Evening Star Newspaper, June 29, 1930, Page 82

10 -n. THE SUNDAY STAR, WASHINGTON, D. C, JUNE 29, 1930. A Detective’'s INSIDE S How Crooked Politics Grew Into Hoodlum Rule and How the Biggest Criminal Organi- FFICIAL corruption is directly respon- sible for the rise of the gangster in Chicago. Chicago has been plagued with gangs for the past 10 years because of the perfectly obvious fact that if you have been taking money from a man for letting him run Beer and whisky you can't very consistently turn around and arrest him for murder. There isn't any mystery about it. Chicago’s gangs got their influence and power because of crooked politics. The only thing that will ever make the gangs curl up and disappear is a restoration of simple, old-fashioned honesty to public office and political power. I have been in touch with underworld condi- tions in Chicago for years. I spent three years in the Chicago police de- partment. Then I was an investigator for the United States Government, specializing in liquor cases, narcotic drug cases, and corruption on the part of the Government's agents. And for the past year I have been chief investigator for the State’s attorney in Cook County. So I've seen it all. 'And I don’t hesitate for & second to repeat—Chicago has had its bold, unrestricted gangs, its “liquor rings,” its ma- chine-gun murders and all the other things of that kind that have made such sensational newspaper copy, simply because Chicago’s poli- ticians were crooked. ‘The best way to explain that is to go back to the beginning. Back in 1921 the city's political powers-that-be decided to set up a new, more efficient system for the handling of graft. ‘The political boss of each ward was set up & sort of czar in his own district. The whole town was divided up into districts for the pur- pose of crooked deals. Each local boss had the say-so about who could break the law in his district and who eould not. BY that I mean simply this: Suppose you were in the business of making illegal beer, Your brewery was in such and such a ward. ‘Well, you have to go to the political boss ot that ward and arrange things with him. You’d tell him what your business was and just how big it was, and he'd tell you just how much it would cost you to operate. Then every month you'd pay him so much and he'd see to it that nobody bothered you. It was a very neat arrangement, and it elimi- nated confusion and lost motion. Each local boss had his own list of “right guys” and “wrong guys.” He'd protect the “right guys” and drive the “wrong guys” out of business. But as this “improved” system began to get to operating on a big scale it called for a more extensive organization than the boys had fig- ured on. The ward boss” political power wasn’t quite enough to keep everybody in line. Beer runners, gamblers and keepers of disorderly houses who couldn’t get the official O. K. for their activities got to trying to operate anyhow without anybody’s permission. So it became necessary for the various bosses Bo collect little strong-arm squads to maintain prder. Each district, then, in the course of time @developed a little army of its own—sluggers, Wwho were suppcsed to see to it that no gambling, Former Chicago policeman, Federal Fiquor and narcotic investigator for the State’s attorney in Cook County, Pat Roche has had trained eyes on the whole sordid siory of Chicago from the beginning. and he tells it here. zation in History Carries on Its Daily Business Are Explained. vice or liquor activities were carried on in the district unless whoever was back of them had the O. K. of the local boss. Now, this was all right, in a way. For a while it worked. But by and by these groups of plug-uglies began to get out of hand. They got more power than the political bosses had fig- ured on. And right there the gangs of Chicagq were born, Of course, the city had always had gangs. Every big city has. But is was this business I'm speaking of that gave the gangs the power that was to make Chicago notorius—all over the world. You can see how it was. The gang of strong- arm men in & given ward would get more powerful than the boss himself. They'd make . Dion O’Banion. From his phony flower shop he directed the organized crime of half a metropolis, until a hail of bullets cut him down among his flowers. Y their own agreements on the side without his knowledge. If a man wanted to open & speak- easy, or run a gambling house, or engage in any other lucrative but illegal activity, he'd go, not to the political boss, but to the head of the strong-arm squad. If they gave him the O.K, he was all set. And if the strong-arm squad decided to put somebody out of business, that was all there was to it. But there wasn't any way for the politicians to stop it. They were in it too deep,.and they were making money out of it. So it kept on getting bigger and bigger, until finally'the gangs were running the politicians instead of the poli- ticians running the gangs. IGHT here, to get the picture, let's back up a little. Back before prohibition there was a man in Chicago named Jim Colcsimo. He started out as a street cleaner. Then he started