There's a Sucker Born Every Minute: Michael C. McDonald and Illinois Corruption

On 111th Street, in my Morgan Park neighborhood, Mount Olivet Catholic Cemetery holds the remains of Chicagoans who not only served and protected; built and preserved;blessed and sanctified; but also corrupted and terrorized this city we love. Mt. Olivet is a Chicago museum that holds the bones of Francis O'Neil the Chicago Police Superintendent who single-handedly preserved Ireland's Musical Heritage and stemmed much of the violence during the 1904 Stockyard Strikes in Canaryville; Spanish American War/WWI/WWII heroes; the Chicago Clan-na-Gael Fenians who invaded Canada after the Civil War; gangsters involved in the Prohibition Beer Wars; and members of the many religious orders who created the Settlement House institutions that were co-opted by Jane Addams and erased from public memory by Progressive Agendas. Mt. Olivet holds people that we on the south side call 'The Real Deal.'

Last night at an intimate gathering to celebrate author Rose Keefe's visit to Chicago ( Rose is the author of the definitive biographies of Chicago beer war chieftains Dean O'Banion and George 'Bugs' Moran and recently The Starker: Big Jack Zelig and brilliant conversationalist), I had the pleasure of discussing the current political scandal concerning Illinois Governor Blagojevich with Richard Lindberg a veteran Chicago crime/political journalist/historian/author and host of the History Channel's 'Underground Chicago.'

Mr. Lindberg is coming out with a biography on the life of Michael Cassius 'Big Mike' McDonald the author of Chicago and Illinois political corruption. Recently Richard Lindberg authored the chilling study of the 1955 murders of two Chicago boys-The Schuessler-Peterson Murders by the monster Kenneth Hansen.


Big Mike McDonald controlled the vice and gambling in Chicago and created the cushion between the elites and the working classes through his corruption of elected officials. McDonald viewed himself as a commodities (gambling and drinking) broker confronted by a Ruling Class of Eastern Progressive Reformers who tried to outlaw beer ( to the masses of German immigrants) and whiskey ( to floods of stockyard and canal worker Irish) as well as gambling to all Americans. The forces of Reform were essentially Nativist Know-Nothings using Prohibition of booze and games of chance to effect political control over Chicago.

Richard Lindberg explained that long before Al Capone became associated with political corruption, Michael Cassius McDonald had perfected, what John Kass so brilliantly termed 'The Combine' - a Coalition of the Willing: 'Turn a blind eye to crime/You got Yours and I got Mine!'

Richard Lindberg's study of Big Mike is coming out soon.

Until then - take a look at this tight sketch of Big Mike from the folks at Find A Grave.Com: Photos from that great site!

Birth: 1839
Death: Aug. 8, 1907
Chicago
Cook County
Illinois, USA

Irish gangster. McDonald began his career as a gambler and used his winnings to open his own gaming parlors and saloons around Chicago. As his wealth grew so did his political power. McDonald eventually became leader of the Chicago Democratic Organization. McDonald became so powerful in fact that on his endorsement alone he could get men elected to high political office. In 1873 McDonald built "The Store" a large four-story saloon, boarding house, and gaming hall. The Store was dubbed "the unofficial City Hall" because much of the city's business was conducted on it's upper floors. A famous phrase, believed to have first been said by legendary circus man P.T. Barnum or Barnum's competitor, banker David Hannum, was allegedly attributed to McDonald. When an employee asked McDonald how they would ever keep The Store filled to turn a profit, McDonald allegedly responded "Don't worry about that. There's a sucker born every minute". The phrase "Never give a sucker an even break" was also credited to McDonald. McDonald was married twice, first to Mary Noonan, then to Dora Feldman. Mike renounced his Catholic faith and divorced Mary to marry Dora. At the age of thirty-two Dora fell in love with a 14-year old artist named Webster Guerin whom she was insanely jealous over. Dora became livid when she mistook Avis Dargan, the fiancee of Webster's brother Archie, as one of Webster's girlfriends. On the morning of February 21, 1907 Dora crept into Webster's studio and shot him through the neck killing him. During Dora's trial "King Mike" McDonald died of heart failure, but left enough money to cover his wife's expenses and court costs. Dora was aquitted on February 11, 1908. On his deathbed McDonald reclaimed his Catholic faith and proclaimed Mary as his only wife in the eyes of God. Mary and two of McDonald's sons from his first marriage later joined Mike in the family mausoleum in Mount Olivet cemetery. Dora was excluded. (bio by: Bobby Hart)


Search Amazon for Michael McDonald



Burial::
Mount Olivet Cemetery
Chicago
Cook County
Illinois, USA
Plot: Section 2 - Directly inside front gates turn right

Maintained by: Find A Grave
Record added: Apr 8 2005
Find A Grave Memorial# 10741444



http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=10741444

Rose Keefe's The Starker: Big Jack Zelig

Reprinted from the Chicago Daily Observer.

