National Affairs: Quiet Chicago

The September day that Fisticuffer Gene Tunney arrived in Chicago, one of the motorcycle policemen in his honking, roaring, droning, whizzing escort fell off his machine and was badly hurt. Last week some gas merchants held a convention in Chicago and one of their honking, droning, whizzing, roaring escort ran down and hurt two women in the crowded Loop district. Last week also, Prince Wilhelm of Sweden visited Chicago. Before arriving he begged the Chicago police not to insist upon a honking, droning, whizzing, roaring escort for him; not, at least, to equip the escort with sirens. Prince Wilhelm said that he would find “such a racket very annoying.” So the Chicago City Council, which has listened with pride to earsplitting, mile-a-minute escorts for Roman Catholic cardinals at the Eucharistic Congress, Queen Marie of Rumania, fisticuffers, gas merchants and almost every least journey of Mayor William Hale (“Big Bill”) Thompson, decreed that hereafter siren-blowing police escorts would be accorded only U. S. Presidents, kings, queens and—as despatches put it—”others of real distinction.” Prince Wilhelm of Sweden was allowed to go quietly, almost unnoticed, through Chicago streets to breakfast at the Cliff Dweller’s Club with Julius Rosenwald, John Tinney McCutcheon,* Samuel Insull, Mrs. Edith Rockefeller McCormick, et al.

*Famed cartoonist for the Chicago Tribune.