City of Scoundrels: The 12 Days of Disaster That Gave Birth to Modern Chicago

by Gary Krist

  As for the prospect of life with her new fiancé, Emily was her usual hopeful self: “Albert—oh! He is so wonderful and so good to me,” she wrote near the end of her diary. “[He] loves me so with all his being, and, well, I love Albert.” That same day, she decided to start a new diary to record her life with Albert. For whatever reason, that document has not survived. But Emily apparently retained her positive attitude to the end. In 1969—exactly fifty years after the summer she documented in her diary—the now-seventy-year-old widow wrote a letter to the Chicago Tribune about the Apollo space missions: “The recent moon walks made me too excited to sleep,” she wrote. “I didn’t want to miss a single part. Every flight is different. When there is an Apollo mission on the moon, it is wonderful just to be alive.”6

  * * *

  The arrival of the Jazz Age and the apotheosis of the Thompson-Lundin machine, of course, did not mean the end of all political opposition to the triumphant mayor. True, some enemies—such as Maclay Hoyne and Charles Merriam—did more or less cede the field and move on to other endeavors, Hoyne to a private law practice and Merriam to academia. But the newspapers continued to rage against the Thompson machine. Victor Lawson’s Daily News launched some of its most heated attacks against the organization’s new state’s attorney, Robert Crowe. Picking up on one of Big Bill’s favorite prevarications, Crowe responded by threatening to buy Lawson “a railroad ticket to the penitentiary at Joliet” for tax evasion. No such prosecution was ever forthcoming, however, and Lawson, after several years of declining health, was permitted to die quietly in his own bed on August 19, 1925. He is remembered today as a seminal figure in the history of American journalism, one of the first major publishers to run his newspaper as a public trust rather than merely as a private business designed to generate profits and propagate a political agenda.7

  Robert R. McCormick, a much younger man than Lawson, had more time in which to wage his war against the man he despised. Firmly convinced that Thompson must have had some tie to the German secret service during the war, the Colonel spent much of 1920 enlisting the aid of his European and Washington correspondents to find such a connection. When this canard came to nothing, he contented himself with continuing his newspaper’s long-standing campaign of resistance to the mayor, stalking him, according to his best biographer, “with the grim tenacity of Ahab chasing his great white whale.” Eventually, the feud between Thompson and McCormick assumed absurd proportions, generating numerous suits and countersuits and culminating in 1931 with Big Bill publicly accusing the Colonel of plotting to assassinate him. By that time, however, the city of Chicago was a bit weary of both men. “The people of Illinois have no enthusiasm for Thompsonism, and less for the Tribune,” one journalist of the day observed. “But they vote for the one, and buy the other. They would shed no tears at the downfall of either. But the fact remains that the Tribune, if not the world’s greatest paper, certainly is one of them, and Thompsonism does build roads and bridges …, even if they cost more than they should.”8

  The ascendancy of the Thompson-Lundin machine, in any case, proved to be a temporary phenomenon. After the zenith year at the beginning of the decade, things began to fall apart in 1921. Overreaching themselves, Thompson and Lundin succeeded in uniting their opposition against them and soon began to lose elections. And before long, the organization was being torn apart by internecine feuding as well. Much to Lundin’s annoyance, Thompson began displaying a highly unpleasant independent streak, making political decisions without consulting his mentor. Then State’s Attorney Crowe began to show some independence of his own. In an act of brazen rebellion against the machine, Crowe launched a grand jury investigation into a school board scandal that eventually implicated even the Poor Swede himself.

