The retired shuffler off of mortal coils who honors me with his acquaintance is about thirty-eight. Perhaps it were better not to describe him too closely, because he might run on to a Toronto paper. But he is about as handsome as a ferret, has fine hands, looks like a jockey a bit overweight.
He quit gunning when the quitting was good—when the country went dry and liquor running became the best-paying outdoor occupation.
After his principal customers discovered that it was altogether better and cheaper to ship whiskey up from the big warehouses in Kentucky than to take the chance of running it across the imaginary line that separates the U.S. and Canada, he retired.
Now he is a man-about-town and bond salesmen call on him. When I talked with him he kept steering the subject away from gunning and the Irish situation to ask my honest opinion on some Japanese government bonds that will pay eleven percent interest.
In the course of an afternoon I learned a number of things about the trade. Yes, there were American “bump-off” artists in Ireland. Yes, he knew some that were there personally. Well, he didn’t know who was in the right in Ireland. No, it didn’t matter to him. He understood it was all managed out of New York. Then you worked out of Liverpool. No, he wouldn’t care particularly about killing Englishmen. But, then, they gotta die sometime.
He’s heard that most of the guns were Wops—Dagoes, that is. Most gunman were Wops, anyway. A Wop made a good gun. They usually worked in pairs. In the U.S.A. they nearly always worked out of a motorcar, because that made the getaway much easier. That was the big thing about doing a job. The getaways. Anybody can do a job. It’s the getaway that counts. A car made it much easier. But there was always the chauffeur.
Had I noticed, he went on, that most of the jobs that fell through were the fault of the chauffeur? The police traced the car and then got the chauffeur and he squealed. That was what was bad about a car, he said. “You can’t trust any of them.”
That’s the type of mercenary that is doing the Irishmen’s killings for them. He isn’t a heroic or even a dramatic figure. He just sits hunched over his whiskey glass, worries about how to invest his money, lets his weasel mind run on and wishes the boys luck. The boys seem to be having it.
Trading Celebrities
The Toronto Star Weekly
February 19, 1921
Why not trade other public entertainers as the big leagues do ball players? At any time you can pick up a paper and read “Aleck to Redlegs?” or “Hornsby Traded—Rumor.” By internationalizing the trading of public assets in personality, stories like this would occur:
To Swap Clemmy
PARIS, FRANCE, FEB. 5.—A report is current that France is in the market for a couple of good statesmen to replace Georges Clemenceau. Although his legs have gone back on him, the Frenchman is thought to have several good years of statesmanship left and it is reported that a number of nations will put in a claim for him via the waiver route. He was at one time internationally known as the Tiger of France.
What a boon to a community like Toronto, which doesn’t know what else to do but elect officials who will keep on running. As in this case:
Church Goes Over
TORONTO, FEB. 16.—Unnamed parties have completed negotiations between the Toronto City Council and the Hamburgervolksparteiverein of Hamburg, Germany, for the exchange of Mayor Thomas Church in return for 20,000 tons of German shipping. Hamburg being in desperate need to civic and industrial reestablishment, it turned naturally to Church, whose remarkable success with Toronto is internationally recognized. Toronto, in turn, having acquired its power, light and now its street railway to public ownership, is anxious to add to its utilities by owning some ships to grace its new harbor. In an interview confirming the trade, Mayor Church said: “I regard this opportunity to further Toronto’s public ownership plans as a significant honor from my people.”
What about those great cultural influences, the newspapers?
Tele for Times
LONDON, ENGLAND, FEB. 10.—In recognition of a mutual need, the municipal governments of London, England, and Toronto have agreed to exchange the Toronto Telegram for the London Times. The university professors who constitute a large percentage of Toronto’s population are growing insistent in their demand for a local paper of the Times’ intellectual status. As for London, it has long been in need of a thorough blowing up. And in the matter of Lord Mayors, this city has fallen into the habit of electing a fresh one every year. It is expected that the Telegram will correct this.
Novelists and literati in general would make excellent trading material:
Scribes Must Pack
WASHINGTON, D.C., JAN. 30.—In the biggest literary deal of the decade, articles were signed yesterday transferring Anatole France, Jean Jacques Rousseau and Voltaire from France to the United States in exchange for Harold Bell Wright, Owen Johnson, Robert W. Chambers and $800,000 in gold. The trade is said to be due to the present low rate of exchange of the franc. Rousseau and Voltaire, whose first name could not be learned at a late hour, are dead.
Occasionally a trade might not be consummated—See this dispatch in the N.Y. Tribune.
Canada Spurns our Jack
OTTAWA, JAN. 7.—Canada yesterday refused an offer of Jack Dempsey and $200,000 in exchange for the province of Manitoba. Jack Kearns, Dempsey’s manager, in making the offer, said that Dempsey would be known as the Canadian champion and would at once become naturalized as a Canadian citizen. Manitoba is noted for wheat.
Visualize the nationwide rejoicing at an exchange of this sort—
Shakespeare New Yank
STRATFORD-ON-AVON, ENGLAND, FEB. 22.—An impressive ceremony marked the celebration here yesterday of Shakespeare’s American citizenship.
