if not in spirit, Congress had ôeffectively assigned an entire industry to the underworldö; as Jack Kelly explains, Prohibition would come to serve as the ôgangstersÆ higher education, demanding as it did management skills, cooperation, planning and high-level political contactsö (Kelly 76). Public respect for the law eroded, and ôturned street thugs into millionairesö (Kelly 76).
The first man to attempt to bring decorum and structure to organized crime was John Torrio, the ôthinking manÆs criminalö. Initially the business manager for the famed founding father of American organized crime, Big Jim Colosimo, Torrio ran a notorious night spot in Chicago specializing in gambling, booze and hookers. Prohibition offered Torrio the opportunity to realize a longtime dream: crime not as a bloody, crude affair but as an elegant, organized business (Kelly 68).
In TorrioÆs Chicago, a North Side bootlegging rival by the name of Dion OÆBannion flourished in his own right due largely to dirty
...