  For Lundin, this was to be the end. Indicted for conspiracy to defraud the school board of more than $1 million, he was subjected to a twelve-week trial that brought to light much of the inner workings of the machine he had worked so hard to construct. And although he was ultimately acquitted—mainly because his lawyer was Clarence Darrow, who engineered a brilliant “Who me?” defense that played on Lundin’s milquetoast persona—the revelations of the trial severely wounded him as a political force. Mayor Thompson, who loyally testified for Lundin in court, was all but through with him afterward. “My friends have crucified me!” Big Bill complained to all who would listen. Weakened by scandal and reeling from the various lawsuits against him, the mayor recognized that it was time to lower his profile. When he was due to run for a third term, Big Bill Thompson announced that he would not be a candidate for reelection. “What a change in two years,” one historian wrote, “the triumphant overwhelming victory in county, state, and nation in 1920, the dregs of defeat in 1922!”9

  And so the mighty Thompson-Lundin machine collapsed. For Frank Lowden, there was significant satisfaction in seeing the downfall of those who had spoiled his own political prospects. Even so, the sage of Sinnissippi was resolved to remain in retirement, and eventually earned a reputation as a stubborn refuser of nominations and appointments, turning down a post in Harding’s cabinet, a U.S. Senate seat, the ambassadorship to the Court of St. James’s, and even, in 1924, a nomination by acclamation as Calvin Coolidge’s running mate. He claimed to have no regrets, though he would admit late in life that he had sacrificed the presidency largely because he’d failed to heed the advice of “some of my best friends to concede … to the worst elements of the party.” It was a lesson learned by many who dabbled in Chicago politics, where scruples could be a fatal political liability. Had Lowden been willing to play the game, Fred Lundin might actually have fulfilled his original goal of making “a Mayor, a Governor, a President.”10

  As for Big Bill himself, he would go on to have the most checkered of checkered careers. Having been declared politically dead upon leaving office in 1923, he would watch as his replacement in city hall—William Dever, a well-meaning progressive Democrat of unimpeachable honesty—made a complete hash of his term in office, enforcing Prohibition with such diligence that the city’s bootleggers were soon engaged in territorial battles that lifted the crime rate to new heights of bloodiness. Seeing his opportunity, Thompson threw his trademark cowboy hat into the ring for another term in the 1927 election. The Tribune, the Daily News, and much of the rest of the world were incredulous. But Big Bill knew his city better than they did. The reformers had had their chance and had just made the city worse; so Thompson ran against them as the ultimate antireformer, promising to usher back the wide-open town (“I’m as wet as the Atlantic Ocean,” he crowed). By playing to the thirsty, vice-deprived crowds, Big Bill was able to push his way past the incumbent Dever and independent John Dill Robertson (the creature of Thompson’s new archenemy, Fred Lundin) to win handily in the April election. Chicago once again had the mayor it wanted—and probably deserved.

  The story of Big Bill’s third term would fill another full volume. Suffice it to say here that it was not a conspicuous success. Without the guidance of his Mephistopheles, the mayor became increasingly erratic. Under his uncertain leadership (during his third term, he suffered a nervous breakdown that left city hall virtually rudderless for months), Chicago became the gangster city of legend. Al Capone and his ilk had the run of the town while Thompson engaged in quixotic battles against alleged British propaganda in the public schools and turned increasingly ruthless in his efforts to win election for his cronies. When he decided to run for a fourth term in 1931, even some of his staunchest loyalists abandoned him. He lost—to Democrat Anton Cermak—and retreated into political irrelevance. When he finally died on March 19, 1944, investigators discovered that he had left an estate of more than $2 million, more than half of it in bills of large denominations stuffed into secret safe-deposit boxes. Running a great city, it seems, was well-paid work, even if the salary wasn’t terribly high.11

  And yet, as Big Bill was putting his scissors to the ribbon across Michigan Avenue on that sunny day in May 1920 (his fifty-th
ird birthday, by coincidence), it was clear that he would be leaving behind another kind of legacy as well—one represented by that beautiful bridge in front of him, and by the Magnificent Mile of North Michigan Avenue that it would make possible. Granted, much of Daniel Burnham’s original grand plan remains unrealized to this day, but the mayor did accomplish much. Would the city have fared better if he had not survived the crisis of 1919, if the Thompson-Lundin machine had been brought down by—or had at least been significantly weakened by—those twelve extraordinary days of civic disorder? The disastrous Dever interregnum of 1923–27 does not inspire confidence that an “honest, scientific administration” would have done a better job of harnessing Chicago’s warring factions to the task of building the envisioned great city. For better or worse, the Chicago of the twenty-first century, perhaps the most architecturally distinguished and physically impressive city in the Americas, is in no small part a creation of the Thompson administration—however corrupt, however incompetent, however wasteful its leaders. Big Bill may have been—at times, at least—the buffoonish, crooked demagogue he is remembered as, but he was also more than that. In his coarse, sentimental way, he did love the city and its people, and he wholeheartedly embraced the idea of making them great. The reality of city politics in the early twentieth century was in any case never as simple as the good-government types liked to think. Reform, for all its good intentions, too often put the city’s struggling masses in the role of children, wards of the state who had to be cared for and improved through the wise guidance of a privileged, well-educated, native-born white elite. Thompsonism, for all its venality, actually gave them a measure of real representation in government. And while the educated white reformers were by and large the ones who went on to write the history of the era, casting their enemies as the villains, it was the machine politicians who made that history, by being elected again and again.

