the Midwest. They trucked the booze from all points to warehouses in Cook County and delivered it to hundreds, and then thousands of retail outlets. While the prices were two to ten times what they had been—a keg of beer now went for $50.00—that figure included protection. To ensure peace in the marketplace, Torrio offered the perfect arrangement. The small-time operators were simply put on the payroll. The big-time operators were offered dependable supplies and protected territory.  Everybody  would respect everbody else’s turf. No outsiders could move in. No speakeasy could buy from anybody but the designated chief of that territory.

Unfortunately, lucrative high-risk enterprises tend to attract the ruthless and greedy, which meant that Torrio’s business partners included such volatile lunatics as the Terrible Gennas, Claude “Screwy” Maddox, and Dion O’Banion, a cherubic little Irishman who might either buy you a drink or shoot you in the back depending on his mood. O’Banion once set Torrio up by selling him the Siebens Brewery on the Near North Side just a few hours before it was scheduled to be raided. Initially, Torrio refused to go after O’Banion, prefering diplomacy to slaughter in the interests of business. But the nature of the business demanded violence. There was no way to prevent it. All arguments, whether about territory, profits, or management philosophy had to be settled by force. In short order, the streets of Chicago were red with blood, as were the streets of Kansas City and Detroit and almost every other major American city. The Cook County State’s Attorney, trying to stem the crimson tide, added a thousand men to the police force, got the county to triple the number of judges, and had absolutely no impact whatsoever.  Over 200 gangsters were gunned down, blown up, or knifed to death during the first two terms of his watch—on at least one occasion there was a machinegun duel in broad daylight right in front of the Standard Oil Building on Michigan Avenue—but not a single gangster was sent up for murder.^[15]  In court, witnesses contracted a disease called “Chicago Amnesia,” and one