Johnny Torrio and the Dream of Real Organized Crime

Although violence was what brought Torrio into power, he realized that such activities were bad for business. Torrio could foresee that a peace between rival gangs would create larger profits than if a major war took place between the various gangs in Chicago. He held out the olive branch and called for the rival gangs to meet and iron out agreements in relation to territories and price controls allowing all to make a profit with out the need to resort to violence. He presented the idea that more profits could be found in cooperation rather than through violent competition. Here was one the original founders of the concept of an "organized crime syndicate" that used collaboration to maintain and increase the power of rival gangs. The majority of the other ethnic gangs agreed to the proposals and through in with the Torrio ideas of collaboration. The Irish, Polish, Jewish and Italian groups agreed to sit down and discuss the proposals for cooperation. Two groups, however, saw no reason to enter into such a cooperative agreement, the Italian Genna Family and the Irish O'Banion Gang. For the first three years of the 1920s things were fairly quiet, each gang circling the others like a boxer looking for a weakness before they tried to land a major punch.

With the cooperating gangs, Torrio began to form an organization that could work as a unit. He helped divide up the city into territories guaranteeing beer distribution in specific areas so long as each gang respected the peace. He also assumed the role of controlling all the protection for the new racket. Payoffs went to all levels of government, city, state, and federal. It looked as if the vision for organization would be a winner in the Windy City, until a reform government swept into power and Torrio began to lose some of control through protection. Without the protection competition for territory became fierce and warring between the gangs broke out once again.

O'Banion used his Irish sense of humor to set Torrio up for federal arrest, by selling him a brewery and appointing a specific time for each of them to meet there to close on the deal. Instead, O'Banion contacted federal agents to attend the meeting where Torrio was placed under arrest. In response Torrio sought revenge through the elimination of O'Banion. Frankie Yale was called to Chicago once again to perform another job. This one

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