"Mushmouth" Johnson's Sister Breaks the Color Barrier at U of C Sorority

July 21, 1907 was an especially hot day in Chicago. All across the city, men in felt hats and women in Victorian bustiers were straining to catch a lake breeze as they went about the ordinary business of their lives. Streetcars were rumbling down Clark and Wells streets, and on Michigan, busy shoppers admired the windows in dry goods stores. On the Westside, the saddest of possible words, "Tinker to Evers to Chance," were being cursed by Cubs opponents as the team slugged its way to the first of two consecutive World Series titles. Everything seemed normal. Too normal. Little did the city's denizens know of the incomparable evil that was stirring in the Southside Hyde Park neighborhood.

Was there a serial killer on the loose? A sex predator? Anarchist terrorists? A rabid dog, even? No, this was something far, far worse. Something that would make page one of every major Chicago newspapers for the next three days. If there are any young readers out there, any with sensitive constitutions or prone to fainting spells, I urge -- plead -- with you to turn away now and spare yourself the shock and horror of it all.

There was a black sorority girl at the University of Chicago.

The Tribune's lede paragraph the next day told of the scandal:

Sorority circles and the social set at the University of Chicago are aghast at the revelation of the identity of one of the school's most prominent women students. Received into a secret society, made a belle at the proms and dances, the girl has been found to be a mulatto.

The girl in question was Cecilia Johnson, and she was the sister of John "Mushmouth" Johnson, the city's gambling and policy (lotto) king, who owned a major State street casino, as well as the upscale Frontenac Club on 22nd street. The family home where Mushmouth, Cecilia, their sister Dora, and their mother, Ellen lived, was at 5830 S. Wabash, pictured here.

Unlike the other three, Cecilia was unusually light-skinned, which caused their neighbors to wonder whether she might have been an adoptee, or perhaps of a different father than her siblings. Cecilia was also exceptionally intelligent, and had completed her baccalaureate at Chicago the previous year with a double major in history and music. She won a scholarship in the history department, and was continuing her studies in a master's degree program.

But it was her membership in Pi Alpha Phi, a university sorority, that brought the city to an uproar that summer. Cecilia had joined the secret society in 1904, her sophomore year, and was quickly made president. As one fellow member later said, "She is bright, witty, and attractive. She dresses in fine clothes, but I do not recall that she ever overdressed, although she had quite a display of jewelry. She always seemed a girl of excellent taste."

Cecilia attended all major social functions at the University, as she had while at the all-white Englewood High School, where she had first met many of her future sorority sisters. She was very popular with the college men.

The other girls found out about Cecilia’s race when one of them read a newspaper account about Mushmouth Johnson in which he mentioned his home at 5830 Wabash, an address they recognized at Cecilia’s. The girl who made the unfortunate discovery explains:

We never for a brief moment suspected she had colored blood in her veins. I remember one time Cecilia was absent from school several days. I received a phone message from her mother to come to see her. It was the first time I was ever in the house. A negro maid opened the door and I was ushered into a well furnished parlor with beautiful oil paintings. Soon a white nurse appeared and took me to Cecilia's room, which was darkened. I thought then I saw the picture of a colored man on the wall, but it was too dark to say definitely. I did not meet any of the members of her family then.

I was invited back in a few days, and I saw our picture hanging on the wall in the library, surrounded by several colored persons. I was surprised, of course, but I did not think much of it, as I had heard her mother was a nurse of Mrs. Abraham Lincoln's, and I thought it likely she might have become acquainted with negroes at that time. But after I read that article in the paper about "Mushmouth" Johnson, I knew she was related in some way to him.

The other sorority girls had long wondered about the source of Cecilia’s wealth. They were jealous of her beauty, her popularity, and her wardrobe. When they heard that she was hiding a secret, a conclave of the sisters (sans Cecilia) was held to hash out the matter. A minority of the girls calmly suggested that Cecilia’s secret remain within the group, that she be allowed to remain in the sorority unmolested, but the majority insisted on a confrontation. The meeting was apparently so rancorous that the sorority disbanded (the majority later restarted it, minus Cecilia and those who stood by her).

When news leaked to the press, all of Chicago’s major newspapers printed the story on page 1, along with condescending quotes from some of Cecilia’s former sisters:

"Certainly she had the best of everything, and I am sure she is a fine girl. It's too bad, but I suppose it would have to come out sooner or later."

"Cecilia is a fine girl in every sense of the word and if it were not for her color I would willingly have her in my sorority.”

When questioned by a reporter, Cecilia admitted her race and heritage. “Certainly,” she said when asked if she was sister to the city’s gambling king.

The next day, when reporters showed up at the family home on Wabash, they found no one to talk with:

The Johnson house at 5830 Wabash avenue was shut all day. The shades were drawn, windows locked, and there was no answer to the doorbell or the telephone. In the flat above, which is occupied by a negro family, it was stated that the Johnsons had refused to see anyone, including the postman.

On the third day of the scandal, the Tribune published a mea culpa, which indicated that, yes, Cecilia Johnson was black, and she was a co-ed at the U of C. However, the paper admitted that some of the details printed in their earlier stories had been incorrect, and issued a public apology to Miss Johnson. The note did not indicate which details were incorrect, however. Was she, not, in fact, related to Mushmouth Johnson? If so, then why had she responded “certainly” when asked that question by a Tribune reporter? Was she not a member of a sorority? It’s hard to imagine the paper could have gotten that critical detail wrong.

Perhaps the scandal weighted heavily on Mushmouth Johnson; his business had brought shame to a family member with a very bright future. Mushmouth died less than two months after the story broke.

Regardless of which parts of the printed accounts of Cecilia Johnson are true, the story indicates the deep racial boundaries that existed in Chicago at the time. Twelve years later, those boundaries would rupture into an all-out race riot. Even today, Chicago is one of the most (de facto) segregated cities in the country.

One of the ways social scientists measure segregation is with a “Dissimilarity Index,” which measures the extent to which blacks and non-blacks live in different areas of a city. It can be interpreted as the fraction of black residents who would have to move to a new neighborhood in order to attain an even racial distribution. A (hypothetical) city in which all blacks lived in one neighborhood would have a Dissimilarity Index of 1.0, since 100% of blacks in that city would have to move to other neighborhoods to achieve perfect desegregation. A city where blacks were dropped out of a helicopter (with parachutes!) randomly over an entirely white city and then built houses wherever they landed would have a Dissimilarity Index of 0.0.

Chicago’s Dissimilarity Index in 1910 was 0.69. By 1970, it had reached 0.91 (nearly completely segregated), before falling to 0.84 in 2000. By contrast, New York and Los Angeles had values of 0.81 and 0.67 in 2000, respectively. Chicago was the fourth most segregated city in the country in 2000, bested only by Detroit, Bergen-Passaic, NJ, and Gary, IN.

Political Banquet for O'Banion

In the relationship between organized crime and politics, politicians protect criminals from prosecution, and criminals, in return, either pay protection money or round up votes (or both). This system is derived from the fact that consumers’ willingness-to-pay for prohibited goods, such as prostitution, gambling, and narcotics, is higher than the cost of providing these goods (up to some level of production), generating a surplus equal to the difference. If these goods were legal, economic theory implies that prices would be set so as to divide the surplus between buyers and sellers, with the division depending on how sensitive to price increases buyers are.

