In Chicago

Chicago's criminals continued flourishing last week, such criminals as whoever it was that haled Footballer John C. Acher of Northwestern University out of his automobile on Michigan Avenue one night and pumped two slugs into him for scraping a fender as he drove past; and hardbitten Joe Saltis, gun-toting beer gangster, who was still at large last week after a six-month "search" by police who know him well.

Nevertheless, Chicagoans thought last week they could see rays of hope piercing the city's crime pall. A cigar store clerk outfoxed a thug, shot him dead. Another citizen, halted on Madison Street by the command "Hands up," was amazed to see his assailant fumbling through his own pockets, looking puzzled.

"You have no gun?" asked the citizen.

"No," cursed the fumbler. "It's gone."

The citizen lambasted the gunless gunman, had him jailed.

Still more hopeful, a new State's attorney was getting ready to enter office in Cook County, Judge John A. Swanson. Robert E. Crowe, the Republican incumbent beaten by Swanson in the primary last spring, is the political "pardner" of Mayor William Hale ("Big Bill") Thompson. Crowe tried to "knife" Judge Swanson in last month's election and "throw" the office to the Democratic candidate. Many another Republican lost out but Judge Swanson prevailed and last week was preparing to rake out Crowe's politico-criminal mess. Instruments ready at hand were some able assistants of Special Prosecutor Frank J. Loesch, the fearless, aging Presbyterian whom Chicago's civilian Crime Commission engaged some months ago to do what State's Attorney Crowe and Mayor Thompson were leaving undone. Judge Swanson planned to take over the Loesch assistants for his own.

Although promising as a new broom, Judge Swanson is taken only on approval by well-informed Chicagoans, who realize that he is politically obligated to Charles Samuel Deneen, perhaps the only U. S. Senator who ever attended a gangster's funeral. But Judge Swanson will be able to bear his political obligations lightly if he makes good his end of his alliance with the Chicago Association of Commerce, which backed Special Prosecutor Loesch and the Crime Commission.

When he got back in office last year, Mayor Thompson called loudly upon men like President James Simpson of Marshall Field & Co., Utility Man Samuel Insull, John Hertz of Yellow Cabs, William (Gum) Wrigley Jr. and Promoter George F. Getz, to serve on a grandiose committee which later proved to be only one more vehicle for Thompsonian publicity. With the Mayor increasingly bogged and discredited, the Mayor's committee has awakened to its opportunity, to Chicago's necessity. Last week the Chicago potentates were considering taking .the city's affairs--debts, taxes, crime, public works and all--into their own hands and running Chicago the way Venice used to be run, by an oligarchy of wealthy, peace-loving trade-seeking doges.

Perceiving the timeliness of working with the Better Element, the Thompsonian school superintendent, William J. Bogan, made a belated effort to close various "ice cream parlors" which sell gin & sundries to high school minors. He suggested that members of the Parent-Teacher association become "vigilantes."