by John Kobler
The countrywide scope of white slavery was never statistically determined. Without arriving at any national figures, the Chicago Vice Commission did uncover evidence indicating that while no wellorganized syndicate existed, there were numerous small, loosely affiliated gangs of white slavers. The interstate traffic was heavy enough to warrant federal action. In 1910 Congress passed the White Slave, or Mann, Act, making it punishable by five years' prison to transport a woman across state lines for immoral purposes. This legislation, together with state antivice laws, crippled but did not end the traffic for a good many years. Between 1910 and 1914 the Vice Commission documented seventy-seven local cases, of which the following typified the modi operandi of the more brutal white slavers:
Case 5a. M.B., 18 . . . came to Chicago from a small Wisconsin town, April 1911. M.B. claimed she came to stay with her aunt, held a position in general housework and sewing for two months, met F. at a saloon, took her to J.'s place (a resort), F. promised to marry her, stayed with him there that night, next morning J. (the woman keeper) told the girl she could make $65 per week and she could have half of what she made, girl refused . . . social worker takes girl back to her aunt's, 3 days later met F. again and took girl back to J.'s place where she practiced prostitution for 5 months, girl was whipped with rawhide by J.'s husband, J. took all money girl earned, an opium joint in the place... .
Case 39. . . . born in Hungary, came to the United States in 1908, married in New York City 5 months after arrival, lived with him 6 months, left him because he turned out to be a drunkard and because he beat her, came to Chicago, worked as a waitress in northside restaurant, met G (Bohemian evidently) at her rooming house in the Bohemian area, he was 50 years of age and a cripple, he sent a woman to see her, H. got on friendly terms with girl, taken by H. to South Chicago vice district on promise of better work, this was a ruse evidently and the better work was at a resort, forced to stay with men, prevented from leaving. . . .
In his recollections of the early Chicago gangsters, The Dry and Lawless Years, Municipal Court Judge John H. Lyle described a case in which he intervened when he was a young alderman.
One evening a youth living in my ward came to see me for help. His 16-year-old sister had been missing for weeks. She had sent a letter, postmarked St. Louis, stating that she was happy in a new job. The brother was sure something was wrong. His anguish stirred my sympathy.
I hired a detective who found the girl in a bawdyhouse. He brought her back to Chicago. Her wretched condition supported her story. This beautiful high school student had gone into the Levee seeking a real estate office where she was to make a payment on the family home.
She asked a man for directions. He persuaded her to enter a restaurant. A knock-out drop was slipped into her coffee. She was taken to a resort where the man seduced her and then sold her to the keeper for $200. Repeated use of drugs clouded her mind. She was used as a prostitute for several days and then resold for $400 to a bagnio in St. Louis.
One of the Levee's leading panders was Maurice Van Bever, a preening dandy who rode around in a carriage driven by a top-hatted coachman. With his wife, Julia, he ran two whorehouses on Armour Avenue. In 1903 Van Bever and Colosimo combined forces. They organized a gang to handle fresh stock, established connections with white slavers in New York, St. Louis and Milwaukee, and during the next six years imported hundreds of girls, either booking them into their own establishments or selling them to their fellow whoremasters.
It was inevitable that an Italo-American as conspicuously nouveau riche as Colosimo would attract the attention of Black Handers.
The Black Hand was not, as some writers have misrepresented it to be, a nationwide criminal conspiracy. Contrary to what its victims, too, imagined, it was not synonymous with the Mafia, the Camorra, the Unione Siciliane or any other secret society. It was simply a crude method of extortion with a long Italian-chiefly Sicilian-tradition, transplanted to America during the mass migrations of the eighties. The majority of its early practitioners in America were Italians with criminal records in their native land who had joined the movement westward to victimize their compatriots. Individually or in small community gangs of five to ten members, long experienced in the use of the Black Hand, they preyed mainly on the cafoni, the ignorant Southern Italian peasants. About the only thing they had in common with the Mafia was their technique of terrorism, but they fostered the delusion that Black Hand and Mafia were identical because of the fear the latter had always aroused among Italians, a fear so ingrained that few victims dared even breathe the word.
