"Free Doughnuts, Coffee, and Soup for the Unemployed"...
In November of 1930 at least a thousand unemployed Chicagoans would line the street 3 times a day to get a hot meal at a recently opened soup kitchen.
Nearly 75,000 residents were registered as unemployed and many were finally able to warm themselves while waiting for news of jobs opening up. These men did not look like they homeless, they were well dressed business men that the Crash of '29 hit hard.
No one questioned who the mysterious hero was that opened a Soup Kitchen at 935 South State Street that fed nearly 2,200 daily. Nobody was asked to provide proof if income, no person was denied second helpings, and no one was turned away.
The benefactor to this soup kitchen had told an associate that he had felt no one was doing enough to help the people in his city. He couldn't stand to see people hungry amd suffering so he took matters into his own hands using his own profits he had acquired from a big to do that had gone down from February 14th, 1929, the St. Valentine's Day Massacre where he had 7 of his rivals executed. This man, you guessed it was Al Capone.
Al Capone ran that soup kitchen at a cost of $300 a day. He also had meals made up for widows & orphans. This kitchen held Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners.
During Prohibition this man gave the people what they wanted, booze. During the Depression and when they were hungry and their own city seemed to have forgotten them, Capone fed them. Needless to say, City Council was terrified he was going to run for Mayor because there was a high chance he would have won that election.
As fate would have it, no matter how much good or bad you do in this life, you don't pay your taxes, they will find you and you will stand in that court room. And as The Godfather of Chicago found out in 1931, you will be judged by a jury of your peers.
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