City of the Century: The Epic of Chicago and the Making of America

by Donald L. Miller

“whole powerful city, more extensive than London—resembles, except for the better residential areas, a human being with his skin removed,”

Powers and his colleagues in crime were “gray wolves,” as the press portrayed them, at loose on the urban estate. In a popular vaudeville skit of the time, city officials are sleeping off a heavy night of celebrating at the Mulligan home. “Will I wake them?” Mrs. Mulligan asks her husband. “Leave them be,” he replies. “While they sleep the city’s safe.”

“People make laws for other people to live up to,”

“Trust everybody,” he is fond of saying, “but cut the cards”