Mar, £1.
The significant fact about Al "Scarface" Capone, the Chicago underworld king, is not that he is a notorious criminal, but that he is a criminal afraid, He went to prison for a year on a technical charge of carrying a pistol, which he undoubtedly sported so that he might be arrested. He found a prison much safer and pleasanter than the great, open spaces, where every gangster recognized that dead kings leave so much more room at the top of the criminal ladder. Capone is not a normal American type. He is a product of unassimilated immigration, of the lower classes of great cities, who have utilized the extraordinary situation create by Prohibition to engage in a career of crime, unchecked at first by the general humour of anti-Prohibitionism and then grown to such dimensions that, for a time, ina place like Chicago, it overwhelmed the law.
Yet no one in the United States has any sympathy for Capone, When he comes to a decent city, he is immediately arrested asa vagrant and sent wandering elsewhere, He money, plenty of it, but en ment of his wealth' grows Ihcreasingly more difficult, so difficult in fact that, for 'a ye Capone took refuge in a pri And now, he has disappeare He is hiding so that men may not drive him away and gangsters kill him. He has become an object upon whose brow is the mark of Cain, Democtatic governments ° a1 ways likely to suffer from the dangers of mob election of pub-ie officials, which leads inevitably to an improper relationship between public officials and the criminal classes, It is not that these abuses do not occur, but that public opinion, in time, is roused against them; the corrupt officials driven from office, are shamed and are often imprisoned. "Big Bill" Thompson, the ridiculous mayor of Chicago, for instance, finds himself politically bankrupt and has to accept assistance from decent gentlemen who formed a committee for the rescue of their city and at the head of which stands Mr, Silas Strawn, who studied the extraterritoriality problem in China some years ago. The fact is that Chica-
cover up the situation, they use not attempting to no white-wash; they make no attempt to save "Big Bill's" or any face, They approach the problem candidly, admitting error where there has been error, calling popular attention to the dangers of careless political action, showing by example what can be done by citizens to. save their city—and in the end, they will produce good government in Chicago. And throughout this very painful process every step that is taken is in accordance with the law. It is true that the law is often
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.