Authors: Jim Ridings
Chicago to Springfield:: Crime and Politics in the 1920s (Images of America (Arcadia Publishing)) (4 page)
The other political powerhouse in Chicago was Fred Lundin, who started out as a huckster with a patent medicine wagon. He would extol the benefits of his Juniper Ade drink while two African American men with banjos provided music to draw crowds. (JR.)
Lundin got into Chicago politics in the 1890s. His real talent was as a kingmaker and political boss. It was Lundin who picked playboy real estate developer William Hale Thompson and made him mayor. Lundin sold Big Bill the same way he sold his snake oil medicine. “He may not be too much on brains, but he gets through to the people,” Lundin said of Thompson. (ALPLM.)
Several scandals rocked the Thompson administration. Thompson and his cohorts cheated Chicago out of $2.2 million in fake expert fees in a city real estate project. They were convicted and ordered to pay $1.7 million, a decision their lawyers managed to get reversed on appeal. Another scandal involved the theft of $1 million in fake contracts for material for Chicago schools. Lundin and 15 others went on trial in 1923 and beat the rap thanks to lawyer Clarence Darrow (right). (CHM-DN-0075818.)
Judge John Lyle ran against Thompson for mayor in the 1931 primary. At rallies, Lyle displayed machine guns and other weapons confiscated from gangsters. Lyle said, “The real issue is whether Al Capone is to be authorized to rule Chicago again through the medium of a dummy in the mayor’s chair. These (weapons) are the fruits of William Hale Thompson’s administration. I lay at the door of the Thompson administration every murder by gangsters in the last 12 years.” (KCC.)
Lyle lost the primary, but Democrat Anton Cermak beat Thompson in the election, and Cermak was no reformer. He was a Democrat party boss and was allied with gangsters who were rivals to the Thompson-Capone faction. Cermak is credited as the architect of the Chicago Democratic machine, while Thompson is credited as the reason there has been no Republican mayor in Chicago since. (HAHSM.)
In Chicago, Al Capone had the police, the mayor, and the governor in his hip pocket, and they let Capone have the city to do as he pleased. This gave Capone power few have ever held in the United States. It is also why federal agent Eliot Ness (pictured) and the “Untouchables” had to be formed in 1928. Ness and his squad earned the moniker because they were the only officials or lawmen in Chicago who could not be bribed. (HAHSM.)
Mayor Thompson believed that reformers were the real enemy. Robert Randolph originated the Untouchables task force to counter “the most corrupt and degenerate municipal administration that ever cursed a city, a politico-criminal alliance formed between a civil administration and a gun-covered underworld for the exploitation of the citizenry.” Chicago police once battled federal agents after a Thompson campaign worker was shot in a saloon by an agent. To Mayor Thompson, Al Capone was a friend, while Eliot Ness was not.
(CHM-DN-0081244.)
GOVERNOR LEN SMALL
GANGSTERS AND GRAFT
It could be debated that Len Small was one of the most corrupt governors this country has seen. He was governor of Illinois from 1921 to 1929, and it was during his administration that the Chicago Mob was allowed to grow and become firmly established. But Governor Small’s corruption went far beyond helping to enable the Mob.
Before he became governor, Small was state treasurer. He embezzled more than $1 million of state funds in a money-laundering scheme by depositing state funds in a bank that did not exist. Six months after taking office as governor, he was indicted for this crime. For three weeks Small ran from the sheriff to avoid arrest, threatening to call out the National Guard “with bayonets” against him. Meanwhile, his lawyers claimed that as governor he was above the law, citing the divine right of kings. Their argument in court was that “the king could do no wrong.”
Len Small went to trial and was acquitted by a jury that was allegedly bribed by Al Capone’s hoodlums. And even though the jury acquitted him, a civil suit ended with the Illinois Supreme Court forcing Small to repay the state $650,000 of the money he stole. In the book
Political Corruption in America
, Mark Grossman wrote, “Although it is obvious that Small was one of the most corrupt, if not the most corrupt, governor in American history, his name is almost wholly forgotten.”
Gov. Len Small purportedly sold thousands of pardons and paroles, including many to gangsters, murderers, white slavers, and even to cop killers. He was a partner with Mayor Thompson in an incredibly corrupt political machine. Small wrecked civil service and brought back the spoils system, and he docked state workers’ pay for his own supposed slush fund. Facing impeachment, Small persuaded the legislature to pass a law exempting the present governor from removal. He also had ties to the Ku Klux Klan, and they endorsed his campaigns.
Today, in his hometown of Kankakee, Small’s family owns the newspaper and endows the local museum in Governor Small Memorial Park.
Lennington Small was born on June 16, 1862, on the family farm near Kankakee. He was one of six children of Abram and Calista Small. At left are Abram (left), his son Len (center), and grandson Leslie. Below are two early portraits of Len Small. (All KCMPC.)
Abram Small grew superior strains of rhubarb and developed a method of growing the perennial plants indoors, seen above, in the winter. Below are his fields with the state hospital in the background. Agriculture was an avocation his son shared. (Both JR.)
Len Small married Ida Moore in 1883, and they had three children, (from left to right) Leslie Small, Ida May Inglesh, and Budd Small, pictured above in the 1890s. Below are Len Small and his family on the porch of their house in Kankakee in 1900. (Both JR.)
Len Small’s first major political job came in 1897, when Governor John Tanner appointed him to the board of the Eastern Illinois Hospital for the Insane in Kankakee, which was a reward for political work. The hospital was an opportunity for theft and graft by those in charge, and Len Small got rich from the coal contracts and more. No one received a job or kept it without kicking back some of their pay, and no merchant did business with the hospital without an added graft payment. Small used hospital horses on his farm and had hospital employees work on his property and on his campaigns. (JR.)
Major scandals at the state hospital in 1902 and 1903 included docking employee paychecks for a political slush fund. Supt. Joseph Corbus admitted it, and so did Small, who also admitted keeping the interest on hospital funds. Pictured here are games at the state hospital in 1900. (HAHSM.)
This is the inside of the state treasurer’s office in 1907; Len Small is fourth from the left. Small kept $200,000 in interest in state funds and did not deny it. A law was passed to prevent it from happening again. During his second term as treasurer a decade later, his theft was on a grander scale. (KCMPC.)
Evangelist Billy Sunday built this huge pavilion in Kankakee for a three-week revival in 1907. Len Small made a controversial altar call, which cynics did not believe. (JR.)