| CRIME & CORRUPTION! During Prohibition, New York had the dapper Jimmy Walker, Tammany Hall and two nice big rivers to keep rum-runners and bootleggers from wasting each other willy-nilly, but Chicago had warring gangs that flourished under Hizzoner "Big Bill the Builder" Thompson, who promised Mr. Capone he would make the city "wetter than the middle of the Atlantic Ocean," courted the Irish vote by denouncing the British in school textbooks and threatened to punch the King of England "in the snoot." |
“Chicago is unique. It is the only completely corrupt city in America.”
– Alderman Robert Merriam Jr.
“Graft is a byword in American life today. It is law where no law is obeyed. It is
undermining this country. The honest lawmakers of any city can be counted on your
fingers. I could count Chicago’s on one hand.” – Al Capone
~ ~ ~
Today Chicago is entirely free of graft, racketeering and corruption.
There might be a little bit left, but that will soon be remedied by Mr. Helmer’s dearest friend and
former policewoman Victoria Cerinich, who has been called back from her retreat in Door County,
Wisconsin, to do a little mopping up of some lingering remnants that somehow had escaped the
notice of Mayor Richie Daley, himself a monument to reform, progress, and the destruction of
every landmark related to the Second City’s reputation as America’s Capital of Crime. Which it isn’
t anymore. So fergit-about-it.
That doesn’t mean, of course, that we can’t go back to Yesteryear, when Chicago was a fun
place! When we had bootleggers, racketeers, the Beer Wars, the murders of Dean O’Banion and
Hymie Weiss, the Mother of All Drive-By Shootings, the Pineapple Primary, Big Bill Thompson, the
St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, and when the Chicago Tribune sarcastically editorialized:
…Thus far the most inspired picture of political life in Chicago has been given
in London by the London Daily News: “Three thousand hooligan gangs are
carrying on a campaign of brigandage and murder,” etc. Machine guns, bullet
swept streets, death lists and the casualties all over the place.
It may be for the best. A Chicagoan soon will be regarded as a person who is
alive because of particular individual hardihood, courage and marksmanship.
He will be known as the hard boiled egg of the world. He has survived. That is
sufficient. He may have a quiet, even chastened, appearance, but no one,
particularly no one abroad, will rely on that. The man probably can shoot from
six pockets at once and will if annoyed….
in London by the London Daily News: “Three thousand hooligan gangs are
carrying on a campaign of brigandage and murder,” etc. Machine guns, bullet
swept streets, death lists and the casualties all over the place.
It may be for the best. A Chicagoan soon will be regarded as a person who is
alive because of particular individual hardihood, courage and marksmanship.
He will be known as the hard boiled egg of the world. He has survived. That is
sufficient. He may have a quiet, even chastened, appearance, but no one,
particularly no one abroad, will rely on that. The man probably can shoot from
six pockets at once and will if annoyed….