The little English town on the Avon was decked with American flags and all the buildings were placarded.
“We Wanted Bill and We Got Him” and “Yea Bill! You Brought Home the Bacon” were the legends on some of the placards. Floats were borne in a parade depicting Shakespeare wearing the clothes of a widely advertised American tailor and bearing this sign—“Big Bill Shakespeare—One Hundred Percent American.”
An American whose name cannot be used, who was one of the big movers in obtaining Shakespeare’s citizenship for the United States, when approached on the Bacon controversy, said, “If need be, we will buy Bacon’s citizenship, too.”
Or it would give the greatest couper of our age a workout—
Etna to Sweden in Big Match Merger—D’Annunzio Coup Planned
ROME, ITALY, FEB. 24.—Articles were signed here yesterday for one of the biggest trades of the year. Sweden is to receive a ninety-nine-year lease to Mts. Etna and Vesuvius in exchange for the title to all Nobel Peace prizes for a period of twenty years. Sweden has been dickering for the mountains for some time to relieve the present shortage of sulphur in the Swedish match industry.
NAPLES, ITALY, FEB. 24.—Special—Gabriele D’Annunzio has occupied both Mt. Etna and Mt. Vesuvius. In an ultimatum last night the poet-warrior said: “I hope to die on both of these glorious mountains if frozen Swedes ever touch one powdered fragment of their holy sulphurs.”
Our Confidential Vacation Guide
The Toronto Star Weekly
May 21, 1921
Any steady reader of obituaries is familiar with the phrase “He had not taken a vacation in twenty years.”
Of course there is no ironbound rule about the period. It may be that the dead man had not taken a vacation in ten years, in thirty years, during all the time he was mayor, or during his entire lifetime. It all points toward the same false moral. It seems obvious that if the poor chap had only accepted the vacation his employers kept forcing on him, he might be alive today.
This is very wrong. The trouble is that newspapers do not make a practice of printing as a cause of death this statement: “He spent every summer at Lake Milkitossup,” or, “The deceased was in the habit of spending the month of August at Lake Wah Wah.”
&
nbsp; A few statements like these would clear up matters. Newspaper readers would then realize that the reason the first man lived twenty years was because he had carefully preserved his health through abstaining from vacations. The reason that the other splendid fellows had dropped like ripened grapefruit at the end of their thirty years, mayoralty terms or lifetimes was the fact that they had never visited such places as Lake Screaming Water or picturesque Bum View. Just a few seasons at Giggling Perch Inn or the New Nokomis, American plan, would have cut them off like flies in the pride of their young manhood.
If you must take a vacation, read this confidential guide on places to avoid. It has been compiled at great labor and is available here for the first time. It means a longer life and happier to stay away from the following:
Poachdale Inn, Ontario
How to reach Poachdale Inn—this is not important.
How to get away from Poachdale Inn—Bounce in a hurdling Ford through five miles of mud. Wait at the railway until the train comes. There is no train on Sunday. Try not to be hysterical when the train comes in sight.
Beautiful Lake Flyblow
Beautiful Lake Flyblow nestles like a plague spot in the heart of the great north woods. All around it rise the majestic hills. Above it towers the majestic sky. On every side of it is the majestic shore. The shore is lined with majestic dead fish—dead of loneliness.
Smiling Lake Wah Wah
Smiling Lake Wah Wah is always smiling. It is smiling at the people who stalk along its shores, grim and unsmiling. Smiling Wah Wah knows that the people are from Giggling Perch Inn. Wah Wah sees that the people are undernourished. She sees their gaunt faces and the feverish eager light in their eyes as they wave off the clouds of mosquitoes. Smiling Wah Wah knows what is in their minds as they walk along her shores. They are waiting for the two weeks to end.
Beautiful Bozo Beach
Beautiful Bozo Beach nestles next to the largest inland body of fresh water on the American continent. Arm yourself with a boat hook and Bozo Beach is an ideal place for the little ones. They can play in the sands of Beautiful Bozo Beach to their little hearts’ content. After their little hearts are contented they will rub the sand in their eyes and chase one another screaming into the largest inland body of fresh water on the American continent. You can usually bring the little ones back from the largest inland body of fresh water with the boat hooks.
Picturesque Bum View
Bum View is one of the quieter resorts in the States on Lake Erie, where you go for a good solid rest. That’s the big thing about Bum View, the solid comfort and the quiet. It is run by S. A. Jarvis.
Every morning at 3 a.m. the Jarvis’s rooster announces that it will soon be daylight. All the other roosters give him their endorsement. Then the Jarvis’s rooster announces that it is daylight. Thousands of other roosters bear him out. There is a great clattering in the kitchen as the hired help start the day. The pump squeaks as Jim, the hired man, pumps the water. The Putnam twins are up early and their childish voices rise above the sound of the phonograph they start playing.
By this time the sun is shining so hotly on the wall of your room that it is becoming as hot as a bake oven. The rosin begins to melt in the knots in the hemlock boarding of the room walls. You had no sleep the first part of the night—mosquitoes. Your head begins to ache with the heat. You dress and come downstairs to breakfast. There is a pale green hard slice of melon on the plate. The eggs are brought in, fried to a cold rubbery consistency. There are white spots in the bacon. The toast is cold and rancid. The beautiful day is before you.
