Evening Post. SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 1930. AN ORGY OF CRIME

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 45, 22 February 1930, Page 8

Evening Post. SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 1930. AN ORGY OF CRIME

"Chicago as a Pauper Cily r> is a typical headline under which the American Press has been recording the inability of the second. cily in the. land and the fourth in the world to meet even such supreme obligations as wages and pensions. AVitlt a last frantic 5.0.5., wrote the Chicago correspondent of the United Press about the middle of January, Chicago's governmental ship has gone down in the ocean of debt through which her battered old hulk lias been wobbling for twenty months. The second largest city in the country is flat broke. For approximately sixteen years Chicago has been living beyond its income. Now credit is exhausted, and the health and safety of 3,500,000 residents are threatened by the gravest financial crisis ever faced by an American municipality. A still more frantic S.O.S. was issued at the end of the month when, as we were informed by cable, the Mayor of Chicago, the notorious "Big Bill Thompson, "admitted publicly for the first time in a statement that Chicago was 'broke' and tottering on the brink of financial disaster." Though it is the corrupt and incompetent administration of "Big Bill" that has brought one of the world's wealthiest cities to this disgrace, it does not appear that any material, part of the shortage is attributed to direct theft. The beginning of the second year of his present term was distinguished by a Court judgment ordering the restoration to the City Treasury of a sum exceeding 1,700,000 dollars which, under the guise of fees to experts and commissions, had been paid over to Thompson's political machine. As the ratepayers have not been encouraged by Thompson's opponents to look for any similar windfalls to relieve the present necessities, it may be assumed that political "steals" have played no great part in the depletion of the city's funds, and that the main cause is the incompetence which is almost as conspicuous a mark of corrupt administration as its dishonesty. But though Chicago's appearance as "a pauper city" is a novelty and a paradox, there is nothing new or surprising in her appearance as a criminal city. That in this capacity she should have greatly enhanced her reputation under "Big Bill's" fostering care is, indeed, just what might have been expected. When he declared during his election campaign for "a wide open town" he may be taken to have meant that a city which is sometimes called "Hell with the lid off" should under his regime suffer from no pretence of a lid at all. Shortly after his election the Mayor took credit to himself for a diminution of crime. The improvement, if it had keen real, might have been regarded "as a triumph for. a .Thompsonian variety of the Montessori method in its application to the very unpromisingmaterial of Chicago's underworld, a policy looking to the better nature of the gunman, the bandit, and the crook to achieve the best results through a self-expression unembarrassed by the attentions of the law, and finding its faith richly rewarded. But the triumph was short-lived. The man who owed his election to "bombs, bullets, and ballots" was not privileged to settle Chicago's crime problem by faith. That faith was apparently still active when at the beginning of last month the retrenchment considered necessary to avert bankruptcy included the dismissal of 473 policemen. But the effect of this step was, according to Police Commissioner Russell, that "crime jumped 66 per cent." The 473 policemen were accordingly called back to work a few days later, and in view of the appalling orgy of crime from which' the city continues to suffer extraordinary measures have since been taken for adding to their number by the enrolment of amateurs. The nature of this astonishing epidemic may be illustrated by a few items from the excellent record which the Press Association has been supplying from day to day during the past month. The first was appropriately timed for the very day on which the Mayor made his public admission that llie city was totter-; ing on the verge of financial -disaster. A much deadlier species of disaster is indicated by these items: Chicago, 29 th January. Meanwhile Chicago's reputation for bombing continues unabated. An attempt was made to put a bomb in the car of one of tho State's attorneys who has been active .against gangsters, while bombs last night blew up a building on the fashionable Michigan avenue a*nd two structures in other parts of the city. Chicago, 30th January. The fifth bombing in the last twentyfour hours occurred when a shop was blown to bits and 100,000 dollars' damage done over an area of two blocks. Ten persons wero injured, and a patrol man was tossed through a plate-glass window. At the same time, the bodies of a taxi company official and a chauffeur were found shot dead in an automobile on

