Soak the Poor

In the 1930s, the Depression led to widespread poverty and hunger. To help relieve this, the government came up with the Home Relief program. This gave the poor tickets they could redeem for subsidized food. The problem is that a gang has begun muscling in on grocery stores--taking the tickets and buying them for only a fraction of what they were worth. Because stores were now losing money, they are forced to raise prices to compensate. Government investigators began noticing that something was amiss and a team led by Special Investigator Stanton (Leon Ames) investigate.

While this installment of "Crime Does Not Pay" was not among the most interesting since it's about such an unusual sort of crime, like its predecessors, it was very well made and exciting.

The eleventh episode of MGM's long-running CRIME DOES NOT PAY series covers is about government fraud. During the Depression, one of the means of relief was to issue "Home Relief" tickets, equivalent to modern WIC Food Stamps. Hoods set up to move between the grocers and the government: the hoods paid the grocers less than face value, and cashed in the tickets themselves. With the grocers losing money on the transaction, they raised prices.

Leon Ames plays the investigator, years before he became the actor who played the father in all the comedies about teen-aged girls.

This popular series highlighted the rackets, national security and stories of petty crimes in 47 two-reel movies from 1935 through 1945. Combining real-world woes and police shoot-outs, it was a popular series that were remade as radio dramas and comic books.

... and there are certain equivalents in what happened to the Covid relief money except there were no paper tickets and thus no way the bad guys could just punch people out and muscle their way in.

In the 1930s one of the things the American government did that it had never done before was hand out relief tickets on a large scale that the unemployed could exchange for an equal amount of food from local grocers. This was a new source of money and so of course it was just a matter of time before organized crime tried to take their cut. They would strong arm the grocers into giving up their relief tickets but only pay the grocers for 60% of what the tickets were worth. The mob would then have the grocers that were fronts for their activities take the tickets that they collected to the Home Relief Office and redeem them. The legitimate grocers are in danger of going out of business, so Nick Garvey, the head mobster, has the word put out for all of the grocers to raise prices 40% to get back their profit. But the relief checks are still the same size, so the large number of unemployed are in danger of starvation even with relief tickets.

Enter special investigator Stanton (Leon Ames) to try to figure out what's going on. He does figure it out immediately, but proving it is another thing, since the mob has a mole in the Home Relief Office. So Stanton instead starts getting court orders to obtain the books of what he figures to be crooked grocers, since that bypasses Home Relief entirely.

This was an engaging installment in the Crime Will Not Pay series, but one casting choice rather hurt my suspension of disbelief. That was having Leon Ames play the investigator. Maybe it is because I really know classic film of the 30s and 40s, but Crime Will Not Pay generally is done in semi documentary style, and having somebody who I know was a well known actor of the era play a part transforms this into pure fiction for me.

Still, I'd recommend it.

Back in the old days of the Great Depression welfare was then called relief and as another reviewer pointed out what we see here is a whole lot like food stamps today. Only a lot more people used them in the 30s.

And of course there were racketeers willing to take advantage. One such as in this film was Leslie Fenton who used strong arm tactics to take those relief tickets that people gave merchants for groceries and have only their few mobbed up grocery stores cash them with Uncle Sam. Leon Ames narrates the film and plays the investigator who smashes said racket.

This found a resonant audience in the Depression.