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Capone belongs to that handful of successful criminals who have enjoyed public admiration during their careers. Among that group, Al Capone as a master criminal stands second only to Jesse James. And just as Jesse James's popularity benefited from the Civil War tragedy, Capone's celebrity derives in large part from the war between the government and the people over Prohibition.

It is hard to imagine now the fame and success Capone achieved. Estimates are that in 1927 when he was only 28 years old his organization took in some $105 million; he was able to demonstrate his power publicly by humiliating his handpicked mayor, Joseph Klenha, on the steps of the town hall in Cicero, Illinois--a small, outlying suburb of Chicago--while a police officer looked on. In 1930, journalism students at the Medill School in Chicago chose Capone as one of the ten most outstanding persons in the world, along with Mahatma Gandhi, Albert Einstein, and Henry Ford.

Countless films, melodramas, and books have been written about Capone. He was among a handful of criminals who could use the media to entertain and mislead the public. He also knew that he symbolized the public's discontent with social and cultural policies (Prohibition) and economic trends (the 1929 Wall Street collapse) in the country.

Al Capone was born into a working-class family in Brooklyn, New York, in 1899. Typically, the family was large and close-knit except for the eldest son, Vincenzo, who ran away from home at age 16 and went west to become a Prohibition agent known as Richard (Two-Gun) Harte. Al was a bright pupil but had little use for school. Minor squabbles with the law and working as a bouncer in a saloon-whorehouse produced the scar on his left cheek. As a young man, he learned the way of the streets in Brooklyn and joined a gang run by a slightly older man, Johnny Torrio, who would later play a fateful role in Capone's life in Chicago.

Torrio and his partner Frankie Yale operated a brothel in Brooklyn and hired the burly young Capone as a bouncer. Within two years, Capone was facing murder charges, and Torrio had relocated in Chicago to join his uncle "Big Jim" Colosimo to fend off Black Hand extortionists who wanted a piece of Colosimo's profitable prostitution empire.

The Black Hand (La Mano Nera) was not synonymous with Mafia or any other secret society. It was simply a crude method of extortion with a long Italian--chiefly Sicilian--tradition, transplanted to America during the mass immigrations of the 1880s. The majority of its practitioners in America were Italians with criminal records in their native land who had joined the migration to the United States to victimize their compatriots. The Black Hand threat was met head-on: Capone and Torrio dispatched the extortionists with skill and efficiency.

By the time Capone arrived in Chicago, Torrio was at odds with Colosimo over bootlegging. Torrio wanted Colosimo to move his organization into bootlegging because of its potential for huge financial opportunities; but Colosimo was not interested. Torrio's ambition could not be constrained by an order from a contented whoremaster forbidding any involvement in this profitable racket. Torrio realized that Big Jim would have to be eliminated. Together with Capone, Torrio arranged Big Jim's assassination. However, there are only suspicions not proof, that Capone participated in the actual murder. In any case, Big Al's position with Torrio was strengthened after Colosimo's murder. Capone proved himself willing and able--and resourceful--when serious problems arose.

Prohibition spawned a huge industry in which Capone used violence freely and ruthlessly to eliminate and intimidate rivals. And much of this was possible because, thanks to Prohibition, a casual disregard of everyday law became part of American life. Many Americans realized, perhaps for the first time, that the law of the land could be misguided, even downright wrong, and therefore might be ignored.

Capone made the most of the situation, riding to fame and fortune on its ironies and hypocrisies. Some feared him, some loved him, and given the hypocrisy of Prohibition, many despised him and rooted for him at the same time. Chicago's power structure drank his booze even as they condemned him as a "dago" thug, but his ability to nimbly circumvent a preposterous law earned him a reputation of grudging respect that eclipsed those of other mobsters. He was volatile, violent, and more visible than any other racketeer, but he had a political flair, a flamboyant urge to be seen in public. . .

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