Al Capone

Al Capone

Every American has a dream of owning their own house, having a good life, owning a lot of money, having a decent house, and a wonderful family. Through most of the 1920s stock prices rose steadily, eager to take advantage of this market many Americans rushed to buy stocks and bonds. By 1929 about 4 million Americans owned stocks. Many of these investors were already wealthy, but others were average Americans who hoped to strike it rich. As stock prices rose, several problems became evident.

More and more investors were engaging in speculation, the buying of stocks and bonds on the chance that they might make a quick or a large profit, ignoring the risks. Their unrestrained buying and selling fueled the market’s upward spiral. As prices rose, wealth was generated on paper, but it bore little relation to the real worth of companies or the goods that they produced. The price of stocks had little relationship to the dividends the stocks paid.

Furthermore many investors began buying on margin or paying a small percentage of a stocks price as a down payment and borrowing the rest. With stockbrokers willing to lend buyers up to 75 perfect of a stock’s purchase price, buying on margin became the rule. This system worked as long as prices continued to rise, since investors could sell their inflated stocks to make a profit and pay off their debt. If stocks declined however, there was no way to pay off the loan.

Although many Americans appeared prosperous during the 1920s in fact they were living beyond their means. They often bought goods on credit, which meant they could buy now, and pay later. By making credit easily available businesses encouraged Americans to pile up a large consumer debt. Many people then had trouble paying off their growing debts. Faced with debts, consumers cut back on spending.

As farmers’ incomes fell, they bought fewer goods and services. Without money to spend, rural families could not buy the products of American industry. The same problem was evident among American consumers as a whole. By the late 1920s Americans were buying less, mainly because of the rising prices. Even as American farms and factories were producing more. Production expanded much faster than wages, resulting in an ever-widening gap between the rich and the poor.

On October 29, known as Black Tuesday, the bottom fell out of the market. People and corporations alike frantically tried to sell their stocks before prices plunged even lower. The individual investors who had bought stocks on credit acquired huge debts as the prices plummeted. Other investors, who had put most of their saving into the market, lost huge portions of their nest eggs. The number of shares dumped the day was a record 16 million. Additional millions of shares could not even find buyers. By mid-November, investors had lost $30 billion, an amount equal to American spending in World War 1.

With this huge impact on the population of the country, the economic suffering has brought down people into a low moral. With no money to pay for great security in the country crime rates have grown immensely. This was the perfect opportunity for gangsters such as Al Capone to begin racketeering, drug dealing, prostituting, and controlling the countries economy.

Al Capone or commonly known as “Scarface” was an Italian American gangster who led a crime syndicate dedicated to the smuggling and bootlegging of liquor and other illegal activities during the Prohibition Era of the 1920s and 1930s. Born in Brooklyn, New York, to southwestern Italian emigrants Gabriele and Teresina Capone, Capone began his career in Brooklyn before moving to Chicago and becoming the boss of the criminal organization known as the Chicago Outfit (although his business card reportedly described him as a used furniture dealer). By the end of the 1920s, Capone had gained the attention of the Federal Bureau of Investigation following his being placed on the Chicago Crime Commission's "public enemies" list. Although never successfully convicted of racketeering charges, Capone's criminal career ended in 1931, when he was indicted and convicted by the federal government for income tax evasion. Al Capone is America's best-known gangster and the single greatest symbol of the collapse of law and order in the United States during the 1920s Prohibition era. Capone had a leading role in the illegal activities that lent Chicago its reputation as a lawless city.

Capone was born on January 17, 1899, in Brooklyn, New York. Baptized "Alphonsus Capone," he grew up in a rough neighborhood and was a member of two "kid gangs," the Brooklyn Rippers and the Forty Thieves Juniors. At the age of five in 1904, he went to Public School 7 on Adams Street. Educational prospects for Italian children were very poor. The school system was deeply prejudiced against them and did little to encourage any interest in higher education, while the immigrant parents expected their children to leave school as soon as they were old enough to work. Bergreen describes the poor learning conditions for the children of Italian immigrants :

“Schools such as Capone's P.S. 7 offered nothing in the way of assistance to children from Italian backgrounds to enter the mainstream of American life; they were rigid, dogmatic, strict institutions, where physical force often prevailed over reason in maintaining discipline. The teachers -- usually female, Irish Catholic, and trained by nuns -- were extremely young. A sixteen-year-old, earning $600 a year, would often teach boys and girls only a few years younger than she...Fistfights between students and teachers were common, even between male students and female teachers...Al Capone found school a place of constant discipline relieved by sudden outbreaks of violence... ”

Although he was bright, Capone quit school in the sixth grade at age fourteen. A few blocks away from the Capone house on Garfield Place was a small low profile building that was the headquarters of one of the most successful gangsters on the East Coast. Johnny Torrio was a new breed of gangster, a pioneer in the development of a modern criminal enterprise. Torrio's administrative and organizational talents transformed crude racketeering into a kind of corporate structure, allowing his businesses to expand as opportunities emerged. From Torrio, a young Capone learned invaluable lessons that were the foundation of the criminal empire he built later in Chicago. He was a role model for many boys in the community. Capone, like many other boys his age, earned pocket money by running errands for Johnny Torrio . Over time, Torrio came to trust the young