a string of disorderly houses, . got rich, married a cabaret girl named Dale Winters, and became a power among the Black Hand outfits. He had a finger in most of the South Side gambling and vice activities, and he also made a lot of money by fixing Black Hand cases. If some Italian got a letter from the Black Hand, he'd go to Colosimo, pay him, and Colosimo would call off the gang. Well, Colosimo got rich. By 1920 he was riding high, and he got a swelled head and took to high-hatting his old friends. He made a lot of enemies, and pretty soon somebody laid for him and shot him to death. Colosimo’s place was taken by another Italian, John Torrio, who had been one of Colosimo’s , lieutenants. Torrio took over the organization —he’d come to Chicago from Brooklyn’s famous “Three Points”—and ran it much the same way Colosimo had. And it was just about this time that this other business I'm speaking of began to evolve—the taking over of power in the political subdivisions of the city by the strong- arm squads. It was also just about this time that the underworld began to discover that prohibition had dropped & good thing in their laps. When the prohibition law went into effect practically all of the brewers closed up their business and their plants. The hoodlums promptly began taking over the breweries. They'd set up a group of more or less respectable men as officers for a “front,” and behind them the hoodlums carried on, making beer and dis- tributing it all over the city and in suburbs. Torrio didn't lose any time seeing the money there was to be made in this way, and he and his gang got /in on it quickly. And there was money in it! It cost about $1.50 to make a barrel of beer, and that same barrel would sell for $55 or $60. Figure out the profit on that. ‘That, of course, left an ample margin for the payment of all necessary graft. Everybody could be taken care of and everybody was taken care of. I should judge that from $10 to $25 went out in protection—in graft, in plain Eng- lish—on every barrel of beer that was made. Torrio was all for peace. He'd rather grease his way with money than use his guns. Every time a truck load of his beer went through town the drivers always carried several hundred dollars in ready cash, so that if some cop or Federal agent stopped him he could fix the thing right there without any delay. I remember one time one of Torrio’s trucks got knocked off by two patrolmen. It was kind of unexpected, and the driver didn't have the money with him to fix it. He called Torrio, and Torrio came down on the double. He didn't fuss or storm around—just handed the two policemen $500 on the spot. They took it and went away, and the truck went on to its desti- nation without being molested again. But things weren't going so well for Torrio, under the surface. He had enemies. So, along in the Fall of 1921 or the early Winter of 1922, Torrio got shot. He wasn't killed; stayed in the hospital a week, pleaded guilty to an indict- ment under the prohibition act, stayed in prison nine months, and then decided the place was too hot for him. He beat it to Europe, and he hasn’t been back in Chicago since. Torrio’s place was taken by a cheap thug named Al Brown. Brown had been running one of the most famous disorderly houses in Chi- cago. It was & place called the Four Deuces, at 2222 Wabash avenue, Brown was known as a tough customer. There was & man he hated, and one night he went into the Four Deuces and saw that man stand- ing at the bar. He pulled out his gun and shot him to death right there. Brown, you see, was a tougher sort than Tor- Tio. You must understand that in those days —back in 1921 and 1922—there were very few gang killings. The gangs had their blackjacks, A gang came into the flower shop and put in a big order. A cheap thug named Al Brown had been running a place called the Four Deuces, and Al Brown is now Al Capone. BY PA'T Chief Investigator in Cook AS TOLD TO and their guns, of course, but they didn't use them the bloodthirsty, hard-boiled way they did later. The killings really started after Al Brown took the throne of Colosimo and Torrio. MAYBE the name Al Brown isn't very fa- millar to you. I'll give you his other name, and you'll recognize him. Al Brown is Al Capone. - Capone, or Brown, took charge along in 1922. The real gang trouble dates from then. The Brown-Torrio outfit was a South Side gang. Over on the North Side there was and still is a different gang in charge—the oM O’Banion gang. Dion O’Banion, who started it, was an inno- cent-looking kid with a face like a choir boy. He got his start early; got pinched while he was still in his teens for burglarizing a safe in a Chicago post office substation. I remember he was too young to be sent to the penitentiary for it, so he got off with a short term in the reformatory. Then, when he came out, he went into business again as a burglar. A little later, when prohibition came, he went into the booze racket. O’Banion quickly became powerful, and about the time that Capone was getting control of the South Side O’'Banion was getting control of A4s O banion .came have it. That was the beginm