Making a good illegal (similar to the case of a sales tax) allows politicians to gain a cut of the surplus (in general, a sales tax is more efficient, but prohibition gives politicians more power to favor certain sellers over others), which they may extract either as direct cash payments (see, e.g., here), or through in-kind payment of get-out-the-vote activities. Sellers of illegal goods generally need to be tough characters, since they operate outside the protection of the ordinary law enforcement system that provides security for sellers of legal goods, and their toughness also makes them especially good at “convincing” voters to cast their ballots for a favored candidate.

One major factor limiting the ability of politicians to capture the surplus from markets in illegal goods is competition from other politicians. The candidate who offers organized criminals protection from prosecution in exchange for the smallest share of the surplus receives their support.

In 1924, Chicago Republicans were reeling. The GOP’s mayoral standard-bearer, William Hale Thompson, was so unpopular he had chosen not to run in the previous year’s election, making way for the victory of Democrat William Dever. Dever had run on a strong anti-crime platform, and he consistently attacked the syndicates that provided illicit alcohol and other illegal goods in the city. But while Chicagoans disliked crime, most of them were deeply opposed to alcohol prohibition, and their desire for liquor created an enormous surplus in that market. Republicans saw an opportunity to undercut their political opponents by offering the underground titans of beer a better deal.

Dion O’Banion, head of the Northside gang, had reliably delivered the 42nd and 43rd wards, including River North, Lincoln Park, and Little Hell/Little Sicily to the Democrats for years. As the saying of the time went, “Who’ll carry the forty-second and forty-third? O’Banion,
in his pistol pocket!”

(Pictured: Dion O'Banion)

So when word got out that O’Banion was thinking about throwing his weight behind the Republicans in the 1924 election, Democrats convened a pow-wow between criminals and politicians in an attempt to stop the defection. In early November, just a few days before the election, a banquet in O’Banion’s honor was held here, at the Webster Hotel (pictured above), 2150 N. Lincoln Park West. Besides O’Banion, representing the Northside gang were “Schemer” Drucci, “Bugs” Moran, and “Hymie” Weiss, along with a coterie of other associates, including Jerry O’Connor, vice president of the janitor’s union. Important politicians, including Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate, Albert Sprague and county Clerk Robert Sweitzer, were present, as was a contingent of police officers, led by Chief of Detectives Michael Hughes. As a token of their appreciation, O’Banion was presented with a beautiful jewel-encrusted platinum wristwatch.

The presence of Hughes was especially interesting. A crack detective, Hughes had come to Chicago at age 17 in 1888 from Ireland, originally finding work in the stockyards. By 1896, Hughes had joined the police force as a “probationary” officer, called in for work if a regular officer was unavailable. Hughes was a success as a police officer, and found himself at the notoriously corrupt 22nd street station during the 1900s, when it served as the means of exchange between the Kenna-Coughlin aldermanic regime and the pimps, madams, gamblers, and saloon-keepers of the segregated Levee vice district. It was there that he first learned how the political/criminal axis turned.

Nevertheless, Hughes was apparently an excellent cop, and made detective in 1918, winning an award in 1920 for being the city’s top crime-fighter in 1920. He played a prominent role in all of the most cases, including the Leopold-Loeb murder and the assassination of “Mossy” Enright. In 1921, Hughes was named Chief of Detectives.

(Pictured: Michael Hughes)

The platinum watch was apparently not enough to sway O’Banion, and the 42nd and 43rd voted strongly Republican in 1924. Sprague lost to GOP senatorial candidate Charles S. Deneen, and the Republicans continued their gains until 1927, when William Hale Thompson regained the mayoralty (with strong financial support from Al Capone). Just days after the 1924 election, O’Banion was assassinated at his State St. flower shop headquarters, and his followers, Drucci, Weiss, and Moran, proclaimed a vengeful blood-letting.

At the same time, news of the pre-election banquet leaked out, and with the city mired in gangland violence, the relationship between prominent Democrats and the criminal element reflected poorly on Mayor Dever. The Mayor publicly asked why his Chief of Detectives was present at a fete for the man known as Chicago’s “arch criminal”. In response, Hughes claimed to have been misled by Sprague:

I don’t know anything about any banquet for O’Banion. I left the bureau that night, and at the corner I met Col. A. A. Sprague, commissioner of public works, who was then a candidate for United States senator, and County Clerk Robert M. Sweitzer. They asked me to accompany them to a banquet given for Jerry O’Connor, a union business agent, whom I know to be honest and clean. The banquet was for O’Connor, not O’Banion. I went with Sweitzer and Sprague, both close friends of the Mayor. This banquet was like almost all others; the hoodlums were there. They go to all such affairs. O’Connor was affiliated with the Sprague campaign committee and it was a sort of political gathering I left soon after I saw who were there, but there were many judges who stayed.

Dever ordered Hughes demoted back to captain, but before he could be reassigned, Hughes quit the police force, returning his star in an angry fit:

The police department is rotten; I wouldn’t stay on under the present administration, if I had to take a job shoveling the streets. They have been wanting to get rid of me ever since Dever became mayor, but until now they didn’t have the nerve.

Days later, Hughes’ friends convinced him to reconsider, and he was allowed to withdraw his resignation and went to work at the Irving Park station.

Hughes was apparently exceptionally talented at policing, and by 1927, he was appointed head of the highway police department, which focused on the increasing vice trade in the suburbs. After Republican William Hale Thompson returned to the mayoralty that year, he brought Hughes back to Chicago, elevating him to Chief of Police (later retitled police commissioner). Hughes did battle with Al Capone during the late 1920s, getting under the Southside racketeer’s skin by not allowing him into the city to visit his wife and son at the family home.

Eventually, however, the rising wave of crime forced Thompson to take action, and he asked Hughes to submit his resignation in August, 1928. Michael Hughes remained on the police force until his retirement at age 64 in 1935. Hughes passed on in 1954.

The Webster Hotel, where the famous O’Banion banquet took place, was new at the time, having been constructed in 1919 for $2.5 million. Converted to apartments in the late 1970s, it remains today as the Webster House. Below is the building as it looked in 1919:

First Ward Ball

There are few events in Chicago history about which more has been written by journalists, historians, and social reformers than the First Ward Ball, otherwise known as the "Grand Reception of the First Ward Democratic Club," the "Annual Masquerade and Fancy Ball," or simply "The Derby". Between 1896 and 1909, the annual fete took place at the Chicago Coliseum, which was located here at 15th and Wabash.

The raison d’etre of the First Ward Ball was campaign fundraising for those famous 1^st Ward alderman, Michael “Hinky Dink” Kenna and “Bathhouse” John Coughlin. The 1^st Ward included the old Custom House Place vice district in the 1890s and early 1900s, and later, the infamous 22nd and Dearborn “Levee”. In order to remain open and advertising widely, the madams, gambling-house owners, and saloon-keepers needed protection from the police, and the First Ward Ball was one of the major means by which Kenna and Coughlin received these payments. Every employee of a house of ill-repute or gambling den, every robber, pickpocket, safe-cracker, and streetwalker, and every bartender, bawdy house entertainer, and low groggery proprietor, all were required to buy tickets, which cost between 50 cents and $1, if they wanted to maintain their livelihood.

