AUTOMATIC GUN CONTROL

 

I think you could call it an average February day for Chicago. It was a gray Thursday,  overcast and a bitter 18 degrees Fahrenheit. The day before an inch of snow had fallen. At a quarter past ten Elmer Lewis struggled eastbound through traffic on North Webster Avenue. His greatest obstacle was his own bulky Chicago built Nelson-LeMoon delivery truck. As he entered the intersection with North Clark Street (above), a four door Cadillac sedan heading south ran the light in front of him.

Trying to avoid the collision, Lewis swerved onto Clark street, but the truck's (above) solid rubber tires slid on the cold pavement and Lewis' truck tapped the rear steel bumper of the big passenger car. Seeing the Cadillac he had just hit was a police car, Lewis pulled over in front of 2156 North Clark Street, expecting a ticket and an angry lecture. 

Instead the uniform cop driving the big Cadillac just flashing a gap tooth smile, and drove on. No damage done, a relived Elmer Lewis proceeded to complete his delivery for the Beaver Paper Company, while the cop went on to complete his mission of murdering seven men in less than six seconds.

When technocrat Colonel John Thompson (above) resigned from the U.S. army in 1914, it was with the specific intent to get rich. He immediately found employment building factories for Remington Arms Company, but also found time to form a partnership with John Blish who had invented a unique breech system for an  automatic weapon. Together, as the Auto-Ordinance Company, they spent five years in raising money for the development of a new gun. 

Their final design was just under three feet long and just under 11 pounds in weight. It fired a heavy .45 caliber lead bullet at 935 feet per second. And it could fire one thousand of those rounds in 60 seconds. The gun was inaccurate at anything over 50 yards, and was nicknamed "The Trench Sweeper".  But the design was finished too late to profit from the First World War.

After driving one block further south the sedan pulled to the west side curb in front of 2122 North Clark Street (above). The bottom half of the front window of the nondescript single story building identified the occupants as the SMC Cartage Company.  Four men climbed out of the big car.  The first two men who walked into the building wore police uniforms and were carrying shotguns. They were followed by two civilians wearing long heavy overcoats. 

The uniformed officers purposefully strode through the unlocked front door. Past a tiny office was a second door, and through that was the 110 foot long garage. Parked head-in facing the west wall were three delivery trucks. Scattered beyond were three more trucks, one being worked on by a mechanic,  and two cars. The mechanic's German Shepard dog, named “Highball”, was tied to the bumper of a truck.  Just inside the door were six men wearing overcoats, smoking, drinking coffee and talking. The cops yelled for the men to put their hands up. This, they announced, was a raid. The seven occupants of 2122 North Clark Street had less than 3 minutes to live.

Initially Auto-Ordinance sold the "Tommy" guns for $200.00 each, with a standard 20 round “stick” magazine, or optionally for an additional $25, a circular magazine of either 50 or 100 rounds. Because the gun cost almost half of what a new Model "T" Ford did, local police departments, government guards, corporate strike breakers and messengers, even the United States Marine Corps, could not afford to buy very many.   Also the supply of World War One surplus Browning Automatic Rifles had depressed the market for automatic weapons.  

The company also felt the legal need to provide buyers with a disclaimer: “Thompson-guns are sold you with the understanding that you will be responsible for their re-sale to those on the side of law and order.”  By 1925 Auto-Ordinance was reduced to marketing the gun at $175 each to western ranchers and farmers, available at gun shops, hardware stores, and by mail.  Still, by 1928, sales were so bad John Thompson was replaced as Chief Executive Officer of Auto-Ordinance.

The police officers ordered the men, including the mechanic, to line up single file and put their hands against the north wall of the garage. While one officer held a shotgun on the seven, a second patted them down for weapons, tossing their handguns to the floor behind them. 

The men peacefully complied, probably because police “shakedowns” like this were common. The men in the freezing garage this morning probably assumed once these rouge cops realized who they were rousting, apologies would be offered. They probably thought that - right up until they heard the bolts on two Thompson machine guns being pulled back, in preparation for firing.

In November of 1925 Auto-Ordinance shipped one Thompson Machine gun with the serial number of #2347 to Mr. Les Farmer, a Marion, Illinois sheriff's deputy. He was a known member of a St. Louis mob called “Egan's Rats”.   On Monday, 28 March, 1927, two other former “Rats” members, Fred “Killer” Burke (above), and Gus Winkler, used that gun in the ambush of three gangsters in Detroit, Michigan. 

