A Gang-Chiefs Taxes Everything connected with the gangsterism for which
Chicago is justly, or (as Chicago vehemently insists) unjustly, notorious has a touch of the incredible about it. This week's headlines record the downfall of the prince of all the gangsters, Al Capone, more familiarly known as Searfacc, and his condemnation to eleven years in gaol, and we assume naturally that at last the penalty for a lifetime's murders and blackmail is being paid in a miti- gated form. Not at all. The only legal offence charged against Mr. Capone is that by evading Income Tax pay- ments he has robbed the American Commonwealth of its due share in his criminally-acquired gains. That is sober and literal fact, and it needs no embroidery of comment. However, unless Capone succeeds on appeal (and appeal procedure in America has often served to rob the gaol of its due) Chicago will know the gangster-chief no more for a considerable time. And as Capone has already rid the city of most of his rivals for his own ends the reign of gangsterism may really receive a vital blow. Chicago took one step to clear its reputation when it refused to re-elect Mayor Thompson in the spring. The Federal Government has now assisted it on the upward path by securing the conviction of Capone, even though it be not for the venial offence of murder but the heinous crime of tax evasion.
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