When this chapter first appeared in print in 1948, they said we were nuts. The following year, when we wrote Chicago Confidential, we expanded on the subject of the organized underworld. That made our critics hysterical.
But the findings of the Kefauver Committee, which got its original inspiration from these books, proved how right we were. In fact, the Senate Crime Committee's final report was practically a plagiarism of Chicago Confidential, and Washington Confidential.
The rattle of the sawed-off tommy-gun, the whining whistle of the leaden slug and the thud of its impact against flesh and bone no longer are the sound effects in the orchestration of the gangsters' theme song.
In the last decade an extraordinary metamorphosis has come over the characters who saw their big years of glamor and of terror during Prohibition and for a spell after repeal.
In truth, there are no gangsters, and there are no mobs. Yet, today's underworld figures cast a far wider shadow and wield an incalculably greater influence on the life of the nation and its principal city.
Except for a few shabby neighborhood ruffians in squabbles about penny-ante rackets, such as fish-peddling, shakedowns of storekeepers, enforcing collections for double sawbuck loan sharks and similar bagatelles, the old and happy habits of killing each other have evaporated.