The Quotable AL CAPONE The Big Fellow shares his wisdom on vice, violence, crime, corruption, bootlegging, business, family, cops, politicians, graft, dairy products, and the only two things in life he could be certain of: DEATH & TAXES |
"You can get much farther with a smile, a kind word and a gun
than you can with a smile and a kind word."
Al Capone said that. At least some people say that Al Capone said that. It's attributed to
him in some "famous quotations" books. But no source is ever given, and it's just remotely
possible that some low-life yellow journalist, at some time or another, decided that Al
Capone, if he didn't say that, could have. Or should have.
The author of this volume would never include such a probably-spurious quotation in
this collection -- at least not without cooking up a good excuse for doing so. The excuse is
that it serves as a good example of the kind of probably- spurious quotation I have not
included.
The following quotes, with the above exception, are taken entirely from interviews,
newspaper stories, books and magazine articles by writers who certainly would never
misquote Mr. Capone, or put words in his mouth, or embellish his remarks, or misrepresent
his position on any subject, considering the high regard in which Scarface Al was held by
scholars, philosophers, gun dealers, revenuers and other intellectuals of the day.
MEET MR. CAPONE
So maybe Al Capone was this country's most notorious gangster, vice lord, bootlegger,
and all-around hoodlum who machine-gunned his competitors, dodged his taxes, ended up
in Alcatraz and eventually died of syphillis.
Nobody's perfect.
The important thing is that Mr. Capone at least tried to conduct his vice, gambling and
bootlegging in a reasonable and businesslike manner and resorted to violence only when
driven to it by Chicago's bellicose North Siders, who kept dropping like flies and making
him look bad. As gangsters go, he wasn't the first and not the worst, by any means.
Like other large cities, Chicago had gangs long before reformers conducted the "Noble
Experiment" that blew up in the country's face. Usually these took the form of athletic or
social clubs -- the successors to 19th Century neighborhood and ethnic groups which
originally banded together for benevolent, protective and social purposes but soon learned
to employ themselves collectively, shaking down shopkeepers, protecting vice operations
and working as goons for machine politicians. At this point, crime was "organized" mainly to
the extent that illegal enterprises paid protection to the politicians who then ruled the
police, who were themselves paid off by prostitution and gambling interests, whose gangs
beat up whoever ran against their politicians. The Chicago system of closed-circuit
corruption demonstrated how well local vice and local government could complement one
another when everyone cooperates. As reform-minded Alderman Robert Merriam once put
it: "Chicago is unique. It is the only totally corrupt city in America."
Enter Mr. Capone
Prohibition upset this balance of nature. The enormous profits from bootlegging, as
from drug trafficking today, transformed local street gangs into wealthy underworld
organizations that could now control the same politicians and vice operations they
previously had worked for.
For awhile, the bootlegging business developed in a fairly peaceful and orderly fashion
thanks to an early summit conference at which the city's major gang leaders divided up
Cook County equitably to forestall competition. The largest group was a confederation of
several gangs led by Johnnie Torrio, who had called the meeting. His able assistant was a
big, tough, scar-faced individual named Alphonse Capone, who, as it happened, turned 21
the day the nefarious Volstead Act took effect, prohibiting the manufacture or sale of
booze.
Both Torrio and Capone were Brooklyn boys who had moved to Chicago (about 1909
and 1918, respectively) to help another former Brooklynite, Big Jim Colosimo, manage his
supermarkets of sin in the Levee district on Chicago's Near South Side. When Colosimo
displayed no great interest in exploiting Prohibition's vast opportunities (the old rascal was
getting it on with a pretty young songbird named Dale Winter and was too busy recapturing
his lost youth), he was found on May 11, 1920, on the floor of his South Wabash Street
nightclub, plugged. Torrio and Capone wept bitterly, gave him the first of the grand
gangland funerals ($50,000 in 1920 dollars), and soon organized the greatest illegal liquor
operation Chicago or the world would ever know.
In the middle Twenties Torrio retired from the business to nurse some gunshot wounds,
leaving the business to Al Capone. Up to that time Capone had avoided publicity, but now
bodies were stacking up, some on his doorstep, and the press discovered that to know the
Big Fellow was to love him. What captured the public's imagination were Capone's
impressive size, scarred face and outgoing personality, which featured a big mouth and a
sardonic sense of humor, much to the delight of newspaper reporters. He was refreshingly
candid about his line of work, regarding himself as a successful entrepreneur who, in the
finest tradition of American capitalism, operated a business that supplied a demand in a
free-market economy. (Supply-side economics, as it were.) He differed from the average
wimpy businessman on a mere technicality: The drinking of liquor was still legal, but the
selling of it was not. What could make less sense? So he regularly and sometimes
eloquently denounced the hypocrisy of a law that almost no one, including the lawmakers,
obeyed.
That a formerly respectable business should now require the wholesale bribing of
police, politicians and public officials was something that offended Mr. Capone's moral
sensibilities. He knew that dishonesty in one sector could metastacize throughout the
system--to the point where you couldn't trust nobody. In Chicago, an honest politician was
one who, when you bought him, he stayed bought.
Likewise regrettable was the absence of a means for peacefully resolving disputes.
With no civil justice system, the pistol, the shotgun and the Thompson submachine gun
became bargaining tools in certain business negotiations. Seen in proper historical
context, the St. Valentine's Day Massacre was merely a hostile take-over.
So Capone the honest businessman often felt misunderstood and unappreciated, and
he made this clear in his comments to the press. He also felt unfairly singled out for
persecution when the stuffy Chicago Crime Commission, ever whining about political
corruption and lawlessness, proclaimed him Public Enemy Number One. Moreover, as an
important contributor to the local economy and as a major employer of the underprivileged
and socially handicapped, he had good reason to feel abused when the federal
government began harrassing him with its new and poorly understood income-tax laws.
Did these constant hassles get Scarface down? You betcha! It's never easy being
Number One anything (as we all know), and try as he might to ignore the carping of
reformers and the sniping of his rivals, their constant attacks eventually eroded his
patience and sense of humor, as we will see in the changing tenor of his remarks.
At first he takes the ribbing in stride, holding firmly to his appointment as businessman
and public benefactor. When his explanations are ignored or rejected, a defensive note
creeps in. Then we perceive his growing resentment of the lackeys and parasites whose
palms must be greased to silence their tongues, and his increasing contempt for
money-grubbing officials who trade on their authority and sell out their public trust.
