James Ragen

James Matthew Ragen, Sr. (August 9, 1880 – August 15, 1946) was an Irish businessman and co-founder of the Chicago-based street gang and political club Ragen's Colts.

After taking control of the social organization Ragen's Athletic and Benevolent Association with his brother Frank Ragen in the late 1890s, later known as Ragen's Colts, Ragen would soon become involved in the gang's usual activities including political intimidation, labor slugging and particularly bootlegging during Prohibition. A veteran of Chicago's "circulation wars" during the 1910s, Ragen would work under Moses Annenberg with other future Chicago mobsters such as Maurice Enright, Walter Stevens and Peter Gentleman in "bootjacking" or forcing downtown newspaper stands to sell Chicago American.

By the early 1930s, Ragen had begun overseeing the day to day office operations for the Nationwide News Service (then known as the General News Service), the sole distributors of racetrack and other gambling results nationwide, under the control of Moses Annenberg. An invaluable source of revenue for legal and illegal gambling alike, the organization was highly sought after among organized crime leaders throughout the decade. Faced with pressure from the Chicago Outfit and the Roosevelt administration, who sought to charge Annenberg with anti-trust and income tax evasion charges Annenberg was eventually forced by Democratic political opponents to sell the National News Service to Ragen on November 15, 1939.

Ragen however, continued to fend off strong arm tactics of Tony Accardo, Murray Humphreys and Jake Guzik in their attempts to pressure Ragen to sell to the Chicago Outfit. After initial attempts to intimidate Ragen failed, the syndicate began a rival news service based in California, Trans-American Publishing, under the control of Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel (where bookies were forced to pay up to a daily $100 subscription fee). Another competing syndicate news service, Dan Serritella's Blue Scratch Sheet, was also established in Chicago, however, it soon went out of business. The failure of these news services convinced syndicate leaders to take the National News Service by force.

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