The larger establishments bought hundreds of tickets each at the strong “suggestion” of the aldermen, with the number of tickets to be purchased rising with the lawlessness of the establishment and the degree of police protection required to remain open. If sales fell behind expectations, even the police were forced to “sell” tickets (the captains of police stations within the ward being political appointees). Officers would then resell these tickets to business-owners on their beats. The newspapers reported one such transaction:

"I see you're down to take three tickets from me, Pete," says the policeman.

"I don't see how that is, I've taken my tickets -- a whole bunch of them -- from the alderman," indignantly exclaims the saloon-keeper.

"Well, that's all right; but I've got to get rid of mine. Do you think I am the government mint or the First National bank? I don't want to use them to take my wife and children. Better come across with the coin. You know it's only a few you take from me."

So the saloon-keeper usually takes the tickets. The policeman protested that nothing was said about the matter of protection, or anything in the way of favors that were supposed to go with the tickets.

Every major underworld figure of the 1890s and 1900s attended, including Andy Craig (who was facetiously named “belle” of the 1903 ball), Ike Bloom, “Polack Ben” Zeller, “Big Jim” Colosimo, “Big Jim” O’Leary, the Everleigh Sisters, Vic Shaw, and many, many more. Over time, the Balls began to draw in more respectable elements of society as well, including the city’s top businessmen and political figures from Chicago and Washington. Mayor Carter Harrison attended, although he always claimed to leave long before the real mayhem began.

The annual take from the event, which accrued to the campaign fund of whichever alderman was running for re-election in the upcoming year (Chicago wards then having two aldermen each), ran upwards of $25,000 each year, with 10,000-15,000 attendees buying not only tickets, but also liquor (supplied at a discount by local breweries) in quantities that allowed them to show their loyalty to Kenna and Coughlin.

In order to receive a waiver of the city's midnight closing laws, by which alcohol could not be sold after 12:00 a.m., the First Ward Balls were officially "charity" events, not campaign fundraisers. An investigative reporter from the Tribune inquired of Kenna skeptically in 1906:

"Where does this money from the ball go?" the alderman was asked.

"Charity, education, burying the dead, and general ward benefits for the people. One or two consumptives will be sent down to Phoenix, Ariz. There is plenty of use for it. When anybody connected with the First Ward Democratic club needs help he applies to Ald. Coughlin or to me, and the money finally comes out of the fund by action of the executive committee of the club."

When pressed to define the “educational” aspects of the First Ward Ball, Kenna admitted:

"It consists of hiring good halls and good speakers to teach the people of the First ward to vote the straight democratic ticket."

The First Ward Ball had several predecessors. Carrie Watson, Chicago’s top madam after the Great Fire, ran an annual benefit ball at Frieberg's during the 1880s in support of her house’s famous “professor” (ragtime piano-player), known as “Lame” Jimmy. As with the later First Ward Balls, drunkenness and acts of wild debauchery were common (as Carrie Watson put it, “joy reigned unrefined”), and rival underworld characters competed to see who could purchase the most champagne -- although in this case it was merely an act of oneupsmanship, instead of an attempt to buy the favor of politicians. The Lame Jimmy benefits lasted until drunken policemen attending the 1894 ball became embroiled in a shootout, leading to public condemnation. A similar, but separate underworld event, the “Veiled Prophet Bal-Masque” was shut down as a consequence of the shooting as well. But it so happened that in 1894, John Coughlin was running for his first reelection campaign, and was opposed in the Democratic primary by Billy “The Clock” Skakel, a gambling-house proprietor from S. Clark St. Skakel had the bright idea to hold a fundraising ball for saloon-keepers in the district, at which he led a fabulous “grand march” of attendees. Late in the evening, a band of Coughlin supporters invaded the festivities and started a fist-fight melee, but the idea no doubt impressed Coughlin.

Coughlin won the election of 1894, and in 1896, he appropriated Skakel’s concept for a dance ball held at the Seventh Regiment Armory, even including a “grand march”, which Coughlin personally led starting at midnight. This was the original First Ward Ball.

The grand march was essentially a conga-line, twenty persons wide and including thousands of followers snaking their way back and forth around the dance floor, while thousands more sat in boxes above the floor, cheering and shouting. Like a Brazilian carnival, the marchers included a wild representation of the excesses of the underworld; women dressed scandalously in bathing suits, bloomers, and slit-cut dresses, men dressed as women, and everyone wore an elaborate and sometimes vile mask. All were on their way – if not already there – to a state of inebriation. Coughlin himself was always attired in one of his world-famous over-the-top suits; for the 1900 ball, he wore a green swallowtail coat and lavender trousers, a white silk waistcoat, brocaded with heliotrope rosebuds and saffron carnations, accompanied by pink gloves and a silk hat. As one Protestant minister and Ball critic later put it, Coughlin appeared "like Satan at the head of the hosts of the damned, leading the grand march of vice and degeneracy."

(Pictured: editorial cartoon in the Tribune depicting the First Ward Ball. The sign on the barrell in front reads, "Guests not contributing voluntarily will regret it!")

In 1899, the new Chicago Coliseum was built at 15^th and Wabash, and First Ward Balls between 1903 and 1909 were held there. The Coliseum was actually the third building by that name in Chicago, the first being a Loop beer-hall, and the second a Jackson Park convention center that burned down in 1897. The origin of the third Chicago Coliseum on Wabash was in 1887, when William H. Gray, one of the city’s top businessmen, toured the Libby Prison in Richmond, Virginia, on vacation. During the Civil War, the Libby Prison held over 45,000 union soldiers in the South, and Gray saw the opportunity to re-appropriate the building as a profitable museum in Chicago. He found a group of investors, and each brick of the old prison building was painstakingly shipped by rail to Chicago (except for a few that were lost in a train accident in Kentucky), where it was reassembled in replica. The Libby Prison opened in Chicago in 1889, and was a success for nearly a decade. By the end of the 1890s, however, interest had waned, and the building was sold to the Chicago Coliseum Company, which was looking to replace the burned second Coliseum. The new owners kept the surrounding wall of the old Libby Prison, but otherwise rebuilt from scratch.

(Pictured: Chicago Coliseum at 15th and Wabash)

Late nights at the First Ward Balls in the Coliseum were notorious. The grand march took place at midnight, but, as Kenna once explained to a reporter, the party “don't never get good until about three in the morning.” By that time, drunken men began to maul women, couples stole away to dark corners of basement or annex, and others with less capacity for strong drink began passing out on the floor. The increasing depravity of late nights at the First Ward Ball, and the increasing prominence of respectable members of society at the annual orgy began to generate a fervor of reform to shut down the event, where before only a bemused tut-tutting had prevailed. In 1907, Ald. Kenna invited a critical minister of the cloth to attend, who reported back to various pastoral conventions that year about the "scenes unmentionable among self-respecting men,” which were “undisguised and frequent," reminiscent of "pagan Rome in her most degenerate days".

Thus was the beginning of the end for the First Ward Ball. The battle over the 1908 Ball was vigorous, beginning in October of that year, when a Methodist conference passed a resolution condemning the Ball, and demanding that Mayor Fred Busse refuse a liquor permit to the Coliseum. A week later, the Federation of Women’s Clubs joined the chorus condemning the First Ward Ball.