  Big Bill Thompson was not, to be sure, some kind of misunderstood benefactor of the common man. He was a deceitful, intellectually limited opportunist whose first loyalty was to himself and his cronies. But for all his faults and transgressions, he did manage to lead the sixth largest city in the world for well over a decade, keeping it afloat amid the conflicting energies of a vast and deeply divided population at a time of great stress. And when it was all over, the results were hard to dismiss, for Thompson left behind him a city as vigorous, as deeply flawed, and as improbably magnificent as himself.12

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I FIRST ARRIVED in Chicago—like many a newcomer over the past two hundred years—with no idea of what I was letting myself in for. The city is so much bigger, brasher, subtler, and rifer with wonders, idiosyncrasies, and complexities than anything that can be captured on paper or screen that someone facing it for the first time (or even the hundredth time) is bound to feel overwhelmed. For the narrative historian in particular the city can be hugely daunting. There were times in my research when it seemed that more happened in Chicago in a single week of 1919 than happened in most places over the course of several years.

  I was therefore fortunate to find so many people ready and willing to help me make sense of this embarrassment of riches. Much of my research occurred during tough economic times, so a lot of these people were facing the pressures of slashed budgets, curtailed hours, and staff shortages, but never were they anything less than generous with their time and expertise. I owe particular thanks to Lesley Martin of the Chicago History Museum’s Research Center, who has been a gracious and informative guide to the museum’s vast collections since the very beginning of this project. Lesley, along with Debbie Vaughan, Anne Marie Chase, and everyone else at the center, deserves the gratitude of all who care about the city’s varied and fascinating past. I also got plenty of help from the staffs of the University of Chicago’s Special Collections Research Center (where the Lowden and Wells-Barnett papers are held), the Newberry Library (which has the Lawson and Lardner archives), the Harold Washington Library Center (especially those in the Newspaper Microfilm Room and the Municipal Reference Collection), the Vivian G. Harsh Research Collection of Afro-American History and Literature, the library of the University of Illinois at Chicago, and the Spertus Institute of Jewish Studies (with particular thanks to Kathy Bloch). For her regular online doses of Second City lore, and for her enthusiasm about this project, I’d also like to send regards to Sharon Williams, author of the wonderful blog called Chicago History Journal (http://www.chicagohistoryjournal.com).

  I received welcome aid outside of Chicago from Eric Gillespie of the Colonel Robert R. McCormick Research Center in Cantigny, Illinois; Chatham Ewing, Dennis Sears, and the staff of Special Collections at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana (where the Sandburg papers are housed); and Christyne Douglas and Beth Howse of Fisk University’s Special Collections in Nashville. Closer to home, I’d like to acknowledge the employees of the Library of Congress, the National Archives (Archives II), and the University of Maryland libraries.

  And to the people at the Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office who tried hard to find the inquest documents I was looking for, I’d like to say “Thanks for trying.”

