Supermob

by Gus Russo

  Here, Yiddish was the language of the streets and homes, used for shopping, labor anthems, lullabies, and political debates. Although Maxwell Street included all the trappings of a shtetl—the open market bazaar being most popular—it was not yet a complete escape from the violence of the homeland. Maxwell Street was in fact known as Bloody Maxwell. In 1906, the Chicago Tribune published a description of the street:

  Murderers, robbers and thieves of the worst kind are here born, reared and grow to maturity in numbers that far exceed the record of any similar district anywhere on the face of the globe. Reveling in the freedom which comes from inadequate police control, inspired by the traditions of the criminals that have gone before in the district, living in many instances more like beasts than any human beings, hundreds and thousands of boys and men follow day after day year after year in the bloody ways of crime . . . From Maxwell come some of the worst murderers, if not actually the worst, that Chicago has ever seen. From Maxwell come the smoothest of robbers, burglars, and thieves of all kinds, from Maxwell come the worst "tough-gangs." In general, it may be safely said that no police district in the world turns out such skilled and successful criminals.5

  The atmosphere began to improve somewhat in 1899, after a Jewish peddler was killed, precipitating a protest meeting at Porges Hall at Jefferson and Maxwell streets. Attended by nearly five hundred, this mobilization led to the formation of the Hebrew-American Protective Association of Chicago. Subsequently, life within Maxwell Street was safer and familiar.

  Lawndale

  Turn-of-the-century immigrants to Chicago found a town that was a model of civic corruption. The city was divided into political wards, and power flowed up from the saloon-owning ward bosses directly to City Hall in an overt scheme involving payoffs and job patronage. Bosses like Michael "Hinky Dink" Kenna and John "Bathhouse" Coughlin were given exclusive rights to hire thousands of city workers, who, out of self-preservation, voted Kenna-Coughlin and their anointed mayors into office ad infinitum. It was a brilliant self-perpetuating corruption machine that had yet to assimilate the Jewish wave.

  As Chicago's Russian Jews started to prosper at the turn of the century, they began moving out of the run-down Maxwell Street area, following Roosevelt Road west toward Ashland Street, then leapfrogging over the Damen Avenue rail yards, finally ending up four miles from the Lake Michigan shoreline in a community called Lawndale. They were barely two miles removed from the dregs of Bloody Maxwell Street, but their new home of Lawndale nonetheless seemed an eternity away. Now, instead of the crowded firetrap homes around Maxwell Street, the quiet streets of Lawndale featured brick homes with porches and backyards. So attractive was the locale to the Russian immigrants that by 1930 Russian Jews comprised 45 percent of Lawndale's population.

  Called a "monument" to Jews who had successfully fled Maxwell Street, Lawndale was organized in 1857 and annexed to Chicago in 1869. The Chicago fire of 1871 sent the first wave of city Jews to Lawndale, followed by the Polish and Irish. When the Sears, Roebuck world headquarters, employing ten thousand workers, and the McCormick Reaper Company (International Harvester) were constructed in South Lawndale, many new inhabitants, especially the Russian Jews of Maxwell Street, took jobs there and found housing in eastern North Lawndale. Like Maxwell Street before it, Lawn­dale swelled from a population of 46,000 in 1910 to 93,750 in 1920, and 112,000 by 1930—50 percent of whom were Russian Jews. By the early forties, as the Jewish population of Chicago was approaching about 9 percent, about 110,000 of the 300,000 city Jews were living in the greater Lawndale area, the largest and most developed Jewish community that ever existed in Chicago.6

  In truth, the name Lawndale was a misnomer—the apartment buildings and duplex homes were so tightly aligned that little room was left for lawns. (At its peak, Lawndale held the dubious distinction of having the highest population density in Chicago, earning it the moniker the Kosher Calcutta. By 1930, Lawndale's population density reached unprecedented totals at fifty-one thousand people per square mile.) Nonetheless, the locale was alive with outdoor activity, and the physical surroundings were a pleasant change from the chaos of Maxwell Street. What greenery existed was largely relegated to the large median on Douglas Boulevard and the bucolic expanses of Douglas Park. The boulevard was Lawndale's main thoroughfare, and the Jewish cultural center of the settlement, measuring 250 feet wide with a seventeen-foot-wide grass median. In a relative eye blink, some seventy synagogues and countless Jewish educational, medical, and convalescent facilities sprang up in this confined area, many of these facilities clustered around Douglas Boulevard.

