◆ SpookStack

a ne er Tate ee Here you have the first actual photo- graphic story ever published of the world famous beer wars of Chicago Gangland. It begins with the murder of “Diamond Jim” Colo- simo at the dawn of prohibition, and it continues on up through the years, death by death, until the killers of Gangland finally gradu- ated from murder to massacre on St. Valentine’s day, 1929, and more recently hit one below the belt by assassinating Alfred “Jake” Lingle, a newspaper reporter. # With the country-wide publication of the massacre photograph, public indifference to Gangland’s crimes came to an abrupt end. The work of destroying organized crime in Chicago began determinedly, coldly, sternly. To use a phrase borrowed from Gangland, the exponents of the “gat” and the machine gun are today being “pushed around” by Decency and Integrity, and they must surely fall into the abyss of oblivion. € What has brought about this uprising? More than any other single factor has been the wide and unceasing publicity given to Gangland’s activities. # It was this fact that gave the authors the idea for this book. Newspaper reporters of long Chicage police experience, they realized that any book showing the criminals of Booze- dom as they really are would necessarily be one of brutality and biced and horror. Only in such a book could it be done. # X Marks The Spot is the result. In its terrible Truth, this book will become * of tremendous value in obliterating gangsters from the Chicago scene. The publication of death i pictures in newspapers is becoming more common every day. Editors have at last realized the terrific force a death picture can exert, particularly in driving home the lesson that the underworld has present day civilization in its grip. € The ultimate good of the death picture far outweighs the shock that it may have on a certain delicate emotional segment of the newspaper readers. A famous New York news- paper editor commenting in Editor & Publisher recently on the publication of the Valentine massacre picture, declared that “it was a more powerful example of the defiance of law and order by the under- world than could be drawn by twenty-five columns of editorials.” # In Chicago the tendency to pub- lish death pictures, particularly of slain gangsters, is definite and growing. And the result is the pass- \ ing of the gangster, It is interesting to speculate on what the effect might have been on crime in Chicago if this tendency had manifested itself on page one four or five years ago. # X Marks The Spot publishes eee a eedine: smal he oe De tedd * - omy a \ those pictures for the first time. The body of the gangster which was blotted out and an X substituted is restored as the camera saw it. You have read the story in countless volumes, now, for the first time you can see it. You will see Chicago crime “put on the spot.” | \ Copsright 193 by The Spot Publishing Company Printed In U.B,A. X ad pr Cae cca pgp AE Ee caged ge ae ; eee en nee = rs