At  4:45 on the morning of  Monday, 28 March, 1927, gangsters Frank Wright, Joseph Bloom and George Cohen knocked on the door of Room 308 of the Milaflores Apartments (above).  Abruptly the stairwell door at the end of the hall swung open, and Fred Burke blasted a machine gun down the hallway. Two of the men died instantly, literally cut to pieces. Frank Wright, died 20 hours later. His only comment was, “The machine gun worked. That's all I can remember.”

In the cold Clark Street Garage, and standing about ten feet from the wall, the two men in plain clothes pulled Thompson machine guns from beneath their overcoats. One Tommy gun had a 50 round circular magazine, the second a 20 round stick. When they they pulled the triggers, the two guns fired their 70 combined rounds within six seconds. In that frighteningly short time each of the seven victims received at least 15 wounds.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CxI2qhRk38&feature=channel_page

On the first day of July, 1928, brutal crime boss Frankie Yale, aka “The Beau Brummnel of Brooklyn”, (above)  was driving alone on New Urecht Avenue when a Buick sedan pulled up next to him. From the front and back passenger seats gunmen opened fire with Thompson machine guns. The body of Frankie's Lincoln coup was armor plated, but not the windows. Still, he was able to accelerate away from the gunfire. The assailants caught up with him again at 44^th street, where shotguns joined the volley of fire. 

Frankie crashed into the front steps of an apartment building at 923 44^th street (above). When examined by police, Frankie was adorned with a 4 carat diamond ring and a large fresh 45 caliber hole in the back of his head.

Back on Valentine's Day, 1929, the seven men being executed were easy targets.  At the left end of the line, 40 year old Pete “Goosy” Gusenberg staggered to his left and fell face down on the seat of a wooden chair (above, left). Forty-two year old James (Kachellek) Clark dropped forward onto his face against the wall (above, center). 

Optician and gangster groupie Dr Reinhardt Schwinner, mob business manager Adam Heyer (aka John Snyder), nightclub manager Albert Weinshank, and 39 year old mechanic John May fell onto their backs. The final victim, 37 year old Frank “Hock” Gusenberg, dropped face down as well.  One police officer then stepped forward and delivered a double barreled point blank shot gun coupe de grace to John May (above, second from the right) obliterating his half his face. 

The four intruders then purposefully strode back out of the front door, pantomiming an arrest. The Cadillac sedan then pulled out into traffic and continued south on North Clark. The St. Valentine's Day Massacre was over. From start to finish it had taken less than five minutes.

On 19 October  1928, Auto-Ordinance shipped three Thompsons, (serial numbers #6926, #7580, #7699) with three 50 round magazines to Peter Von Frantzius Sporting Goods, 608 Diversey Parkway, Chicago (above). 

The shipment was recorded as received on 23 October,  and according to Frantzius Sporting Goods records, were trans-shipped that same day to a Railway Express warehouse (above) in Elgin, Illinois. Here it waited to be picked up by a private customer - a Mr. Victor Thompson.  However the package lay unopened and unclaimed in the warehouse until authorities opened it in the summer of 1929, well after the massacre.  The box which should have contained three Thompson machine guns and magazines, was filled with packing material and four bricks. The guns had disappeared, presumably somewhere at Peter von Frantziurs's store.

The first police officer on the scene, Sargent Thomas Loftus, found Frank “Hock” Gusenberg,

trying to climb into one of the straight back chairs next to his brother's body (above, left). Loftus had grown up in the same East Side neighborhood as Frank. His childhood friend was now bleeding profusely from 14 bullet wounds, but still recognized him. Loftus asked, “Who did it?” Gusenberg wheezed “I won't talk,” and then urged Loftus to take him to a hospital. 

Hank Gusenberg died three hours later in Akexian Brothers Hospital. Highball, the now abandoned German Shepard, was so terrified and unruly, he could not be calmed and had to be put down. He was the eighth and usually forgotten victim.

From the beginning it was called “The Massacre”.  Eight months afterward deputy police commissioner John Stege told a reporter, “When a representative of the Auto-Ordnance company...said he wanted to help me in tracing the guns...I told him the help he could give me was to go back and close the gun factory. The weapons are absolutely of no value to...anyone other than criminals We would never dare use one of them,” he added, because “too many innocent people might be killed.” 

The Chicago Tribune interviewed Mr V.A. Daniels, who admitted reselling Thompsons to criminals for two hundred dollars profit apiece. He explained, “It's no problem to buy machine guns. All I had to do was to send to New York for them and they shipped them to me.” Auto-Ordinance was so eager to makes sales, that even after a $180 check from Daniels bounced, they allowed him to continue buying.  Peter Von Frantzius, whose store had facilitated the illegal transfer of at least three machine guns to Chicago mobsters, had charged just $2 to file down the serial number on any weapon. He admitted under oath he felt no moral responsibility. He said all he cared about was making money. 

