Читать книгу Jacobs Beach. The Mob, the Garden and the Golden Age of Boxing онлайн

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A far greater ill visited upon society than sly drinking was the spread of the protection rackets, which instilled fear even in men of physical courage. Some of those boxed for a living, but their fists were useless against the hoodlums who raked the streets of New York and other cities with submachine guns from the safety of their passing Model T Fords.

The lotus-eaters were being driven underground, into the speakeasies, dealing in the dark. Then, at the very time the reactionaries were winning socially, boxing, of all sports, decided to reach for respectability.

Fist fighting in all its forms had, since Georgian days, struggled to stay a step ahead of the law. The National Sporting Club, formed in 1881, regarded itself as boxing's gatekeeper, regulating titles and weights. But boxing grew with such speed after World War I that no private members’ club in London was going to contain the ambitions of the trade's rising entrepreneurs in New York.

On the face of it, the urge to cleanse seemed to be spreading from the bars to the ring. The New York State Athletic Commission was formed in 1920 to oversee the Walker Law, a piece of legislation that entertained professional fighting as long as it subscribed to the law's jurisdiction of the commission. In time, the NYSAC established influence over similar organizations in other states—and the world.