Bitterness begins to take its toll.
As time goes by he finds himself the convenient scapegoat for conditions he did not
create and for killings he did not commit, except maybe for the occasional retaliatory or
pre-emptive strike, when such was necessitated by great provocation--like when that
scrawny Northside nut-case Hymie Weiss sent a motorcade down the main street of
Cicero to shoot up Big Al's temporary headquarters at the Hawthorne Hotel.
Assailed from every quarter, blamed for every crime, Capone acquires a philosophical
fatalism that may well mask a deepening melancholy. Finally overwhelmed by the vast
resources of the United States Government, Big Al does not grovel or snivel or beg for
forgiveness; he asks only for a little understanding, and in 1932 he goes stoically to prison
with a certain grace and at least one consoling thought:
CRIME MAY NOT PAY
BUT IT CAN BE A SHORTCUT TO IMMORTALITY
What is it about this one-time Public Enemy that still captivates and fascinates
Americans--and, for that matter, the Germans, the Brits, the Japanese and other foreign
visitors? His swagger and self-assurance delight some, perhaps. Others no doubt envy his
opulent lifestyle. And the simple fact that he could waste any son of a bitch who pissed him
off, and get away with it, may, unfortunately, hold some appeal for a mean-spirited few.
But certainly those are not the traits admired by the average, honest, hard-working,
chicken-hearted individual who has no interest in a life of crime or incarceration. What we
can admire in a man like Capone is his ability to cope with stress, think positive, perform
under pressure, assert himself, win friends, influence people and survive adversity ranging
from murder charges to gunfire. Without soiling himself. (As Winston Churchill once said,
"The most exhilarating thing in life is to be shot at, without result.")
The only thing they got him on was income tax evasion. Pitiful! It should be noted that
some thirty years later, at an annual meeting in Chicago of the American Bar Association,
Mr. Capone, was posthumously retried under the present tax code and current rules of
evidence, before a real judge and jury, and granted a new trial.
Al had his little faults and lapses of judgment, as don't we all. The Massacre, for
instance, was a public-relations disaster. But let those who have never fudged on a 1040
cast the first stone. And let's not forget that it was Al, more than Frank Lloyd Wright, or
Mies van der Rohe, or Marshall Field, or Colonel McCormick, who put Chicago on the
map. And thanks to Al and Prohibition we have learned (even if the reformers still haven't)
about the Doctrine of Unintended Consequences.
We have the Big Fellow to thank for yet another lesson: the importance of practicing
Safe Sex.
But let's not dwell on the present when we can open the pages of history and find in
them the Wisdom of Al Capone, who said, among other things:
"Nobody wanted Prohibition. This town voted six to one against it. Somebody had to throw
some liquor on that thirst. Why not me?"
"Hell, it's a business... All I do is supply a public demand. I do it in the best and least
harmful way I can. I can't change the conditions. I just meet them without backing up."
"I'm a businessman. I've made my money supplying a popular demand. If I break the law,
my customers are as guilty as I am."
"Some of the biggest Drys in the country buy from me and have for years, so let's stop
kidding."
"All I ever did was sell beer and whiskey to our best people. All I ever did was supply a
demand that was pretty popular. Why, the very guys that make my trade good are the ones that
yell the loudest about me. Some of the leading judges use the stuff."
"I violate the Prohibition law, sure. Who doesn't? The only difference is that I take more
chances than the man who drinks a cocktail before dinner and a flock of highballs after it."
"The country wanted booze and I organized it. Why should I be called a public enemy?"
"The funny part of the whole thing is that a man in this line of business has so much
company. I mean his customers. If people did not want beer and wouldn't drink it, a fellow
would be crazy for going around trying to sell it."
"I give the public what it wants. I never had to send out high-pressure salesmen. I could
never meet the demand."
"I've seen gambling houses, too--in my travels, you understand--and I never saw anyone
point a gun at a man and make him go in. I've never heard of anyone being forced to go to a
place to have some fun."
"I have read in the papers of bank cashiers being put in cars, with pistols stuck in their
slats, and taken to the bank, where they had to open the vault for the fellow with the gun. It
really looks like taking a drink is worse than robbing a bank. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe it is."
"I never stuck up a man in my life. Neither did any of my agents ever rob anybody or
burglarize any homes while they worked for me. They might have pulled plenty of jobs before
they came with me or after they left me, but not while they were in my outfit."
"Ninety percent of the people of Cook County drink and gamble and my offense has been to
furnish them with those amusements. Whatever else they may say, my booze has been good and
my games have been on the square. Public service has been my motto."
"I've been spending the best years of my life as a public benefactor. I've given people the
light pleasures, shown them a good time. And all I get is abuse."
"When I sell liquor, they call it bootlegging. When my patrons serve it on silver trays on
Lake Shore Drive, they call it hospitality."
When some self-righteous ingrates voiced disapproval of Big Al's lifestyle and
questioned whether an admitted lawbreaker could be considered a good citizen, Mr.
Capone set them straight on his total commitment to the American Way of Life and his
concern that the working man might fall victim to the international Communist conspiracy:
"They talk about me not being legitimate. Nobody's on the legit. You know that and so do
they. Nobody's really on the legit when it comes down to cases."
"My rackets are run on strictly American lines and they are going to stay that way."
"If machines are going to take jobs away from the worker, then he will need to find
something else to do. Perhaps he'll get back to the soil. But we must care for him during the
period of change. We must keep him away from Red literature, Red ruses; we must see that his
mind remains healthy."
So maybe Mr. Capone does come up a little short in the civil liberties department; that
only indicates his basically conservative value system and 100-percent Americanism. In his
view, helping his fellow Chicagoans circumvent the diabolical Prohibition law was as
American as the Boston Tea Party. Indeed, Mr. Capone performed many public services
out of a sense of civic duty and the goodness of his heart. He gave generously to charities,
and paid the medical bills of a pedestrian injured in a shooting. When millionaire John
Lynch was kidnapped and the authorities were stymied, Lynch's friends turned to Big Al,
who said:
"A kidnapper is no better than a rat, and I don't approve of his racket because it makes the
kidnaped man's wife and kiddies worry so much. I shall be glad to help Chicago in this
emergency."
"I'll go as deep in my pockets as any man to help any guy that needs help. I can't stand to
see anybody hungry or cold or helpless."
