Captive city

Dust jacket notes: Chicago is a city on chains. It is owned and operated by a cabal of organized criminals and corrupted politicians. So-called "respectable businessmen" cooperate fully. For the first time, their relationship is clearly shown, not in an archetypal tale, but in a book conceived with courage and packed solid with hundreds of names! Crime now poisons every level of American society - but Chicago is unique. It is the killing ground, the training school, the pace setter. Here, the alliance of mobster and politico is brazenly open. The "Westside Bloc", as noted in this book, is Mafia controlled and dominates the State Assembly on every issue of importance to the crime business. Members, virtual card-carrying Mafiosi, have been sent to Congress. "I believe," declared author Ovid Demaris, "that the tie between mobster and politician is closer in Chicago than anywhere else in the world including Sicily." There have been more than one thousand gangland slayings in Chicago and only two convictions. The power and popularity of the politician-protected Mafia group is demonstrated again and again in specific examples of union racketeering, gambling, prostitution, narcotics, loan