It is too hot at Bum View to do anything except read. The heat beats down and forces every one into the shade of the porch. That is all the shade there is. Facilities have been provided for reading. There are: a hammock—a large weak hammock which someone is occupying—and several uncomfortable chairs. A library of books including Hall Caine and Marie Corelli, an illustrated history of the Japanese-Russian War, the Canadian Almanac for 1919, a small red set of volumes of the world’s best short stories arranged according to nationality and an illustrated book on the wild flowers of Palestine.
It is too hot in the house. It is too hot anywhere but on the porch. In the afternoon it is too hot on the porch. When it is too hot on the porch the guest goes to the back of the house where a shadow is beginning to start and lies down on the grass. In a short time he is asleep. Thousands of weird-shaped insects climb carefully down from the grass stems and up on the sleeper. He sleeps on. More insects abandon the grass stems to come and climb on him. He still sleeps. He will sleep all afternoon—then he will lie awake all night. Then the Jarvis’s rooster will crow again and it will be another day. He has thirteen more to go till he gets back to his office.
Will he last it? Or will the vacation kill him?
Ballot Bullets
The Toronto Star Weekly
May 28, 1921
CHICAGO.—Anthony D’Andrea, pale and spectacled, defeated candidate for alderman in the 19th Ward, Chicago, stepped out of the closed car in front of his residence and, holding an automatic pistol in his hand, backed gingerly up the steps.
Reaching back with his left hand to press the door bell, he was blinded by two red jets of flame from the window of the next apartment, heard a terrific roar and felt himself clouted sickeningly in the body with the shock of the slugs from the sawed-off shotgun.
It was the end of the trail that had started with a white-faced boy studying for the priesthood in a little Sicilian town. It was the end of a trail that had wound from the sunlit hills of Sicily across the sea and into the homes of Chicago’s nouveau riche. A trail that led through the penitentiary and out into the deadliest political fight Chicago has ever known.
But it was not quite the end. For the pale-faced D’Andrea, his body torn and huddled, his horn-rimmed spectacles broken, but hooked on, pulled himself to his knees and looking with his nearsighted eyes into the darkness jerked five shots out of his automatic pistol in the direction of the shotgun that had roared his death warrant.
For months D’Andrea had been entering his home, gun in hand, in the expectation of such a death. He knew he was doomed—but he wanted to protest the verdict. It is all part of the unfinished story of the gunmen’s political war that is raging in Chicago at present.
Anthony D’Andrea, who is dead in Jefferson Park Hospital today with twelve slugs in his body, was educated at the University of Palermo. He renounced a career in the church and went to the States.
In Chicago he became a foreign-language teacher to some of the wealthiest families of the city, numbering among his pupils many of the newer members of society. D’Andrea became an American citizen in 1899, and in subsequent years embarked on various commercial enterprises. In a small way he was a real estate dealer, macaroni manufacturer and banker.
Secret service agents raided his home in 1902 on a tip that D’Andrea was the man who was flooding Chicago with spurious ten-cent pieces. Counterfeit coins were found by the government operatives at both D’Andrea’s home and his macaroni factory. He was tried, pleaded guilty and sentenced to Joliet penitentiary. After serving thirteen months, he was pardoned by President Roosevelt.
After coming out of the penitentiary he became an Italian labor leader and shortly announced his intention of entering politics. His first venture in politics was in 1914, when he was defeated as candidate for city commissioner.
In 1916 he first contested the seat of Alderman John Powers, who has been the alderman from the 19th Ward for twenty-five years. Although D’Andrea proved he was not disfranchised due to his pardon by President Roosevelt, his past record defeated him.
His power over the Italians continued to grow, however, and the first of the murders that have marked the Powers-D’Andrea feud occurred when Frank Lombardi, a strong Powers adherent, was killed in his saloon.
This last election started off with the bombing of Alderman Powers’ home. Then D’Andrea’s headquarters were bombed while a meeting was in p
rogress and many of his henchmen badly wounded.
Alderman Powers, who is known to the Italians as “Johnny de Pow,” won the election of last November by about 400 votes. Immediately D’Andrea announced a contest—and a series of killings commenced.
Gaetano Esposito, a strong Powers worker, was tossed out of a speeding motorcar, in the heart of the city, his body riddled with bullets.
Paul A. Labriola, municipal court bailiff, who many believed was being groomed by Powers to take his place, was shot by five men who cornered him on his way to court. After he had fallen, one of his assassins bent over him and fired five times into his back.
The same day Harry Raimondi, a fellow Sicilian of D’Andrea’s and another strong Powers worker, was shot while in his own grocery store.
Police were informed that twenty-five Powers workers were on a proscription list. All were marked for death. No Powers man in the ward has felt sure of his life. Then came the first threat of reprisal and vengeance.
“D’Andrea is a dying man,” Alderman Powers is reported to have said. “I can no longer keep my men in check.”
Everything quieted down—and then D’Andrea was shot on May 11.
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