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On February 13, 1929, George Moran, leader of the Irish – Jewish gang in Chicago,
received a phone call concerning a truckload of whiskey. Moran, thinking he was very lucky,
arranged for it to be delivered to a warehouse the next morning at 10:30. So on Valentine’s Day
a Cadillac that looked like a police car drove up to the building and five men got out and entered.
Gun shots pierced the silence and eight minutes later they came back out and drove off. What
happened that day was one of the biggest mob shootings in history. Al Capone was suspected,
but he wasn’t in Chicago at the time. The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre as it became known
helped the government to focus on organized crime. Organized crime was around before Al
Capone, but only after the amendment on prohibition, did the government begin to crack down
hard on crime bosses like Al Capone.
Organized crime came to America in the 1800’s replacing criminals who worked alone or
in small groups. It was brought by immigrants who were oppressed by their governments and
had to fend for themselves. So they turned to local criminals to protect them and provide the law
and order. In return these peasants would give them money or any other service they could
provide. These criminals formed gangs amongst themselves and fought with other gangs over
territories. When people began to immigrate to America after the Civil War, they still distrusted
the public authorities and brought the gangs with them. One of the most well-known groups
associated with organized crime was the Italians. Most were from the island of Sicily where they
had been taken advantage of by the mainland. Their name for organized crime was the Mafia.
Other groups linked with organized crime to a lesser extent, were the Irish and the Jews. Since
the U. S. government did not persecute them as they had done in their home countries, the gangs
turned to other means to make a profit. Before prohibition this included running prostitution
houses and illegal casinos. America did not notice these crime organizations springing up
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everywhere until a police chief was killed outside his home in New Orleans. The suspects were
Italian (Woog). After this incident they slipped below the radar again until Al Capone’s reign
over Chicago in the 1920’s.
Al Capone was born on January 17, 1899, in Brooklyn New York. His parents were
immigrants from Naples and he was the fourth of nine children. Capone started his career at an
early age, quitting sixth grade and joining the James Street Boys gang. He continued to move up
the ranks and made it into the pinnacle of gangs in New York, the Five Points gang. When he
was 19 years old Capone left New York and headed to Chicago at the request of Johnny Torrio,
one of his mentors when he was in Brooklyn. Other reasons for making the move included
escaping from murder and rape charges made against him in New York. Capone worked under
Torrio until Torrio was almost killed in a gang war in 1925. With this incident, Capone moved
into the biggest position in his life, crime boss of biggest gang in Chicago. Some thought he was
not made for making business decisions and more suited to being a bodyguard, but Capone
quickly changed their minds. In 1927 his estimated wealth was close to 100 million dollars
(Capone). Most of this was made in the bootlegging business that came about in the early 1920’s
due to the move to prohibition.
The move towards prohibition began in the 19th century and had a widespread following
across the nation. Many groups advocated it and worked to get rid of all alcohol. The Women’s
Christian Temperance Union and the Anti-Saloon League are just two of the many organizations
responsible for the ending of alcohol consumption. So on January 16, 1919, the 18th amendment
was passed which made the selling of alcoholic beverages illegal (American History). The
Volstead Act passed in 1920 solidified the amendment and gave it further structure. But the
tough part of this movement was the enforcing of it. Gangs took over the illegal selling of
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alcohol which was known as bootlegging. They set up secret bars like taverns hidden in grocery
stores and got the liquor from overseas and “underground” distilleries. Law enforcement was not
much of a problem for them, because the operations were so big that the crime bosses could pay
off police officers to look the other way. American citizens were not helping the temperance
movement either. The public saw the illegal speakeasies and taverns as glamorous and exciting.
Gangsters were made out to be heroes and acted like businessmen providing a rare service
(Woog). Among the crime organizations turbulence was brewing. Just like back in Italy, gang
fights broke out between gangs trying to control the biggest territories and get the most money.
Probably the most prolific dispute was the fight between Capone and O’Banion’s gangs on
Valentine’s day in 1929 (Cavendish). These events caught the government’s attention and started
their war against organized crime.
When Herbert Hoover was elected president in 1929, he began his war on crime. For him
the most obvious target was Al Capone. The government hired Eliot Ness to find evidence to
prosecute Capone on prohibition violations and tax evasion. Ness formed a team of agents like
himself and worked to spread them out around Chicago and infiltrate the organization. While this
was going on, Capone was arrested for carrying a concealed weapon and his brother Ralph was
put in charge. Ness worked hard to shut down Capone’s breweries while he was in jail and made
a small victory when he indicted Ralph Capone for tax evasion. In mid-March of 1930 Capone
was let out of jail on good behavior. His business situation did not improve, and to compound
matters, he was put at the top of the Chicago Crime Commision’s public enemies list. This
outraged and humiliated Capone. All the while Ness was digging deeper and deeper into the
organization. He had already placed two agents inside to aid with the investigation, and they
were doing their part. One double agent named Graziano had found the bookkeepers for
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Capone’s finances. With the help of Ness, they cooperated and were taken in to protective
custody. If for some reason the tax evasion case failed, Ness had documented thousands of
prohibition violations. He even took the trucks he had confiscated from Capone’s many
breweries and paraded them past his headquarters in Chicago. Finally the investigation came to a
close and the grand jury met on June 5, 1931, and indicted Capone on 22 counts of tax evasion
and violation of the Volstead Act. If the government had completely won its case he would be
facing 34 years in prison. The trial had its fair share of complications as well. Capone tried to
make a deal for a lighter sentence, which initially worked but did not get past the judge in charge
of the case. The U. S. Attorney was also worried about jury tampering which was huge in gang
circles, but at the last minute the jury panel was switched with another from an adjacent court
room (Bardsley). After getting past these obstacles, the court finally found Capone guilty of tax
evasion on October 17, 1931, and was sentenced to 11 years in jail (Bonesteel). With the
conviction, the government got confidence and continued to work on shutting down more crime
organizations throughout the nation.
With Capone put away and other criminal empires being shut down, there were no more
gang fights as bloody as the one that happened in 1929. Al Capone was the epitome of an
organized crime boss but only when Prohibition began did the government try to bring him
down. Prohibition was repealed in 1933 and with it came the end of bootlegging sending the
remaining gangs back out of the public view.