the street. The son of a gangster later was ambushed and critically wounded in the same neighbourhood. New York, 3rd February. • The crime cycle in Chicago, almost unparalleled even for that city, was augmented to-day by a gang murder, the fourth in as many days, and two bombings,, one in a theatro crowded with women and children. Forty holdups were listed on the police records in a ten-hour period. Shootings, robberies, and s'luggiugs in tho meantime also continued unabated. This last message also reported the bombing of a suburban theatre in which 300 women and children were assembled, and their panicstricken stampede to the street, fortunately without loss of life. An-, other explosion in the early hours of the same day destroyed three shops, "rocked the entire south-west side of Chicago," shook thousands of houses within a radius of two miles, and filled the streets with terrified men, 'women, and children, many in .their night clothes. We have omitted the message of the 2nd February, which reported, at unnecessary length ' for our purpose, the -shooting of a detective by two gangsters in the street,' but the sequel cannot be -missed: The police practically threw up their hands when it camo to naming the assassins with whom he had incurred enmity. They said it was impossible to theorise as to which group had decreed his death. If a crime cycle, in which these are the fruits of six consecutive days, is "almost unparalleled", in the City of Chicago, it must be surely without a parallel, except under the stress of war or revolution, anywhere else. And of all our quotations the most ominous is the last, showing, as it does, that "the police practically threw up their hands" when asked to name the detective's assassins, and preferred not to "theorise." If the police are intimidated or "squared-," it is lime for the citizens to protect themselves, and' that is what they are doing. The Citizens' Rescue Committee which is endeavouring to save the city from bankruptcy has now its analogue in a kind of Citizens' Police Force, also under private auspices. "The explosion of another bomb on the north side of Chicago destroying a laundry and injuring two persons" was followed on the 12th February by the formation of an organisation "to conduct a secret campaign against the city's criminal elements." Under the command of Mr. Robert Randolph, a leading business man, with a distinguished war record, they lostno. time in getting to work. On the very next day the round-up of over 2500 suspects was reported, and on the day after that there was still more exciting and effective work. Chicago, 14th February. Citizens of Chicago fought- shoulder to shoulder with the unpaid police today against the outlaws of tho boulevards and back alleys. Two bandits were killed and two, wounded at the end of the fifth day in tho city's campaign against organised crime. In addition, 3000 suspects have been rounded up, 572 men being arrested ill the last twenty-four hours on suspicion of having a connection with the underworld. Whether Mr. Randolph's organisation supplied the "unpaid police" or only the other citizens who fought by their side is not quite clear. What possible legal basis there can have been for the round-up or the shooting on the part of the police, paid or unpaid, or any other citizens is a question of much greater interest and importance. They seem to have acted as though' they had a sort of general warrant for the arrest- of anybody suspected of c6nnection with the underworld, and for shooting him down if he'resisted. One might have supposed' that this was a considerable performance even for American licence, yet 'it does not satisfy the ambition of Police Commissioner Russell. "Looking at a collection of 500 evil faces peering through gaol bars," he is reported to have said: I wish I had Mussolini's powers, and I wouia execute every last one of them. Let us hope that the Commissioner had a tenderer thought when "in line with seedy, unkempt derelicts," he saw two handsome girls, Irene Bent and Barbara Meyer, whose specialty is holding up taxi-drivers at the point of the pistol and embarrassing them greatly by walking off with their-pants. The 'romantic glamour associated in the mind of a distant observer with the idea of being robbed by a girl bandit is dimmed by these distressing details. One is reminded of that strange verse in the Apocalypse: Behold, I come as a thief. Blessed is he that watcheth, and keepeth his garments, lest he walk naked, and they see his shame. This beatitude will be more easily, achieved by the taxi-drivers of Chicago . while Irene and Barbaja remain under lock and key.