  Beneath the orthodox surface, subtle changes were mutating the culture of the Ashkenazim: They adopted an uncommon (for Jews) desire to assimilate, perhaps because they came to the collective conclusion that it was the only way to prosper in America. They started to affect German ways (so much so that this area of second settlement was often referred to as Deutschland), becoming increasingly less orthodox, or kosher. Lawndale Jews, as they were called, became lax about synagogue and began to frequent the Near North and the Loop for entertainment. The rabbi had been the most important person in their lives in the Pale and on Maxwell Street, but now, increasingly, the most important person was the precinct captain, who lorded over the vital patronage job allocations. The Jews even started producing athletes—Sidney Korshak was a school basketball and boxing star. But above all, they worked and studied tirelessly in an effort to ascend the social and economic ladder. In the words of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Wendell Rawls, "The Jews were called names, but they were smarter than the others. They knew math and percentages. They were the Asians of their day."7

  Since Jews were not allowed to rent, they bought Lawndale—block by block—and they were thrilled to be able, for the first time, to do so. Their focus on acquiring real estate bordered on the obsessive and would play a major role in the success of the Supermob. The intense drive for improvement created a potent primordial soup that saw an extraordinary number of Maxwell Street/Lawndale youths achieve greatness: there were entertainers such as Benny Goodman, whose father had taken him to the free band concerts in Douglas Park on Sunday afternoons; actors Wallace Beery, Tom Mix, Gloria Swanson, and Paul Muni; President Kennedy's secretary of labor, Arthur Goldberg; World War II military hero Admiral Hyman George Rickover; champion lightweight boxer Barney Ross; corporate moguls William S. Paley (founder of CBS) and Barney Balaban (founder of Paramount Pictures); Harry Hart, of Hart, Schaffner & Marx men's clothing;

  Julius Rosenwald, founder of Sears, Roebuck; Charles Lubin, of the Kitchens of Sara Lee; the Goldblatt brothers, founders of the fifty-store chain of Goldblatt's Department Stores; the Bensinger family of Brunswick Bowling;

  Abe Pritzker, founder of Hyatt Hotels and the massive conglomerate the Marmon Group; Henry Crown of General Dynamics and an owner of the Empire State Building; writer L. Frank Baum (The Wizard of Oz); and even the occasional infamous ne'er-do-well like Lee Harvey Oswald's killer, Jack Ruby, and a key member of Al Capone's brain trust, Jake Guzik.8 Then there were the not-so-famous successes . . .

  One year after the 1881 pogroms in Kiev, brothers Mendel and David Korshak, then young adults, set sail from Hamburg, Germany, on the SS Suevia and arrived in New York in 1882. They proceeded on to Chicago, followed over by Max, Abraham, Reuben, and, finally in February 1889, thirteen-year-old Harry, the youngest by almost a generation. It is believed that all the Korshaks in America today descended from these siblings. David Kor­shak, a saloonkeeper and a real estate investor, achieved ignominy when he became part of an arson-for-hire ring, and the first Korshak to be exposed in the New York Times (July 13, 1913). One of David's partners was an insurance adjuster named Joseph Fish, whose wife was heiress to the Brunswick bowling ball and billiards empire. That an old-line German Jew would have engaged in an arson conspiracy with an immigrant Russian Askenazi contradicted the conventional wisdom, but for a time, the partnership flourished. David, who was dubbed King of the Firebug
s by the Chicago DailyJournal, even hooked up with an Italian for the schemes. With Fish's insurance ken and Korshak's talent with kerosene, the arson trust set up operations in Chicago, New York, and other large cities, defrauding numerous insurance companies out of tens of thousands of dollars. As friends and a

  David Korshak, arsonist (Rich Samuels)

  family photo album attest, David Korshak appeared to have a special closeness with Harry's middle child, Sidney.9

  Also of interest was brother Max, the first of many Korshak lawyers. According to Korshak family historian Rich Samuels (husband of Judy Kor­shak), Max became one of the two proteges of Judge Harry Fisher. The other was a fellow young Ashkenazi named Jacob Arvey, about whom much more will be seen. According to Samuels, Max wanted to become the ward boss and kingmaker that Arvey eventually became, but only reached as high as the master of chancery in circuit court.*