Did Chicago thank Big Al for his missions or when Mr. Lynch was released unharmed?
Hell, no. In fact, some of his enemies accused him of kidnapping Lynch in the first place.
So Al decides: OK, Assholes, No more Mr. Nice Guy, and proceeds to tell it like it is. Or
was. Since then, of course, Chicago has rooted out virtually all corruption in city
government, but in those days dishonesty was rampant.
"Graft is a byword in American life today. It is law where no law is obeyed. It is under-
mining this country. The honest lawmakers of any city can be counted on your fingers. I could
count Chicago's on one hand."
"A crook is a crook, and there's something healthy about his frankness in the matter. But
the guy who pretends he's enforcing the law and steals on his authority is a swell snake.
"The worst type is the Big Politician who gives about half his time to covering up so that no
one will know he's a thief. A hard-working crook can buy these birds by the dozens, but he
hates them in his heart."
"You'd be surprised if you knew some of the fellows I've got to take care of."
"Crooked bankers who take people's hard-earned cash for stock they know is worthless
would be far better clients at penal institutions than the little man who robs so that his wife and
babies may live."
"Once you're in the racket, you're always in it. The parasites will trail you, begging for
money and favors, and you can never get away from them no matter where you go."
"Union members look at dues the same way they look at taxes: just something you got to
pay the thieves who run things."
As much as it went against the grain of his fundamental benevolence, Mr. Capone
understood the importance of not displaying weakness that might invite the unscrupulous
or the wicked to walk all over him. Referring to his type of venture capitalism, he said:
"Well, maybe he thinks that the law of self- defense, the way God looks at it, is a little
broader than the law books have it."
"There's always some wiseacre who stands in the wings and criticizes. You've got two
choices. You either buy these wiseacres off by giving them jobs...or you scare them off. If they
don't scare, you take them in the alley. When they get out of the hospital, if they still want to
squawk, you get rid of them."
"I'm the boss. I'm going to continue to run things. They've been putting the roscoe on me
for a good many years and I'm still healthy and happy. Don't let anybody kid you into thinking
I can be run out of town. I haven't run yet and I'm not going to."
"People who respect nothing dread fear. It is upon fear, therefore, that I have built up my
organization. But understand me correctly, please. Those who work with me are afraid of
nothing. Those who work for me are kept faithful, not so much because of their pay as because
they know what might be done with them if they broke faith."
Part of Mr. Capone's problems stemmed from the fact that his competitors were not all
as high-minded, public-spirited and service-oriented as he, and that many were constantly
taking advantage of his good nature. Dean O'Banion, for instance, held the booze
franchise for the lucrative North Side but never showed any gratitude for all the help he
received from Al Capone and John Torrio when he was just getting started. Worse, he
swindled Mr. Torrio out of half a million dollars in the Sieben Brewery scam in 1924,
getting him jailed in the bargain, and then heaped insult on injury by referring to his good
South Side friends as Greaseballs. In the end, Torrio and Capone had no choice but to ice
the irascible Irisher in his flower shop on North State Street, and those were the shots
heard 'round the underworld.
The passing of O'Banion led to five years of regrettable strife known as the Chicago
Beer Wars, during which Big Al found himself accused of shooting people. Usually they
were people who were shooting at him, and just not doing a very good job of it. For
instance, Hymie Weiss, O'Banion's obnoxious successor, swore revenge, shot Torrio, laid
siege to Al's temporary headquarters in Cicero, and had to be machine-gunned in front of
the Holy Name Cathedral just to calm him down. More or less permanently.
At another time, North Sider Joey Aiello tried to sweet-talk Al into a false sense of
security so he could slip up on his blind side, only to set a new gangland record with his
total of 59 slugs from a two-machine-gun nest.
One victim of the Beer Wars was Assistant State's Attorney William McSwiggin, who,
historians later concluded, was not the intended target and simply should not have been
out partying with some bootleggers. In any case, Al found himself in the awkward position
of constantly having to issue explanations, apologies and denials:
"Deany was all right and he was getting along to begin with better than he had any right to
expect. But like everyone else, his head got away from his hat."
"I'm sorry Hymie was killed, but I didn't have anything to do with it.... There's enough
business for all of us without killing each other like animals in the street."
"Of course I didn't kill McSwiggin. Why should I? I liked the kid. Only the day before he
got knocked off he was over at my place, and when he went home I gave him a bottle of Scotch
for his old man. If I wanted to knock him off, I could have done it then, couldn't I? We had
him on the spot."
"I paid McSwiggin and I paid him plenty, and I got what I was paying for."
"Every time a boy falls off a tricycle, every time a black cat has gray kittens, every time
someone stubs a toe, every time there's a murder or a fire or the Marines land in Nicaragua,
the police and the newspapers holler, 'Get Capone!' I'm sick of it. As soon as I possibly can, I'll
clear out of here."
"The other day a man came in here and said that he had to have $3000. If I'd give it to
him, he said, he would make me the beneficiary of a $15,000 insurance policy and then kill
himself. I had to have him pushed out."
"Today I got a letter from a woman in England. Even over there I'm known as a gorilla.
She offered to pay my passage to London if I would kill some neighbors she's having a quarrel
with."
"They've hung everything on me but the Chicago fire."
"Nobody was ever killed except outlaws, and the community is better off without them."
After Mr. Capone had demonstrated the ugliness of gangland violence by hosing down
Weiss and four others on the Cathedral steps, he thought that should teach everyone a
lesson and afterwards called a peace conference. So it wasn't as if he didn't try to restore
some sanity among the local bootleggers. Indeed, several times he called peace
conferences, but it was never very long before the irresponsible elements would whack
somebody and undo everything Big Al was trying to accomplish.
"I told them we are making a shooting gallery out of a great business and nobody is
profiting by it."
"Why not treat our business like any other man treats his, as something to work at in the
daytime and forget when he goes home at night? There's plenty of business for everybody. Why
kill each other over it?"
"I wanted to stop all that because I couldn't stand hearing my little kid ask why I didn't
stay home. I had been living at the Hawthorne Inn for fourteen months... If it wasn't for him,
I'd have said, To hell with you fellows. We'll shoot it out."
"I have always been opposed to violence, to shootings. I have fought, yes, but fought for
peace. And I believe I can take credit for the peace that now exists in the racket game in
Chicago. I believe that the people can thank me for the fact that gang killings here are probably
a thing of the past."