In the Little Italy of America to display any sign of affluence, such as expensive jewelry or an automobile, was to arouse the malign interest of the Black Hand. For that reason many Italo-Americans hesitated to buy property and if they did, few banks would mortgage it. Having selected his victim, the Black Hander would send him an anonymous letter, demanding money, signed La Mano Nera and usually garnished with sinister symbols-daggers, skull and crossbones, a hand imprinted in black ink. The letters were sometimes blunt, sometimes couched in the flowery idiom of old-world courtesy.
Mrs. Joseph Lupo, for example, a resident of~Chicago's North Side Little Italy and a real estate investor, bought a small apartment building for $25,000. At the same time her daughter also bought one nearby. Six weeks later Mrs. Lupo received the following note:
Place $4000 in a red handkerchief and put it with $4000 from your daughter. Place it at the west end of the Chicago avenue bridge at midnight Thursday. We have looked at your new building on Park Avenue and have found a nice spot where a bomb could do a great amount of damage if you don't obey. Don't notify your son-in-law, Marino Modeni.
Ignoring the warning, Mrs. Lupo appealed to Marino, who, though terrified, went to the police. Two plainclothesmen kept watch by the bridge all through the appointed night, but the Black Handers never showed up.
In the courtly epistolary vein, another Chicago Black Hander wrote to a Sicilian named Silvani:
MOST GENTLE MR. SILVANI-
Hoping that the present will not impress you too much, you will be so good as to send me $2000 if your life is dear to you. So I beg you warmly to put them on the door within four days. But if not, I swear this week's time not even the dust of your family will exist. With regards, believe me to be your friend.
Silvani, too, mustered the courage to go to the police. They traced the letter to one Joseph Genite, raided his home on South Racine Avenue, in Little Italy, and uncovered a cache of revolvers, shotguns, and dynamite. Despite the evidence, they failed to establish Genite's guilt.
No accurate tally of Chicago's Black Hand crimes was possible. The police found it convenient to ascribe every unsolved crime involving Italians to Black Handers. Still, the frequently quoted figure of 400 Italians killed by bullets, knives, bludgeons or bombs between 1895 and 1925 was probably not excessive. How many people survived injuries inflicted by Black Handers during the three decades of their greatest activity and how many quietly yielded to threats were incalculable. On May 25, 1913, the Chicago Daily News speculated:
In the first ninety-three days of this year, 55 bombs were detonated in the spaghetti zone. Not one of the 55, so far as can be determined, was set for any reason other than the extraction of blackmail. A detective of experience in the Italian quarter estimates that ten pay tribute to one who is sturdy enough to resist until he is warned by a bomb. Freely conceding that this is all guess work, then 550 men will have paid the Mano Nera since January 1. The Dirty Mitt never asks for less than $1,000. If a compromise of $200 was reached in each of the 550 cases, "Black Handers" profited by $110,000 in 93 days. That's an average of $1,111 a day, which is fair profit for the expenditure of five two-cent stamps, a dollar's worth of gunpowder and 15 quarts of wood alcohol chianti, that being the usual ration. Perhaps these figures are inaccurate in detail, but they are conservative enough en masse. Well informed Italians have never put the year's tribute to the "Black Hand" at less than half a million dollars.<
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When a Black Hander was arrested, mutism afflicted the neighborhood. Family, friends, and witnesses would receive letters promising swift and terrible retribution should they break their silence. If the case got as far as the courtroom, threats deluged the district attorney, judge, and jury. On June 22, 1909, Joseph Bertucci stood trial for a Black Hand killing. Bruno Nordi, who had been indicted as an accomplice, turned state's evidence, and his wife also agreed to testify. As Nordi mounted the witness stand, a man slipped into the courtroom, waved a red handkerchief and vanished. After that nothing could prevail upon either Nordi or his wife to utter a word. The case was dismissed.
On January 8, 1910, a sixty-year-old Italian named Beneditto Cinene, living at 500 Oak Street, was shot to death in bed. To every question put by the police sergeant from the Chicago Avenue Station the murdered man's relatives all replied with the same three words: "Me don't know." His son-in-law simply shrugged.