  Brother Abraham was found guilty, along with his son Jimmy, of beating a woman named Sophie White into unconsciousness on June 10,1933, and a federal grand jury had earlier indicted Jimmy and a brother for violation of the Volstead Act (the federal law that outlawed the sale of alcohol from 1920 to 1933). Jimmy was not convicted, but his brother was.10 Alluding to the less savory aspects of the family's history many years later, Harry's son Morris (later "Marshall") told the attendees at the second family reunion, "You know, in the old country we were horse thieves. In this country we became car thieves." When he noticed a journalist in the crowd, he suddenly changed the topic. Descendant Judy Korshak's husband, Rich Samuels, said, "I sometimes think my wife thinks she's still in the marketplace in Kiev. There's a certain toughness there. My wife says, 'Don't ever fuck with a Korshak.'"11

  Harry's Atlantic crossing was followed in 1890 by that of his future wife, then seven-year-old Rebecca Beatrice Lashkovitz from Odessa. Young Rebecca barely survived a pogrom; her parents' landlord was a kindly gentile who allowed her family to hide in his barn when the Cossacks searched the house. Harry and Rebecca married in Chicago in 1902, and Harry took work as a two-dollar-per-week laborer, before hiring on as a carpenter contractor, then starting his own company. When Harry's small construction enterprise began to flourish, the family, which quickly came to include five children, joined the Maxwell Street exodus to Lawndale, where Harry presided over a kosher home—son Marshall would continue the tradition, never having bacon or ham in his own home. Harry now operated his business out of his family's new Douglas Boulevard home (which he built), just down the street from Douglas Park, where Jake Arvey, too short to play basketball with the towering Korshaks, played tennis.12 Named after Senator Stephen A. Douglas, Douglas Park was a large and beautiful landscaped refuge that saw the occasional nighttime turf war between Polish gangs and the new Lawndale Jews.

  David with nephew Sidney at a 1927 Korshak family picnic (Rich Samuels)

  On June 6, 1907, Rebecca gave birth to Sidney Roy Korshak, the middle child among five: Theodore (1903), Minnie (1905), Sidney Roy (1907), Morris Jerome (1910), and Bernard (1913).13 Morris, who went by the name Marshall, described his six-foot-two-inch father as a "cream puff," whereas his mother was "the strong one, an introvert like Sidney." Sidney may have been an introvert, but by all accounts he was a tough one. One schoolmate told the New York Times in 1976, "He was handsome and had a lot of ego and a lot of guts. He didn't let anybody push him around. Sid was a tough guy."14 The famously outgoing Marshall noted, "Sidney and I are completely different."

  Sidney's elder siblings were family tragedies. Theodore, known as Ted, fell into the throes of drug addiction and, using numerous aliases, amassed quite a rap sheet with the local police, often charged with narcotics violations and confidence schemes. For a time he ran a bookie joint at 217 North Clark Street for Tony "Joe Batters" Accardo, boss of the Chicago Outfit, and his underboss, Charles "Cherry Nose" Gioe. (Sidney's cousin Pete Posner handled bookmaking for the Outfit in the Hyde Park section for Curly Humphreys's underlings Ralph Pierce and Hy Godfrey.)15

  Tony "Joe Batters" Accardo mug shot (Chuck Schauer)

  Minnie Korshak's tragedy was of a different kind. Shortly after her marriage to Harry Wexler, she died of an unknown cause on January 12, 1928, at just twenty-two years of age. Exactly one year later, the Korshaks paid tribute to her, placing a short poem in the Chicago Tribune's death notices:

  Thoughts return to days long past,

  Time rolls on, memory lasts.

  Your life is a beautiful memory.

  Your absence a great, great sorrow to us.