Alas, that was not to be the case. By 1928, the Battle of Chicago had been going on
for three years and was starting to wear the Big Fellow down. In addition, the meddlesome
Chicago Crime Commission had caused Mr. Capone considerable embarrassment by
declaring him "Public Enemy Number One," even though he continually counseled against
violence. Indeed, after conducting the St. Valentine's Day Massacre of 1929 in one last
effort to quell the murderous Northsiders, he threw up his hands in defeat. To get out of
the line of fire, he checked into a Philadelphia jail on a gun-carrying charge. During his
year's sabbatical, he expressed deep frustration over the sorry state of Chicago crime.
"I'm tired of gang murders and gang shootings. It's a tough life to lead. You fear death at
every moment, and worse than death, you fear the rats of the game who'd run around and tell
the police if you don't constantly satisfy them with money and favors."
"It's hard, dangerous work, aside from any hate at all, and when a fellow works hard at
any line of business he wants to go home and forget about it. He don't want to be afraid to sit
near a window or an open door."
"I want peace, and I will live and let live. I'm like any other man. I've been in this racket
long enough to realize that a man in my game must take the breaks, the fortunes of war. I
haven't had any peace of mind in years. Every minute I'm in danger of death."
"What do you want to do, get yourself killed before you are thirty? You'd better get some
sense while a few of us are left alive."
"I don't want to end up in the gutter punctured by machine gun slugs."
Clearly experiencing melancholy over the turmoil in his life, Big Al becomes
increasingly reflective and philosophical, though he handles it manfully enough that we
cannot accuse him going soft:
"Things people know about amuse them. They like to laugh over them and make jokes.
When a speakeasy is raided, there are a few hysterical people, but the general mass are light
hearted. On the other hand, do you know any of your friends who'd go into fits of merriment if
they feared being taken for a ride?"
"I came to Chicago with forty dollars in my pocket.... My son is now twelve. I am still
married and I love my wife dearly. We had to make a living. I was younger than I am now, and
I thought I needed more. I didn't believe in prohibiting people from getting the things they
wanted. I thought Prohibition was an unjust law and I still do."
"I'd rather the newspapers wouldn't print a line about me. That's the way I feel. No more
brass bands for me. There's a lot of grief attached to the limelight. If I was just plain Izzy
Polatski, living in Chicago, I wouldn't stand out in the gutter trying to get a peek at Capone. I'd
attend to my business and let him attend to his."
"I've got a mother who never misses mass unless she's too sick to get out of bed. I've a wife
who loves me as dearly as any woman could love a man. They have feelings. They are hurt by
what the newspapers say about me. And I can't tell you what it does to my twelve-year-old son
when the other school children, cruel as they are, keep showing him newspaper stories that call
me a killer or worse."
"There's a lot of people in Chicago that have got me pegged for one of those bloodthirsty
mobsters you read about in story books--the kind that tortures his victims, cuts off their ears,
puts out their eyes with a red-hot poker and grins while he's doing it. Now get me right. I'm not
posing as a model for youth. I've had to do a lot of things I don't like to do. But I'm not as
black as I'm painted. I'm human. I've got a heart in me."
"I'm out of the booze racket now and I wish the papers would let me alone."
"Let the worthy citizens of Chicago get their liquor the best way they can. I'm sick of the
job. It's a thankless one and full of grief."
One can appreciate the worry and exhaustion that have driven Mr. Capone to want out
of the bootlegging business, what with all the treachery and bloodshed and criticism it
entails. Perhaps it is to polish his besmirched reputation and mitigate his unsought
notoriety that he slightly exaggerates his civic rectitude.
"It's pretty tough when a citizen with an unblemished record must be hounded from his
home by the very policemen whose salaries are paid, at least in part, from the victim's pocket.
You might say that every policeman in Chicago gets some of his bread and butter from the
taxes I pay."
Bringing up the subjects of property ownership and taxes may not have been, in
retrospect, a smart move. For Mr. Capone's remarkable success at violating the Prohibition
law--and making no bones about it--long had rankled legions of petty bureaucrats in the
U.S. Government. Jealous of his fame and achievements, they cast about in search of
some means, any means, to avenge their sense of professional impotence, and they
discerned that the new federal income tax law was ideally suited to their purpose. In the
hands of auditors and bookkeepers, it proved more deadly than the bullets and buckshot
of rival gangsters, and in the end it brought the Big Fellow down:
"If Al Capone is found guilty, who is going to suffer--a masquerading ghost or the man
who stands before you? You're right; it'll be me who goes to jail. Well, I'd much rather be
sitting in a box watching the world baseball championship. What a life!"
"I was willing to go to jail. I could have taken my stretch, come back to my wife and child,
and lived my own life. But I'm being hounded by a public that won't give me a fair chance.
They want a full show, all the courtroom trappings, the hue and cry, and all the rest. It's utterly
impossible for a man of my age to have done all the things I'm charged with. I'm a spook, born
of a million minds."
"I'll be made an issue in the next presidential campaign. We sent Capone to the
penitentiary, they'll be saying. It wouldn't seem so bad if they didn't use the income tax for
political purposes. There's a lot of big men in Chicago who beat the government out of most of
the taxes they ought to pay and they get away with it. I don't think that's playing fair, but
they've got me and I'll have to take the medicine."
"I leave with gratitude to my friends who have stood by me through this unjust ordeal, and
with forgiveness for my enemies. I wish them all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year."
And that was the end of Al Capone. With neither a bang nor a whimper, he went to the
federal penitentiary at Atlanta, and from there to Alcatraz, where his health began to fail
from the ravages of an untreated social disease. He was released in 1939, "nuttier than a
fruitcake," according to a collegue, and died at his estate at Palm Island, Florida, in 1947.
Had he taken better care of himself, he might have survived his prison ordeal and become
a tycoon in the diary business, for it seems that Big Al also had milk on his mind. In
contemplating Life After Repeal, he once declared:
"You gotta have a product that everybody needs every day. We don't have it in booze.
Except for the lushes, most people only buy a couple of fifths of gin or Scotch when they're
having a party. The workingman laps up half a dozen bottles of beer on Saturday night, and
that's it for the week. But with milk! Every family every day wants it on the table. The people
on Lake Shore Drive want thick cream in their coffee. The big families out back of the yards
have to buy a couple of gallons of fresh milk every day for the kids.... Do you guys know there's
a bigger markup in fresh milk than there is in alcohol? Honest to God, we've been in the wrong
racket right along."
