okay, Leo. If you say so.

The series between the Chicago White Sox and the Cincinnati Reds was won by the underdog Cincinnati team five games to three (at the time the series was best of nine). Eight players from the Chicago team conspired to throw the games, earning themselves entry into the Baseball Hall of Infamy as the "Black Sox." Their throwing of the games were so clumsy, though, that there was immediate suspicion aroused. After a screaming-headline investigation, all eight players involved were banned from playing baseball for life, and a new office of Baseball Commissioner was created. Ban Johnson, the president of the American League, was certain of Rothstein’s participation in the fix and openly said so. To which Rothstein responded, "My only connection was to refuse to do business with some men who said they could fix it…I intend to sue Ban Johnson for libel…" Needless to say, he never did.

Up until 1920, Rothstein was a highly successful gambler, corrupt political fixer and criminal who also dabbled in such illicit enterprises as securities fraud, fencing stolen bonds, diamond smuggling, and other such white collar crime. He knew and used the services of gangsters and hit men, but only as bodyguards or on a kind of piecework basis when there was a specific job of wet work that needed to be done, usually collecting money for him. He was not primarily a mobster himself, but that was about to change.

When Prohibition began on January 16, 1920, Rothstein had many of the component parts of organized crime in place. Rothstein immediately appreciated the immense profits to be made in providing liquor for thirsty Americans, and there is no doubt that he was responsible for financing, systematizing and organizing the bootlegging business on the East Coast, and thereby quite probably preventing the New York bootleg scene from degenerating into the total blood-soaked free-for-all which occurred in places like Chicago, St. Louis, and Kansas City. It was at this time that Rothstein began to assemble a stable of gunmen that included men like Diamond, Siegel, Lansky, Luciano, Jacob "Little Augie" Orgen, Lepke Buchalter, Gurrah Shapiro, and Dutch Schultz (Arthur Flegenheimer.)

As always in any form of organized crime, Jews were prominent. One of Rothstein’s first ventures into rum running came after a meeting with Waxey Gordon (Irving Wexler) and Detroit bootlegger Maxie Greenberg. While in Detroit, Greenberg began smuggling in whiskey from Canada, which he purchased largely from the Jewish Bronfman family, prominent liquor dealers and Zionists to this day . Realizing how profitable this venture was, Greenberg wanted to expand and needed $175,000 to do so. He traveled to New York in hopes that through Gordon, he could obtain financing from Rothstein. From this arose the infamous, all-Jewish Detroit and Cleveland Purple Gang, with a fleet of rum-running boats so big it was called "The Little Jewish Navy."

Rothstein was always content to remain a silent partner and sponsor of the bootleggers. The business was so huge and complex that he could never hope to control it all, and he knew this. But one illicit trade Arnold Rothstein did in fact reserve for his own personal monopoly, and woe to the criminal who trespassed thereon--narcotics.

It is not widely known that opium based narcotics and cocaine were not always illegal in this country. Up until the late 'Teens dope flowed freely in this country; the first anti-drug bill, the Harrison Act was not passed until 1916. There were nowhere near as many addicts as there are today, but many of them were wealthy socialite types, silent film stars such as Wallace Beery and others, and they were willing to pay top dollar for their now illegal blow and smack. Rothstein was never involved in street pushing; he was strictly importation and wholesale. Some of the first major drug lords in America, whose names are virtually unknown today, were criminals bankrolled and supervised by Rothstein, men like Harry Mather, "Dapper Dan" Collins, Sid Stager, George Uffner, and Jacob "Yasha" Katzenberg.

Rothstein purchased the well-known importing house Vantines as a front for his drug operation. The establishment had a legitimate reputation and shipments arriving from China and the Orient received only a cursory inspection. Rothstein made sure that when he got word someone he knew was furnishing a home that Vantines received part of that business. It was reported that Jewish songstress and comedienne Fanny Brice ordered thousands of dollars of furnishings and bric-a-brac from Vantines to adorn a new apartment, which she got for free after first letting Rothstein's crew remove certain "extras" hidden away in secret compartments in the consignments. In addition to Vantines, Rothstein purchased several antique shops and art galleries to serve as legitimate fronts for his drug business.

In May of 1928, to Rothstein's irritation, the newspapers detected and questioned him about a series of meetings he held with "Captain" Alfred Loewenstein, the Belgian-born Jewish stock swindler and war profiteer who was considered to be at that time the richest man in the world. (see Jewish Histories passim, The Man Who Fell From The Sky) It has been speculated that Rothstein was working with Loewenstein on some kind of European dope network, the two fell out, and then Loewenstein literally fell out, out the door of his private airplane thousands of feet above the English Channel. Rothstein has been accused of having his co-religionist whacked in this unusual manner, although there is no hard evidence for this assertion.