Rose Keefe pours on the gas from the first sentence. ‘As Jacob Goldberg rounded the corner of Forty-ninth Street and Madison Avenue, the last person he expected to encounter on the bustling sidewalk was his old partner in crime, Harry Smith. Jacob considered himself to be a hard-working and law-abiding citizen these days, but his teenage years had included some wilder moments, and Harry had been an instigator of most of them. Seeing him now aroused portions of nostalgia and uneasiness.’
Rose Keefe writes vigorous prose when her razor-sharp mind cuts through layers of fat-headed assumptions. Everyone assumed that Dion ‘Dean’ O’Banion, the beer baron gunned down by Johnny Torrio’s thugs in a Chicago Flower shop was an off- the –boat Irish mobster; that George ‘Bugs’ Moran was an Irish American hitter whose north side mob challenged Al Capone and inspired ethnic flourishes to the panoramic painting of the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. Nonsense. Rose Keefe dug the scalpel into the lard and got to the heart of matter.
Dean O’Banion was a Maroa, Illinois mossback and only Irish on his mother’s side and George ‘Bugs’ Moran of French Canadian decent (George Clarence "Bugs" Moran was born Adelard Cunin on August 21, 1891 and died in Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary, February 25, 1957). Moreover, the celebrated Beers Wars of the Volstead Act Era, the great Progressive stain on America, had very little to do with ethnic hostilities than about the very American value of profit. Capone’s wife was Irish and Dean O’Banion’s and later Bugs Moran’s mobs celebrated diversity!

” Earl "Hymie" Weiss, Vincent "The Schemer" Drucci, and George "Bugs" Moran) joined the Market Street Gang, which specialized in theft and robbery for the black market. The boys later became "sluggers," thugs hired by a newspaper to beat newsstand owners who did not sell the paper. The Market Street Gang started out working for the Chicago Tribune. However, they later switched to the rival Chicago Examiner due to a more attractive offer from newspaper boss Moses Annenberg. Through Annenberg, the gang met safecracker Charles "The Ox" Reiser, who taught them his trade. In 1909, O'Banion was arrested first for safecracking and then for assault. These would be the only times O'Banion would ever spend in a correctional institution.’ 1.

Rose Keefe is a brilliant young Canadian writer with a witty and energetic prose style accompanying a restless capacity for inquiry. In her recently released Crime Biography of New York Jewish Gangster, Zelig Lefkowitz, alias Big Jack Zelig, The Starker ( Cumberland Press, 2008), Keefe examines the assumptions that Jack Zelig was hired by corrupt New York Police Captain Charles Becker to murder the gambler Herman Rosenthal, who threatened to expose Becker as a grafter. Zelig was murdered on a New York streetcar the day before he was to testify in murder trial against Becker. The assumptions resting on New York District Attorney Charles Seymour Whitman, a wildly ambitious patrician using the prosecutor’s office to amass bodies on which he might step his way to the White House, assisted in his efforts by the Police Commissioner Rhinelander Waldo.

