American Mobsters – Little Augie (Jacon Orgen)
Jacob “Little Augie” Orgen was born on the streets of Manhattan’s Lower East Side in 1896. He quickly dropped out of school and became known as “Schlammer” to Benjamin “Dopey” Fein’s mob. The “Schlammers” or “Sluggers” were basically jigsaws who kept union workers at bay, “hitting” them on the side of the head, with a club or baseball bat, if they went against what their union leaders graduated. Orgen formed a small side gang called the “Little Augies”, but was strictly a small-time player under Fein.
After Fein was arrested for wrongdoing related to the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, instead of going to jail for a long period of time, Fein, not as dumb as his name, made a deal with the police. As a result of being a rat, Fein lost her job and his influence in the unions. He joins rival gangsters Johnny Spanish and Kid Dropper, who spent the next several years fighting for control of the syndicates, while Orgen chilled in prison on a robbery charge. In 1919, Dropper took out the Spanish with a few bullets, and Little Augie, fresh out of prison, had his eyes on Dropper’s domain.
Orgen’s gang, mostly Jewish criminals, joined forces with Soloman Schipiro’s gang, whose men, oddly enough, were mostly Italian. They were fighting a losing battle with Dropper’s forces, so they decided to cut off his head; The dropper itself. As Dropper was released from prison on a weapons charge at Essex Market Court at Second Avenue and Second Street, Little Aguie and his gang stood anxiously on the street in front of the courthouse, chaos on their minds. A dozen policemen surrounded Dropper, their eyes on Orgen, who was rumored to be there to kill Dropper. The police pushed Dropper into a waiting cab, when out of nowhere, a nobody named Louis Kushner lunged at the cab from the rear and shot Dropper twice in the head. Kushner denied any involvement with Orgen (but the police knew better), and he was sentenced to 20 years in prison for life.
Orgen immediately took over Dropper’s rackets and recruited a dangerous group of assassins, including “Jack Legs” Diamond, Louis “Lepke” Buchalter, and Jacob “Gurrah” Shapiro. Pressure from the police, who were embarrassed that Dropper was murdered right under his nose, forced Orgen to abandon the labor rackets. He went straight into the bootlegging business, supplying moonshine to various speakeasies around the city. This did not sit well with the smugglers whom he displaced in those dens. Arnold Rothstein and Meyer Lansky told Orgen, in no uncertain terms, to get out of the smuggling business, or bad things could happen to him very quickly. Orgen ignored these warnings, so the offended smugglers struck a deal with Lepke Buchalter and Jacob Shapiro, offering them employment in their vast operations, for Orgen’s murder.
On October 16, 1927, Orgen was walking in front of 103 Norfolk Street with his new bodyguard, Legs Diamond, when a black touring car pulled up next to him, guns blazing. Orgen was killed and Diamond badly injured, but he lived to die another day.
Orgen was buried by his estranged father in a huge cherrywood coffin, lined with white satin. On top of the coffins was a silver plaque that simply read: “Jacob Orgen – 25 years.”
Orgen was 33 years old at the time of his death, but his father, a legitimate and God-fearing man, left his son for dead eight years earlier, when he couldn’t talk Orgen out of the mobs.