The Dairt Company
As we saw last month, wartime government agencies redirected corporations to make different products (for example, to build aircraft engines instead of cars). Such redirection was not limited to industrial giants. Mid-sized companies also had niches to fill, as when a company that made wristwatches instead made navigation instruments for the U.S. Navy. Even small manufacturers got defense contracts. Thus, it was not very surprising when a factory on Duffy Lane (the road had not yet achieved "Avenue" status) stopped canning mushrooms, and was taken over by The Dairt Company, Inc. to manufacture "reloaded" ammunition - military-grade .45 caliber bullets, made from used brass cartridge casings.
If people in Hicksville noticed the change, they might have been concerned - after all, cans of mushrooms rarely explode. Such people would have been right to be concerned, even outraged, but for the opposite reason: a lot of the bullets made in that factory would never explode.
Published details of the Dairt experience are scant, but one can safely say that its tale made no one proud.
Note: "Little Norway" was a wartime camp in Ontario, used for training
the military of the Norwegian Government in Exile. Many of those at the
camp were members of the Norwegian air corps, who were being trained
to fly and maintain contemporary military aircraft.
Note that the charges described here relate to Mail Fraud - a sometimes effective but last-ditch backdoor, by which the U.S. government targeted criminal activities that were impossible to prosecute directly. The stratagem is loosely comparable to sending Al Capone to prison for tax evasion, rather than for his ordering many murders, because witnesses to his murders were afraid to come forward. In this case, it appears that Dairt was not being charged for criminally manufacturing faulty ammunition and selling it to America's allies. Rather, it was being charged for sending through the mail correspondence that misstated the quality of said ammunition.
Obviously, the apparent character of some of the people charged is not impressive. Most had enough past involvement with the criminal justice system to be considered questionable.
Plant Manager Moe Saraga, whom testimony later alleged once had said he did not care if the bullets made in the factory did not work, was known in underworld circles as Luger Joe. Testifying in unrelated previous cases, he had admitted selling guns to the Dutch Schultz mob. He had been convicted of failing to record gun sales, so as to make guns used in certain mob murders harder to trace. He had supplied guns to New Jersey criminals who participated in what was seen as a "union war," in which organized crime hoped to back and corrupt the victorious union.
Alas, not much more was said about this case in the press. It came to trial in November 1943, and was over before Christmas. The accused maintained that they had not known that any bullets were defective (even though the former foreman at the plant testified that he had reported that many were). After evaluating the testimony, the judge directed that one of the accused be acquitted, as insufficient evidence of his participation had been presented. For whatever reason, the jury voted to acquit the rest on the mail fraud charges. Case closed.
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