All for Al
I FIRST visited Chicago in the early summer of 1926, some time, I suspect, before Mr. Allsop was born, and reading this fascinating work has had the effect on me of Proust's madeleine. For at that time the Chicago Post Office, a remarkably fortress-like building, was occupied by a platoon of United States Marines to pre- vent its being taken over by one of the numerous gangs who, like companies led by condottieri, were disputing the lordship of the city. One of the problems being discussed by the Chicago press in that golden age was the destiny of a great deal of medicinal whisky then lodged in a bonded warehouse near one of the Chicago railway stations. For some reason or other, the owners of the bonded ware- house wanted to get rid of the whisky and the papers were speculating on when and by whom it would be hijacked. Appeals were made for more marines, but most of them were in Nicaragua at that moment. When I came back after a visit to the West the problem had been solved. An ingenious entrepreneur had rented premises near the bonded warehouse and had run a pipeline over the roof into waiting tank cars. Unless my memory fails me, this was the first time I heard the name of Alphonse Capone (he always insisted that the `e' was silent).
Mr. Al(sop's book has a slightly misleading title, for it is not only or mainly a story of bootlegging in Chicago; it is a Balzacian story of the rise and fall of Al Capone, the C6sar Birotteau of Chicago in the Roaring Twenties. I think Mr. Allsop is right in suggesting that Capone's name is one of the few likely to be remembered from this 'era of beautiful non- sense.' Even Al Smith's name is faintly recol- lected today. But I am quite prepared to believe that the mention of the name Capone evokes, all over the world, the 'rat-tat-tat' of the tommy-gun (the Thompson sub-machine- guns that first proved of real worth in Ireland). Al Capone was, for a time, by far the most famous American citizen; he was known, in a way than pedants might object to, as the 'nine- teenth amendment.' For his main aim in life was to bring order and efficiency into the distribu- tion of illicit booze in and around Chicago. Since most inhabitants of Chicago were strongly opposed to the eighteenth amendment, Al met little hostility. If one could imagine a Professor
Moriarty in London providing beer on a great scale to the thirsty inhabitants persecuted by Welsh and Scottish versions of the Noncon- formist Conscience, one would have some idea of why Capone was, on the whole, a popular and respected figure in the Chicago of the Twenties.
He was also a legendary figure in his life- time and in the full flower of his activity. He has recently been one of the begetters of the funniest movie I have seen in years, Some Like It Hot. He was 'public enemy number one,' a rank which provided Dr. P. G. Wodehouse with an idea for a good musical and Miss Florence Desmond with the theme for an admirable parody, 'Public Sweetheart Number One.'
Mr. Allsop tells us of how he was struck in his childhood by the sight of Al Capone's ar- moured car, which was carried round like an Epstein statue from raree show to raree show. And Mr. Allsop, in a serious, indeed almost solemn, way, tells the story of this simple-minded businessman (he thought women should stay at home in the old Italian fashion, dotni mansit lanam feel%) and he was very worried about the dangers of Communism. Like most Italians, he had a very strong sense of family life and prob- ably never understood why he ended up in Alcatraz (there were other citizens of Chicago who had equally earned a time on the Rock). At one level, this book can be recommended without reservation.
At another, I'm afraid it can't. Mr. Allsop has not asked enough relevant questions of his Chicago informants. He refers to and quotes eminent Chicagoans and other eminent Ameri- cans in a way which suggests he is not deeply soaked in the background. Thus, 'Cissie' Pater- son, who interviewed Mr. Capone, is brought on in a fashion which suggests to me that Mr. Allsop has no idea who Mrs. Paterson was. She was the cousin of Colonel Robert Rutherford McCormick, of the Chicago Tribune, the sister of Captain Joe Paterson, of the New York Daily News, herself the owner of the Washington Times-Herald and one of the most entertaining and able women that Chicago ever produced. She was not, as Mr. Allsop seems to think, just a reporter. Then Mr. Allsop doesn't do enough of what the Jesuits call 'composition of place.' There is no discussion of the incredibly com- plicated political situation of Cook County in which Chicago is embedded (a situation which makes the office of sheriff of Cook County far more important that it is in most American cities).
More than that, there is no real understanding of the world in which Capone came to the top. This was the era of the Teapot Dome; this was the era when Harry Dougherty had just ceased to be United States Attorney-General. This was the era of Len Small, 'the Kankakee Farmer.' It was also the era of the building-up of the topless towers of the Insult Empire, a far more important racket than any Mr. Capone organised. The elections of 1926, to which Mr. Allsop makes a brief allusion, were about far more important prizes than the beer racket, and if a great many inhabitants of Chicago were 'all for Al' (Capone, not Smith), it was because they thought he was a more entertain- ing and not conspicuously more dishonest citizen than some of the figures who flit through Mr. Allsop's pages. Of course, killing people is wrong, just as eating people is wrong, but with- out asserting there were any worse citizens in Chicago than Mr. Capone, some of his critics were not conspicuously better.
D. W. BROGAN
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