How was Capone Really Brought Down?

It wasn't Elliott Ness. When I am signing books of Al Capone and the 1933 Worlds Fair I ask this simple question of people. Who brought Capone down? Elliott Ness and the Untouchables is the fast answer. Most people have either seen the movie or even the old television show or heard it through the lore of Capone that makes people profess being related to the big man, having seen the gangster, having been past his home, his grave, worked on his car, his stills, gone to his home in Wisconsin, eaten in his restaurant hideout along the Fox River. But the truth of what really happened to Capone has not seen the light of day.

Elliott Ness in 1957 was a drunk who met a Sports writer Oscar Fraley. Fraley like a lot of writers myself included was on the lookout for a new story. So he asked Ness if he had any good stories from the Prohibition years about Al Capone. Ness produced a dogeared manuscript of about twenty pages and gave it to Fraley. It wasn't much and Oscar went to work by the time he was done the tale of the Untouchables was complete. Then Ness died and Fraley published his books and sold about a million copies. Then he sold it to television and Robert Stack was set for life and then it was sold to the movies and Kevin Kostner became famous.

But the real story is much more fascinating. Six Chicago millionaires banded together to get rid of Al Capone. They had a Worlds Fair coming and it was going to be a disaster unless they got rid of the gang violence plaguing the city. They hired their own investigators and their own police force. They began a witness protection program, set up a speakeasy, and sent their own gangsters into Capones organization. Then they started to study his operation and began to attack his profitability. In the end they famously got him on tax evasion.

So that is the real story. Fraleys story was good but the real story of the Secret Six is even better.


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How the Thompson and Valentines Day made Chicago get rid of Capone

It was Valentines Day in 1929 that sealed Capones fate. The German Shepherd tied to a bumper was the only witness and he wasn't talking. The smell of gunpowder still lingered in the air when the cops arrived. The Thompson Machine gun fired .45 ACP cartridges and fired them one after another. General Thompson wanted a gun to kill the Germans in World War I and so he invented The Annihilator. That's what he called it but everyone else called it The Thompson. Soldiers called it a trench sweeper. 

Whatever the name the angry gun fired one bullet after another from the gas of the last one. The war ended and the annihilator was very rarely used and it was expensive for civilians at 400 per gun. The British thought it was too loud. But a new group of men really liked it. The cost wasn't a factor and it fit nicely in a violin case. Just like a man going to a recital of death. So the Thompson did its dirty work in that garage on Clark Street on St Valentines Day and killed off seven of Bugs Moran's men. 

The brick wall behind the men would be sold to a restaurant in Indiana so people could sit and stare at the chipped brick. The Annihilator fired like a garden hose and that's how the two men dressed as cops fired it. One low and one high so they could be sure each man was shot at least a dozen times. And that is what made Chicago realize Capone was out of hand and had to go. The Annihilators rendezvous with Americas holiday of love. 

Al Capone and the 1933 Worlds Fair

The Problem with Print on Demand for Authors

Publishers love print on demand. They can hedge their bets now. Sure we will buy your book does not have the same import any more as the print runs really don't exist. So lets talk about this. Traditional publishing goes this way:  Good advance. Good print run. Books in the stores. That is traditional publishing. But technology morphed and suddenly a publisher no longer had to make a stand on a book. Doing a print run requires the publisher to say I think I will sell x amount of books and it lets the author know that books will be there for the stores, events, signings, whatever the author does he can rest assured the book will be behind him.

Now lets talk POD. Small advance. The publisher will print maybe a hundred books. Maybe 50. The technology is such that if there is a demand then a book will be printed. But there is a lag. So the author notices there are no books in the stores. Then you notice that the publisher is showing no books in stock. Now you have another event and the printer cannot get the books to the press because there are lots of presses using this technology and they have books in cue. So the author shows up a at his signing with no books.

The author does not do well with POD technology. The publisher cannot react to a surge because the printer has other jobs ahead. Worse there will be no surge because books are not out in the marketplace pinging around. Now you are over nighting books talking to harassed book sellers and publishers. It becomes publishing lite. The assumption the book will be there is gone. Books create energy. But if the books is not there then there is a vacuum. So the question is where do authors sell their books?

The truth is for the author the traditional is still better. It is the publishers job to produce the book and the authors job to sell the book. Both must do their jobs for a book to be profitable.

Al Capone and the 1933 Worlds Fair