William J. McCormack (businessman)

William J. McCormack
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William J. McCormack (1880?-1965?), was a successful New York City businessman of the first half of the twentieth century. Born in Jersey City, New Jersey to Irish potato-famine immigrants from County Monaghan, McCormack began life as a grocer's “wagon-boy” along the West Side docks, but would go on to establish Penn Stevedoring, one of the most important produce handlers in the United States. For almost thirty years he was known as "Big Bill McCormack," or simply "Mr. Big." In the early 1950s, details of McCormack’s relationship with International Longshoreman’s Association President Joseph P. Ryan and various organized crime figures, were revealed in a series of New York Sun articles by Malcolm Johnson entitled “Crime on the Waterfront.” These articles, and the 1953 Waterfront Crime Commission hearings that followed, provided Elia Kazan with the factual background for his classic 1954 film "On The Waterfront."

Businessman

United States Trucking Company

Bill McCormack and his brother Harry first became known in the Port of New York as owners of a small trucking business. They were also stout pillars in the New Jersey political organization of Frank “I am the law” Hague, for whom they got out the vote. The McCormack brothers, like so many children of famine immigrants who started out with less than nothing, were esteemed as fearless street brawlers. Bill McCormack was also shrewd. In 1920, he banded together with several other truckers and formed the U.S. Trucking Corporation, installing himself as executive vice president in charge of labor relations. The key to McCormack’s success was his ability to cultivate powerful political connections, a classic first-generation Irish trait. Along with Boss Hague, McCormack was close to Alfred E. Smith. In 1920, Governor Smith was defeated in his campaign for reelection. McCormack and his business associates shrewdly made Smith the president, or front man, of their U.S. Trucking Corporation.

Chairman of the Licensing Committee of the State Athletic Commission

When Smith was reelected governor, he paid Bill McCormack back by appointing him chairman of the New York State Boxing Commission. At the time, the Committee ran boxing in New York and the commissionership was a powerful appointment coveted by Tammany boyos. And McCormack may have abused that power, because on January 30, 1924, not long after his appointment McCormack resigned under mysterious circumstances. Speculation was that Governor Smith had forced McCormck out when allegations surfaced that McCormack had extorted $81,500 from promoters before he would grant a license for the Jack Dempsey – Luis Firpo fight in New York City. In 1953, under oath, McCormack dismissed the charge as an “alcoholic’s dream” and, although McCormack was never formally charged, the alleged extortion was one of the many questionable practices that would plague the athletic commissions and the boxing profession.

United Sand and Gravel

TWA Flight Center

In 1927, McCormack sold his interest in United States Trucking and entered the sand and gravel business by obtaining an interest in United Sand and Gravel, a company owned by former Assistant District Attorney Edward J. Chapman and McCormack's cousin, Bronx politician Robert L. Moran. United Sand and Gravel became Transit Mix, which, as one of only two concrete plants located within the city, provided millions of cubic feet of concrete for public and private construction projects including: the Chrystler Buildingthe and New York Central Building, the United Nations, Guggenheim Museum, Lincoln Center, 1969 Worlds Fair Grounds in Flushing, the Cross Bronx Expressway, Major Deegan Expressway and Long Island Expressway, the TWA Flight Center at JFK Airport designed by Eero Saarinen, the Whitestone, Throgsneck and Verrazano Narrows bridges and the World Trade Center. After McCormack's death, Transit Mix was left to McCormack’s daughter who sold the corporation to Edward J. Halloran, owner of the Halloran House Hotel on Lexington Avenue at 49th Street. In 1986 Halloran and Transit Mix were indicted, along with Anthony Salerno and other members of the Genovese Crime Family, for bid rigging, extortion, gambling and murder conspiracies. Halloran disappeared under mysterious circumstances in 1998 and remains missing to this day.

