Speaker 1: Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio, Hey Brainstuff. Florin
Speaker 1: Vogelbaum here. Al Capone, sometimes known as Scarface, is perhaps
Speaker 1: the most recognizable and infamous figure in American organized crime.
Speaker 1: His life as a gangster was highlighted by a series
Speaker 1: of racketeering schemes, tax fraud, violence, and bootlegging. But a
Speaker 1: lot of that was hard to stick to the so
Speaker 1: called teflon Dawn since somehow the federal government only managed
Speaker 1: to put him in prison for eleven years on charges
Speaker 1: of income tax evasion. He served out his sentence in Atlanta,
Speaker 1: then later in Alcatraz. But there's one story about Capone
Speaker 1: you might not have heard. It has to do with
Speaker 1: the Chicago dairy industry and several farmers and delivery drivers' unions.
Speaker 1: It was nineteen thirty three and Capone was already in prison.
Speaker 1: Fairy prices were fixed by law, but independent dairy farmers
Speaker 1: wanted more money for their milk. Representatives from the dairy
Speaker 1: trade group the Associated Milk Dealers said that the public
Speaker 1: wouldn't pay more, as so the farmers, who were union
Speaker 1: members of the Pure Milk Association walked off the job. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: Capone and his gangster proteges needed money because it was
Speaker 1: clear that President Franklin D. Roosevelt was preparing to repeal prohibition.
Speaker 1: Once bootlegging and speakeasies became a thing of the past,
Speaker 1: it would put a dent in the Mob's major revenue sources,
Speaker 1: so they targeted the dairies for the article this episode
Speaker 1: is based on as toff Work spoke with Claire White,
Speaker 1: the director of education for the Mob Museum in Las Vegas,
Speaker 1: who explained that there were two reasons why the dairies. First,
Speaker 1: the dairies lacked regulation, and second, the mafia already controlled
Speaker 1: other food products, including artichokes, yes really, and Wisconsin cheese.
Speaker 1: Capone's Mob bought meadow More dairies intending to bully its
Speaker 1: way into the milk business. Bottling milk and metal Moore's
Speaker 1: facilities would allow them to bypass the fixed dairy pricing
Speaker 1: and to stop unions from distributing only local milk. A
Speaker 1: metal Moore distributed milk through stores exclusively, rather than using
Speaker 1: drivers for home deliveries. The dairy bought milk from farmers
Speaker 1: at a flat price, an aggressively exploited store distribution. This
Speaker 1: allowed metal Moore to underprice other distributors who were bound
Speaker 1: by contract to pay union prices to union drivers. These
Speaker 1: mob tactics pitted the gangsters against union officials and the
Speaker 1: dairies that were legally obligated to deliver milk directly to
Speaker 1: consumers homes and those delivery drivers. But the mob wanted
Speaker 1: the union's help. A story in the Chicago Tribune recounts
Speaker 1: how Capohne's political fixer, A Murray the Camel Humphreys, went
Speaker 1: to one Steve Sumner, who was the union leader of
Speaker 1: the Milk wagon Drivers Union Local seven fifty three. Humphries
Speaker 1: asked him to lay low so that metal Moore could
Speaker 1: hire non union workers to undercut the other dairies. Then
Speaker 1: Sumner and his union drivers could protest Meadow more, which
Speaker 1: would give metal Moore reason to raise milk prices again.
Speaker 1: All of this was in exchange for the mobs of protection.
Speaker 1: Of course, A Sumner wanted no part of it. He
Speaker 1: declined the mob's security and said no to all of
Speaker 1: their demands, which led to the beginning of Chicago's Milk Wars.
Speaker 1: Over an eighteen month campaign of violence and intimidation, there
Speaker 1: were numerous bombings, dozens of windows smashed, damaged trucks and
Speaker 1: drivers and mendors beaten a striking dairy farmers and drivers
Speaker 1: bombed metal More just after it opened in nineteen thirty two. Undeterred,
Speaker 1: the dairy sold its milk at nine cents a court,
Speaker 1: two cents below the regular price at other distributors. Capone's
Speaker 1: mob also extorted New York pizzerias to use only Metamore cheese.
Speaker 1: There's even anecdotal evidence that Capone is responsible forgetting the
Speaker 1: practice of printing expiration dates on milk bottles officially implemented.
Speaker 1: There's no clear proof, but Metomoor dairies did help set
Speaker 1: the standards for Grade A milk, if only because the
Speaker 1: dairy knew that its milk would pass the requirements while
Speaker 1: others would not. As the battles raged between the unions,
Speaker 1: the mob, home delivery drivers and retail sellers, Sumner and
Speaker 1: the Milk Wagon Drivers Union attempted to organize the companies
Speaker 1: and convert them to an employee wage system, but the
Speaker 1: Associated milk Dealers refused, and the dairy farmers continued to strike.
Speaker 1: Even those Supreme Court handed down injunctions against union picketing.
Speaker 1: A fast forward to November of nineteen thirty eight, when
Speaker 1: a grand jury indicted forty three individuals with violating the
Speaker 1: Sherman Act for trying to fix the price of milk.
Speaker 1: Fourteen corporations and forty three people were indicted in total,
Speaker 1: including Sumner and several unions, but not Copones Associates. In
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty nine, the antitrust case was thrown out by
Speaker 1: a district court judge, but later reinstated by the u. S.
Speaker 1: Supreme Court. However, instead of going to trial, the Department
Speaker 1: of Justice offered the parties the option of signing a
Speaker 1: consent decree to agree to the following. The farmers organizations
Speaker 1: and unions pledged that they would not stop independent producers
Speaker 1: from marketing milk. Distributors vowed to end price fixing, and
Speaker 1: the Driver's Union promised to not hamper store sales of milk,
Speaker 1: and thus the milk Wars officially ended in nineteen forty.
Speaker 1: By then, Sumner was already voted out of his job
Speaker 1: as leader of the Milk Wagons Union. He seemingly took
Speaker 1: it with grace. The Chicago Tribune quoted him as saying,
Speaker 1: the young fellows wanted to move in, so we'll have
Speaker 1: to step out, But what about Capone and his connection
Speaker 1: to the Chicago milk wars. Most likely there wasn't much
Speaker 1: of a direct one. Claire White noted that both Al
Speaker 1: and his brother Ralph were already in prison when it
Speaker 1: kicked off, and unlike in Hollywood movies, they probably weren't
Speaker 1: pulling too many strings from behind bars. A Capone essentially
Speaker 1: retired from the mob after his first imprisonment in nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty one, but the Chicago crime syndicate that he created
Speaker 1: continued under the leadership of several of his mafia disciples.
Speaker 1: By the time Capone was released from Alcatraz in nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty nine, he had complications from a severe case of syphilis,
Speaker 1: including progressive dementia and paralysis. Doctors noted that he had
Speaker 1: the cognitive processing of a twelve year old child. He
Speaker 1: never returned to Chicago and instead lived out his last
Speaker 1: years with his family at his Florida mansion, where he
Speaker 1: died in nineteen forty seven at the age of forty eight.
Speaker 1: Today's episode is based on the article how Alcpohone's mobster's
Speaker 1: outmuscled Chicago milkmen on HowStuffWorks dot com, written by Schrese Cunningham.
Speaker 1: Brainstuff is production of iHeartRadio in partnership with HowStuffWorks dot
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