AMERICAN ELECTIONS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20378, 9 April 1928, Page 7

AMERICAN ELECTIONS

GUARDING CHICAGO'S POLLS POLICE CONCENTRATING. (United Press Association.) (By Electrio Telegraph—Copyright.) NEW YORK, April 6. (Received April 8, at 5.5 p.ra.) News from Chicago states that 5000 police, comprising five-sixths of the city’s entire force, will guard Chicago’s polls in the Ulinoie primary election on April 10. This is the most extensive election guard in the history of the city, and it will be augmented bv 25,000 volunteer watchers and challengers recruited from civic organisations. —Australian Press Association. “AND THIS IS JUSTICE!” BRIBERY AND CORRUPTION. WHOLESALE MURDER PREDICTED. NEW YORK, April 7. (Received April 8, at 11.30 p.m.) The New York Herald and Tribune prints the following remarkable despatch, contributed by a staff correspondent at Chicago. The correspondent states that machine guns and “ pineapples,” as the natives playfully call bombs, may decide at Tuesday’s primary election at Chicago “ which particular gang is going to harvest 100,000,000d0l derived from the graft estimated to flow from liquor and gambling. Two armies of jobholders, hoodlums, gunmen, bootleggers, and gamblers will do battle in the 50 wards which make up this city, and in some or the outlying towns. One will be fighting under the banner of ‘ Bill ’ Thompson and Governor Small, who is battling for his political life, and States Attorney Crowe, whose record in ‘ stamping out crime ’ in America’s second city has aroused no envy in other. communities. The other army will fight under the banner of Senator Deneen and Mr Louis Emmerson, a candidate for the Republican nomination for Governor against Governor Small. “ Wholesale murder is confidently predicted on both, sides. No one is quite sure of the outcome, though the opinion generally seems to favour the betterorganised Thompson side. “ One judge has been given authority by the Supreme Court to gaol anyone, ■without the possibility of release under bail, whom he believes to be guilty of vote manipulation, and he has sworn in 3000 deputies, who have power to arrest anyone on suspicion. This, mav reduce stolen votes from 75,000 to 25,000. Rival beer gangs, gambling mobs, and alcohol smugglers have developed such armies of gunmen, machine-gun operators, and bomb-throwers that the rate for murder has considerably dropped Murder can be arranged for any ordinary person at 60dol, with considerable competition as to who will get the contract. However, this situation, which apparently affects only the Republican Party, is complicated. There ar e wheels, within wheels, and sometimes it is a knotty problem for an honest gunman to know just whom to shoot for the benefit of his employer.”—Australian Press Association.