These reformers were surprised on November 27, 1908, when advertisements were nevertheless posted around the 1^st Ward, declaring the annual “Derby” would take place that year on December 14. In response to the protests, Ald. Coughlin wrote one of his famous poems:

Strike up the march, professor, and I will lead the way;
We'll trip the light fantastic too until the break of day.
Who knows that ere another ball we'll be outside the city hall;
Be gay, but not too gay.

Ald. Kenna was more forthright in his criticism of the Ball’s detractors:

There has been so much talk about the First ward ball being disorderly, that this year we decided to invite a dozen ministers and let them see for themselves. If the ball ain't respectable alongside of some camp meetings I have been to I'll give each minister who attends a present of $100....

Preachers are a good deal like saloon-keepers. Most of them are jealous of everybody else in the business if a fellow is going along. If I've got a slot machine and the fellow across the street hasn't, because he ain't in right, he's going to knock. See what I mean?....But whenever you hear one of them fellows shouting that Hinky Dink is a menace to society and that he has horns, just keep your hand on your watch. Savvy?

The day after the advertisements went up, the city’s protestant ministers declared open war on the Ball, in concert with the Law and Order League, an anti-crime pressure group organized by Hyde Park-based reformer Arthur Burrage Farwell. Farwell pleaded with the mayor not to issue a liquor license for the event, arguing for government control to protect the city’s residents from their own ignorance:

Everybody knows that this gathering of criminals under the name of "Ball" permits them to mingle with some young men and women who do not realize the depths to which they are sinking. To prevent crime such a gathering of objectionable citizens should under no circumstances be tolerated…

You must stop this disgrace to Chicago. You must stop it in the name of the young men who will be ruined there. I put this matter up to you personally, Mr. Busse. Suppose you had a young friend whose character and life you prized highly. How would you like to have such scenes of debauchery as are allowed at this ball used to bring degradation and perhaps destruction to your friend?

One wonders how anyone in Chicago could “not realize” the lascivious nature of the First Ward Ball by 1908, but a subtler incentive of the reformers, as with alcohol temprance and Sunday closing laws, was to allow wives to socialize the cost of monitoring their husbands. By the 1910s, women held increased political power and the prospect of attaining the vote in just a few years’ time. Indeed the Women’s Christian Temperance Union joined in the chorus of boos associated with the Ball, saying that "it always engenders immorality and sends out a vicious influence for our young people."

Rev. William O. Walter, pastor of Grace Episcopal, filed a formal request for an injunction against the Ball, in which the prosecutor argued explicitly in favor of the monitoring motive: "We are not trying to correct public morals, but protect our property rights. Many of the old communicants of the church will not permit their daughters to attend after one of these balls." But it was all to no avail – the injunction was denied and the liquor license was approved. The Ball would take place on December 14th that year.

The night before the event, at 8:20 p.m., a bomb exploded in the passageway between the Coliseum Annex and an adjacent junk room on the grounds, blowing out windows of buildings 200 feet away on Michigan and Wabash Aves. Dynamite attacks were common in those years, mostly associated with the Gamblers’ War between Mont Tennes, “Big Jim” O’Leary, and others. But this bomb was more likely thrown by a frustrated reformer, for what kind of amateur could throw a stick of dynamite and miss the entire Coliseum entirely, only blowing a hole in an barely-used adjacent out-building?

A more serious problem for Kenna and Coughlin was the Tribune’s announcement that reporters would be in attendance and the following day’s paper would print the names of all respectable members of society who attended. These social leaders were a major source of revenue, purchasing thousands of dollars of champagne, and their money, if not their persons, would be seriously missed. In fact, the Tribune’s threats did keep many of Chicago’s elite away from the 1908 Ball; many of them contrived elaborate alibis, such as holding a big dinner party that night in which reporters were invited. A few others did attend, but masked their faces before entering.

By the evening of December 14, 1908, tens of thousands of curiosity-seekers and protesters flocked to Wabash Ave., joining the throng attempting to enter the event. The police admitted the first 12,000, but then shut the doors to prevent overcrowding. Thousands more attempted to break in through the exit doors, which the police then locked from the inside. The crowd was so enormous that when women fainted – a common occurrence – they had to be passed overhead from hand to hand towards the exits. Cigar smoke settled on the floor in such thick fogs that visibility was no greater than 30 feet in any direction. The noise of shuffling feet and murmuring overpowered the sound of the dance band, and fist-fights and shoving erupted in all quarters.

When Lyman Atwell, photographer for the Tribune, showed up outside and began setting up his flash and tripod, security notified Coughlin, who emerged from the Coliseum, personally jumping on Atwell, breaking his camera and knocking him to the ground. Coughlin had previously announced that no photography would be allowed (on the grounds that pictures of the poorly-dressed women at the Ball would be used as ammunition by the reformers). Later, defending himself in court, Coughlin claimed he thought Atwell's flash bulb would be perceived as another bomb, causing a riot and a stampede.

As usual, things started to get interesting at midnight, when the regiments of madams and their inmates showed up, led by the Everleigh Sisters. This caused another influx of thousands of men to attempt to enter the building, and everyone craned their necks to get a look at the scarlet women.

The most infamous party in Chicago history lasted until 5 a.m., when the last drunken revelers staggered out of the orgy.

In 1909, when the date of that year’s ball was announced for December 13, the forces of reform returned even stronger than the year before. The Law and Order League and the protestant ministers of Chicago were joined by Roman Catholic leaders, including the Young Men’s Association of SS. Peter and Paul Church, who passed a resolution that was read at city council, over the protests of Ald. Coughlin. While the resolution was read, Ald. Kenna (who was Catholic) hid under his desk. Again, note the argument that government intervention is required to protect "ignorant" citizens from themselves:

Whereas, The experience in past years, as testified to by persons who attended the saturnalia, has shown that unfortunate and vicious men and women of the so-called red light districts display their degradation in public to great injury to morals of others who go there because of ignorance, curiosity, and other reasons....The First ward ball is notoriously reported to be the means of collecting illegal tribute from the lowest and most unfortunate denizens of vicious resorts and is a disgrace to all who, pretending to be respectable, encourage the saturnalia by attending it....

Finally, on December 10, the city revoked the liquor license for the 1909 event, causing Ald. Coughlin to write the shortest of all his poems:

No Ball;
That’s All.

That wasn’t the end of his complaint, though:

Not until within the last two or three years has the press or clergy ever entered a word of protest against the holding of the ball. The reason, I suppose, is that what the people would stand for ten or twelve years ago won't be tolerated at present. Chicago is growing better. There's no mistake about it. And let me tell you I'm just as glad to see the change in social conditions as any man in the city.

On the date of the Ball, Coughlin and Kenna instead held a sober concert at the Coliseum, in which a classical orchestra plodded through the William Tell overture, then selections from popular musical comedies. Only 2,500 attended, and most of these only for a short while, until they could be sure they had been seen by one of the Aldermen. Instead of an enormous dance hall and a grand march, the Coliseum was filled with thousands of wooden chairs, nailed to the floor. The 1909 “Ball” ended at 11:00 p.m.

After the fizzle of the 1909 event, Kenna and Coughlin admitted defeat and did not attempt to hold any future Balls. However, the First Ward Ball became a perennial comparison for any hedonistic event in the city for decades to come. The closest thing to a modern First Ward Ball is the "Players Ball," held every year in the Chicago area as a nationwide convention of pimps, which, like the First Ward Ball, inevitably attracts wide public protest.