Al Capone--What a guy!
than you can with a smile and a kind word."
Al Capone said that. At least some people say that Al Capone said that. It's attributed to
him in some "famous quotations" books. But no source is ever given, and it's just remotely
possible that some low-life yellow journalist, at some time or another, decided that Al
Capone, if he didn't say that, could have. Or should have.
The author of this volume would never include such a probably-spurious quotation in
this collection -- at least not without cooking up a good excuse for doing so. The excuse is
that it serves as a good example of the kind of probably- spurious quotation I have not
included.
The following quotes, with the above exception, are taken entirely from interviews,
newspaper stories, books and magazine articles by writers who certainly would never
misquote Mr. Capone, or put words in his mouth, or embellish his remarks, or misrepresent
his position on any subject, considering the high regard in which Scarface Al was held by
scholars, philosophers, gun dealers, revenuers and other intellectuals of the day.
MEET MR. CAPONE
So maybe Al Capone was this country's most notorious gangster, vice lord, bootlegger,
and all-around hoodlum who machine-gunned his competitors, dodged his taxes, ended up
in Alcatraz and eventually died of syphillis.
Nobody's perfect.
The important thing is that Mr. Capone at least tried to conduct his vice, gambling and
bootlegging in a reasonable and businesslike manner and resorted to violence only when
driven to it by Chicago's bellicose North Siders, who kept dropping like flies and making
him look bad. As gangsters go, he wasn't the first and not the worst, by any means.
Like other large cities, Chicago had gangs long before reformers conducted the "Noble
Experiment" that blew up in the country's face. Usually these took the form of athletic or
social clubs -- the successors to 19th Century neighborhood and ethnic groups which
originally banded together for benevolent, protective and social purposes but soon learned
to employ themselves collectively, shaking down shopkeepers, protecting vice operations
and working as goons for machine politicians. At this point, crime was "organized" mainly to
the extent that illegal enterprises paid protection to the politicians who then ruled the
police, who were themselves paid off by prostitution and gambling interests, whose gangs
beat up whoever ran against their politicians. The Chicago system of closed-circuit
corruption demonstrated how well local vice and local government could complement one
another when everyone cooperates. As reform-minded Alderman Robert Merriam once put
it: "Chicago is unique. It is the only totally corrupt city in America."
Enter Mr. Capone
Prohibition upset this balance of nature. The enormous profits from bootlegging, as
from drug trafficking today, transformed local street gangs into wealthy underworld
organizations that could now control the same politicians and vice operations they
previously had worked for.
For awhile, the bootlegging business developed in a fairly peaceful and orderly fashion
thanks to an early summit conference at which the city's major gang leaders divided up
Cook County equitably to forestall competition. The largest group was a confederation of
several gangs led by Johnnie Torrio, who had called the meeting. His able assistant was a
big, tough, scar-faced individual named Alphonse Capone, who, as it happened, turned 21
the day the nefarious Volstead Act took effect, prohibiting the manufacture or sale of
booze.
Both Torrio and Capone were Brooklyn boys who had moved to Chicago (about 1909
and 1918, respectively) to help another former Brooklynite, Big Jim Colosimo, manage his
supermarkets of sin in the Levee district on Chicago's Near South Side. When Colosimo
displayed no great interest in exploiting Prohibition's vast opportunities (the old rascal was
getting it on with a pretty young songbird named Dale Winter and was too busy recapturing
his lost youth), he was found on May 11, 1920, on the floor of his South Wabash Street
nightclub, plugged. Torrio and Capone wept bitterly, gave him the first of the grand
gangland funerals ($50,000 in 1920 dollars), and soon organized the greatest illegal liquor
operation Chicago or the world would ever know.
In the middle Twenties Torrio retired from the business to nurse some gunshot wounds,
leaving the business to Al Capone. Up to that time Capone had avoided publicity, but now
bodies were stacking up, some on his doorstep, and the press discovered that to know the
Big Fellow was to love him. What captured the public's imagination were Capone's
impressive size, scarred face and outgoing personality, which featured a big mouth and a
sardonic sense of humor, much to the delight of newspaper reporters. He was refreshingly
candid about his line of work, regarding himself as a successful entrepreneur who, in the
finest tradition of American capitalism, operated a business that supplied a demand in a
free-market economy. (Supply-side economics, as it were.) He differed from the average
wimpy businessman on a mere technicality: The drinking of liquor was still legal, but the
selling of it was not. What could make less sense? So he regularly and sometimes
eloquently denounced the hypocrisy of a law that almost no one, including the lawmakers,
obeyed.
That a formerly respectable business should now require the wholesale bribing of
police, politicians and public officials was something that offended Mr. Capone's moral
sensibilities. He knew that dishonesty in one sector could metastacize throughout the
system--to the point where you couldn't trust nobody. In Chicago, an honest politician was
one who, when you bought him, he stayed bought.
Likewise regrettable was the absence of a means for peacefully resolving disputes.
With no civil justice system, the pistol, the shotgun and the Thompson submachine gun
became bargaining tools in certain business negotiations. Seen in proper historical
context, the St. Valentine's Day Massacre was merely a hostile take-over.
So Capone the honest businessman often felt misunderstood and unappreciated, and
he made this clear in his comments to the press. He also felt unfairly singled out for
persecution when the stuffy Chicago Crime Commission, ever whining about political
corruption and lawlessness, proclaimed him Public Enemy Number One. Moreover, as an
important contributor to the local economy and as a major employer of the underprivileged
and socially handicapped, he had good reason to feel abused when the federal
government began harrassing him with its new and poorly understood income-tax laws.
Did these constant hassles get Scarface down? You betcha! It's never easy being
Number One anything (as we all know), and try as he might to ignore the carping of
reformers and the sniping of his rivals, their constant attacks eventually eroded his
patience and sense of humor, as we will see in the changing tenor of his remarks.
At first he takes the ribbing in stride, holding firmly to his appointment as businessman
and public benefactor. When his explanations are ignored or rejected, a defensive note
creeps in. Then we perceive his growing resentment of the lackeys and parasites whose
palms must be greased to silence their tongues, and his increasing contempt for
money-grubbing officials who trade on their authority and sell out their public trust.
Bitterness begins to take its toll.
