“Writer says prohibition taught Americans a costly lesson” from the March 27, 1979 Door County Advocate
By JOHN ENIGL, PART II
Writer says prohibition taught Americans a costly lesson
By JOHN ENIGL
PART II
Nationwide publicity and public indignation after the St. Valentine's Day Massacre resulted in the dispatch of a committee of prominent Chicago citizens to see the new president, Herbert Hoover. Among the delegation, determined to destroy the Capone organization, were Colonel Frank Knox of the Chicago Daily News and Colonel Robert R. McCormick of the Chicago Tribune. Although historians claim that Eliot Ness far overstated his role in putting Capone out of business, he did gather enough evidence for the government to indict Capone on income tax evasion. Hoover started that action.
After the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, another event occurred that further aroused the public to the fact that organized crime had jumped in to replace a legal alcohol trade. The event added to the pressure for the repeal of the Volstead Act — the 18th amendment to the Constitution. In July, 1929, Jake Lingle, crime reporter for the Chicago Tribune, was shot and killed in an elevated train station by an unknown assailant. Unknown to anyone on the paper, Lingle was in league with gangsters and crooked policemen alike. The grapevine said that Lingle -had demanded 50 percent of the take for making an arrangement with the police for some of Moran’s friends to open a gambling joint. Jack Zuta had engineered the killing of Lingle, underworld rumors said.
This act spilled over into Wisconsin with its consequences and, in following it up, I got a chance to step back into those prohibition days of the early 30s.
John Kobler’s definitive biography, Capone, relates that “Scarface” tracked Jack Zuta to where he was hiding out at a roadhouse called the Lake View Hotel in Upper Nemabin Lake, 25 miles west of Milwaukee. Capone had been a friend of Lingle’s and may have wanted to avenge his death. Or perhaps Lingle had tried to cross Capone and Capone ordered his death and was looking for Zuta to make sure he wouldn’t talk.
At any rate, Kobler relates, Zuta had just put another nickel in the player piano and it was cranking out a tune called “Good for You, Bad for Me,” when he was cut down by Capone guns.
I drove out to Upper Nemabin lake to find out if anyone remembered that killing, one of the last of prohibition times.
I stopped at one of several taverns along the south edge of Upper Nemabin and asked where the Lake View Hotel was.
“Oh, that was torn down years ago,” one of the patrons said. The county built a wayside park where it used to be. But there’s an old barber up the road, must be 86 or 87 years old, that could probably tell you about Jack Zuta.
I drove to the village, found the barbershop and as I entered, I could have been stepping back into 1930.
The barber, a short, trim gentleman, white haired, had no customers just then. His two ancient but well kept barber chairs were empty. Their leather seats were worn but entirely serviceable. The other fittings matched the 20’s and 30’s style. I spoke to the man seated on the bench, reading a paper.
“I’d like some information,” I said. “How much is it worth to you?” he returned.
“I was told you might be able to tell me who I could talk to about Capone’s shooting of Jack Zuta, almost 50 years ago,” I said.
“Jack Zuta? I was standing right next to him when he was shot!” he replied. “I shaved him in that chair a half hour before he was killed!
“Jack invited me, to come over to the Lake View Hotel to see a strip-tease dance, put on by some girls he brought up from Chicago. I didn’t go much for that sort of thing, but I went anyway.
“Zuta and I were having a drink at the bar and he had just put money in the music box, when a car drove up. Five men got out and walked in, Indian file. The first had a tommy gun; the others, sawed-off shot guns.
They let Zuta have it and after they were done, one of the men bent over him and made a big cross, like this, over his dead body.
“The girls didn’t even know what happened until they saw the pool of blood on the floor.”
The barber told me that Ralph and Al Capone had owned a house in Delafield, and relaxed there when most people thought they were up at Mercer, Wis.
“I gave them haircuts lots of times, but didn’t tell anyone. I didn’t want any bullets flying through my window.” (The barber was referring to assassination attempts to which Capone was prone.)
“One funny story I remember was the time Ralph Capone came in and asked where he could buy a case of beer.” (Imagine one of history’s most notorious bootleggers unable to supply his own needs! )
“I told him I thought I could help him out. We went over to see a friend of mine.
“We got the case of beer but my friend was so nervous when he found out who his customer was that we had to count the money for him!”
The killing at Upper Nemabin of Jack Zuta was most unfortunate for Capone because Zuta kept records. Those records implicated some of Chicago’s high police and government officials. Public indignation was further heightened. Raids and arrests were conducted under every pretext imaginable.
Capone complained, “They try to blame everything on me, including the Chicago Fire (of 1871).” After all, he argued, hadn’t he done a lot of good things? How about the soup kitchens he set up for poor people during the Depression?
Stories of Capone’s “generosity” abound even today. On a trip to Mercer, a few miles north of Dillinger’s hideout at Little Bohemia on Highway 51, I heard these stories. “Capone put this town on the map,” one storekeeper said. He pointed out the tavern Capone himself had owned: “Billy’s Hotel” — it was for sale when we were there.
