Capone: The Life and World of Al Capone by John Kobler Read Free Book Online Page B

a stable of diligent girls. Then, reduced to poverty and penitence after a brush with the law, he went to work as a street sweeper. Promoted to foreman, he organized his fellow sweepers into a social and athletic club. Like every denizen of the Levee, Big Jim recognized the sovereignty of Aldermen Coughlin and Kenna, and he set out to ingratiate himself with them by delivering the club votes to their political machine. In return they made him a precinct captain, an office that conferred virtual immunity from arrest. It was the first of numerous quid pro quos. Under the aldermen's patronage Big Jim rose to poolroom manager, saloonkeeper and-the juiciest plum-one of their brothel bagmen. In the last capacity he established his effectiveness once for all when he called on Georgie Spencer to notify him that the cost of protection was about to go up. Georgie balked and in the ensuing argument reached for a knife. Slipping on brass knuckles, Big Jim battered him to a jelly, lifted $300 from his billfold, the assessment due, and left him at death's door. Collections flowed smoothly thereafter. During a vice investigation ten years later Minna Everleigh identified Big Jim as the agent through whom she had paid Coughlin and Kenna $100,000.
    In 1902, while fulfilling his bagman's duties, Big Jim made the acquaintance of Victoria Moresco, a fat, homely, middle-aged bawd who operated a second-rate brothel on Armour Avenue. She was devastated by his dark Latin virility. She offered him the post of manager, which he eagerly accepted. Two weeks later they were married. Under Colosimo's management and the benevolence of his aldermanic protectors, the brothel prospered. In his bride's honor he named it the Victoria. Presently he acquired a brothel of his own, then another, and before long he owned or controlled scores, most of them $1 and $2 cribs, though the Victoria and later the Saratoga came to rank among the Levee's fancier vice resorts. Out of every $2 his girls earned Colosimo kept $1.20. Like most of his colleagues, he also ran a number of saloons near, or connected by, passageways to his bordellos.
    The supply of prostitutes never quite met the demand. The turnover was too rapid. The average parlor house whore seldom lasted more than five years. Aging fast, she would sink to cheaper and cheaper houses until she hit bottom on Bed Bug Row or took to the streets. Drink, drugs or disease usually completed her destruction. To replenish their "stock," the whoremasters resorted to white slavery.
    The origin of the term "white slave" is sometimes associated with Mary Hastings, a Chicago madam of the nineties who prowled through the Midwest seeking seducible young girls. She preferred those between the ages of thirteen and seventeen. By promising them a job in Chicago, she gulled many of them into returning with her. Once inside her three-story brothel on Custom House Place, they were stripped, locked in a top-floor room, and abandoned to professional rapists. The broken-in girls whom Mary Hastings did not employ herself she sold to other brothelkeepers at prices ranging from $50 to $300, depending on their age and looks. One victim managed to scrawl on a scrap of paper, "I'm being held as a slave," and tossed it out of her prison window. Found by a passerby and taken to the police, who raided the brothel and rescued the prisoner, the note supposedly inspired a newspaper reporter to coin the term "white slave." (The raid evidently caused Mary Hastings no serious damage since she continued to do business at the same address for several more years until four captives escaped and brought about her downfall.)
    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