In Chicago

Upon the wistful departure of Alphonse ("Scarface Al") Capone, famed ganglander, for a winter vacation (TIME, Dec. 16),* Chicago announced itself to be convalescent from the civic disease that had made it the most notably criminal city in the U. S. Even Mayor William Hale ("Big Bill") Thompson stopped shouting about Chicago's virtues to announce that its vices were on the wane. Chief of Police Michael Hughes gave out figures to the effect that Chicago was 66% less criminal in 1927 than formerly.

While Mayor Thompson shouted and Chief Hughes compiled figures, leading citizens investigated for themselves. Besides the black eye which dramas like Chicago and The Racket were giving their city, citizens had become genuinely alarmed by hordes of crooks and thugs who, finding the alcohol and dope industries too highly organized to be profitable or even safe in Chicago, had turned to such bold badness as the "union racket"-- a simple strongarm game, played with lead pipes and sawed-off shotguns, where the crooks formed "labor unions" of junk men, fish dealers, tailors, cobblers or other defenseless professionals, and shot or clubbed any who refused to join and pay "dues."

Having investigated, the citizens asked President Silas Hardy Strawn of the American Bar Association to preside over them at a discussion meeting. Last week the evening of the meeting came--rendered appropriate by the arrival that morning of three fresh corpses, the remains of some novice "hijackers," at a Chicago Heights morgue.

After dining 250 strong, in the Hotel La Salle, the citizens listened seriously to Chief Justice W. E. Brothers of the Criminal Court, to State's Attorney Robert E. Crowe, to members of the Chicago Crime Commission, to Police Chief Hughes, all of whom said they were doing their duty and quoted figures to prove it. Lawyer Strawn, ever judicious, sought to mitigate the officials' embarrassment by saying heartily, "I do not believe crime here is greater than it is in any other city. In 36 years in Chicago, I have never been held up, robbed or racketeered. . . . By this testimony here we may do something to purge the fair name of Chicago."

But other citizens present remained serious. Thomas E. Donnelley, Chairman of the Citizens' Committee, considered the report with the cold eye of a printer who knows a good deal about statistics and announced with Irish candor his belief that Chicago crime had not been materially stamped out. Mr. Donnelley said: "I know from secret sources that criminals in Chicago are watching this meeting and wondering whether this is the beginning of a rising of citizens. If it ends in talk, praising this person and that person, saying we are better than we are, we will be missing the greatest opportunity. . . . Crime is much complicated with politics. . . ."

The Rev. Philip Yarrow. Superintendent of the Illinois Vigilance Association, last week thrilled a Chicago audience, mostly women, by producing on the Masonic Temple platform a black robed, hooded, masked figure who croaked sepulchrally: "I have consorted with the dregs of humanity. I have waded through cesspools of vice in order to carry out my investigations. I have played poker with the brother of Al Capone! I have a sixth sense! . . .

"I want to tell you people that the underworld is wonderfully organized. . . . It is so powerful that if my identity were known as I stand here, a bomb might be pitched at my feet."

The audience looked thankfully at burly guards stationed near. No bomb came. The speaker thundered: "Chicago has sold her soul for pleasure. Old Rome in all its licentiousness was never like this city! . . . It is up to you people to arise!"

*Ousted from Chicago, escorted out of Los Angeles, received tentatively by Miami, Fla., Capone was last week driven out of Miami by editorials in the Miami Beach Sun, whose editor, Kent Watson, was lately beaten by gangsters following the Sun's campaign against an allegedly crooked gambling resort.