Capt. Becker was a Cossack, Police muscle for Tammany Hall and an unabashedly corrupt cop, but Rose Keefe is not buying the assumptions that Becker murdered Rosenthal or subsequently Jack Zelig – and neither will the reader.
The reader meets the world of The Starker – the Tough Guy, The Golem, The Jewish Avenger- with same nostalgia and uneasiness as Jacob Goldman upon meeting boyhood partner in crime Harry Smith. American Jewish emigration was brought on in the late 19th Century by the Czarist Pogroms that slaughtered millions of Jews everywhere in the Russian Empire. Stuffed into the slums of New York City along with Irish and Italians escaping their own Holocausts, Jews competed for work and survival.
Some children of the Diaspora, like their Irish and Italian counterparts, took to the gang life. Jack Zelig was one such kid. Zelig Lefkowitz became a pickpocket in Monk Eastman’s Gang which competed with Italian mobster Paul Kelly. Keefe brings to life her remarkable research into the bloody capacities of gangsters – their skills, their ethics, and their powerful influence on polite society.
The Better Angels of public life make great use of the violent and larcenous –then and now. Profit and Progress require the capacity to compromise and betray. No one betrays like a public official.
Rose Keefe parallels Zelig’s rise to prominence with the meteoric career of Police Bully Captain Charles Becker. Charley Becker was a German beer hall bouncer hired to ‘exercise’ the Law upon non-compliant ne’er-do-wells who failed to pay dues and respect to Tammany Hall. Becker was highly successful. A gambler by the name of Herman Rosenthal came afoul of his elected betters and Becker was unleashed.
Rosenthal decided to ‘take his case’ to the courts and expose graft and corruption. Exit Rosenthal.
The murderer of the gambler signaled an opportunity for a Progressive Reformer to make his bones and the murder jacket fit the broad shoulders of Charley Becker nicely. Jack Zelig, notorious tough guy was called in as well, as his associates participated in the murder of Rosenthal. Zelig was murdered by a small-time punk who conveniently used a Police Revolver. DA Whitman got two for one.
Rose Keefe interviewed relatives of the personalities involved, including an eye witness the streetcar murder of Jack Zelig, and tunneled through granite mountains of documents to bring to life the World of the Starker and the Cossack executed in the Pogrom of an ambitious louse –Charles Seymour Whitman.
The Starker by Rose Keefe is uneasy nostalgia. The Starker knocks down the assumptions we hold about events past and present.

Rose Keefe CV

Published Books:

Guns and Roses: The Untold Story of Dean O'Banion, Chicago's Big Shot Before Al Capone. Cumberland House Publishing (Nashville, TN) 2004
The Man Who Got Away: the Bugs Moran Story. Cumberland House Publishing (Nashville, TN) 2004
The Starker: Big Jack Zelig, the Becker-Rosenthal Case of 1912, and the Advent of the Jewish Gangster. Cumberland House Publishing (Nashville, TN) 2008
Professional Affiliations:

Member, the Writer's Union of Canada
Radio, Television, and Film Appearances:

"Talkline with Zev Brenner", WSNR 620 AM(NY) (November 2008)
"Dave Gordon Radio Show Show", ThatRadio.com (October 2008)
"Our Gotham",www.monk1903.com (June 2008)
"Bulldog and The Rude Awakening Show", WOCM-FM 98.1 (June 2008)
"Mobs In America", Abu Media Ireland (August 2007)
"Man, Moment, and Machine" History Channel televised special (November 2006)
"Young Indiana Jones" DVD Series- consulting expert (July 2006)
"Paddy Whacked": the Irish Mob History Channel televised special (March 2006)
Dave Strauss Radio Show, KTRS St. Louis (February 2006)
The Radio Detective, with Jerry Pearce (March 2004)
WBIG AM with William Kelly (March 2004)
Magazine Articles (author) :

"Mary Ward: The First Fatal Automobile Accident". History Magazine, Volume 8, Number 2, December / January 2007
"Labor Pain: Mossy Enright and Chicago's Labor Wars". On the Spot Journal, Volume 1, Issue 1, Fall 2006
"An Officer vs A Gentleman : The Saga of Chicago's Deadly Gentleman Brothers". On the Spot Journal, Volume 1, Issue 2, Winter 2006
"A Buck A Fist: Dopey Benny Fein and New York's Labor Wars". On the Spot Journal, Volume 1, Issue 3, Spring 2007
"The Fighting Parson: Remembering the Reverend Leslie Spracklin, Canada's Elliot Ness." On The Spot Journal, Volume 1, Issue 5, Winter 2007
"Rose Rossi- First Victim of the One-Way Ride?." On The Spot Journal, Fall 2008
Personal Appearances:

Golden Age of Gangsters Convention, Itasca, Illinois, September 2004
Contributing Author / Expert:

The Most Evil Mobsters in History, by Lauren Carter. Michael O'Mara Books Ltd, London, England, UK 2004
Public Enemies: America's Criminal Past 1919-1940, by Rick Mattix and William J. Helmer. Cumberland House Publishing, (Nashville, TN), 2007
Bad Seeds In The Big Apple, by Pat Downey. Cumberland House Publishing, (Nashville, TN) 2008