Al Capone owned this Mercer, Wis., tavern in the 1920’s.
And, at the time I was in Mercer with my family, Ralph Capone was still in business at the Rex Bar up the street.
We walked in to the Rex Bar, my wife and six children, including a babe-in-arms and my mother-in-law. At the end of the bar were a number of round-faced young men, looking very much like the characters in my Capone book. The young lady bartender introduced herself as Ralph Capone’s daughter. The young men were relatives, she said.
My wife’s Uncle Adolph, from down in Cicero, Ill., had told us how he used to go out with one of Capone’s sisters; I don’t know if it was Mafalda or Rose.
We talked-across the bar about a few innocent things, and then my wife, Mary Ann came up with the story about Uncle Adolph.
The conversation with the bartender ceased, and the talk at the end of the bar turned to whispers.
Wisconsin was the Capones’ refuge, and no mention of the old days was welcome.
Al Capone’s Door county refuge was out near Idlewild, Mary Wilke tells me. Until his imprisonment for income tax evasion at Alcatraz in 1931, Capone and his friends would quietly steal up here to enjoy themselves. The lodge they patronized was closed in 1936 and torn down in the 1960’s by Roy Fittshur to build storage for his auto parts yard.
The public, realizing that prohibition had created more problems than it solved, elected Roosevelt in 1932. I remember that election night as the returns came in. They wouldn’t elect Al Smith in 1928, Al who favored repeal of the Volstead Act. “Rum, Romanism (because of his Catholic faith), and Repeal” were linked together in the eyes of enough near sighted people to ensure Hoover’s election. But the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre and the events that followed it awakened the public to reality. (Incidentally, Archbishop Mundelein quite routinely refused burial rites for gangsters, so linking the Catholic church with, violating prohibition laws is hardly accurate. Catholic gangsters were cut off from the church.)
Forgotten is the fact that Herbert Hoover really had a tremendous part in bringing the involvement of criminals in the illegal liquor business to light, just as are his efforts to end the Depression are forgotten.
Roosevelt was elected. Liquor was back, legally. Cherry Circle Beer, brewed down on the Bay Shore, didn’t reappear. The building still stands, down on the shore. All our Door county taverns reopened legally — most had never really closed.
Today we’re forced with a similar situation. There’s a lot of pressure to raise the drinking age to 19, or even to 21.
We must ask ourselves if that would solve the problem of alcoholism among the young, which is becoming even a greater problem than the drug problem.
Examine the reasons for the turning of youth to alcohol rather than drugs. What percentage of homes in Door county, or anywhere in Wisconsin, contain no alcohol, bought and consumed by parents? Parents become infuriated at the idea of drug abuse. To us who grew up here, we knew about marijuana way back in the 30’s, when the Mexican migrants brought it along with them. But we weren’t foolish enough to try it. We thought, “This is a habit of stupid people who have no hope in life — people far below us.”
But Americans never stopped their liking for liquor, even when the law said they couldn’t have it during those prohibition days. And we still don’t make such a big hassle with the young folks over drinking, because we do it ourselves. So they take the course that creates less of a hassle and still allows them to fellowship with their peers.
I attended a seminar sponsored by the State Educational Telephone Network in Menomonee Falls with a minister friend of mine. The topic was related to how we can lead our youth. The essence of the discussion was that, we, as parents, must set a good example ourselves.
My pastor, who grew up in an Irish Catholic and Jewish neighborhood in New York City, has never taken a drink in his life. Never, not even socially, in his position as a lieutenant commander of a tanker in the Navy, did he feel he was obligated to take a drink. How many of us show that much courage of conviction?
Yet, Rev. Burke says, “You can drink — but you don’t have to get drunk!” That’s a credo we can live by.
We have to ask ourselves if it is better for 18, 19, or 20 year olds to go to a tavern or get someone older to buy liquor for them and drink it as a forbidden fruit, without any adults around!
I’ve seen 18 year-old walk into a tavern, buy a pitcher of beer and sit quietly playing cards all night. And I’m sure Smokey Bley lets the 18 year olds talk as loud as they want, providing they don’t disturb someone else, in his West Jacksonport tavern, and as long as they don’t get tipsy. I’m sure Bill Anschutz at Downtown Carlsville is big enough to put a lid on any excesses on the part of teenagers in his place.
I’m not so sure it would be best to put the whole problem underground, out of sight, as we did in 1920.
I am sure that the most powerful influence in support of temperance is the example we adults set. We don’t need another prohibition and its results.
I hope there will be some comments on these thoughts.
Courtesy of the Door County Library Newspaper Archive
Articles about prohibition
https://doorcounty.substack.com/t/prohibition
Articles by John Enigl
https://doorcounty.substack.com/t/john-enigl