As time goes by he finds himself the convenient scapegoat for conditions he did not
create and for killings he did not commit, except maybe for the occasional retaliatory or
pre-emptive strike, when such was necessitated by great provocation--like when that
scrawny Northside nut-case Hymie Weiss sent a motorcade down the main street of
Cicero to shoot up Big Al's temporary headquarters at the Hawthorne Hotel.
Assailed from every quarter, blamed for every crime, Capone acquires a philosophical
fatalism that may well mask a deepening melancholy. Finally overwhelmed by the vast
resources of the United States Government, Big Al does not grovel or snivel or beg for
forgiveness; he asks only for a little understanding, and in 1932 he goes stoically to prison
with a certain grace and at least one consoling thought:
CRIME MAY NOT PAY
BUT IT CAN BE A SHORTCUT TO IMMORTALITY
What is it about this one-time Public Enemy that still captivates and fascinates
Americans--and, for that matter, the Germans, the Brits, the Japanese and other foreign
visitors? His swagger and self-assurance delight some, perhaps. Others no doubt envy his
opulent lifestyle. And the simple fact that he could waste any son of a bitch who pissed him
off, and get away with it, may, unfortunately, hold some appeal for a mean-spirited few.
But certainly those are not the traits admired by the average, honest, hard-working,
chicken-hearted individual who has no interest in a life of crime or incarceration. What we
can admire in a man like Capone is his ability to cope with stress, think positive, perform
under pressure, assert himself, win friends, influence people and survive adversity ranging
from murder charges to gunfire. Without soiling himself. (As Winston Churchill once said,
"The most exhilarating thing in life is to be shot at, without result.")
The only thing they got him on was income tax evasion. Pitiful! It should be noted that
some thirty years later, at an annual meeting in Chicago of the American Bar Association,
Mr. Capone, was posthumously retried under the present tax code and current rules of
evidence, before a real judge and jury, and granted a new trial.
Al had his little faults and lapses of judgment, as don't we all. The Massacre, for
instance, was a public-relations disaster. But let those who have never fudged on a 1040
cast the first stone. And let's not forget that it was Al, more than Frank Lloyd Wright, or
Mies van der Rohe, or Marshall Field, or Colonel McCormick, who put Chicago on the
map. And thanks to Al and Prohibition we have learned (even if the reformers still haven't)
about the Doctrine of Unintended Consequences.
We have the Big Fellow to thank for yet another lesson: the importance of practicing
Safe Sex.
But let's not dwell on the present when we can open the pages of history and find in
them the Wisdom of Al Capone, who said, among other things:
"Nobody wanted Prohibition. This town voted six to one against it. Somebody had to throw
some liquor on that thirst. Why not me?"
"Hell, it's a business... All I do is supply a public demand. I do it in the best and least
harmful way I can. I can't change the conditions. I just meet them without backing up."
"I'm a businessman. I've made my money supplying a popular demand. If I break the law,
my customers are as guilty as I am."
"Some of the biggest Drys in the country buy from me and have for years, so let's stop
kidding."
"All I ever did was sell beer and whiskey to our best people. All I ever did was supply a
demand that was pretty popular. Why, the very guys that make my trade good are the ones that
yell the loudest about me. Some of the leading judges use the stuff."
"I violate the Prohibition law, sure. Who doesn't? The only difference is that I take more
chances than the man who drinks a cocktail before dinner and a flock of highballs after it."
"The country wanted booze and I organized it. Why should I be called a public enemy?"
"The funny part of the whole thing is that a man in this line of business has so much
company. I mean his customers. If people did not want beer and wouldn't drink it, a fellow
would be crazy for going around trying to sell it."
"I give the public what it wants. I never had to send out high-pressure salesmen. I could
never meet the demand."
"I've seen gambling houses, too--in my travels, you understand--and I never saw anyone
point a gun at a man and make him go in. I've never heard of anyone being forced to go to a
place to have some fun."
"I have read in the papers of bank cashiers being put in cars, with pistols stuck in their
slats, and taken to the bank, where they had to open the vault for the fellow with the gun. It
really looks like taking a drink is worse than robbing a bank. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe it is."
"I never stuck up a man in my life. Neither did any of my agents ever rob anybody or
burglarize any homes while they worked for me. They might have pulled plenty of jobs before
they came with me or after they left me, but not while they were in my outfit."
"Ninety percent of the people of Cook County drink and gamble and my offense has been to
furnish them with those amusements. Whatever else they may say, my booze has been good and
my games have been on the square. Public service has been my motto."
"I've been spending the best years of my life as a public benefactor. I've given people the
light pleasures, shown them a good time. And all I get is abuse."
"When I sell liquor, they call it bootlegging. When my patrons serve it on silver trays on
Lake Shore Drive, they call it hospitality."
When some self-righteous ingrates voiced disapproval of Big Al's lifestyle and
questioned whether an admitted lawbreaker could be considered a good citizen, Mr.
Capone set them straight on his total commitment to the American Way of Life and his
concern that the working man might fall victim to the international Communist conspiracy:
"They talk about me not being legitimate. Nobody's on the legit. You know that and so do
they. Nobody's really on the legit when it comes down to cases."
"My rackets are run on strictly American lines and they are going to stay that way."
"If machines are going to take jobs away from the worker, then he will need to find
something else to do. Perhaps he'll get back to the soil. But we must care for him during the
period of change. We must keep him away from Red literature, Red ruses; we must see that his
mind remains healthy."
So maybe Mr. Capone does come up a little short in the civil liberties department; that
only indicates his basically conservative value system and 100-percent Americanism. In his
view, helping his fellow Chicagoans circumvent the diabolical Prohibition law was as
American as the Boston Tea Party. Indeed, Mr. Capone performed many public services
out of a sense of civic duty and the goodness of his heart. He gave generously to charities,
and paid the medical bills of a pedestrian injured in a shooting. When millionaire John
Lynch was kidnapped and the authorities were stymied, Lynch's friends turned to Big Al,
who said:
"A kidnapper is no better than a rat, and I don't approve of his racket because it makes the
kidnaped man's wife and kiddies worry so much. I shall be glad to help Chicago in this
emergency."
"I'll go as deep in my pockets as any man to help any guy that needs help. I can't stand to
see anybody hungry or cold or helpless."
Did Chicago thank Big Al for his missions or when Mr. Lynch was released unharmed?
Hell, no. In fact, some of his enemies accused him of kidnapping Lynch in the first place.