After its heyday in the era of the First Ward Ball, the Coliseum continued to hold major conventions, trade, automobile, and livestock shows, circuses, and sporting events until 1971. Each Republican National Convention between 1904 and 1920 was held there. During the 1920s, the fledgling Chicago Blackhawks held home ice at the Coliseum, and in 1935, the “sport” of roller derby was invented there. During WWII, the Coliseum was a training facility for Navy aircraft radio operators. By the 1960s, most major conventions were bypassing the Coliseum for the larger and more modern McCormick Place, but an NBA expansion team, the Chicago Zephyrs, played their home games there for several years before decamping for Baltimore (the successor of that team is the Washington Wizards, where Chicago basketball hero Michael Jordan played and coached during his declining days). Due to structural defects, after 1971 the city refused to issue permits for any further shows, and the Coliseum was shuttered until 1982, when it was sold for $375,000 and demolished.

The site of the Coliseum is now the parking lot for a Buddhist temple. A park commemorating the Coliseum stands across the street.

The Arbeiter-Zeitung, Chicago's "Red Rag", moves West after Haymarket

Revolutions spreading across Europe in 1848 brought a wave of liberal immigrants full of anti-statist fervor into the United States, many of whom settled in central Texas, Cincinnati, and Chicago. Fleeing autocracy in Europe, and with the words of Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto, published that year, still ringing in their ears, they brought a culture distinctly different than that prominent among the city’s first settlers, who were largely of New England Congregational stock. Germans and German-Americans constituted around 15% of the population in 1850, and grew steadily to around 20% by the 1880s.

Germans were unapologetic in their appreciation of brewed alcoholic beverages, liberal in their politics, and they formed an insular population largely concentrated in North and West side neighborhoods. American-born Chicagoans were suspicious of these immigrants, many of whom spoke no English and rarely dealt with non-Germans. Germans suffered discrimination at the hands of government and police, as during the Lager Beer Riots of 1855.

Chicago largely escaped the spectre of Communism that haunted Europe during the 1850s and 1860s, but the prolonged recession of the 1870s brought greater conflicts between workers and employers throughout America. The Great Railroad Strike of 1877, which was really a general strike, not confined to railroads, strangled the country’s transportation system from coast-to-coast, and illustrated graphically the ability of workers to unite and wreck havoc on the economy if their demands were ignored. Early labor leader Samuel Gompers called the ’77 strike “the tocsin [alarm bell] that sounded a ringing message of hope to us all.”

At the time, Chicago had two German language newspapers: the Staats-Zeitung (“state newspaper”), and the Neue Freie Presse. The Staats-Zeitung was Republican in its politcs, while the Freie Presse was Democrat. In 1877, a third paper, the Arbeiter-Zeitung (“worker’s newspaper”), began publishing, with editorials expressing socialist perspectives, edited by Paul Grottkau. The Arbeiter-Zeitung’s original headquarters was on S. Wells st. (then Fifth Ave.), where it became America’s first regularly-published Socialist publication. The editors of the three papers despised each other, and were frequently embroiled in libel suits based on personal attacks published in their pages.

In its early stages, socialism in Chicago was largely dismissed as the wild ranting of those who went tilting at windmills. A Tribune editorial on the occasion of a socialist picnic took the tone of mild mockery:

There was neither murder, nor arson, nor robbery. Several unoffending beer-kegs were valorously stormed at the point of a nickel; many innocent blades of grass – aristocratic grass, perhaps – were trodden under the heel of the proletariat; muslin dresses were frayed and tumbled in the rude clasp of labor while whirling in the waltz; contributions of 25 cents were extorted from the capitalists and city officers who visited the grounds; the grinding monopolies of the land were taken by the throat by Parsons and other speakers and choked until they howled again; and in the dim recesses of the grove wild work was done with the sausage and the ham-sandwich.

Over time, however, the Arbeiter-Zeitung became increasingly radical, ranging from socialist to anarchist under the influence of noted New York radical Johann Most, who edited his own publication there. While the Arbeiter-Zeitung was largely unreadable to most Chicagoans, who did not speak German, incendiary fragments would occasionally be translated for publication in English-language newspapers, which generally condemned the violent rants.

A July, 1879 editorial in the Tribune was not exactly impartial towards’ the Zeitung’s editor, Paul Grottkau:

The acknowledged leader of the Socialistic party in the City of Chicago is Paul Grottkau, a fugitive from Berlin, Germany. He is extreme in his views, narrow, ignorant, and in a measure, shrewd and eloquent. He is a man of much personal magnetism, though cowardly in his instincts and methods. Though for many years a resident of Chicago, he does not speak the English language, and, apparently does not care to learn. He knows little of American institutions, and is an agitator and a revolutionist by instinct and education. He is more to be feared, perhaps, than any man of his class in Chicago, not because he has the courage to carry out his schemes, but because he has the power to sod a movement on foot which he may not be able to control or stop.

The Tribune then went on to quote the editor of the Neue Freie-Presse at length regarding Grottkau’s supposedly cowardly history and violent tendencies.

In 1880, the Arbeiter-Zeitung was on the verge of bankruptcy, and a young, well-educated and successful upholsterer from Wicker Park, August Spies, was brought on as business manager. Spies, who had immigrated to New York in 1872, came to Chicago in 1876, and was successfully supporting his mother, sister, and three brothers, all of whom he helped bring to America in the 1870s. Spies had become a socialist during the Railroad Strike of 1877, and had begun associating with its most radical elements in Chicago, including the militaristic Lehr-und-Wehr Verein (roughly, the “education and resistance committee”). By 1880, when he began work at the Arbeiter-Zeitung, he was a committed anarchist.

(Pictured: August Spies, who was considered exceptionally handsome)

It was in that year that Cook County Recorder of Deeds James W. Brockway sued the editorial staff of the Arbeiter-Zeitung, including Grottkau and Spies, for besmirching his character. The radical newspaper had printed an editorial urging votes against Brockway, claiming he had fired most of the male workers in his office, and that “he now has at times from twenty-five to thirty unfortunate female beings about him, who have to submit to his beastly desires.”

Grottkau and Spies were arrested and placed under $1,000 bail. The Tribune, never a friend to socialists, described the scene:

The Communistic journalists found difficulty in procuring bail, and remained in the Justice’s office several hours, when [Socialist Labor Party] Alderman Frank Stauber signed their bonds, and they were again at liberty to set their smut-mill in operation.

The violent rhetoric of the radicals, led by the editors of the Arbeiter-Zeitung, which became increasingly insurrectionary over time, inflamed sentiments against German-Americans in Chicago, and gave the impression that vast cabals were being formed to overthrow law and
order.

It was in this mood that the public witnessed the role of the Arbeiter-Zeitung at the Haymarket massacre. August Spies, who upon the retirement of Paul Grottkau in 1883, was named editor of the paper, was one of the featured speakers at the meeting that evening. On May 5, 1886, the day after the riot, police showed up at the newspaper’s editorial office to arrest Spies, along with Michael Schwab, the associate editor. In their search of the Wells St. offices, they claimed to find a large stash of dynamite and other explosive materials in a closet adjoining Spies’ office, which the police toted to the lakefront at Randolph Street and destroyed.

