LAWLESS CHICAGO

Taranaki Daily News, 9 April 1928, Page 7

LAWLESS CHICAGO

MOB RULE BY GANGSTERS BATTLES FOR GRAFT MONEY MANY MURDERS EXPECTED CORRUPTION IN ELECTIONS By Telegraph—Press Assn.—Copyright. Received ApTil 8, 11.5 p.m. A. and N.Z. New York, April 7. The New York Herald and Tribune prints the following remarkable despatch contributed by a staff correspondent sent from 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 a hundred million dollars this year derived from the graft estimated to flow from booze and gambling. Two armies of job holders, hoodlums, gunmen, bootleggers, gamblers and just plain “mugs” will do battle in fifty wards which make up the city of Chicago and in some of the outlying towns. One will be fighting under the banner of Bill Thompson, the present Mayor, and Governor Smail, who is battling for his political life, and the State’s attorney, Mr. 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 Louis Emerson, candidate for Republican nomination .for th© Governorship against Governor Small.

Wholesale murder is confidently predieted on both sides. No one is quite sure of the outcome, though opinion generally seems to favour th© better organised Thompson side. One judge has been given authority by the Supreme Court to jail anyone without the possibility of release under bail whom he believes guilty of vote manipulation, and the latter has sworn in 3000 deputies, who have power to arrest anyone on suspicion. This may reduce the 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 rat# of murder has considerably increased. Murder can be arranged for any ordinary person at 50 dollars, with considerable competition as to who will get the contract. However, this situation, which apparently only affects the Republican party, is complicated. There are 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.