Chicago, Chicago
The Dry and Lawless Years. By John H. Lyle. (Prentice Hall, 18s.) HISTOIUANS, Mencken once wrote, are failed novelists. Nowadays they are too frequently successful journalists. Or, in this case, a success- ful Chicago judge, working with a local newsman to achieve 'readability.' In trenchant Timese, Judge John H. Lyle uses the memories of twelve years spent in the criminal courts of Chicago to scratch at the hoary htemophilias of prohibition days in. Chicago. The everbleeding massacre of St. Valentine's Day spatters the garage wall once more. Again Dion O'Banion, acutely character- ised as `the pixy with the twenty-five notches on his gun,' bloodies the funeral wreaths of his own flower shop. In his zealous unearthings of the Well-known and gory details, Judge Lyle leaves no headstone unturned.
The tragedy is that Judge Lyle, by his- own account, did much to break up the hoodlum's hold on Chicago in the Twenties. His setting of high bail. and use of vagrancy charges helped to put the mobs on the run. If his pursuit of their bones in print is weary, stale, flat and highly profitable, he has worried their flesh enough in his day to earn the gratitude of the citizens of Cook County. The book spends sixteen chapters repeating the ancient accounts of the rise of the gangs in the Windy City. A concluding chapter asks for action against organised crime in America today. And an epilogue tries to deny the body of the book by saying that Chicago is really the home of virtuous citizens, 'so many more good people than bad,' Aunt Nettie and the Tribune. Un- fortunately, the work in general weighs heavy
on the side of the angels, the sensational, the notorious and the inaccurate.
Whenever Judge Lyle leaves the combat-area of his own recollections, he is usually bushed. In two pages, which aim to explain the origins of prohibition, he is guilty of nine false or mislead- ing statements. Other errors spot the pages. Still, there is one new and interesting theory. Lyle maintains that Zangara, who killed the Mayor of Chicago, Anton Cermak, while he was stand- ing at the side of Franklin Roosevelt, was really aiming at the mayor, not at the President. Cermak's noble last words to Roosevelt, 'I'm glad it was me instead of you,' were all along the intent of the Mafia. Since Zangara had won marksmanship medals in the Italian army, this new theory sounds plausible.
The worst aspect of the book is its repetition of the antique myths of prohibition. The 'experi- ment, noble in motive' was not really all my rye and Al Capone. It was, in intention, a progressive reform to clean up the vice districts and city saloons which provided the loot for corrupt city political machines. The tie-up be- tween liquor and politics was, in the words of Coolidge's• Assjstant Attorney-General, as old as beer and pretzels. If the graft under the Vol- stead Act exceeded the golden grease poured out by beer barons and whisky trusts, it was in the tradition of the urban Land of Opportunity.
Prohibition was also more than a Chicago problem. It was a national affair. Little liquor, except legal hard cider, was drunk in many country districts. Moreover, the crime rate in the Corn Belt was one-quarter of that in the cities.
In much of the south and west, the Twenties was a dry and lawful decade. It was this peace which the country voters had hoped to extend to the cities with the Eighteenth Amendment, trying to make of all America a millennial Kansas afloat on a nirvana of pure water.
Perhaps the most enduring myth of all, still perpetuated in this book, is that Prohibition gave gangsters the chance to muscle into legitimate business. In fact, big business called in the hood- lums to break up early labour unions. From Pinkerton's gunmen through the Pennsylvania Coal and Iron Police to Ford's Service, American businessmen have used thugs to beat up labour. In self-defence, labour has retaliated by employing other thugs to hammer company scabs. In these battles, only the gangs won, taking over manage- ment and unions in many fields of business. When Dion O'Banion was killed, the local Team- sters put a wreath on his coffin. Jimmy Hoffa, their present President, is the offshoot of those flowers of evil.
Judge Lyle brings out one fact well, and, for this alone, the book can be recommended. There is a Grand Canyon between American law and American enforcement. Although gangland killings in Chicago have sometimes exceeded an annual average of a hundred since the Twenties, not one member of an organised gang was executed during Prohibition by the authorities, nor has one been executed since. As that old Chicago hand, the bartender Mr. Dooley, pointed out, 'In England a man is presoomed to be inno- cent till he's proved guilty an' they take it f'r granted he's guilty. In this counthry a man is presoomed to be guilty ontil he's proved guilty an' after that he's presoomed to be innocent.'
ANDREW SINCLAIR
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