In November 1930, a storefront opened on South State Street in
Chicago with a banner over the door: FREE SOUP, COFFEE &
DOUGHNUTS FOR THE UNEMPLOYED. Three times a day a line formed
outside it, and nobody was asked for proof of anything.

For about a week, nobody knew who was paying. Then the Chicago
Tribune found out, and the answer was Al Capone.

Half of Chicago's workforce was out of a job. There was no
unemployment insurance and no federal relief. An average of 2,200
people ate there every day, at a cost of around $300 a day, and a
Harper's writer described Capone as a man who killed with one
hand and fed with the other.

Both readings are on the record, and this is an honest account of
each — including how it ended, in the spring of 1932, on the
claim that the economy was recovering when unemployment had
risen by four million.

Harlan Fenwick keeps an almanac of things America stopped
writing down.

Harlan Fenwick is a character. The records are real.

#greatdepression  #alcapone  #chicago  #americanhistory