  Among the historians who offered me guidance and suggestions along the way, special mention must go to Douglas Bukowski, William Hale Thompson’s most insightful biographer. Doug and I don’t agree on everything Big Bill, but he has been incredibly generous with his time and his research, once even lending me his copies of some old FBI files that the Bureau itself no longer has. I now consider Doug a friend, and I apologize to him for those suggestions of his that I ended up not taking. I’d also like to express my gratitude to historians Sarah Marcus (now of History Works), Dominick Pacyga of Columbia College in Chicago, and Margaret Garb of Washington University in St. Louis for various comments and advice, and to Carl Smith of Northwestern University, who helped steer me to important sources very early in my research. And, as always, this book is better for having passed before the editorial eye of my pal Lisa Zeidner.

  I owe enormous thanks yet again to my astute, erudite, and debonair agent and friend, Eric Simonoff at William Morris Endeavor, and to his assistants Eadie Klemm and Britton Schey. At Crown, I’d like to thank Rachel Klayman, Molly Stern, and especially my editor Sean Desmond and his assistant, Stephanie Chan, for their enthusiasm, insight, and gameness above and beyond the call of duty. And finally, I’d like to express gratitude to my family—Elizabeth Cheng, Anna Chang-Yi Krist, and Lily—for being just about the most wonderful spouse, child, and hound (respectively) I can imagine.

  NOTES

  All dates are 1919 unless otherwise indicated.

  BA = Broad Ax

  CA = Chicago American

  CD = Chicago Defender

  CDJ = Chicago Daily Journal

  CDN = Chicago Daily News

  CDT = Chicago Daily Tribune

  CEP = Chicago Evening Post

  CHE = Chicago Herald and Examiner

  CSM = Christian Science Monitor

  NYT = New York Times

  The opening quotations are from Darrow, Story of My Life, p. 219, and Haywood, Black Bolshevik, p. 1. “Bathhouse John” Coughlin was quoted in Cutler, Chicago, p. 62.

  PROLOGUE: THE BURNING HIVE

  1. Principal details about Carl Otto’s morning come from a July 22 article in the CDT (in which his wife is interviewed) and from a special July 19 memorial issue of the Columns, the house publication of the Illinois Trust and Savings Bank. Weather details are from various local newspaper reports. The death toll from influenza had surpassed that of the war according to the January 9 edition of the CDN. Carl Otto’s reputation as a conscientious worker and the bank’s “all-around utility man” is from the Columns, p. 8. The bank’s president describes Monday as the bank’s busiest day on p. 3 of ibid. (NB: Although the Ottos’ son is referred to as “Daniel” in the above-mentioned CDT article, later newspaper reports and death notices identify the boy as “Stanley.”)

  2. The movements of Ear
l Davenport were reported more widely in the Chicago papers—perhaps because, as a former sportswriter, he was personally known to local journalists. Most details come from the July 22 editions of the CHE, CEP, CDN, and CDT, the last of which quotes one of White City’s owners on Davenport’s genial personality. An editorial entitled “Earl Davenport” in the July 22 CEP (where Davenport was once a sportswriter) also speaks at length about Davenport’s sunny nature. Specifics about the amusement park itself come principally from the “White City” article in “Jazz Age Chicago: Urban Leisure from 1893 to 1945,” edited by Scott Newman (http://chicago.urban-history.org). The Wingfoot Express and its assembly at the White City aerodrome are described in Hansen, Goodyear Airships, pp. 1–3, and in Young, Chicago Aviation, pp. 17–20. “Like a kid with his first pair of red-top boots” was reported in the July 22 CDN article. Davenport’s tennis shoes and his eagerness to fly that day were attested to by blimp pilot Jack Boettner in the July 22 CHE.

  3. Information about Roger J. Adams comes principally from two newspaper articles—the cited p. 1 interview in the July 21 CDN and an article in the July 22 CDT, in which Adams describes his movements of the day before. The “Blimpopolis” comment and other quotations in this section were recorded in the CDN piece. The Wingfoot’s departure time from the aerodrome was reported in a flight log printed in the CDT of July 22.

  4. Milton Norton, as a CHE photographer, was naturally given much attention in that newspaper. The scene in the newsroom and exact quotations (“Have you got a cameraman ready?”) were described by Meissner in a July 23 article in the CHE. Reports of crowds around town watching the blimp’s first flight were reported in the July 21 CDJ, an afternoon paper that was hitting the streets just as the blimp was taking its final flight.