Chicago Touches Bottom
CHICAGO TOUCHES BOTTOM TRADITIONAL American faith in democratic government has been badly bruised and beaten of late years, but it probably never put up with a more devastating blow than was...
...He could be pretty certain that an hour would dawn when his peculiar virtues would be in demand again...
...What this new "big boss" means to Chicago cannot be developed here...
...Indeed, he went further against the grain than any merely ambitious person would have gone...
...Through his altruistic endeavor, throngs of Negro workers flocked into Chicago during war-time, under circumstances which made disastrous race strife inevitable but revealed to the Southern darky, earning big wages, a "real friend...
...Bill" Thompson is the only man now living who could have organized all the forces that balk against frank and above-board municipal rule in Chicago...
...One thing, however, Mayor Dever did not find time to achieve—the organization, in his own support, of a political machine so well lubricated that it would spin round for him under any circumstances...
...to enforce the civil law against tremendous odds, engendered by the worst system of gangstering and bootlegging ever to have existed inside an American metropolis...
...Even so, however, Thompson could not have got back into office without the canny promoting of State's Attorney Robert Crowe...
...Who is responsible...
...A public official who attempts to hold the fort of law against attacks by organizations of desperate men as well as against general antagonism to the Eighteenth Amendment, is sure to lose that charm of "hale fellowship" (it may be observed incidentally that Mr...
...Under his direction much was done to develop the city's highways...
...He was one of the first to realize that the Middle-West, and, of course, its biggest town, bitterly resented the world war and would not get that resentment out of its system for years...
...The question had better be pondered carefully now, before projects to anneal the Chicago judiciary to the Crowe-Thompson system of "government" have been realized...
...He had never compromised himself by lifting an eyebrow against the old saloon or the new blind pig...
...Robert Crowe controls the municipal welfare of millions of Americans...
...To imagine an American city tumbling back into the worst features of "boss rule" as inveighed against during a generation is a somewhat difficult feat for the optimistically minded, but is genuinely imperative now...
...but the town is in his hands, and anybody who likes to sing "O Beautiful, my country...
...Education without politics was inconceivable to him...
...Chicago is a striking representative instance of how deeply the issue of dry enforcement has changed the current of local government throughout the country, turning it from decent progressive effort to an extremely shady defense of "personal liberty...
...He declared that, although he did not believe in the Eighteenth Amendment, it was his duty as a mayor to enforce it as fully as possible...
...651...
...to render the educational system efficient and respectably independent of politics...
...The point, however, is not so much the unutterable banality of a population which comes back to the dross it once happily cast aside, as it is the very grave danger which liquor enforcement within municipalities implies...
...It may be that the elements responsible for having made the moral issue of abstinence a part of constitutional law will some day discover the fact that they have exposed the essential character of democratic rule to disastrous fluctuations of sentiment and to the organizing skill of hoodlums...
...ought to take the trouble to find out for himself what Crowe actually means...
...For his part, "Bill" Thompson is a comeback...
...His grip might have slackened a little, but the fingers were long and the wrist muscular...
...Mayor William A. Dever has never been a professional politician: he abandoned a distinguished legal career when the citizens of Chicago, badly in need of decent municipal rule, earnestly besought him to assume the responsibilities of office...
...Ousted from the City Hall, whence his slogan, "Throw away your hammer and buy a horn," had radiated to every billboard in the town, Thompson went into training...
...The two leading candidates were about as fully differentiated as day and night...
...Gunrunners and law-breakers have captured the nerve-centre of the Middle-West, and the great Mr...
...Thompson's second name is "Hale") so indispensable to political leadership...
...CHICAGO TOUCHES BOTTOM TRADITIONAL American faith in democratic government has been badly bruised and beaten of late years, but it probably never put up with a more devastating blow than was delivered at the recent Chicago mayoralty election...
Vol. 5 • April 1927 • No. 24