The hostility of native Americans to immigrants was, in the case of the Italians, intensified by the depredations of Black Handers. Demagogues and irresponsible journalists revived all the old nonsense about instinctive Italian criminality. In McClure's Magazine for May, 1912, Arthur Train, a former New York City assistant district attorney, contributed his bias after a six-month tour of Italy. "The Italians from the extreme south," he declared, ". . . are apt to be ignorant, lazy, destitute, and superstitious. . . . The number of South Italians who now occupy positions of respectability in New York and who have criminal records on the other side would astound even their compatriots. . . ."
The truth was that in Chicago, as in New York, the Italians-the majority of Neapolitan, Calabrian, or Sicilian origin-had a percentage of arrests and convictions far lower than their ratio of the population. In 1913 the Italians totaled approximately 59,000. That year 2,972 were arrested for misdemeanors and 1,333 convicted; 392 were arrested for felonies and 108 convicted. The combined convictions represented slightly more than one-tenth of 1 percent of the Italian proportion of the population, which was, as the City Council Committee on Crime observed, "surely so small as to be negligible."
In 1907 the worthies of Chicago's Italian colony organized, under the leadership of the Italian consul, Guido Sabetta, the White Hand Society, with the double object of stamping out Black Hand crime and counteracting the slander against their people. They set an ex ample which was followed by Italian community leaders in other cities. Hiring attorneys and private investigators to assist the authorities, the society brought about the conviction of several Black Handers and drove from the city what it claimed to be the 10 most dangerous. But after this impressive start it met frustration at every turn. In 1910 the Black Handers killed 25 people; in 1911, 40; in 1912, 31. Though the police arrested many suspects-194 following the shooting of one supposed informer-bribery and terrorism continued, and they solved not a single murder. The few imprisoned culprits whom the White Hand had brought to justice were, one after the other, paroled, their co-conspirators having provided the money with which to suborn officials. The society's members began dropping away, unwilling to sacrifice further sums for futile prosecutions. At the same time rank-and-file Italians had come to feel that by publicly acknowledging the existence of crime in their midst the White Hand was bringing opprobrium upon the whole community, and they, too, withdrew their support. As for the native Americans, they had never given the society any support, for they considered the Black Hand atrocities no concern of theirs as long as they were confined to Italians. By 1913 the White Hand had disbanded and the Black Handers extended their reign of terror.
What finally stopped the flow of extortion letters in the twenties was what reduced white slavery: federal intervention. For using the mails to defraud, the federal law set penalties of up to five years' prison and $1,000 fine. The game seemed too hazardous after several Black Handers drew the maximum sentence and were removed beyond reach of corrupt local officials to Leavenworth Penitentiary.
Extortion, however, far from languishing, expanded in new directions. Threats were conveyed by other means. The dread letter signed La Mano Nera was replaced by a voice on the telephone or a personal visit. The character of the victim changed, too. The supply of simpleminded, malleable cafoni began to dwindle after 1914, when new regulations restricted immigration. By then far richer opportunities were beckoning to the professional extortionists in the city which Lincoln Steffens described as "first in violence, deepest in dirt, loud, lawless, unlovely, ill-smelling, irreverent, new, an overgrown gawk of a village, the 'tough' among cities, a spectacle for the nation." The skill developed in three decades of bomb throwing and marksmanship with revolver and shotgun was not wasted. Many an ex Black Hander became a prized technician in the swelling ranks of gangdom.
Bombing as a business thrived. Contractors in the field were retained by labor and business racketeers to discipline tradesmen who declined to pay tribute. During the twenties some 700 bombs destroyed millions of dollars' worth of Chicago property. The contractors established a price list:
Black powder bombs-$100
Dynamite bombs-$500 to $1,000 (depending on the risk)
Guaranteed contracts-$1,000 and up
Joseph Sangerman, an officer of the Chicago Barbers' Union, directed one of the busiest bombing crews. His ace was George Matrisciano, alias Martini, a Neapolitan barber's son and a veteran of Little Italy terrorism, who manufactured his own black powder bombs. When a barbershop owner defied the union's dictates, Matrisciano and his four teammates would reduce the shop to rubble.