So Al decides: OK, Assholes, No more Mr. Nice Guy, and proceeds to tell it like it is. Or
was. Since then, of course, Chicago has rooted out virtually all corruption in city
government, but in those days dishonesty was rampant.
"Graft is a byword in American life today. It is law where no law is obeyed. It is under-
mining this country. The honest lawmakers of any city can be counted on your fingers. I could
count Chicago's on one hand."
"A crook is a crook, and there's something healthy about his frankness in the matter. But
the guy who pretends he's enforcing the law and steals on his authority is a swell snake.
"The worst type is the Big Politician who gives about half his time to covering up so that no
one will know he's a thief. A hard-working crook can buy these birds by the dozens, but he
hates them in his heart."
"You'd be surprised if you knew some of the fellows I've got to take care of."
"Crooked bankers who take people's hard-earned cash for stock they know is worthless
would be far better clients at penal institutions than the little man who robs so that his wife and
babies may live."
"Once you're in the racket, you're always in it. The parasites will trail you, begging for
money and favors, and you can never get away from them no matter where you go."
"Union members look at dues the same way they look at taxes: just something you got to
pay the thieves who run things."
As much as it went against the grain of his fundamental benevolence, Mr. Capone
understood the importance of not displaying weakness that might invite the unscrupulous
or the wicked to walk all over him. Referring to his type of venture capitalism, he said:
"Well, maybe he thinks that the law of self- defense, the way God looks at it, is a little
broader than the law books have it."
"There's always some wiseacre who stands in the wings and criticizes. You've got two
choices. You either buy these wiseacres off by giving them jobs...or you scare them off. If they
don't scare, you take them in the alley. When they get out of the hospital, if they still want to
squawk, you get rid of them."
"I'm the boss. I'm going to continue to run things. They've been putting the roscoe on me
for a good many years and I'm still healthy and happy. Don't let anybody kid you into thinking
I can be run out of town. I haven't run yet and I'm not going to."
"People who respect nothing dread fear. It is upon fear, therefore, that I have built up my
organization. But understand me correctly, please. Those who work with me are afraid of
nothing. Those who work for me are kept faithful, not so much because of their pay as because
they know what might be done with them if they broke faith."
Part of Mr. Capone's problems stemmed from the fact that his competitors were not all
as high-minded, public-spirited and service-oriented as he, and that many were constantly
taking advantage of his good nature. Dean O'Banion, for instance, held the booze
franchise for the lucrative North Side but never showed any gratitude for all the help he
received from Al Capone and John Torrio when he was just getting started. Worse, he
swindled Mr. Torrio out of half a million dollars in the Sieben Brewery scam in 1924,
getting him jailed in the bargain, and then heaped insult on injury by referring to his good
South Side friends as Greaseballs. In the end, Torrio and Capone had no choice but to ice
the irascible Irisher in his flower shop on North State Street, and those were the shots
heard 'round the underworld.
The passing of O'Banion led to five years of regrettable strife known as the Chicago
Beer Wars, during which Big Al found himself accused of shooting people. Usually they
were people who were shooting at him, and just not doing a very good job of it. For
instance, Hymie Weiss, O'Banion's obnoxious successor, swore revenge, shot Torrio, laid
siege to Al's temporary headquarters in Cicero, and had to be machine-gunned in front of
the Holy Name Cathedral just to calm him down. More or less permanently.
At another time, North Sider Joey Aiello tried to sweet-talk Al into a false sense of
security so he could slip up on his blind side, only to set a new gangland record with his
total of 59 slugs from a two-machine-gun nest.
One victim of the Beer Wars was Assistant State's Attorney William McSwiggin, who,
historians later concluded, was not the intended target and simply should not have been
out partying with some bootleggers. In any case, Al found himself in the awkward position
of constantly having to issue explanations, apologies and denials:
"Deany was all right and he was getting along to begin with better than he had any right to
expect. But like everyone else, his head got away from his hat."
"I'm sorry Hymie was killed, but I didn't have anything to do with it.... There's enough
business for all of us without killing each other like animals in the street."
"Of course I didn't kill McSwiggin. Why should I? I liked the kid. Only the day before he
got knocked off he was over at my place, and when he went home I gave him a bottle of Scotch
for his old man. If I wanted to knock him off, I could have done it then, couldn't I? We had
him on the spot."
"I paid McSwiggin and I paid him plenty, and I got what I was paying for."
"Every time a boy falls off a tricycle, every time a black cat has gray kittens, every time
someone stubs a toe, every time there's a murder or a fire or the Marines land in Nicaragua,
the police and the newspapers holler, 'Get Capone!' I'm sick of it. As soon as I possibly can, I'll
clear out of here."
"The other day a man came in here and said that he had to have $3000. If I'd give it to
him, he said, he would make me the beneficiary of a $15,000 insurance policy and then kill
himself. I had to have him pushed out."
"Today I got a letter from a woman in England. Even over there I'm known as a gorilla.
She offered to pay my passage to London if I would kill some neighbors she's having a quarrel
with."
"They've hung everything on me but the Chicago fire."
"Nobody was ever killed except outlaws, and the community is better off without them."
After Mr. Capone had demonstrated the ugliness of gangland violence by hosing down
Weiss and four others on the Cathedral steps, he thought that should teach everyone a
lesson and afterwards called a peace conference. So it wasn't as if he didn't try to restore
some sanity among the local bootleggers. Indeed, several times he called peace
conferences, but it was never very long before the irresponsible elements would whack
somebody and undo everything Big Al was trying to accomplish.
"I told them we are making a shooting gallery out of a great business and nobody is
profiting by it."
"Why not treat our business like any other man treats his, as something to work at in the
daytime and forget when he goes home at night? There's plenty of business for everybody. Why
kill each other over it?"
"I wanted to stop all that because I couldn't stand hearing my little kid ask why I didn't
stay home. I had been living at the Hawthorne Inn for fourteen months... If it wasn't for him,
I'd have said, To hell with you fellows. We'll shoot it out."
"I have always been opposed to violence, to shootings. I have fought, yes, but fought for
peace. And I believe I can take credit for the peace that now exists in the racket game in
Chicago. I believe that the people can thank me for the fact that gang killings here are probably
a thing of the past."