As big as he was, Rothstein never gave up his personal gambling. On September 8th, 1928, Rothstein sat down in a Manhattan hotel room for a marathon poker game which lasted until the morning of the 10th. The other players participating in the game were all professional gamblers and/or gangsters themselves. They included West Coast gambler and criminal Nathan "Nigger Nate" Raymond, Alvin "Titanic" Thompson, Joe Bernstein, and New York bookmaker and leg-breaker George McManus, who acted as Mine Host.

"Titanic" Thompson was a Texan who wore a ten-gallon hat and spurs even on the sidewalks of New York. He carried a pearl-handled six-shooter and had been known to use it on suspected cheaters. He got his nickname because he was a survivor of the sinking of the Titanic. According to underworld legend, he and his fellow players were so engrossed in their poker in the saloon lounge that they didn't notice the iceberg hit and the fact that the ship was sinking until the water was lapping the tilted deck beneath their feet, and when the others rose to make a break for it Thompson called out, "Oh, come on, fellers, we got time for one more hand!"

George McManus was a hardened Irish thug who was known to have several notches on his gun. These were not men that anyone in his right mind would screw around with, but this time Rothstein slipped badly in the character judgment department. That classic Jewish hubris and arrogance was about to catch up with Mr. Big.

For once, Rothstein's usual luck or skill at cards deserted him. By the end of the marathon card game, Rothstein was a big loser. He owed Raymond $219,000, Bernstein $73,000, and Thompson $30,000. When Rothstein walked out, without so much as signing an IOU, a couple of the players became irritated. McManus assured the pair, "That's A. R. Hell, he's good for it. He'll be calling you in a couple of days." But he didn't.

A week passed and Rothstein had still not made good. Rumors began to circulate that the game was crooked. Rothstein confided to Nicky Arnstein, "A couple of people told me that the game was rigged." Arnstein's advice to Rothstein was to pay the players off, "No point to your advertising you were a sucker." The word percolated like wildfire down Broadway: Mr. Big had welshed on a gambling debt. As sponsor of the game, by the unwritten law of professional gamblers George McManus had stood guarantor for all the players, and it was his responsibility to make sure all bets were settled. As the weeks passed, the pressure began to get to McManus who began drinking and threatening Rothstein in speakeasies for making him into a patsy.

On the evening of November 4th, 1928, Rothstein arrived at Lindy's restaurant on Seventh Avenue and went to his private booth. Lindy's was Rothstein's office. He kept a regular schedule there and several men were already waiting to see him when he walked in that night. One of the men, Jimmy Meehan, ran the Park City Club, one of the city's biggest gambling dens during the 1920s. Meehan operated the plush club with a bankroll supplied by Rothstein. He warned Rothstein again to pay up; McManus was getting dangerously angry. "I'm not afraid of some dumb Irish palooka," replied Rothstein with a sneer. "I'm Mr. Big, remember? I pay when I feel like paying." WRONG...

About 10:15, Rothstein received a telephone call. After a short conversation he hung up and motioned for Meehan to walk outside with him. "McManus wants to see me at the Park Central," Rothstein said. He then pulled a gun out of his pocket and handed it to Meehan saying, "Keep this for me, I will be right back." Meehan then watched Rothstein walk up Seventh Avenue. Why Rothstein handed over his own weapon to Meehan before going to meet a dangerous adversary like McManus, or why he didn't take some of his own bodyguards with him, has always been a mystery. Perhaps after years of immunity from the law and his miraculous ability to get out of any scrape, Rothstein had indeed come to believe he was invincible and immortal.

The exact sequence of subsequent events has never been satisfactorily explained, although it is believed that Rothstein did go up to McManus's room 349 in the Park Central, where he was registered as George Richards. At 10:53 the West 47th Street police station received a call from the manager of the hotel. Arnold Rothstein had been found lying shot on the floor by the employee's entrance. About the same time as the shooting, a ..38-caliber revolver was thrown out of one of the windows of the hotel by someone and bounced off the roof of a taxicab on the street; the driver turned the gun over to the police. Rothstein was conscious when he was taken to Polyclinic Hospital and underwent emergency surgery for the removal of a single bullet from his belly, and for several days he lingered in agony before he died of peritonitis and blood poisoning at age 46.

George McManus was arrested and tried for the murder, but acquitted due to lack of evidence, and the defense's case was helped by the fact that to give the man his due, even in his final death throes Arnold Rothstein had held to the code of the underworld and refused to name the man who had shot him. Rothstein's estate was almost completely looted by his many crooked associates, and his widow Carolyn received only a few thousand dollars in the end out of all the millions that Rothstein had squirreled away over the years.

`White trash`	`Glenn miller`	`Race`
`Western civilization`