Colosimo knew what to expect. In his youth he had turned a Black Hand trick or two himself. At first he submitted. He met demands for as much as $5,000. But as the extortionists kept after him, raising the amount each time, he prepared to fight. He commanded plenty of muscle in such subalterns, who had sworn on his Bible to defend him, as his brother-in-law, Joe Moresco; Mac Fitzpatrick, alias W. E. Frazier, a gunman from San Francisco; Billy Leathers; "Chicken Harry" Gullet; Joe "Jew Kid" Grabiner. At the next attempted levy Colosimo wrapped up a bundle of blank paper, armed himself with a revolver, and, accompanied by a brace of his gorillas, concealing sawed-off shotguns, set out for the rendezvous under a South Side bridge well in advance of the appointed hour. After depositing the bundle as instructed, they fell back into the shadows across the street. At midnight three men approached the bundle. They had scant opportunity to verify its contents. The hidden foe opened fire, killing them all.
Colosimo enjoyed tranquillity for a while. Then he heard from still another Black Hand gang. He decided he needed an adjutant wilier than any available to him in Chicago. He thought of his sharp-witted, ruthless little nephew.
TORRIO was thirty-one when he came to Chicago in 1909. Not long after, three more of Colosimo's tormentors were ambushed under the Rock Island Railroad overpass on Archer Avenue and shot to death. Torrio, with his aversion to bloodshed, had taken no direct hand in the massacre. He had only arranged it. He arranged other killings in behalf of his beleaguered uncle. The time for treaties and coalitions was not yet.
The lesson was lost on Sunny Jim Cosmano. He thought he could extract $10,000 from Big Jim. The misjudgment cost him a nearly mortal stomach wound inflicted by buckshot at close range. Two policemen stood guard by his hospital bed, waiting to remove him for questioning to headquarters as soon as he recovered, a trip Cosmano contemplated with no relish. His confederates, wondering how they could spare him the ordeal, consulted "Big Tim" Murphy, one of the few important Irish racket bosses whom the Italian underworld esteemed. Big Tim's advice was succinct: "Knock the cops on the head and carry him out." Four of Sunny Jim's friends paid him a visit, bearing flowers and candy. They also carried guns. They disarmed the policemen. They roped them together back to back, helped the patient dress, and smuggled him out of the hospital to a hideaway, where he convalesced, untroubled by interrogators.
Torrio's mother, Maria Caputa, was living with him in Chicago, and when Big Jim bought the restaurant that bec
ame famous as Colosimo's Cafe, she lent her name to the deeds. For a time Mama Maria and Papa Luigi Colosimo ran the place. Torrio had a small interest in it, which he sold to Mary Aducci, the wife of a Colosimo lieutenant. She remained Big Jim's partner for many years. He later took in a third partner, "Mike the Greek" Potzin, a gambler and whoremaster.
Torrio's services to Colosimo went far beyond planning the liquidation of Black Handers. He was an organizational genius. Years later Elmer L. Irey, chief of the Enforcement Branch of the U.S. Treasury, called him "the father of modern American gangsterdom." With the cool, soft-spoken little New Yorker as his gray eminence, Big Jim consolidated his holdings to become the foremost Chicago racketeer of his era. Starting with the Saratoga, of which his grateful uncle had made him the manager, Torrio was soon supervising all the Colosimo brothels, and he put them on a sounder business footing. He next reorganized the adjunctive saloons and gambling dives. Under his guidance the Colosimo-Van Bever white slave ring captured the Levee market. Torrio saw personally to the greasing of police and political palms. When Colosimo branched out into the protection racket, Torrio collected the dues, using no persuasion other than a quiet word of warning, a thin smile, and an icy stare. He suffered a slight setback when he was arrested along with several members of the white slave ring, following the transportation of a dozen girls from St. Louis to Chicago. Maurice Van Bever and his wife, Julia, paid a $1,000 fine and went to jail for a year. Five others received lesser sentences, among them the prosecution's star witness, Joe Bovo, the pimp who had delivered the St. Louis cargo. But the court freed Torrio because Bovo would not testify against him. It was Torrio's first court appearance. Colosimo, shielded by Coughlin and Kenna, was not even questioned.