Chicago Pineapples

Chief of Police Michael E. Hughes of Chicago having announced that he had stamped out a great part of his city's crime (TIME, Jan. 30). Chicago has been peacefully humdrum in recent weeks, except for a few episodes, such as:

The bombing of the City Comptroller's home.

The bombing of a ward boss's home.

The bombing of a judge's home.

The bombing of the State's Attorney's secretary's home.

The discovery of a bomb large enough to raze a five-story building beside an elevated railway pillar.

The posting of 300 policemen to guard other city officials' homes, especially Mayor William Hale ("Big Bill") Thompson's. Two families in the Thompson apartment building took good advice and moved out.

The holding-up of a Grand Trunk Railway train at 90th street by six bandits who bombed open the mail car and made off with $133,000.

Who was doing the city wide bombing, Chief of Police Hughes could only guess, but doubtless it was some liquor and gambling racketeers who resented having the most criminal city in the U. S. publicized as a sudden convert to law & order. The bombers' technique appeared to derive from a style of bombing inaugurated last autumn by the Chicago Association of Candy Jobbers, whose methodical representatives found little to deter them from pitching "pineapples" (hand grenades) into independent goody factories.

"Pineapples" are convenient, effective and easy to obtain in Chicago, where bomb-making has almost the status of an industry. "Our people are being terrorized," said President Frank Joseph Loesch of the Chicago Crime Commission last week. Police Chief Hughes could only say, "I'm helpless. . . . If I had 3,000 more policemen we could stop those bombers."

Undismayed, Mayor Thompson left town, going to Washington to have a fat finger in the larger political business of Flood Control (see p. 7).