On 14 December 1929, 11 months after “The Massacre”, a minor traffic accident in St. Joseph, Michigan lead to the murder of police officer Charles Skelly. The shooter's car was later found abandoned, and the registration traced back to a Mr. Fred Dane (above). 

When police searched his home they found Dane gone, but under a bed, in a large trunk, they found two Thompson machine guns (above).  A rinsing in acid recovered the ground down serial numbers - #2347 and #7580. 

They also found information indicating that Fred Dane was really Fred “Killer” Burke (above), who was identified by delivery driver Elmer Lewis as the officer who had waved him on, after their collision on North Clark Street on St. Valentines' Day morning.

Peter Von Frantzius admitted selling the three missing Thompsons to Frank V. Tompson (above), who claimed to have resold them to James “Bozo” Shupe. 

Shupe (above) refused to talk to authorities, and quietly escaped to visit his mother in New York City. It did him no good. 

On 31 July, 1929.  'Bozo' and a friend were killed in a "hit" outside of a tobacco store on West Madison Avenue, in New York City.  Police never identified his killers.

Once Fred Burke was identified as the fake police officer who waved on truck driver Elmer Lewis, the two Thompson Machine guns found in his Michigan home were sent to Chicago to be tested by ballistics expert Calvin Goddard (above, left). 

In a forensics science first, examining ejection markings on the shell casings removed from the victims (above), Goddard proved that both guns had been used in “The St. Valentine's Day Massacre:.  Gun  #2347 had also killed Brooklyn's Frankie Yale, and had also been used in the 1927 Detroit “Milaflores Massacre". 

In addition, ammunition found at Burkes' home (above), and produced by the United States Cartridge Company during 1927-28,  and was also proven to having been used in the St. Valentine's Day Massacre.

Eight months after “The Saint Valentine's Day Massacre” the stock market crashed, and with Republicans unable to slow the Great Depression from engulfing the nation, in November of 1932, a Democratic sweep brought Franklin Delano Roosevelt into the White House, with the Democratic dominating both houses of the 73^rd Congress. 

Curiously, the first two pieces of legislation introduced by this reform minded Congress were not geared toward solving the financial crises. First came the repeal of Prohibition, which had funded the gang wars. And second came The National Firearms Act (NFA), to deal with the weapons which had armed the gangsters and bootleggers. Rather than arguing about firing rates or magazine sizes, the Tommy Guns was simply taxed right out of the market place.  

Under the NFA any gun that fired more than one bullet with one pull on the trigger, now carried a tax of $200 – thus more than doubling the price of the Thompson. When added to the Thompson's weaknesses – its inaccuracy and its weight – the tax drove Auto-Ordinance to the brink of bankruptcy.  Unfortunately, since 1934,  the money to be made selling guns has prevented the tax on military style weapons from being raised.  

It is interesting that ten years after “The Massacre”, as the United States was gearing up for World War Two, a new company, named Savage Arms, took a fresh look at the Thompson design. They discovered that by replacing John Blish's ingenious breech system, the weapon remained fully automatic. But the new simpler breech significantly reduced the price of manufacture.

The garage at 2122 North Clark Street (above)  eventually became an antique furniture store, before, finally being torn down in 1967. Today it is a parking lot. 

Fred Killer Burke (above) the only man ever tied directly to the St. Valentine's Day Massacre, was sentenced to life in prison for his murder of State Police Officer Charles Skelly.  Burke would die in a Michigan state prison in 1940, an over weight untreated diabetic. No one would ever be charged with the seven brutal murders in a Chicago garage. 

And the gun made infamous on that lovers' holiday is still sold by Auto-Ordinance and Savage Arms, who are both still profiting from selling a weapon of mass destruction which in comparison to modern assault weapons is now seen as a romantic historical anomaly.  And few seem to remember the cost of all that profit.

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TRUE BELIVER

 

I  tell you, if you travel long enough down any philosophical path you always reach the land of ad nauseum. And, having reached this ever ever land one particular spiritual Puritan in Quaker garb,  Neal S. Dow - a five foot two inch Napoleon of Temperance, this two term Mayor of Portland, Maine, could never find his way back to sanity. Even the Rum Riot of 1855 failed to convince Mayor Dow that his own obsession had set the cause of sobriety in America back by a generation..

