U. S. v. Gangs

"Alphonse Capone," said a Federal attorney in Chicago last week, "in Indictment 22,852 you are charged with attempting to evade and defeat your income taxes. Do you plead guilty or not guilty?"

"Guilty," muttered Gangster Capone.

"Indictment 23,256 charges you with conspiracy to violate the national Prohibition Act. How do you plead, guilty or not guilty?"

"Guilty," mumbled the porcine racketeer. Having thus made himself liable to 34 years imprisonment and $90,000 in fines arising from charges brought during the previous fortnight (TIME, June 15, 22), Public Enemy Capone ("Snorkey" to his cronies), attired in a sulphur- colored suit, was hurried off to the freight elevator remarking that he "hoped everybody was satisfied."

Well satisfied were most U. S. citizens. Well satisfied was President Herbert Clark Hoover, credited with personally setting in motion the Government's war against organized crime. Well satisfied was U. S. District Attorney George Emmerson Q. (for nothing) Johnson, bushy spearhead of the Chicago drive. Not so well satisfied was Henry Hastings Curran, president of the Association Against the Prohibition Amendment. In Washington he lamented: "Never before have we seen Uncle Sam with one hand trying to lock up a man for his felonies and with the other hand trying to collect a good income tax out of the fruits of his felonies. . . . To top it off, Capone pleads guilty both ways; so while Mr. Mitchell edges him up to the jail, Mr. Mellon halts him at the door to make a thrifty touch for the Capone liquor income tax. Capone may get a little of what is coming to him for his curious code of ethics, but is Uncle Sam's code of ethics any less peculiar than Capone's?"

Secretary Mellon may not get all of Snorkey's $215.000 in delinquent taxes, for most of the racketeer's worldly goods have been shrewdly placed in his wife's and mother's names. And there was small chance of Capone's getting all of the Federal punishment coming to him. Snorkey's attorneys believed that by saving the Government the trouble of a trial they may get their client off with a sentence of three years for both offenses. Still pending is a six-month sentence for contempt of Federal Court (TIME, March 9). Capone, now aged 33, hopes that when he leaves prison he will still be a young man, that times will be better, that he can profitably resume business.

Meantime, word came that Johnny ("The Immune") Torrio--who brought Snorkey from New York to Chicago eleven years ago, was later scared out of town by rival guns--would come back from Florida to succeed his onetime protege. Gangster Torrio has been erroneously reported as hiding in Italy. His pretensions to the Chicago gangland throne will probably not go unchallenged. Hardly had the Capone pleas been entered last week before two gunmen were shot down in a reawakened feud between the South Side gangs of Frank McErlane and Edward ("Spike") O'Donnell. Attorney Johnson said that the Government also had plans in the event of Torrio's return.

With Capone in captivity, it was announced that 40 of the Federal agents who had worked on his case had been transferred to New York City where the next phase of the Government's racketeer hunt will take place. A day later the luck and courage of one of the city's six Public Enemies ran out when he fainted in an uptown police station. He was Arthur Feigenheimer alias "Dutch" Schultz, prominent member of the Bronx beerage. In a run-in with two city detectives outside his Fifth Avenue apartment, Gangster Schultz saw one of his four henchmen shot down, fled. Captured, taken to headquarters, Gangster Schultz begged for a sedative, said that he was on the verge of nervous prostration, asked that no camera flashlights be exploded. After he was placed under $150.000 bail (it was later halved, he was released) for carrying a gun and resisting arrest, U. S. Attorney George Zerdin Medalie announced that he was trying to bring tax evasion and bootlegging charges against the pale-faced hoodlum.

The five other prescribed gangsters against whom the Government will concentrate in New York are: Irving Wexler ("Waxey Gordon"), East Side whiskey peddler; Owen "Owney" Madden, extortionist, laundry racketeer; Larry Fay, shady proprietor of night clubs, taxicabs, milk associations; Bill Duffy, cabaret owner and prize fight manager; Giro Terranova, "The Artichoke King," who collects his levy from markets.

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