Al Capone
Apprentice
A few blocks away from the Capone house on Garfield Place was a small
unobtrusive building that was the headquarters of one of the most successful
gangsters on the East Coast. Johnny Torrio was a new breed of gangster,
a pioneer in the development of a modern criminal enterprise. Torrio's
administrative and organizational talents transformed crude racketeering
into a kind of corporate structure, allowing his businesses to expand as
opportunities emerged. From Torrio, a young Capone learned invaluable
lessons that were the foundation of the criminal empire he built later
in Chicago.
Torrio was physically small, learning early in life on the street that
brains, ingenuity and the ability to make alliances were critical to survival.
Torrio was a gentleman gangster who was very visible as a numbers racketeer
and almost invisible as a keeper of whores and brothels.
He was a role model for many boys in the community. Capone, like
many other boys his age, earned pocket money by running errands for Johnny
Torrio. Over time, Torrio came to trust the young Capone and gave
him more to do. Meantime, young Al learned by observing the wealthy
successful respected racketeer and the people in his organization.
Bergreen explains that Al learned from Torrio "the importance of leading
an outwardly respectable life, to segregate his career from his home life,
as if maintaining a peaceful, conventional domestic setting somehow excused
or legitimized the venality of working in the rackets. It was a form
of hypocrisy that was second nature to Johnny Torrio and that he taught
Capone to honor." In 1909, Torrio moved to Chicago and young
Al fell under other influences.
Kids growing up in immigrant Brooklyn ran in gangs -- Italian gangs, Jewish gangs and Irish gangs. They were not the vicious urban street gangs of today, but rather groups of territorial neighborhood boys who hung out together. Capone was a tough, scrappy kid and belonged to the South Brooklyn Rippers and then later to the Forty Thieves Juniors and the Five Point Juniors. As John Kobler wrote, "the street gang was escape. The street gang was freedom. The street gang offered outlets for stifled young energies. The agencies that might have kept boys off the street, the schools and churches, lacked the means to do so. Few slum schools had a gym or playground or any kind of after-class recreation program...They formed their own street society, independent of the adult world and antagonistic to it. Led by some older, forceful boy, they pursued the thrills of shared adventure, of horseplay, exploration, gambling, pilfering, vandalism, sneaking a smoke or alcohol, secret ritual, smut sessions, fighting rival gangs."
Despite Al's relationship with the street gangs and Johnny Torrio, there
was no indication that Al would choose someday to lead a life of crime.
He still lived at home and did what he as expected to do when he quit school:
go to work and help support the family. The family was actually doing
quite well under Gabriele's guidance. He now owned his own barbershop.
Teresa continued to produce children --several boys and then two girls,
one of whom died in infancy. The only significant disruption in Al's
tranquil family life was in 1908 when his oldest brother Vincenzo (James)
left the family and went out west.
At this point in his life, nobody would ever have believed that Al would
go on to be the criminal czar that he ultimately became. For approximately
six years he worked faithfully at exceptionally boring jobs, first at a
munitions factory and then as a paper cutter. He was a good boy,
well behaved and sociable. Bergreen writes, "You didn't hear stories
about Al Capone practicing with guns; you heard that he went home each
night to his mother. Al was something of a nonentity, affable, soft
of speech and even mediocre in everything but dancing."
.How did the soft-spoken dutiful Al Capone metamorphose into the spectacularly
successful and violent super gangster? One clear catalyst was the
menacing presence of Frankie Yale. Originally from Calabria, Francesco
Ioele (called "Yale") was a both feared and respected. At the opposite
end of the spectrum from the peace-loving, "respectable" Johnny Torrio,
Frankie Yale built his turf on muscle and aggression. Yale opened
a bar on Coney Island called the Harvard Inn and hired, at the recommendation
of Johnny Torrio, the eighteen-year-old Al Capone to be his bartender.