Alas, that was not to be the case. By 1928, the Battle of Chicago had been going on
for three years and was starting to wear the Big Fellow down. In addition, the meddlesome
Chicago Crime Commission had caused Mr. Capone considerable embarrassment by
declaring him "Public Enemy Number One," even though he continually counseled against
violence. Indeed, after conducting the St. Valentine's Day Massacre of 1929 in one last
effort to quell the murderous Northsiders, he threw up his hands in defeat. To get out of
the line of fire, he checked into a Philadelphia jail on a gun-carrying charge. During his
year's sabbatical, he expressed deep frustration over the sorry state of Chicago crime.
"I'm tired of gang murders and gang shootings. It's a tough life to lead. You fear death at
every moment, and worse than death, you fear the rats of the game who'd run around and tell
the police if you don't constantly satisfy them with money and favors."
"It's hard, dangerous work, aside from any hate at all, and when a fellow works hard at
any line of business he wants to go home and forget about it. He don't want to be afraid to sit
near a window or an open door."
"I want peace, and I will live and let live. I'm like any other man. I've been in this racket
long enough to realize that a man in my game must take the breaks, the fortunes of war. I
haven't had any peace of mind in years. Every minute I'm in danger of death."
"What do you want to do, get yourself killed before you are thirty? You'd better get some
sense while a few of us are left alive."
"I don't want to end up in the gutter punctured by machine gun slugs."
Clearly experiencing melancholy over the turmoil in his life, Big Al becomes
increasingly reflective and philosophical, though he handles it manfully enough that we
cannot accuse him going soft:
"Things people know about amuse them. They like to laugh over them and make jokes.
When a speakeasy is raided, there are a few hysterical people, but the general mass are light
hearted. On the other hand, do you know any of your friends who'd go into fits of merriment if
they feared being taken for a ride?"
"I came to Chicago with forty dollars in my pocket.... My son is now twelve. I am still
married and I love my wife dearly. We had to make a living. I was younger than I am now, and
I thought I needed more. I didn't believe in prohibiting people from getting the things they
wanted. I thought Prohibition was an unjust law and I still do."
"I'd rather the newspapers wouldn't print a line about me. That's the way I feel. No more
brass bands for me. There's a lot of grief attached to the limelight. If I was just plain Izzy
Polatski, living in Chicago, I wouldn't stand out in the gutter trying to get a peek at Capone. I'd
attend to my business and let him attend to his."
"I've got a mother who never misses mass unless she's too sick to get out of bed. I've a wife
who loves me as dearly as any woman could love a man. They have feelings. They are hurt by
what the newspapers say about me. And I can't tell you what it does to my twelve-year-old son
when the other school children, cruel as they are, keep showing him newspaper stories that call
me a killer or worse."
"There's a lot of people in Chicago that have got me pegged for one of those bloodthirsty
mobsters you read about in story books--the kind that tortures his victims, cuts off their ears,
puts out their eyes with a red-hot poker and grins while he's doing it. Now get me right. I'm not
posing as a model for youth. I've had to do a lot of things I don't like to do. But I'm not as
black as I'm painted. I'm human. I've got a heart in me."
"I'm out of the booze racket now and I wish the papers would let me alone."
"Let the worthy citizens of Chicago get their liquor the best way they can. I'm sick of the
job. It's a thankless one and full of grief."
One can appreciate the worry and exhaustion that have driven Mr. Capone to want out
of the bootlegging business, what with all the treachery and bloodshed and criticism it
entails. Perhaps it is to polish his besmirched reputation and mitigate his unsought
notoriety that he slightly exaggerates his civic rectitude.
"It's pretty tough when a citizen with an unblemished record must be hounded from his
home by the very policemen whose salaries are paid, at least in part, from the victim's pocket.
You might say that every policeman in Chicago gets some of his bread and butter from the
taxes I pay."
Bringing up the subjects of property ownership and taxes may not have been, in
retrospect, a smart move. For Mr. Capone's remarkable success at violating the Prohibition
law--and making no bones about it--long had rankled legions of petty bureaucrats in the
U.S. Government. Jealous of his fame and achievements, they cast about in search of
some means, any means, to avenge their sense of professional impotence, and they
discerned that the new federal income tax law was ideally suited to their purpose. In the
hands of auditors and bookkeepers, it proved more deadly than the bullets and buckshot
of rival gangsters, and in the end it brought the Big Fellow down:
"If Al Capone is found guilty, who is going to suffer--a masquerading ghost or the man
who stands before you? You're right; it'll be me who goes to jail. Well, I'd much rather be
sitting in a box watching the world baseball championship. What a life!"
"I was willing to go to jail. I could have taken my stretch, come back to my wife and child,
and lived my own life. But I'm being hounded by a public that won't give me a fair chance.
They want a full show, all the courtroom trappings, the hue and cry, and all the rest. It's utterly
impossible for a man of my age to have done all the things I'm charged with. I'm a spook, born
of a million minds."
"I'll be made an issue in the next presidential campaign. We sent Capone to the
penitentiary, they'll be saying. It wouldn't seem so bad if they didn't use the income tax for
political purposes. There's a lot of big men in Chicago who beat the government out of most of
the taxes they ought to pay and they get away with it. I don't think that's playing fair, but
they've got me and I'll have to take the medicine."
"I leave with gratitude to my friends who have stood by me through this unjust ordeal, and
with forgiveness for my enemies. I wish them all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year."
And that was the end of Al Capone. With neither a bang nor a whimper, he went to the
federal penitentiary at Atlanta, and from there to Alcatraz, where his health began to fail
from the ravages of an untreated social disease. He was released in 1939, "nuttier than a
fruitcake," according to a collegue, and died at his estate at Palm Island, Florida, in 1947.
Had he taken better care of himself, he might have survived his prison ordeal and become
a tycoon in the diary business, for it seems that Big Al also had milk on his mind. In
contemplating Life After Repeal, he once declared:
"You gotta have a product that everybody needs every day. We don't have it in booze.
Except for the lushes, most people only buy a couple of fifths of gin or Scotch when they're
having a party. The workingman laps up half a dozen bottles of beer on Saturday night, and
that's it for the week. But with milk! Every family every day wants it on the table. The people
on Lake Shore Drive want thick cream in their coffee. The big families out back of the yards
have to buy a couple of gallons of fresh milk every day for the kids.... Do you guys know there's
a bigger markup in fresh milk than there is in alcohol? Honest to God, we've been in the wrong
racket right along."
Al Capone--What a guy!
