CRIME IN CHICAGO

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20644, 16 February 1929, Page 13

CRIME IN CHICAGO

GANGSTERS RAID A GARAGE. SEVEN EMPLOYEES MURDERED. (United Press Association.) (By Electric Telegraph—Copyright.) NEW YORK, February 14, News from Chicago states that one of the most cold-blooded crimes in the city’s history occurred when two automobile loads of gangsters raided a garage where a cartage company had headquarters, and murdered seven employees with sawed-off shot guns. The police construe the assassination as the outgrowth of the so-called “beer war,” and say that it is likely that some of the employees of the cartage company had been engaged in running beer. The roar of shots was so great that persons in the neighbourhood thought an explosion had occurred. The victims were treated in the customary gang manner—namely, shot down withou a chance to defepd themselves. All the murderers escaped. A VINDICATION. Some months ago an article appeared in the Otago Daily Times in which reference was made to the rather unenviable reputation Chcago was earning throughout the world, consequent on the reports of hold-ups and all manner of capital crimes. This article was forwarded by a Dunedin resident to a friend in Chicago, who replies as follows: “ I am writing this rather formidable-' looking letter to‘you as a sort of goodnatured answer to the clipping you enclosed and to try and clear your mind a bit as to present conditions in these United States of ours, and particularly as to our city of Chicago. “To begin with, this big country of ours has increased in population and wealth so rapidly of late that it is somewhat bewildering to most of ua to contemplate the changes that have come to both city and country life. We have something like 120,000,000 in these United States, and over 3,000,000 are in Chicago. Among these Chicago millions are several hundred thousand Poles, several hundred thousand ’ Italians, several hundred thousand Germans, scores of thousands each of Greeks, Lithuanians, Russian Jews, Slovaks, and Scandinavians, over 200,000 negroes, and a groundwork, of course, of several hundred thousand of the old colonial stock, so called, of English, Scotch, Irish, and some German, French, and Dutch blood. This is something of a mixture, we must admit, and the eastern seaboard cities are of much the same character and suffering from the same ‘ indigestion ’ that followed our unrestricted immigration laws—extremely liberal laws that invited the whole world to come, but which, thank God, were radically changed in 1924. “We claimed, for many years, to maintain a melting-pot for the world, ‘ a haven of refuge for the oppressed of all the world,’ and all that rot, and woke up to find we were running a soupkettle instead, with the stock getting mighty poor and the resulting soup mighty thin. Well, the conditions are here, and we are trying to meet them. It may take a generation or two to solve the problems resulting, but I have every faith that they will be solved. “ As for Chicago, there is a whole lot of crime and crookedness here and in all the large cities of’the country, and there are several good reasons why it should be especially apparent just now. We are endeavouring to digest this most unfortunate mass of South European immigration of- the last few years, and we are in the midst of a phenomenal period of prosperity and high wages, of speculation and extravagance; we are operating under an obsolete system (or lack •'Of system) of criminal law and a mawkish sentimentality that prevents the proper course of justice; a partnership between politics and crime that is appalling and a most unfortunate failure of the prohibition laws (ill-advised measures, as many of us think, yet the law of the land), to function as they should, through the .slackness of the authorities, the diversities of public opinion, and the .efforts of the politicians to carry water on both shoulders. But, and positively, the better elements of society will prevail, in time, and we still ‘ carry on,’ “ Meanwhile, wonderful progress is going on all over the country, in hundreds of cities and towns between the coasts. Chicago is being re-created into a wonder city of broad boulevards and parks, skyscraping buildings, museums, and hospitals, colleges, churches, and monuments—a network of thousands of miles of cement roadway is spreading over the whole country, over which more than 25,000,000 automobiles and trucks are speeding, and all this progress is being accomplished, not with the aid of the criminal classes and the crooks, but in spite of them, and the time is not so far in the future when we will overcome these 1 forces of Belial.’ The United States has not turned its affairs, over to the criminal classes yet, all of them anyway, but it has been making such marvellous progress that it hesitates to stop and clean its house. But it will, one of these days, you mark my word. “Now, that’s that! Chicago, as I have stated, has an enormous lot of crime, and, most unfortunately, it largely goes unpunished. _ And yet my wife and I have been living in Chicago nearly 20 years, and in the business section inside the so-called Loop all that time. We have motored in the city and suburos and in most, if not all, the 48 States of the Union, we have walked the streets of Chicago and New York and most nf the larger cities by day and by night, have been in motion most of that 20 years, and have never seen a hold-up, a robbery, a murder, or a serious accident due to traffic congestion. “ There’s a lot of crime in Chicago and a whole lot of political rottenness and prohibition crookedness—and then there’s a whole lot of good. You should see our museums and universities and things of that sort that count; our boulevards and parks and forest reserves.

“ Our unfortunate and present mayoralty experience is indeed a great hardship for the city. Thompson comes of good colonial stock, is rich, and should have been a good servant of the people. He trained with the wrong crowd, thought he could buy almost anything in American politics, had no scruples as to where the money came from,, lost his head and most of his political friends in the end, and is now badly in the discard, although he has nearly two years more in office—unless he has the decency to resign. Some of his acts and eccentricities have been rather exaggerated by the press, but Chicago is wearing sackcloth and is ashamed of the situation. I think the city it really on the way to reform —and it must, for they are to hold a great World’s Fair in 1933 and it will be well worth seeing. “We would rather cross any of the thoroughfares of Chicago, crowded as they are but subject to traffic regulations, than similar streets in Berlin, London, or Paris. Tell your friend she wouldn’t get a chance to see any crime in Chicago unless she went, where she shouldn’t. Tell her our Mayor is chastened, tamed, and not to W feared.”