CHICAGO GANGSTERS

Evening Post, Volume CXXI, Issue 23, 28 January 1936, Page 14

CHICAGO GANGSTERS

FOUR LIVELY DAYS

ELEVEN STREET KILLINGS

Rubbed out or bumped off, American phrases that mean taken for a ride or put on the spot, have more to justify their coinage than fiction. Mr. W. D. G. Hartley, managing, director of Securities Corporation, New Zealand, Ltd., who has returned to the Dominion after a five months' torn- of Palestine, Europe', and the United States, spent a short but eventful time in Chicago, the stamping-ground of some of America's most notorious racketeers. In four days when he was there, he told "The Post" today, there were eleven street killings.

He commented that the free rein given to the gangster might in some measure be due to the apathy displayed By the average citizen towards the police, and he agreed the Americon "cop" could learn much from the English "bobby" in courteous methods of dealing with the public. The English constable was never too busy to help the visitor, even to the extent of holding up traffic to give directions. Many of the , force, were,, Cockneys, and one policeman in charge of traffic remarked. when Mr. Hartley ■■ misinterpreted his directions,' "Wotcher fink I 'eld me 'and up for?" but even that complaint was good-humoured, but in America there was no polite request to move on—there was trouble if the "Snap into it" was not obeyed promptly. Although Mr. Hartley did not see revolvers and pistols on open display or as the subjects of adyertisements, he frequently saw them in hardware stores, where they wore easily obtainable.

While the American citizens were not so law-conscious as the English or New Zealanders, the flight of Lindbergh from the United States as a means of protection for his remaining child against the attentions of kidnappers—exploiters of the "snatch Tacket"—had swung public, thought to the necessity for stamping out the gangster. Society had definitely realised the menace constituted by the racketeer.