The Montgomery Advertiser
- GANGLAND IS SILENT AS OFFICERS PROBE MONDAY OUTBREAK
- FARM BUREAU PLAN IS GIVEN APPROVAL AT COMMERCE MEET
- FARMERS ASSURED OF FINANCIAL HELP TO HANDLE COTTON
The Montgomery Advertiser of October 13, 1926, led with an AP dispatch from Chicago: after machine-gun fire from a window opposite Holy Name Cathedral killed "Hymie" Weiss and Paddy Murray and wounded lawyer W. W. O'Brien and two others, the city's gangsters went into hiding and police were left without a clue, refusing even to confirm reports that they had questioned Al Capone. Cotton filled the rest of the front page excerpts. From Washington, President Coolidge's cotton committee, chaired by Eugene Meyer Jr. and including Mellon, Hoover and Jardine, promised the South credit and cooperation to market a record crop and judged the outlook better than in 1921. Closer to home, a commerce meeting approved Alabama Farm Bureau president O'Neal's resolution calling for 4,000,000 bales to be pulled off the market and for a Farm Bureau-run pool of up to two years for Alabama's share.
Translation
GANGLAND IS SILENT AS OFFICERS PROBE MONDAY OUTBREAK
Identity of Machine Gunners in Latest Gesture Shrouded in Mystery; Police Search Without Clue
TEMPORARY TRUCE MARKS WAR OF EXTERMINATION
Enforcement Officers Unable to Determine Motive or Identify Guilty Parties
CHICAGO, Oct. 12.—(AP)—Stoic Gangland, silenced tonight, shrouded the identity of the machine gunners who yesterday mowed down five men as the latest gesture in the war of extermination between rival gang factions for control of Chicago's liquor traffic.
Every gangster went into retirement, leaving the police without a clue to the identity of the men who operated a machine gun last night from an apartment building window opposite Holy Name Cathedral on North State street, killing "Hymie" Weiss, and Paddy Murray, leaders of one gang faction, and wounding W. W. O'Brien, well known criminal lawyer, and two of Weiss' associates.
It was reported during the day that the police had ferreted out the hiding place of "Scarface" Al Capone, powerful leader of the faction opposing Weiss, and had questioned him. The police, however, would not admit this, and Capone was not in custody.
Law enforcement authorities were trying to answer two questions: Who …
FARM BUREAU PLAN IS GIVEN APPROVAL AT COMMERCE MEET
The resolution was introduced by E. A. O'Neal, president of the Alabama Farm Bureau federation and seconded by C. A. Cobb, farm paper editor of Atlanta. It pointed out that 4,000,000 bales should be removed at once from the market for the prosperity of the south and provided for retiring the proportionate amount of the Alabama crop by creating a long-time pool to run two years if necessary with the Alabama Farm Bureau Cotton association in charge.
FARMERS ASSURED OF FINANCIAL HELP TO HANDLE COTTON
Coolidge Committee Promises South Cooperation in Marketing Record Crop; Surveys Situation
OUTLOOK BRIGHTER THAN IN 1921 SAYS CHAIRMAN
Summary Points to Strength of Southern Banks and Storage Facilities
WASHINGTON, Oct. 12.—(AP)—The South was promised co-operation and financial resources to market its record cotton crop by the president's cotton committee, which met today to survey the situation.
A hasty diagnosis of conditions brought the statement from Eugene Meyer, Jr., chairman, that the outlook was better than in 1921, when a similar situation arose.
The committee, which also includes Secretaries Mellon, Hoover and Jardine summed up the situation after its first conference as follows:
Problems "real but not impossible."
No lack of financial resources in connection with orderly marketing of crop.
Spinning industry in position to take care of panicky sales and thus hold prices.
Leading cotton consuming countries—England, Germany and Japan—have stabilized currencies and are in position to make long time contracts for …
Context
Why Weiss was a target: the North Side–Capone war of 1924–26
The AP dispatch calls the shooting the "latest gesture" in a war of extermination, and the sequence behind that phrase is well documented. The North Side Gang's co-founder Dean O'Banion was killed at his flower-shop headquarters on November 10, 1924, and Weiss took over the gang and pursued revenge against the Torrio-Capone organization. After the North Siders' 1925 attacks, Johnny Torrio relinquished control of his gang to Al Capone. In August 1926 Capone gunmen attacked Weiss and Vincent Drucci, and on September 20, 1926, Weiss answered with a ten-car convoy that fired into Capone's Hawthorne Hotel in Cicero, only three weeks before the cathedral shooting. Weiss was also seeking an alliance with the South Side bootlegger Joe Saltis, whose murder trial opened with jury selection on October 11, 1926, the day Weiss was seen there. The paper's description of Capone as leader of "the faction opposing Weiss" therefore matches the later record, even though Chicago police would not confirm publicly that they had questioned him.