(Pictured: Michael Schwab, associate editor of the Arbeiter-Zeitung)

In the red scare that followed Haymarket, some questioned whether authorities should have allowed the incendiary publication to continue unregulated. In a speech that could have been given today (though with a different terrorist target in mind), Mayor Carter Harrison
argued for a “blowback” theory:

Talk about my encouraging Socialism and Anarchism! They [my opponents] ought to recollect when I was elected to the Mayoralty there were 11,000 and odd votes for the Socialistic candidates. By allowing them free speech, by not interrupting them – treating them as if they were citizens – the best element got out from among them and today Spies himself doesn’t claim that there are over 3,000 Socialists in the city, and I doubt if there are 1,000 Anarchists….I still believe the best thing to do is not to oppress that class of people where there is no violence – not to give them the feeling that they are being oppressed, because opposition always causes that class to grow.

Spies and Schwab, along with Adolph Fischer and Oscar Neebe, who were also employed at the paper, were convicted of murder in the Haymarket matter, supposedly bring dynamite to the meeting and handing it to the bomb-thrower. Spies and Fischer were hanged, and Neebe was sentenced to 15 years, while Schwab asked for, and received, a commutation to life sentence from the Governor. Both Schwab and Neebe later received full pardons and were released from prison.

After Haymarket, the Arbeiter-Zeitung’s printer, which was located on the same block in Wells Street, refused to work with the radical paper’s editorial staff, and so headquarters was moved to 727 W. Roosevelt (at the time, number 274 12th St.), near Halsted, the site of which is pictured above, deeper into the working-class neighborhoods where anarchist sympathies were
maintained. The paper continued publishing material despised by most Chicagoans, including an annual jeremiad against the Thanksgiving holiday, and increasingly anti-Christian rhetoric. An editorial in the Arbeiter-Zeitung on the date of the hangings of Spies and Fischer indicated

We are honest, and acknowledge that we have lost a battle….We mourn the loss of these eloquent, true, brave, and proud men , sacrificed to Mammon….Up, comrades, and begin the work anew. Hear not the specious promises of peace which sentimentalists whisper in your ear. We are at war – at war with a society that has at its throat a moral cancer like that destroying the throat of the German Crown Prince. The forces of Nature are with us, or, as they used to say, God is helping. Nevertheless, we rely neither upon God, who mocks and fools such as hope and dally, nor upon Nature; we ourselves are Nature’s masterpiece, on which we must depend.

After Spies' departure, the paper was edited by Gustav Belz, who had been active in the riot at the McCormick Reaper Works, which was the inspiration for the Haymarket meeting where the massacre occurred. Consistent with Mayor Harrison's theory, Belz claimed that the Haymarket massacre doubled the circulation of the Arbeiter-Zeitung in less than six months, and in August 1886, he claimed 6,000 subscribers.

Despite their unsentimental rhetoric, Belz (as well as his successor, Jens Christiansen) disavowed violence, and urged workingmen to seek their rights through the ballot and the pen. This led to some divisions within the paper, and the more radical elements of the socialist movement departed from the Arbeiter-Zeitung after Haymarket.

This didn’t stop the Tribune and other conservative elements from heaping scorn on “the flaming torch,” as the Arbeiter paper became known. After a November, 1891 speech by an anarchist, Weissman, at the graves of the four men hanged for their roles at Haymarket, the Tribune editorialized in a column headlined, “Is This Kind of Free Speech to Be Allowed?”:

Do the demagogue papers which are truckling to the Anarchists of Chicago and the boodle Aldermen who are in the same vile business think that speeches of this Weismann stamp are the proper mental food for excitable, ignorant foreigners who may act any minute on the bloodthirsty advice given them by these revolutionary orators?

The Arbeiter-Zeitung continued publishing into the 20th century. In 1917, its offices were raided by the police during the wave of anti-German fervor that swept the country during WWI. The police stated that the editors had “grown bold in their criticisms of the government.” In 1918, the U.S. District Attorney for Illinois seized the books of the paper after a flyer supporting the Russian Bolshevik revolution was printed and distributed from the Arbeiter-Zeitung offices.

The Arbeiter-Zeitung continued publishing until 1933, the need for an expressly German press in Chicago having waned and other, nationwide, socialist newspapers having supplanted the role of the country’s first continuously-printed radical publication.

Where the Arbeiter-Zeitung once officed after Haymarket, the new and beautiful UIC Forum convention center now stands.

Colosimo and Mushmouth Work Side by Side in the Levee

Number 239 Twenty-second street (now numbered 41 W. 22nd) was a virtual who's who of the underworld in the first decade of the 1900s, an interracial mixing of Chicago's once and future vice kings in the midst of the Levee.

The building appears to have housed a first-floor saloon, with various gambling, billiards and off-track betting operations on the second floor. It was on the second floor that "Big Jim" Colosimo, future titan of the Levee and founder of the Chicago Outfit later run by Johnny Torrio and Al Capone, founded his first establishment, the Colosimo Billiard and Pool Room Parlor, sometime about 1904. The Parlor was connected by telephone, a sure sign in those days that a horse racing handbook was operating within, as race information needed to be distributed quickly to bookmakers (see, e.g., the Mont Tennes operations).

(pictured: James "Big Jim" Colosimo)

In his authoritative volume on Colosimo, Arthur Bilek claims that Big Jim hired two of his brothers-in-law, Joseph and John Moresco, to work at the Parlor (this was before Colosimo divorced his first wife, Victoria, for a new love interest), and that these two eventually took over the business while Colosimo concerned himself with his Cafe and various brothels.

The second floor was also the site of the Frontenac Club, a joint operation between three of the city's top gambling lords: policy (lotto) king John "Mushmouth" Johnson, dice-man Bill Lewis, and Tom McGinnis, who was at times an independent bookmaker and at other times associated with the Mont Tennes and Jim O'Leary syndicates. The Club opened May 1, 1906. Notably, though Johnson and Lewis were black, the Frontenac Club catered exclusively to white customers of means (a gambler had to flash at least $10 -- roughly a week's wages for a typical laborer -- in cash at the door to be admitted). The name of the Club evoked 17th Century Quebecois leader and Indian fighter Count Frontenac, and so symbolized old world wealth and aristocracy in a city short on both. Reports at the time indicated the Frontenac Club turned profits of $200 per day (nearly $5,000 in 2008 dollars), which was split in thirds between the owners.

The building's popularity among the Levee's elite kings of vice may have been due to its central location. 22nd and Dearborn was ground zero for the red light district, and some of the better establishments, catering to a higher class of sinner, such as the Everleigh Club, were just across the street.

After Mushmouth Johnson died in 1907, it's not clear what became of the Club. A report in 1908 indicates the police raided operations on the second floor of the building and discovered a big craps game run by Bill Lewis, with mostly black players, a fact which suggests the Frontenac had either closed or changed substantially in character, although it's possible the Lewis game took place in a separate room.

That the building was still a major gambling resort in 1909 is certain from the fact that it suffered a dynamite attack in the Gamblers' War that year. The owner of the first floor saloon, old-time Satan's Mile barkeep John Morris, claimed there was no gambling currently in the buildilng (highly unlikely), though he admitted the second floor housed poker rooms at some time in the past.

As late as 1920, Colosimo's old billiards room, apparently consolidated by Bill Lewis, was still in operation. After the closure of the Levee in the mid-1910s, most of the big names in vice had moved either into the suburbs or further south (for instance, Lewis was by that time headquartering at a notorious mixed-race craps game on 35th street), but many gambling and vice resorts were still operating surreptitiously at that date.