The first time Neal Dow (above) was elected Mayor was in April of 1851. He had been carried into office by his support of the new “Maine Law”, which made the sale of alcohol in the state illegal, except for medicinal and industrial uses. Wrote Neal, “Portland wharves groaned beneath the burden of West India rum.” Eighteen other states quickly followed Maine's moralistic lead. But as in all the other states, the new law was popular in Calvinist Maine only so long as it was easily avoided.

The most famous bootlegger became “Handsome Jim” James McGlinchy, who along with his three brothers, operated the Casco Brewery, after the original name for Portland. It and a few distilleries survived the Maine Law because, officially, they exported all of their product. But a good part of all that rum seeped back into Maine. 

Such leaks in his prohibition boat infuriated Mayor Dow (above), who was also president of the Temperance League. And after raids of every Irish “grog shop” in Portland failed to plug the local traffic in the demon rum, the Mayor insisted on searching all trains, boats and wagons entering the city. Since Portland was the primary rail and sea connection with Canada, the delays this created infuriated merchants up and down the eastern seaboard. Dow was even burned in effigy on Boston Common. And in April of 1852, when Mayor Dow came up for re-election, merchants from all over New England funded his opponent, Albion K. Parris. Mayor Dow lost re-election by 542 votes out of 3,300 cast.  That's a landslide.

Being a true believer (his maternal great-grandfather had the given name of “Hate-Evil”), the diminutive Mr. Dow could not believe the fault was his or his cause's . He was convinced he had been victimized by a conspiracy of merchants who provided fake I. D.s for the 2,200 Irish immigrants in Portland who had brought to America their strange Catholic religion and their vulgar sinful ways. Even worse, they almost all voted Democratic. Still at least the new Mayor Parris was also a temperance man, if not quite as enthusiastic an enforcer of the Maine law.  

So “The Grand Pooh-bah of temperance” as the Irish nick-named him, retreated to his mansion at 714 Congress Street (above), to lick his wounds, and plan his comeback.

Under the theory that the only problem with his temperance law was that it was too weak, in 1853 Dow lobbied the state legislature in Augusta to doubled down. The new sterner temperance law they passed allowed a search warrant to be issued if three private citizens claimed liquor was present in an establishment. It also made the mere possession of alcohol proof of intention to sell. Thus every user was now a dealer. By now Dow was convinced the temperance movement was so strong...“The voters...will turn upon that point.” The little dictator even saw the growth of the Republican Party across the northern states not as primarily a condemnation of slavery, but as a rejection of alcohol.

In March of 1855 Maine passed two other pieces of legislation which Dow had come to see as essential for the eradication of liquor. First all immigrants must register and show their naturalization papers three months prior to election day. This disenfranchised hundreds of otherwise qualified voters for the approaching April elections, under the theory that what a local newspaper described as “Irish cattle” were also  “illegals” with false papers. The second law took care of most of the rest of Irish voter-wanna-be Americans. From now on, any voter rejected at the polls for whatever reason in Republican Maine, must appeal in Federal court. Cases here could take weeks just to get on the docket. The Democratic paper, the Eastern Argus put it best. “Dow...and company...have made up their minds to rule the state at all hazards.”

And they did. Dow was re-elected Mayor in April of 1855. But out of the 3,742 votes cast, Neal Dow's margin of victory was a mere 46 votes. Ignoring that sliming margin his close friend and political ally, Elder Peck, said it was “...a victory over Rum…Catholicism, and Corruption.” In his inaugural address, the zealot Mayor Dow warned, “I shall not fail... to employ all the power which the law has put into my hands.” He even suggested that his administration would “restrain the right of suffrage, now exercised by our foreign population...to prevent their overawing and controlling our elections, as they have done.” Mayor Dow had thrown down the gauntlet. And it would slap him right across the mouth.

As part of his new duties, Mayor Dow and the city council were supposed to jointly appoint a committee to pick a new liquor agent, whose job it would be to purchase liquor which would then be legally sold to the apothecaries and industries of the city. However Mayor Dow was so certain of his own nobility, he appointed himself to the selection committee, and to save even more time appointed himself the temporary liquor agent. As such he purchased $1,500 worth of alcohol (in his own name) and had it shipped to City Hall. Only after it arrived did he notify the city council. After all, who could question the morals of Mayor Dow?