Other Business Ventures

McCormack was also partners with the politically hefty Sam Rosoff in a number of contracting and bus ventures, including the Fifth Avenue Bus Company. “Subway Sam,” as Rosoff was known, arrived in New York from Russia by himself and sold newspapers under the Brooklyn Bridge before becoming a construction millionaire before age 30. The story is told, that McCormack and Rosoff got their starts in a unique partnership. Rosoff had a contract to remove all the cinders and ashes from city buildings, including schools and McCormack had a contract to pave city streets. Rosoff would dump the cinders on an empty lot on the West Side, where they would be picked up by McCormack’s trucks and used to pave the streets.

McCormack also operated New York’s biggest chain of independent filling stations and in 1944 he incorporated and became president of Morania Oil Co. which, in 1952, was responsible for $2.25 of the City's $2.5 million purchases of gas and oil. McCormack also owned a contracting company, a barge company, a dredging company and ran an Illinois race track.

Penn Stevedoring

McCormack's largest enterprise by far, however, was Penn Stevedoring. Founded in 1930, Penn would eventually hold a virtual monopoly on unloading all freight brought into the city via the Pennsylvania Railroad, principally all the fruit and vegetables freighted daily into the metropolis. In effect, McCormack acted as the agent of the Pennsylvania Railroad in New York politics and became something of an expert in labor relations and a major power behind Mayor Impelliteri. On the waterfront, where flash-strikes were common, McCormack’s companies were struck only once.

Crime on the waterfront

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Movie Poster for "On The Waterfront"

McCormack was paternalistic toward his men, powerful in politics and wielded enormous influence over Joe Ryan, the President of the International Longshoreman’s Association. Ryan did the bidding of McCormack and the shipping companies, providing labor peace in exchange for personal financial gain. All the while, the men in Ryan's union suffered low wages and underemployment that made them vulnerable to loan sharking and extortion from the hiring bosses. McCormack, along with Ryan and their underworld associates, pocketed millions of dollars from bribes, protection rackets and stolen merchandise and their rule went unchallenged for decades because the men of the waterfront held firm to the "Irish code of silence."

In 1949, the New York Sun published "Crime on the Waterfront," a 24-part series of articles written by Malcolm Johnson which detailed the widespread corruption, extortion, and racketeering that existed on the waterfront. The series won the 1949 Pulitzer Prize for Local Reporting and lead to the establishment of the 1953 Waterfront Crime Commission. When called before the Commission, McCormack denied any role in the alleged labor racketeering and denied knowing anything about theft, loan-sharking, gambling, union corruption or any other evils associated with the docks. However, McCormack was not a particularly credible witness. During the five years prior to 1953, McCormack and members of his family had made payments to unknown parties totaling almost $1 million, none of which could be accounted for by business receipts or invoices. Moreover his dock employees, although members of the International Longshoreman’s Association, earned fifty cents per hour less than other dockworkers and the conclusion was that these payments had gone to labor racketeers.

"Crime on the Waterfront" and the resulting 1953 Waterfront Crime Commission provided Elia Kazan with the factual background for his 1954 film "On The Waterfront" and "Mr. Upstairs," the corrupt leader who directs Johnny Friendly from afar, is based on the real-life McCormack. Years later, Bud Schulberg, who wrote the screenplay, recalled bringing Kazan to meet with Father John, the real life "Father Barry" played by Karl Malden in the movie.

"That day he was going up in smoke. He was furious that Spellman was giving an award to John McCormack--the 'Mr. Big' of the waterfront. Mr. McCormack was a respectable man. He had lots and lots of money. He put Mayor Impellitteri in office. But the people under McCormack were monsters and killers. Anyway, the day I brought Kazan, Father John was yelling, 'I'm going to stop Spellman.' He was cursing--'McCormack, that son of a bitch'--and shouting.".

Mr. Upstairs’s face is never shown, and we see only the plush estate (with television set and butler) where he lives. The director's script, housed at Wesleyan Cinema Archives, includes a double page Newsday Report, "Death on the Docks," of May 18, 1953 and, opposite the script section depicting the reaction of "Mr. Upstairs" to Terry Malloy's testimony, and unidentified magazine picture of McCormack.