The Criminal History of Mankind by Colin Wilson

By 1919, New York was the criminal capital of America. The Mafia existed in most other major cities but it remained an underground criminal organisation; only in New York had it achieved something like political control. And New York was regarded by the rest of America – particularly the rural communities – as a pit of corruption and wickedness. America was a religious country, and the forces of law and order were well in control. And then, in 1920, the law-abiding citizens handed the gangsters a mandate for unlimited expansion. It was called the Volstead Act.

Prohibition was not a sudden visitation of the spirit of religious intolerance. The crusade for total abstinence had been launched as early as the 1840s – largely by Methodists. It sprang up in the frontier towns, on the great plains of the west. In most small towns, the saloon was a shack that sold cheap whiskey and gin, and the men who used it were prone to drink themselves unconscious because they might not be back in town for another month. The women who could be picked up in such places were usually worn out drabs suffering from venereal disease. When the face of vice was so ugly, the Anti-Saloon League had no difficulty persuading the virtuous that the answer lay in total prohibition. Boredom and sexual frustration also played their part in the psychology of the temperance crusader. Carrie Nation, who used to wreck Kansas saloons with a hatchet around the turn of the century, was always stirred to additional destructiveness by the sight of ‘immoral’ pictures over the bar. As Americans became more aware of the growth of organised crime, the abolitionists used it as an additional argument for prohibition; if alcohol was banned, the vices that depended on it would wither away.

But in spite of this aggressive puritanism, America would probably never have taken the fatal step if it had not been for the First World War, when many states banned the manufacture of alcohol merely in order to conserve grain for food. This caused no problems, since Americans were ready to take any measures to defeat the Kaiser. The ‘dry’ lobby in Congress saw success within its grasp and pushed through the eighteenth amendment, banning all alcohol; Senator Andrew J. Volstead proposed an act for its legal enforcement, and it was promptly passed. On 17 January 1920, America became ‘dry’; the Anti-Saloon League declared that it presaged an ‘era of clear thinking and clean living’.

What Congress had done was to create in America the same conditions that had made Italy the most lawless country in the world. Government suddenly became the enemy of the people. Americans had always been inclined to cynicism about politicians – the comedian Will Rogers remarked: ‘With Congress, every time they make a joke it’s a law, and every time they make a law it’s a joke.’ Now Congress had made a particularly bad joke, and commonsense revolted. The gangster who was willing to defy the new law suddenly ceased to be a public enemy and became a benefactor. By the time America realised its mistake – after ten years of murder and violence – it was too late. Organised crime had come to stay.

The greatest mistake of the Anti-Saloon League was in failing to work out how total prohibition could be enforced. ‘Near-beer’ – beer containing less than one half per cent alcohol – was still legal, so breweries were allowed to continue operating. But in order to manufacture near-beer, ordinary four per cent beer had to be brewed, then de-alcoholised. There was nothing to stop the brewers diverting kegs of real beer, or providing their customers with some pure alcohol – distilled from the beer – to add to their unpalatable near-beer. An alternative was to add industrial alcohol, which was still legal – American production of industrial alcohol shot up in the 1920s from 28 million gallons to 180 million. Drinkers who could afford it had no difficulty in buying real Scotch or brandy from smugglers who brought it in from Canada – which was soon providing the American market with more than five million gallons a year. Apart from these large-scale commercial concerns, thousands of ordinary citizens were willing to take the risk of distilling alcohol on cheap apparatus – ‘alky-cookers’ – and selling the results to criminal syndicates who paid up to $15 a day – a sum that would once have represented a week’s wages for many of them.

In Chicago, ‘Big Jim’ Colosimo – also known as Diamond Jim because of his habit of carrying pockets full of diamonds – already had the criminal organisation to launch into large-scale traffic in illicit alcohol. (It quickly became known as bootlegging, because a boot was a good place to conceal a bottle or a hip flask.) He already ran a chain of brothels, with the aid of his chief lieutenant, Johnny Torrio, who was an ex-member of the Five Points Gang. Torrio was small, well-dressed and quietly-spoken; he was also intelligent enough to know that violence usually rebounds against those who employ it. When it came to gangland disputes, he preferred diplomacy to assassination. At the beginning of Prohibition, he was in his mid-thirties; Colosimo was fifty – too old to take advantage of the magnificent opportunities that had been placed in his lap by the Anti-Saloon League. Torrio chafed impatiently; but on 11 May 1920, he suddenly inherited Colosimo’s empire when his employer was mysteriously shot through the head as he went to take delivery of a consignment of alcohol. Rumour had it that Torrio paid the assassin – a man named Frankie Yale – ten thousand dollars.

Colosimo’s funeral was magnificent, attended by five thousand mourners. And as soon as it was over, Torrio settled down to the business of organising Chicago’s crime. There were too many gangs engaged in bootlegging, and even at this early stage they were inclined to shoot at one another for violations of territory. Torrio called the gangs together, proposed a peace treaty – pointing out that there was more than enough for everybody – and suggesting that the gangs should reach strict agreements about territory. And when the various gang leaders – Dion O’Banion, the Gennas, the O’Donnells (two gangs of that name), ‘Terrible’ Touhy and Terry Druggan – had agreed to co-operate – or at least suspend hostilities – Torrio turned his attention to expanding the former Colosimo Empire, searching out locations for roadhouse-brothels in Cook County (which had been allotted to him) and bribing the local police and civic authorities. Torrio preferred to avoid threats and violence; instead he relied on persuasion and judicious gifts. Most of Chicago’s most influential businessmen and politicians were happy to co-operate. Torrio went into partnership with a wealthy brewer, and was soon making more money in a week than Colosimo had made in a year.

Minor criminals viewed his success with envy. A safe-blower named Joe Howard decided to join the bootleg business by holding up a truck loaded with alcohol and leaving the driver to walk home – a practice that became known as hijacking, presumably because the gunmen stopped the trucks with a shout of ‘Hi, Jack!’ When two of Torrio’s consignments vanished in this manner, Torrio decided to suspend his prejudice against violence. On 8 May 1924, Joe Howard was in Heinie Jacobs’ bistro on South Wabash Avenue, explaining to some acquaintances that all dagoes were cowards, when an overweight young Italian walked in through the door. ‘Hi, Al,’ said Howard, and was shot through the head six times. The next morning, Chicago newspapers carried photographs of Torrio’s chief lieutenant, Alphonse Capone, who was wanted for questioning by the police.

In 1924, Capone was twenty-five years old. He had known Torrio in New York, and had always regarded him with hero worship. When Capone was nineteen – in 1918 – Torrio had invited him to come to Chicago to work as a bouncer in the Colosimo Cafe on South Wabash; his wages were $75 dollars a week. It was widely believed in Chicago that Capone murdered Colosimo. What is certain is that by 1922 he was earning $2,000 a week by running the brothels. He also slept with the most attractive of the girls, and at some point acquired syphilis.

When the police were searching for Capone, he was nowhere to be found. Meanwhile, the witnesses to the Howard shooting all began to develop doubts about whether the killer was Capone. One of them simply vanished. A month later, Capone walked into a police station, saying he had heard a rumour that he was wanted for questioning. The police were forced to drop the case for lack of evidence.

By 1924, the Torrio-Capone gang was also at cross-purposes with Dion O’Banion, whose territory was the North Side. The Irishman had been a choir boy, and disapproved of brothels; he was also inclined to take every opportunity to grab more than his share. The last straw came when he sold Torrio one of his breweries for half a million dollars, then tipped off the police when Torrio went to view his acquisition; Torrio was arrested.