The answer was the city council could. Their council members got into a shouting match with the Mayor over his actions. And one of them leaked details of the shipment to the Eastern Argus. On Saturday June 2, 1855 the paper printed up and posted handbills all over Portland, which laid out the facts, in particular that the liquor had been bought under the name of Neal Dow. The handbills then asked, “Where are our vigilant police... who think it their duty to...often push their search (of the poor man's cider) into private houses, contrary to every principle of just law? We call upon them by virtue of Neal Dow’s law to seize Neal Dow’s liquors and pour them into the street....Let the lash which Neal Dow has prepared for other backs be applied to his own when he deserves it.”

The timing could not have been worse for Mayor Dow. This was the four year anniversary of the original Maine Law. Three men found a judge who witnessed their testimony that there was illegal alcohol in City Hall, and he was thus required to issue a search warrant. A small crowd gathered at City Hall, mostly to see if the police were going to arrest Mayor Dow. They were not. But still the crowd stayed. 

As the day wore on, and the shifts at the locomotive plant and other factories let out, the crowd began to grow. By seven that evening there were 2,500 people milling around City Hall (above)), their anger fueled by what they saw as the hypocrisy of the biggest temperance man in the state having his own $1,500 stash of booze protected by the police. To avoid antagonizing the crowd the ten police officers locked themselves in the Liquor Room in City Hall, with the booze. Mayor Dow sent word to two “private” militia companies to come quick.

At least one member of the militia sensed the approaching disaster. But when Sargent William Winslip suggested the militia should load blanks, Mayor Dow responded, “We know what we are about sir. We’ve consulted the law, sir.” At that point Sargent Winslip dropped out of the militia. At ten that night one company of about twenty men, formed up in front of City Hall. Backed by armed troops, Mayor Dow ordered the crowd to disperse. The crowd responded with a hail of trash and garbage. Dow now ordered the troops to fire over the heads of the crowd. But their commander, Captain Green, said he needed more men. And for the only time that day Mayor Dow let a cooler head over-rule him.

It was a mistake. The sight of the twenty militia men retreating encouraged the crowd to surge forward. Rocks and bricks now replaced the garbage. One energetic fellow, a 22 year old sailor from Deer Isle named John Robbins, crawled through a broken window into the liquor room, unlocked the door, and the crowd stormed in.  At this moment the reinforced militia returned, and under Dow's command, opened fire. The uneven battle continued for twenty minutes. Only the fact the militia were armed with flintlock muskets prevented the death toll from being higher. John Robbins was killed, and seven others wounded. Eventually the crowd dispersed. To Republicans it was the Rum Riot. To Democrats it was the Portland Massacre.

Dow was charged with breaking the law he had helped pass, but he was acquitted after a one day trial for two reasons – first it was obvious the liquor was not really his, and second because the judge, Henry Carter, was a strong temperance man and a Dow supporter. Still, Mayor Dow learned nothing from the debacle. He immediately issued a “...Message on the Riot” which he blamed on un-named anti-temperance men, and claimed John Robbins was an Irish immigrant who was wanted by the law. But that charge fell apart when several witnesses under oath testified that John was a native American (i.e. born in America),  had never been arrested, was a mate on the barque Louisa Eaton and was a “steady, honest man, remarkable for his good nature and peaceable disposition.”  But whatever Robbins' disposition had been, it was suddenly clear the mob had been outraged at Mayor Dow's behavior and had not even been mostly Irish.

That fall the voters drove that point home by electing Democratic majorities to both houses of the state legislature, and the Governor's office, too. And quickly the Maine Law was overturned, ending Maine's five year experiment with prohibition. John Robbins was buried in the old Eastern Cemetery, with honors. Mayor Dow did not bother to even run for re-election. And even though prohibition was re-instated two years later, Neal Dow stayed out of that fight.

The new prohibition law was again rarely enforced. Thus it stayed on the books until the Federal government passed its own “noble experiment” in 1920. But long before then, in 1880, the bootlegger James McGlinchy had died, leaving behind an estate worth $200,000, marking him as one of the richest men in Portland., and proof that whatever people said in church, they were just people. 

As for the true believer Neal Dow (above),  he was lucky not to live long enough to see his dream produce what he feared most, the funding of organized crime, largely made up of foreign born and first generation immigrants (from lots of countries with different religions, but mostly Italian Catholics), who fed an increase in public drunkenness and alcohol addiction in response to the Great National Experiment in Prohibition. The Napoleon of Temperance died still blind to the truth of his folly in 1897 at the age of 93.

And if there is a lesson from the life of Neal Dow, it is that ad nausium is the land where all ideas, even good ones, go to die. Or, as Ben Franklin urged, "moderation in all things - including moderation".

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