THE CHICAGO MOB

By Gary Potter

Prohibition and the political machine in Chicago came together to create one of the most notorious criminal organizations in America's history. Turn-of-the-century machine bosses such as William "Big Bill" Thompson and Mont Tennes changed the history of Chicago forever by creating and fostering a spoils system whereby corruption was the common way of conducting daily business. However, it was newcomer Al Capone who the media made into a symbol of lawlessness and corruption in Chicago.

Al Capone represents the quintessential caricature of a gangster. The characteristic white hat, scarred pudgy face, and complacent sneer became trademarks of Alphonse Capone. Although it is popularly believed that Capone was born in Naples, he was actually born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1899. Although he never got past the fourth grade, Capone learned all he ever needed to know in a New York street gang known as the Five Pointers.

In New York, some of the street-gang protection rackets were controlled by Frankie Yale, a flamboyant mob boss. Yale recognized certain useful talents in Capone including both his such as toughness and willingness to follow orders, and put Capone to work as a bartender and greeter at the Harvard Inn, a Coney Island dime-a-dance club. All was going well until Capone began to act on his own, allegedly committing two murders, including a member of "Wild Bill" Lovett's White Hand gang. Capone had two alternatives; he had to leave New York or risk being killed.

In 1920, Johnny Torrio brought Capone to Chicago to work with crime boss "Big Jim" Colosimo, Torrio's uncle. Colosimo, who was the largest prostitution operator in Chicago, had risen from an immigrant ditch digger to the owner of a fashionable cafe as well as a political power in Chicago's first ward. However, Colosimo was not as progressive as many of his contemporaries. He was resistant to entry into the liquor rackets, feeling that his prostitution rackets were sufficiently lucrative. Big Jim's caution was fatal. He was found shot to death in his office in his Wabash Avenue cafe.

Torrio, known for his intellect more than his toughness, seized the opportunity to take over Colosimo's rackets and expand them with the help of Capone. Torrio saw all of the possibilities of Prohibition even before its enactment and quickly bought up breweries to ready his organization for the coming demands of the "big thirst." In addition, Torrio painstakingly convinced other gangsters in Chicago to stop fighting among themselves for turf and settle for assigned territories in the city. Dion O'Banion was given the North-side of the city. Other territories were assigned to other local gangs as well, but the majority of Chicago, including the suburbs, were claimed by Torrio and Capone. By 1924, they were splitting up $100,000 per week after expenses.

Capone soon developed a reputation as a benevolent crime king who was providing the people of Chicago what they wanted most - beer and liquor. He began to exert great political influence in the city. During 1924 in the aftermath of one of the bloodiest campaigns in U.S. history, Capone's puppet candidate was elected as Mayor of Cicero, a city which became known as one of the country's most wide open cities as well as a power-base for Capone.

Trouble with O'Banion had been brewing for some time because O'Banion had been hijacking Torrio and Capone's liquor. It finally came to a head in late 1924. Torrio, Capone, and O'Banion had been uneasy partners in a brewery when the Irishman sold out shortly before a raid (which he knew about beforehand). Torrio was arrested in the raid, and because it was his second liquor violation, he was fined $5000 and sentenced to serve nine months in jail. On November 2, 1924, O'Banion was shot to death in his North-side flower shop.

Succeeding O'Banion as the North-side gang leader was Polish-born Hymie Weiss. Weiss and his gang retaliated on January 12, 1925, by ambushing Capone at a street corner in downtown Chicago. Although Capone escaped unharmed, his mentor Johnny Torrio wasn't as lucky. Torrio was ambushed later that day at his home and was shot five times. Three weeks later, Torrio, wrapped in bandages, began serving his nine-month sentence. When released, Torrio retired from the rackets, supposedly with a $30 million dollar fortune. Several weeks later, as Weiss was walking from his car to his headquarters, two gunmen blasted the North-side gang boss with machine gun and shotgun fire.

With Weiss dead, opposition to Capone fell to another gang leader, Charles "Bugs" Moran. Moran's headquarters were located in a Clark Street garage, a location which would become the site of the St. Valentine's Day Massacre. The massacre was ordered by Capone, planned by "Machine gun" Jack McGurn, and carried out by two of Chicago's most notorious killers: Albert Anselmi and John Scalisi. The hitmen, dressed as police officers, were driven to the garage in a black limousine. Believing they were real police officers, Moran's men offered no resistance and lined-up spread eagle on the garage wall. The "officers" then opened up on them with machine gun fire, spraying them with a hail of bullets from left to right. The massacre's aftermath left seven dead on the floor of the garage; no one was ever tried for the killings. Later Anselmi and Scalisi were murdered by Capone himself.

In March, 1929, a group of Chicago businessmen visited President Hoover. The delegation urged the repeal of Prohibition and asked for help in controlling Capone. As a result, the Treasury department assigned Agent Elliot Ness to the Chicago Police Department. Ness, aware of widespread corruption within the police department, selected a special squad of officers with which to work. More in legend than in fact, the personal integrity of Ness and his band of detectives earned them the name "the Untouchables" from journalists. Ness and his men relentlessly pursued Capone and his gang, serving search warrants and conducting midnight raids. Although much liquor was seized and destroyed during these raids, Ness was unable to get sufficient evidence to arrest Capone. Finally, someone in the Treasury Department came up with the idea of prosecuting the gangster not as a boss of the rackets but as an income tax evader. Author Hank Messick suggests that it was Meyer Lansky's brother Jake who persuaded the government to follow this strategy (Messick, 1976). After inquiries into Capone's business dealings, investigators discovered that he had over $165,000 of taxable income on which there was never any tax paid. Capone was indicted for income tax evasion in June 1931. Capone was convicted on the charge and sentenced to eleven years and an $80,000 fine by Judge James H. Wilkerson. After spending two years in an Atlanta prison, he was transferred to the prison island of Alcatraz, off the coast of San Francisco. Suffering from syphilis while in prison, Capone was released in 1939 and spent his final years at his Florida estate, where he died on January 25, 1947, at the age of forty-eight.

Chicago is another city thought of as having a predominantly Italian mob structure. In the early twentieth century names like "Big Jim" Colosimo and Johnny Torrio were prominent, and their reign was followed by the Capone era. True, the Capone mob had a preponderance of Italians, men like Charley Fischetti, Frank Nitti, Paul Ricca, Tony Accardo, and Sam Giancana. But there were also others, such as the Welshman Murray "the Camel" Humphries and the Pole "Greasy Thumb" Jake Guzik, and still later money movers like the Dorfmans. Other cities present a similar picture of ethnic criminal coexistence. In Philadelphia, both Italians and Irishmen operated within the context of a predominantly Jewish leadership. In Cleveland, the domination of the "Cleveland Four" (Dalitz, Rothkopf, Kleinman and Tucker)is clear, with Italians such as the Polizzis and Romano in a subservient position. There are countless other examples as well: in New Jersey Longie Zwillman worked with Jerry Catena and Willie Moretti; in Kansas City crime was run by Solomon "Cutcherheadoff" Weissman and Johnny Lazia. The fact is that gangsters were coexisting at street level throughout this period of alleged Italian domination (Fried, 1980: 116; Messick, 1967). The ethnic model employed by advocates of the alien conspiracy theory obscures the true nature of organized crime.