How gangster businessman Al Capone made money from the crisis and how he repaid ordinary people

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

Each era has its own heroes and its own landmarks. Once, Al Capone was considered an ambiguous person: on the one hand - a gangster and a murderer, a brothel organizer, a racketeer and generally a multi-source on the part of violating criminal laws, on the other, a businessman responding to the needs of ordinary Americans, helping to find what the state blocked access to - first of all, of course, alcohol; he is also a philanthropist - it is common knowledge that during the Great Depression, Capone opened a chain of free canteens in Chicago for the unemployed. Now, almost a century after the end of the high-profile "career" of this crime boss, everything looks much more certain, and even philanthropy does not save Capone's image.

New York and the beginning of a "career"

Of course, Capone was a product of his time: moreover, if he had not become a gangster and a major figure in the criminal world, his fate would have been completely unenviable, here the “pan or disappear” rule worked and the choice was made in favor of the former. Alphonse Gabriel Capone was born on January 17, 1899 in Brooklyn, in a family of immigrants from Italy. In the first third of the twentieth century, there were about four million immigrants from this country in the United States, and the Italian diaspora, along with others, occupied a significant place in American society. Capone's father was a hairdresser, his mother worked as a seamstress, and in addition to Alphonse, eight more children were born in the family.

The beginning of the century could hardly be called serene for Americans in general and for Italian Americans in particular, but Al Capone's main problems were associated not so much with the echoes and consequences of the First World War, as with his own nature. Later, his tendencies were called psychopathic; at fourteen, he was expelled from school for assaulting a teacher. Of course, the boy was accepted with open arms by the street - he got into the gang of one of the New York gangsters, Johnny Torrio.

In the biography of Capone, it is customary to note that he started from the bottom, it is not surprising: the mere fact of belonging to the national diaspora did not open all the doors of the criminal world. The young Italian, distinguished by great physical strength and the very expressiveness that prevented him from becoming part of ordinary society, worked for some time as a bouncer in a billiard club. There, among other things, he learned this game and even won one after another local tournaments, but the main income of the institution was brought by another - the gambling business, which the owners hunted. After a series of showdowns with competitors, Al Capone left for Chicago, where he was supposed to perform the duties of a bodyguard boss, Johnny Torrio.

Prohibition, Great Depression and other favorable factors for career development

Since the beginning of 1920, the so-called "dry law" came into force in the United States, which was canceled only thirteen years later. But the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which banned the production and sale of alcohol, could not prohibit ordinary Americans from wanting to drink. Bootleggers came to "help" - smugglers and underground producers of alcoholic beverages, including Capone, of course. The Torrio gang was not the only one in Chicago that sought to profitably provide citizens with the coveted potion, the competition between the groups led to shootouts and real battles in which Capone showed himself to be a desperate and cruel guy, which only added to his credibility in the eyes of the leader and the criminal world in general.

And in 1924, Torrio himself became a victim of an attack, as a result of which he almost died. After recovering from a serious operation and treatment, he handed over the leadership of the gang to Capone, who for seven years became one of the most influential people in Chicago. First of all, he was concerned about his own safety, remembering the risks that were attached to the new position. An armored Cadillac with bulletproof glass was created for Capone, and the rear window could be removed to shoot at pursuers. Later, by the way, this car came in handy for US President Franklin Roosevelt.

Under Capone's leadership, the gang grew in influence and income, with about a thousand members and a total income exceeding three hundred thousand dollars a week. Bootlegging, organizing brothels, underground casinos - Capone actually felt like the master of the city. It was then that the concept of racketeering arose - institutions that refused to "cooperate" often simply blew up in the literal sense of the word, the Chicago bandits were excellently equipped with all kinds of ammunition. In the five years from 1924 to 1929, more than five hundred bandits were killed in the city - mostly as a result of showdowns between clans. Capone had the dubious fame of organizing the Valentine's Day Massacre, when seven members of a rival gang were murdered in 1929.

Of course, the huge financial flows that flowed into the pockets of the gangsters did not come out of nowhere, they came from what ordinary citizens paid - for alcohol, smuggling from Europe, affordable women, gambling. Capone himself, who by the end of the twenties earned a huge multimillion-dollar fortune and did not hide his wealth, considered himself only a successful businessman who gives people what they want - with some nuances inevitable in his business in the form of shooting and corpses, nuances that required firmness of character and taking tough measures. Of course, the influential rich man, confident in his indispensability for society, could not ignore politics either. Capone's money relied on the mayor of Chicago, William Hale Thompson, who became famous, among other things, thanks to the "pineapple primer" when several polling stations were attacked by Capone's gang with grenades.

Philanthropy as a tool for political career

Perhaps Capone himself planned a political career for himself in the future - this would help him solve problems with law enforcement agencies. Since 1929, when Capone was arrested in Philadelphia for illegal possession of weapons and spent a year in prison, he has been on the list of the most dangerous criminals. By that time, the Great Depression had already begun in the country - a financial crisis that led to the loss of jobs for almost a quarter of adult Americans with legal capacity. People were losing not only a source of income, but also at home, the opportunity to feed their children. Under these conditions, Capone's opening of a network of free canteens for those in need was greeted with a bang.

Even though the Italian was known as a gangster and a murderer, hunger turned out to be stronger than principles, and these establishments were not empty. All comers, without asking questions, in these dining rooms were given coffee and a roll for breakfast, soup and bread for lunch, soup, coffee and bread for dinner. Capone's dining halls were visited by about 2,200 Chicagoans daily, and by Thanksgiving in 1929 they had about 5,000 guests.

This, and even the constant support of Italian Americans, which Capone provided, apparently from the bottom of his heart, remembering how difficult it is to break through in life, and feeling a strong connection with both family and roots, could lead a gangster to a political success, but fate had other plans for him. For a number of law enforcement officials, it became a matter of honor to send Capone to jail, and this was finally done - in 1932, a verdict was passed in the case of non-payment of income tax - the prosecutor managed to find convincing evidence of Capone's super-high income, which, of course, did not appear in his declaration. The amount unpaid as tax was almost 400 thousand dollars. The gangster was sentenced to eleven years in prison.

In prison, Capone's chronic diseases, especially syphilis, worsened, he began to rapidly lose health, including mental. By the time of his early release - in 1939 - his intellectual development was comparable to that of a 12-year-old child. Despite the intervention of the best doctors available to the Capone family, despite the fact that the ex-leader of the gang became one of the first American to be treated with an antibiotic, penicillin, Capone's condition continued to deteriorate, and in 1947, after celebrating his forty-eighth birthday, he passed away., at his home in Florida, surrounded by his family. Even with the imprisonment of Capone, the influence of his gang on the life of Chicago has significantly weakened. Showdowns still took place, but their degree decreased, open violence and skirmishes were avoided by the participants of the skirmishes.

Al Capone became not only a brainchild, but also a symbol of his era, well understood and accepted as an inevitable stage in the development of society. The Italian will be replaced by others, who are essentially just as unscrupulous in the choice of means of obtaining money and power, generations will change before philanthropy, which once served the ambitions of the powerful, ceases to be a means of creating a public image. Al Capone, the one who donated three hundred dollars a day for food to Chicagoans, collecting only $ 25,000 a month from gambling revenues, has become at least morally obsolete.

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