Response To The Violence
As the violence heightened, the focus of the voters turned to crime and Prohibition. Chicago's violent campaign drew attention and scorn from out-of-town newspapers. In the days before the election, a Federal grand jury was sworn in with instructions that it would be called upon to protect the voters of Chicago under the federal statutes about intimidation or conspiracy to prevent a citizen from exercising his right to vote. Special federal Prohibition officers swarmed into the city after the Deneen and Swanson bombings, and a city court bailiff who was a Thompson supporter was shot and wounded by a federal agent during a raid on a saloon.
Under a finding by the Illinois Supreme Court, election judges were ruled as officers of the county court, and that any election judge who tampered with votes or intimidated voters could be jailed for contempt. Under the same court decision, some 3,000 persons drawn from the ranks of the local bar association and other civic organizations were deputized as pollwatchers, and were empowered to compel a policeman to arrest anyone involved in vote fraud. The same ruling deprived Governor Small from the power to pardon politicians arrested under this contempt ruling. This unprecedented ruling was estimated to have the potential to cut the stolen votes from about 75,000 to 25,000 within Cook County.
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Famous quotes containing the words response to, response and/or violence:
“It does me good to write a letter which is not a response to a demand, a gratuitous letter, so to speak, which has accumulated in me like the waters of a reservoir.”
—Henry Miller (1891–1980)
“There is ... but one response possible from us: Force, Force to the uttermost, Force without stint or limit, the righteous and triumphant Force which shall make Right the law of the world and cast every selfish dominion down in the dust.”
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“If a thousand men were not to pay their tax-bills this year, that would not be a violent and bloody measure, as it would be to pay them, and enable the State to commit violence and shed innocent blood. This is, in fact, the definition of a peaceable revolution, if any such is possible.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)