Chicago Circus

Dirty rat--nutty judge--hoodlum--lazy blood-sucking jobber-- William Halitosis Thompson--blustering loudmouth, irresponsible mountebank--blubbering jungle hippopotamus--lurching, shambling imbecile--flabby jowls of a barnyard hog--two jackass ears, a cowboy hat and an empty space between--chambermaid in a ranch bunkhouse--skunk--:

With such epithets loud-yawping Mayor William Hale Thompson and publicity-crazed Municipal Judge John Homer Lyle belabored each other last week in the final round of their fight for the Republican nomination to be Mayor of Chicago. The primary election was to be held Feb. 24, their battleground was the Loop, their prize the honor of being the city's First Citizen during the Century of Progress (1933). Their hooligan antics, their vulgar language blanketed other reasonable is sues, obscured other candidates.

Mayor Thompson--"Big Bill the Builder"--sought a fourth term in a campaign in which he flayed Prohibition, harped on waterway development, abused the Chicago Tribune and his opponents. His famed "King George" issue was played down. Into the Loop his limping, bulky racoon-coated figure led his parade of bands, elephants, cowboys, burros, mules to block traffic for hours. At his rallies he shook a halter at pop-eyed crowds, loudly denied that he, unlike his rival, was tethered to the Press. When his speeches grew so vicious that local papers refused to carry them, he screamed more insanely than ever against the Press.

Typical was an incident in a Loop theatre last week. The Mayor boomed out his usual nonsensical speech, twirled his halter, cried: "I wear no man's halter around my neck but thank God, I've got one real friend in the newspaper business. He's a Democrat and his name is William Randolph Hearst."* Up rose a heckler to shout: "And he's got his halter around your neck, you lying skunk, Bill Thomp son." Eggs began to splatter over the stage.

An angry Thompson crowd fell upon the heckling egger, almost tore him to bits before he was rescued by police. Ten minutes later when quiet had been restored, Mayor Thompson continued: "That hoodlum Lyle sent one of his gangsters over here to break up this meeting. The nutty judge lives with the hoodlums, the dirty rat!"

Judge Lyle's candidacy is an attempt to profit politically from his sudden headline reputation as the judicial scourge of Chicago's gang world. From the bench and with newshawks closely covering him he made a great dramatic and futile attempt to have the city's 26 "Public Enemies" arrested and held in exorbitant bail under an old vagrancy law (TIME, Oct. 13). So erratic and unstable that he had scant support from lawyers, Judge Lyle focused his campaign on the charge that Mayor Thompson was in league with the underworld, that Gangster Alphonse Capone had contributed $50,000 to the last Thompson campaign and was now ready to help the Mayor steal the forthcoming primary election. He summarized: "The real issue is whether Al Capone is to be authorized to rule Chicago again through the medium of a dummy in the Mayor's chair." At his rallies he exhibited gangsters' machine guns. When the Judge charged the Mayor with diverting funds from flood relief to his own political use, the Mayor sued him for $100,000 libel damages.*

For sheer vituperation and ridicule Judge Lyle could hold his own against Mayor Thompson. Excerpt: "Chicago is a great and growing city. But what has Bill the Bluffer had to do with it? Like an African witch doctor he looks about, sees Chicago's skyscrapers, waves his arms and says, 'I did it all!' . . . An Eskimo at the North Pole might as well have been mayor ; while he was in Chicago his head quarters were in a hotel room where he spent his time playing checkers with a policeman. He calls me loony. Did you ever see a shambling imbecile whose dis eased brain didn't defend its lunacy by snarling at others? To refer to him as a blubbering charlatan perhaps is charitable. Even a lunatic may not be charged with complete mental bankruptcy."

The Thompson-Lyle contest stirred street crowds to a frenzy of partisanship. Respectable conservative citizens, mortified by such political horseplay and vilification, could find little to choose between the two Republican candidates--except that to Mayor Thompson must go chief credit for creating 20th Century Politics Chicago Style. Meanwhile, out of the spotlight and assured of the Democratic nomination for Mayor, waited Anton J. Cermak, holding his fire until the April election.

Days of destiny in the lives of Chicago's three most public figures:

William Hale Thompson was born in Boston May 14, 1869, scion of a wealthy and respectable family. In 1900 after playcowboying in Wyoming, he took a $50 bet in the Chicago Athletic Club from his friend George Jenney that he was not scared to go into politics, was elected Alderman from the Second Ward. On April 6, 1915 he was elected Mayor of Chicago, with the aid of notorious Fred ("Terrible Swede") Lundin, on a Wet-Dry, White-Black, German-British platform. "Freedom for Ireland" got him his re-election in 1919. His third election (1927) he won on a promise to "punch King George's snoot."

Born in Indiana 49 years ago, Judge John Homer Lyle got his political start on Sept. 17, 1930 when he issued a batch of warrants for the arrest on vagrancy charges of Chicago's worst "Public Enemies."

Born in Brooklyn 34 years ago, Alphonse Capone started up to the top of U. S. crime on May 12, 1920 when James ("Big Jim") Colosimo, whose lowly bodyguard Capone was in the Chicago underworld, was assassinated.

* Though bitterly partisan, Publisher Hearst is politically unpredictable.

* Pending in Chicago courts are 18 libel suits filed by Mayor Thompson.

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