The buildling was demolished in the mid-1950s as the entire Levee district was slowly redeveloped by the Chicago Housing Authority for low-income residences. The CHA's headquarters building between 1961 and 1974 was located on the southwest corner of Dearborn and 22nd (by then renamed Cermak Rd.), right where the Colosimo-Johnson building once stood. Ironically, the CHA left in 1974 citing crime in the nearby Ickes and Hilliard projects they managed. Robert Loeffley, information director for the public housing agency, told reporters

Because the present office location is in the midst of a string of public housing developments, people have the idea, whether it's true or not, that the neighborhood is unsafe.

The site is now part of the campus of the "National Teacher's [sic] Academy," a public magnet school opened in 2002.

Mont Tennes, King of Gamblers

"The complete life story of one man, were it known in every detail, would disclose practically all there is to know about syndicated gambling as a phase of organized crime in Chicago in the last quarter century. That man is Mont Tennes."

So declared the Illinois Crime Survey of 1929. The man who stood at the center of Chicago gambling during the first quarter of the 20th century, and who developed a sporting news service that eventually monopolized horse racing operations throughout North America, lived here, in the mansion at 632 W. Belden Ave. (or before the 1909 street renumbering, 404 Belden) during the height of his power.

Jacob Tennes was born in Chicago in 1873 to a large family with five brothers and two sisters. He was nicknamed "Mont" by his mother at a young age, and that became the only name by which the city's King of Gamblers was ever known to be called. Even as a boy, he was known to be an expert at dice and other games, and before his 20th birthday he began running his first handbook operation. His gambling expertise provided the start-up capital he used to open the Tennes Billiard Hall on Lincoln Ave., near Wrightwood Ave., which he operated along with his brothers. There he sponsored pool tournaments, in which he himself was frequently the victor.

Over the next few years, Tennes gained interest in a number of other handbooks operating on the Northside, and in 1900, he began opening saloons, including one inside the Billiard Hall on Lincoln.

By 1901, Tennes' name was already well known among anti-gambling advocates, and a crusade against saloons on N. Clark St. in River North focused primarily on Tennes-owned saloons. The Tribune reported that “residents of the neighborhood allege that the district fast is approaching the condition that existed in the levee” (probably a reference to Custom House Place, the city's biggest red light district at the time).

The newspaper described the operations at what was at the time Tennes' biggest gambling outfit at 143 Clark (now in the 600 block, where the "Rock & Roll" McDonalds sits today), where a ragtime piano player began vamping behind the bar every day after 2:00 p.m.:

On a cigar stand in front of the main room is posted a racing form, which is eagerly studied by those who enter. The ticker is behind a thin partition and the bookmaker gets information of track and odds over the telephone. The results are announced at the bar and down-stairs in the bowling alley, where many men gather....Everyone seems to have the utmost faith in the bookmaker, and gains and losses are taken from his report without a word. The book has been successful, it is believed, for ‘killings’ [large winnings by the house] are rare in Tennes’ place.

Remarkably, women were among the major clients of Tennes' gambling houses, though they rarely entered the saloons, cigar shops, and even cash register shops that fronted his operations, choosing instead to call in their bets or give them to one of a team of employees who traveled around the city, taking wagers in the morning at homes and stores on races taking place in the afternoon, and settling accounts from the previous day's races.

(Pictured: Mont Tennes)

The increased interest in horse racing during the early part of the century created a business opportunity for gambling entrepreneurs, who previously focused on cards or games like roulette and faro. At the same time, off-track betting presented a serious technological problem: how to acquire quick and accurate results from the races, as the house stands to lose substantial sums if gamblers learn the outcome first. Managing and monopolizing the supply of information on tack conditions, odds, scratches, and race results became Mont Tennes' life work.

Starting in 1904, Tennes began operating clearinghouses where national racing information was received by telegraph, then dispersed to handbooks throughout the city by telephone. The first of these, opened in league with other major gambling figures including Tom McGinnis and "Big Jim" O'Leary, was a little cottage in Dunning at Irving Park Rd. and Narragansett, just outside Chicago city limits, where suspicious neighbors noticed two telegraph lines leading in through a kitchen window.

The photo below shows a forest of telephones in one of Tennes' later clearing houses at 123 Clark St. (now 550 N. Clark).


In order to operate such a large and complex operation, Tennes required implicit protection from police raids, which he obtained throughout his career with payoffs from beat cops all the way up to the chief of police. As early as 1902, he was a notorious source of graft:

Frequenters of the place say Tennes has a pull which is strong enough to keep his handbook running in spite of the strong opposition of many people in the vicinity. The East Chicago Avenue Police Station is four blocks away, but Captain Revere’s policemen pay no attention to the poolroom. While strangers have some difficulty in placing money with the bookmaker, there is no great attempt at secrecy, and the betting goes on while chance customers come and go at the bar.

Politicians, however, must satisfy their constituents if they want to keep their jobs, and so in 1903, Mayor Carter Harrison, Jr., declared open "war" on Chicago's handbooks, forcing the hand of the police. He revoked the saloon licenses of all the city's top gamblers, including Bob Motts, Andy Craig, Mushmouth Johnson, Alderman Michael "Hinky Dink" Kenna, and above all, Mont Tennes.

Thus began a complex and protracted political battle between Tennes, the police force which wanted his graft, the Mayor, and citizens. In league with the police, Tennes publicly declared that, due to Mayor Harrison's order, he was finished with the gambling business, and he sold his saloon license to a "M. A. Jockum," who was actually an associate, allowing Tennes to remain in control of his bars and handbooks. At the same time, he paid the police to focus on raiding the books of his business rivals. This latter practice was one Tennes continued to employ throughout his career as he attempted to monopolize gambling in the city. At the December First Ward Ball, an annual saturnalian party and underworld soiree thrown by Aldermen Kenna and John J. Coughlin, Tennes' men handed out over $2,500 to the various politicans to help turn down the heat on his operations.

Besides the police and city politicians, Tennes also faced continuous trouble from rival gamblers. While his original 1904 clearinghouse in Dunning was a partnership with Jim O'Leary, the two fell out in 1906 over the latter's success in operating the City of Traverse, a gambling boat that operated outside police jurisdiction, four miles offshore on Lake Michigan.

In retaliation, Tennes threatened to start his own gambling cruise operation, the City of Midland, unless his rivals cut him in on the deal. When they refused, he sent a tug boat out to shadow the Traverse, and when it turned on its wireless service to begin receiving racing news for the sports aboard, Tennes' tugboat blasted hits fog horn, thinking this could disrupt the transmissions. Instead, the trick only caused those on shore to believe the City of Traverse was on fire, sending panic throughout the city.

Some reports claim that O'Leary and his associates finally did cut Tennes in as an investor in the City of Traverse later in 1906, ending the feud. But this theory is belied by the fact that the following three years witnessed constant dynamite bombings of rival gamblers' homes and businesses in what the media dubbed the "Gamblers' War".

The Gamblers' War started in June of 1907 when Mont Tennes was physically attacked on the street near his home by a man whom police initially believed to be a disgruntled loser at one of Tennes' resorts. Tennes, however, was convinced O'Leary was behind the attack in retaliation for Tennes' efforts to have O'Leary's Northwest Indiana gambling houses raided by police.

