AL CAPONE

Hokitika Guardian, 23 April 1932, Page 6

AL CAPONE

COMPLAINS OF INJUSTICE

NEW YORK, April 12. Q

While the hunt for the Lindbergt ha by vvuus at its height “Scarf ace” A 1 Capone, America’s “beer baron, ga\e his opinion of the “beer racket to Arthur Brisbane, noted columnist and newspaper owner, who interviewed him in the Cook County goal of Chicago, on the Lindbergh kidnapping case.

“1 am in the beer business,” said Capone. “If 1 am guilty those that bu.v are guilty. 1 don’t have much to do with whiskey. In Chicago w e do not sell 2 per cent of the whiskey that they sell in New York. Yes, of course selling whiskey is easier and more pi°fitable. There its more money in a small package.” Capone smiled sorrowfully as lie described the “injustice” to which lie lias been subjected. The Government wants him to pay 33(3,000 dollars income tax. “I don’t know,” said he, “where they get those figures, unless it is out of the moon.”

Capone said it was his intention to live up to the agreement that he had, to pay what the Government wanted He thought it strange that the Government should share profits in a business that it calls criminal. “It was my intention,” said Capone, “to serve my two and a half ypais without, a murmur, and get into some legitimate racket when I got out of gaol.” Concluding his article, Brisbane wrote: “A prominent Chicago hotel man tolls you that three more speakeasies have just been opened close to bis big hotel, for the convenience of hotel guests, making competition more keen. We have a civilisation built up under prohibition, a civilisation of bootleggers, gangster rule, kidnapping, gigantic financing of crime and rackets of a thousand kind-. No wonder Capone says: ‘lf T am a bootlogger, so are they all’.