Editing Rough Riders (section)

==Johnny Spanish partnership and rivalry==
Kaplan and Johnny Spanish emerged from the same Lower East Side gang environment. After their release from prison around 1917, they cooperated in labor slugging, but their partnership deteriorated into competition. This personal partnership preceded the securely reconstructed Rough Riders phase and should not be treated as a merger of two fully formed gangs.

Spanish was killed on July 29, 1919. Later narratives commonly blame Kaplan or his faction, but no murder conviction established Kaplan's responsibility. John Jay College's archival catalog preserves the earlier 1911 prosecution and contemporary reporting that police regarded Spanish as a successor to Monk Eastman and connected him with violence involving Kaplan.<ref>[https://dc.lib.jjay.cuny.edu/index.php/Detail/Object/Show/object_id/5152 ''People of the State of New York v. John Wheeler and John Spanish''], Lloyd Sealy Library Digital Collections, John Jay College of Criminal Justice.</ref>

Spanish's death left Kaplan with greatly increased influence in labor slugging. That result does not prove one formal merger of the two gangs.