In any case, the home of "Blind John" Condon, who had previously worked with Tennes, but was also an associate of O'Leary's, was bombed on July 9, 1907. Two weeks later on July 25, Tennes' home on Belden Ave. (pictured above) was bombed, creating a gaping hole in the alley behind the house. A month later, O'Leary's resort on S. Halsted was bombed, and on August 19, the Tennes home was again victimized. This time, the bomb landed in the front yard, blowing out all the windows of the house, plus those of his neighbors, several of whom announced plans to move away. Tennes himself sent his wife and children to live out in the country for the next few months.

In all, over 30 bombs exploded at the homes and businesses of the city's major gambling kings over the next three years. The police claimed the bombings were the result of a blackmailing scheme run by a mysterious gang known as "Smith & Jones":

The Chicago dynamiters who blew up gambling places for blackmail did business under the name “Smith & Jones”. That is, when they wanted a gambler to put them in the payroll the gambler would receive a mysterious telephone call telling him to see Smith & Jones. The gamblers all knew what that meant and that they would be dynamited if they did not see Smith & Jones.

The police never offered any evidence of such a scheme, and were never able to arrest Smith or Jones. A more likely cause for the bombings was Mont Tennes' attempts to monopolize the flow of race information into the city.

At the beginning of 1907, Tennes was paying $300 each day to the Payne News Service of Cincinnati, which telegraphed race information from throughout the U.S. and Canada to Tennes' Chicago clearinghouse, which was then in suburban Forest Park, which then conveyed the information to subscribers in the city by secret telephone lines known only to the Chicago Telephone Company. The Payne service had taken control over the race wires after the Western Union company had ceased the business in 1904 under pressure from an anti-gambling shareholder.

Tennes disliked paying such high prices to Payne, and the final straw took place in 1907 when an error in odds reporting by the service on a horse named Grenesque at Fort Erie ended up costing him thousands of dollars. He decided to start his own rival wire service and to drive Payne out of business nationwide.

Tennes hired agents to attend races throughout the country, who would report back to an operator nearby with a telegraph key. Often race track operators wanted nothing to do with Tennes' agents, and removed them from the premises. In such cases, Tennes' men found their way onto the tops of nearby buildings and used telescopes to observe action on the turf. In one interesting case where the racing action couldn't be seen from any nearby building, a woman was sent into the track to observe; she would periodically excuse herself from the action to a spot where she could be seen applying makeup, touching her nose, eyes, and ears in a specified order that indicated the winners of the race to a telegraph operator observing her nearby.

Tennes insisted that all Chicago handbooks use his new General News Bureau service and discontinue any subscription to Payne. Those that refused were either bombed or raided by police friendly to Tennes. Tennes also took the fight against Payne beyond Chicago. He sold his sporting news services in cities across the country, including San Francisco, San Antonio, Cleveland, Oklahoma City, Detroit, and New Orleans. Finally, the Kentucky home of John A. Payne, proprietor of the Payne News Service, was bombed, and the latter gave in, selling out his interest to the Tennes' General News Bureau in 1909, when the flow of bombs in the Gamblers' War finally slowed.

In 1911, Mont Tennes again came to public notice when he was sued by a former gambler-turned-reformer named Harry Brolaski, and a disgruntled General News Bureau business partner, Tim Murphy. Allegations that Tennes was at the head of a national gambling syndicate with 800 clients nationwide and $500,000 per day in revenue inflamed public opinion, and in September of that year, the Tribune published a scathing editorial accusing the chief of police, John McWeeny, of accepting graft. When the paper's reporters confronted McWeeny the next day, the Chief was nonchalant. After reading a copy of the editorial given him by the reporters, he was dismissive.

“That’s just a rehash,” was his comment. “It has been said before.”

“What are you going to do about it?”

“Let them fight it out among themselves,” the chief said calmly.

“Then you are not interested in what Tim Murphy and Mont Tennes are doing?”

“I don’t know Tim Murphy. He may be a myth for all I know.”

“Mont Tennes is not a myth.”

“No,” the chief admitted. “I have met people who knew Mont Tennes.”

“Are you going to question Tim Murphy or Mont Tennes?”

“Who is the complainant against them?” the chief said bluntly.

“Call the Tribune complainant. It has printed columns about the methods of Murphy and Tennes and the gamblers’ war.”

The chief sighed.

McWeeny insisted, disingenously, "There is no gambling in Chicago and the police do not 'tip off' raids," despite the obvious fact that handbooks were rampant in the city, and the police did tip off their raids in return for Tennes' payoffs. The matter finally ended when Tennes paid off Tim Murphy as well, and the latter wrote letters to the court and the attorneys general of three states swearing off his earlier charges.

Mont Tennes continued to monopolize racing information in Chicago and throughout the country for the next decade. Though the handbooks he operated were constantly raided and he served as a political punching-bag for every mayor and congressman seeking the law-and-order vote, he never served a day in prison, always hiding behind a defense that he was simply a newspaper man, conveying sports information around the country.

In 1916, Federal appeals court judge and future baseball commissioner Kennesaw Mountain Landis even launched a personal investigation of Tennes' operations, in which it was revealed that his operations netted $75,000 each year, of which 90% went to Mont Tennes personally. Tennes hired superstar attorney Clarence Darrow (of "Scopes Monkey Trial" fame), and eventually Landis' inquiry ended with the conclusion that interstate transmission of gambling information wasn't illegal under federal statues, and actual gambling was a local phenomenon and so not under a federal court's jurisdiction.

One of the few times Mont Tennes lost a substantial bet was during the famous 1919 "Black Sox" scandal, in which Chicago White Sox players allegedly threw the World Series in league with a group of New York gamblers. Tennes later claimed he knew the fix was in, but put up $80,000 on his home team anyway. As a Northsider, Tennes really should have only bet on the Cubs.

When reformer "Decent" William Dever was elected Mayor of Chicago in 1924, a 51 year-old Tennes decided to get out of the business of operating handbooks and focus exclusively on his news service. A few years later, noting the violent tendencies of Al Capone and other Chicago gangsters, who increasingly were expressing interest in the sporting news business, Tennes sold the General News Bureau in 1927, with a 50% interest going to media mogul Moe Annenberg, founder of the Daily Racing Form.

In retirement, Mont Tennes devoted himself to his progeny, his golf, and his charity work. When he died on August 6, 1941, his heirs received a $5 million estate which provided for a $2,000 monthly lifetime income for his wife, Ida, $700 monthly to each of his four children, and $200 monthly for each grandchild. One of the Tennes boys, Ray, ran a Ford dealership, while another, Horace, became a champion motorboat racer.

He also established a $1,000,000 trust fund, which donated to Roman Catholic, Jewish, and Masonic charities, and ordered $10,000 annually to support a new "character home" for wayward boys, Camp Honor.

The General News Bureau was run by Moe Annenberg together with a Capone associate, James Ragen, until the latter went to prison in 1939 (Ragen was murdered by Capone hitmen in 1946). Afterwards, the Bureau was reorganized and rechristened as the Continental Press Service, and eventually passed into the control of Moe's son Walter Annenberg, who used the money from his news empire, which included Continental Press, to fund journalism schools at the University of Southern California and the University of Pennsylvania.

Tennes' mansion at 632 W. Belden, which was built in 1885, still stands today.