Who fired from the window, and the ceasefire that followed
The dispatch describes a single machine gun firing from an apartment window and leaves the gunmen unnamed. Later accounts list the party walking toward the North Side headquarters as Weiss, his bodyguard Sam Pellar, Paddy Murray, attorney William W. O'Brien and O'Brien's investigator Benjamin Jacobs, which identifies the paper's two wounded "associates" as Pellar and Jacobs. Those accounts place two gunmen in a nearby rooming house, firing a submachine gun and a shotgun. Chicago police later named Jack McGurn as the man behind the tommy gun, yet a witness, Charles E. McKibben, accused the wounded Pellar and Jacobs of having shot Weiss, so the question the dispatch left open still has competing answers in the record. Vincent Drucci succeeded Weiss as North Side leader. The "temporary truce" in the deck refers to the gangs' own silence; a negotiated ceasefire came separately, when a conference at the Hotel Sherman on October 20 agreed a general ceasefire between the Capone organization and the North Side Gang. That truce lasted a little over two months before war broke out again.
Eugene Meyer Jr. and the federal credit behind the cotton committee
The committee's chairman, who told reporters the outlook was better than in 1921, was a financier with long experience of government lending. Eugene Meyer had been made director of the federal War Finance Corporation in April 1918 and remained at its head long after the fighting ended, so his comparison with 1921 came from someone who had held federal finance office in the postwar years. The committee described in the article, which paired him with Treasury Secretary Mellon, Commerce Secretary Hoover and Agriculture Secretary Jardine, was an early step in his move into farm credit: President Coolidge named him chairman of the Federal Farm Loan Board in 1927, and Herbert Hoover made him chairman of the Federal Reserve Board in 1930. The committee's list of reassurances, including ample financing for orderly marketing and stable foreign currencies in England, Germany and Japan, reads as the case of an administration that preferred credit and private buying to direct price support for the record crop.
The Alabama Farm Bureau, Edward O'Neal and the idea of withholding cotton
The resolution approved at the commerce meeting came from the head of a young but rising organization. The Alabama Farm Bureau was organized at the Alabama Polytechnic Institute, now Auburn University, in January 1921, and in its early years it set up commodity co-ops, member-owned stores through which farmers marketed and sold their products. The 1926 plan to hold Alabama's share of 4,000,000 bales in a Farm Bureau-run pool for up to two years fits that cooperative-marketing approach. Its sponsor, Edward O'Neal III, grandson of a former Alabama governor, had become bureau president in 1923; the bureau's success led to his election as president of the American Farm Bureau Federation in 1931. In the New Deal he helped craft the Agricultural Adjustment Act, which paid farmers to plant fewer crops such as cotton to keep prices high. The voluntary, bureau-managed withdrawal in this article thus stands at the start of a path that ended with federal payments for cutting cotton output.
Original
GANGLAND IS SILENT AS OFFICERS PROBE MONDAY OUTBREAK
Constructive Fearless Independent VOLUME XCVIII-NO. 286 GANGLAND IS SILENT AS OFFICERS PROBE MONDAY OUTBREAK Identity of Machine Gunners in Latest Gesture Shrouded in Mystery; Police Search Without Clue TEMPORARY TRUCE MARKS WAR OF EXTERMINATION Enforcement Officers Unable to Determine Motive or Identify Guilty Parties CHICAGO, Oct. 12. - (AP) - Stoic Gangland, silenced tonight, shrouded the identity of the machine gunners who yesterday mowed down five men as the latest gesture in the war of extermination between rival gang factions for control of Chicago's liquor traffic. Every gangster went into retirement, leaving the police without a clue to the identity of the men who operated a machine gun last night from an apartment building window opposite Holy Name Cathedral on North State street, killing " Hymie " Weiss, and Paddy Murray, leaders of one gang faction, and wounding W. W. O'Brien, well known criminal lawyer, and two of Weiss ' associates. It was reported during the day that the police had ferreted out the hiding place of " Scarface " Al Capone, powerful leader of the faction opposing Weiss, and had questioned him. The police, however, would not admit this, and Capone was not in custody. Law enforcement authorities were trying to answer two questions: Who
FARM BUREAU PLAN IS GIVEN APPROVAL AT COMMERCE MEET
The resolution was Introduced by ' l., A. O'Neal, president of the Alabama Farm Bureau federation and seconded by C. A. Cobb, farm paper editor of Atlanta. It pointed out that 4. 000. 000 bales should be removed at once from the market for the prosperity of the south and provided for retiring the proportionate amount of the Alabama crop by creating a long-time pool te run two years If necessary with th * Alabama Farm Bureau Cotton associa tion In charge.
FARMERS ASSURED OF FINANCIAL HELP TO HANDLE COTTON
Constructive Fearless Independent 14 PAGES Price 5 Cents FARMERS ASSURED OF FINANCIAL HELP TO HANDLE COTTON Coolidge Committee Promises South Cooperation in Marketing Record Crop; Surveys Situation OUTLOOK BRIGHTER THAN IN 1921 SAYS CHAIRMAN Summary Points to Strength of Southern Banks and Storage Facilities WASHINGTON, Oct. 12. - (AP) - The South was promised co-operation and financial resources to market its record cotton crop by the president's cotton committee, which met today to survey the situation. A hasty diagnosis of conditions brought the statement from Eugene Meyer, Jr., chairman, that the outlook was better than in 1921, when a similar situation arose. The committee, which also includes Secretaries Mellon, Hoover and Jardine summed up the situation after its first conference as follows: Problems " real but not impossible. " No lack of financial resources in connection with orderly marketing of crop. Spinning industry in position to take care of panicky sales and thus hold prices. Leading cotton consuming countries - England, Germany and Japan-have stabilized currencies and are in position to make long time contracts for
Source: Holding institution