  LOVING PARENTS AND BROTHERS16

  Like many of the Lawndale Jewish youth, Sidney attended Herzl Grammar School, then Marshall High School, where he was an A student and a standout basketball player, his skills no doubt honed in Douglas Park, little more than a long jump-shot from his front yard. His academic success mirrored the business fortunes of his father, Harry, who was on his way to becoming one of the most successful contractors in Lawndale. "My father was a Jewish millionaire," recalled Marshall. "He was worth about two hundred thousand dollars, a fortune in the twenties."17 From 1925 to 1927, Sidney went to the University of Wisconsin, enrolled in the College of Letters and Sciences. At UW, the Phi Sigma Delta pledge held an 82 average, but with a 98 in Phys Ed, not surprising given that he won the 158-pound title in the 1927 All University Boxing Championships. The school paper reported on the curious nature of Sidney's pugilistic success: "Korshak was awarded a verdict over Schuck at 158 pounds in an overtime period. Kor­shak, tall and with a long reach, was unable to withstand the heavy punching of Schuck, who hit him at a rate of six blows to one. However, an overtime period was required, and again Schuck sent Korshak reeling with a flock of stomach blows and kidney punches. Consequently when the judges awarded the fight to Korshak, there was a great deal of surprise in the crowd."

  Korshak left UW for DePaul University, where he graduated in June 1930 with a law degree.18 His grades had slipped to a C+ average, and, curiously, the only As he received in two years were in Partnership, Trust, and Property Law—subjects well suited to his future successes. After Sidney's death many years later, a collegetown scribe wrote ominously, "He left DePaul for the shadows, where he spent the next sixty years."19

  Sidney Korshak (front row, far left), the Marshall High School basketball team's star center (Francelia Herron)

  Sidney Korshak's

  1925 Marshall High School portrait (Francelia Herron)

  Sidney Korshak's law school graduation photo (DePaul University Alumni Relations)

  Frat boy Sidney Roy Korshak (top row, fourth from left), 1928 (David Null, University of Wisconsin Alumni Association)

  Sidney Korshak was licensed to practice law on October 16, 1930,'" and his younger brother Marshall followed Sidney to Herzl, Marshall High, Wisconsin, and DePaul. "I aped Sidney," Marshall remembered. At Wisconsin, Marshall was a privileged student, receiving $125 a week from his father. However, when Harry was hard hit by the Depression, Marshall's University of Wisconsin days were over. "My brother Sidney called and said, 'You'd better come home and tell Dad you don't want to stay,'" Marshall recalled years later. "He was telling me the old man was broke."20 Marshall came home and sold programs at Soldier Field, putting himself though night school at the Kent School of Law ($175 per semester), where he earned his law degree. Their father, Harry, would die soon thereafter, on January 29, 1931, at age fifty-five, likely due to the combined effects of the Great Depression and his young daughter's death. Marshall would go on to build one of the greatest political careers in Chicago history, all the while keeping his thriving law practice going.^

  Whereas Marshall's career remained squeaky-clean, Sidney would prove to have few qualms about subscribing to the maxim "The ends justify the means." Tom Zander (pseudonym), a former organized crime investigator with the Chicago office of the U.S. Department of Labor, said of the brothers' formative years, "I saw Sidney when he was moving up the ladder. I knew his brother Marshall very well. He was a great fifth Ward committeem
an. I think Marshall was against the mob, but was very careful never to say it. In Chicago it wasn't uncommon for one brother to go straight while the other went with the boys."21

  These two most enterprising of Harry's sons, Sidney and Marshall, were astute enough to deduce that the shortest road out of Deutschland was to ally with Uncle Max's fellow protege of Judge Fisher's, and their neighbor of some six blocks away, the rising Twenty-fourth Ward star Jake Arvey. The Korshaks had been friends with the Arveys for as long as anyone could remember, and that kinship would come to benefit not only Sidney and Marshall, but also the majority of America's future Supermob. For in Lawn­dale's solar system, there was but one star for the up-and-comers to orbit, Jake Arvey.

  The Patriarch

  A man ain't going nowhere without he has his Chinaman.

  CHICAGO PROVERB

  Jacob Meyer Arvey was born in Chicago in 1895, the son of Russian immigrants Israel and Bertha Arvey. Like so many other Russian Ashkenazim, Israel worked in the Maxwell Street marketplace. A hardworking street peddler and milkman, Israel inculcated his son with the need for self-improvement. Arvey described the times: "Where [my parents] came from in Russia, they were poor not only in money but poor in liberty and opportunity . . . They could not participate in who would govern them. And they were always in fear of the raids and assaults of hooligans and Cossacks . . . They were denied things. They had to grease the palms of authorities. Pay tribute in the shtetls. And the story of Maxwell Street is like the story of the Jews all over the world for centuries. They are raised amid violence, muscle, corruption, [and] distortion . . . Well, I was understanding that things could be better for the Jew. The opportunity was there. We needed the power."22