the St. Paul Courthouse.
After a while, O’Connor left city government for the more lucrative job of actually running city government, becoming St. Paul’s undisputed “fixer.” So vast was his influence that the Great Man Himself—James J. Hill—once summoned O’Connor to his Summit Avenue mansion. Hill was supporting Robert Dunn for governor and asked O’Connor for advice on how to get him elected. Hill disagreed with what O’Connor told him and began to explain why. O’Connor said, “Mr. Hill, you asked for my opinion. I gave it to you. I did notcome here to argue.” He walked out, figuring that Hill might know how to run the Great Northern Railroad better than he, but the Cardinal sure as hell knew more about politics and Hill would call again—and so he did. Shortly after, Dunn won the Republican Party’s nomination. Only O’Connor wasn’t finished. He arranged for John A. Johnson to receive the Democratic Party’s nomination and saw to it that he defeated Dunn in the general election to become just the second Democratic governor in the history of Minnesota. When he was later asked why he did it, the Cardinal replied, “Because I could.”
O’Connor smiled at the remembrance of it. He enjoyed the role of kingmaker. Still, he tended to ignore state politics to concentrate on his city—emphasis on his. He saw to it that all of the city’s most important positions were filled with his cronies and that his brother John was made chief of police in 1900, a position that “the Big Fellow,” as John was dubbed, would hold for nearly twenty years. O’Connor made every corporation, contractor, or individual doing business with St. Paul pay for the privilege—starting at twenty-five hundred dollars each. Heads of departments paid one hundred to one-fifty for their jobs annually, members of honorary boards paid one hundred, and the breweries were expected to supply free beer and line up their employees and saloon owners behind whatever initiatives O’Connor favored.
For additional income, O’Connor established the Twin Cities Jockey Club and organized horse races at the state fairgrounds, ran a book out of the Fremont Exchange on Robert Street, and operated a numbers game modeled after the Louisiana Lottery. He also skimmed a percentage of every dollar earned by the city’s many saloons, brothels, and gambling establishments, much of which also found its way into the pockets of St. Paul police detectives, aldermen, grand jury members, judges, and prosecutors. In exchange, the city honored a “layover agreement” ensuring that criminals would receive police protection if they followed three simple rules: check in with Chief O’Connor,donate a small bribe, and promise to commit no crimes within the city limits. The Big Fellow enforced the system with ruthless efficiency. As a result, St. Paul became one of the safest cities in America. A punk snatching a woman’s purse would be tracked down and taught a lesson by other criminals; a man who had the audacity to rob a bank in the Midway District was turned over to the police the very next day by his colleagues in crime. All this two full decades before Prohibition and thirty years before the city would become a home away from home for killers like John Dillinger.
Of course, the O’Connor System didn’t apply to surrounding communities. Gangsters sworn to keep their noses clean in St. Paul thought nothing of raiding neighboring cities. The Minnesota Bankers’ Association would later report that 21 percent of all the bank holdups in the United States in 1932—an amazing forty-three daylight robberies—occurred in Minnesota. As long as they didn’t occur in St. Paul, O’Connor didn’t care.
The original liaison between the criminals and the O’Connors was a red-haired Irishman named Billy Griffin who held court at the old Hotel Savoy on Minnesota Street. When he died of apoplexy in 1913, Dapper Dan Hogan replaced him. Now, with Hogan’s murder,
After a while, O’Connor left city government for the more lucrative job of actually running city government, becoming St. Paul’s undisputed “fixer.” So vast was his influence that the Great Man Himself—James J. Hill—once summoned O’Connor to his Summit Avenue mansion. Hill was supporting Robert Dunn for governor and asked O’Connor for advice on how to get him elected. Hill disagreed with what O’Connor told him and began to explain why. O’Connor said, “Mr. Hill, you asked for my opinion. I gave it to you. I did notcome here to argue.” He walked out, figuring that Hill might know how to run the Great Northern Railroad better than he, but the Cardinal sure as hell knew more about politics and Hill would call again—and so he did. Shortly after, Dunn won the Republican Party’s nomination. Only O’Connor wasn’t finished. He arranged for John A. Johnson to receive the Democratic Party’s nomination and saw to it that he defeated Dunn in the general election to become just the second Democratic governor in the history of Minnesota. When he was later asked why he did it, the Cardinal replied, “Because I could.”
O’Connor smiled at the remembrance of it. He enjoyed the role of kingmaker. Still, he tended to ignore state politics to concentrate on his city—emphasis on his. He saw to it that all of the city’s most important positions were filled with his cronies and that his brother John was made chief of police in 1900, a position that “the Big Fellow,” as John was dubbed, would hold for nearly twenty years. O’Connor made every corporation, contractor, or individual doing business with St. Paul pay for the privilege—starting at twenty-five hundred dollars each. Heads of departments paid one hundred to one-fifty for their jobs annually, members of honorary boards paid one hundred, and the breweries were expected to supply free beer and line up their employees and saloon owners behind whatever initiatives O’Connor favored.
For additional income, O’Connor established the Twin Cities Jockey Club and organized horse races at the state fairgrounds, ran a book out of the Fremont Exchange on Robert Street, and operated a numbers game modeled after the Louisiana Lottery. He also skimmed a percentage of every dollar earned by the city’s many saloons, brothels, and gambling establishments, much of which also found its way into the pockets of St. Paul police detectives, aldermen, grand jury members, judges, and prosecutors. In exchange, the city honored a “layover agreement” ensuring that criminals would receive police protection if they followed three simple rules: check in with Chief O’Connor,donate a small bribe, and promise to commit no crimes within the city limits. The Big Fellow enforced the system with ruthless efficiency. As a result, St. Paul became one of the safest cities in America. A punk snatching a woman’s purse would be tracked down and taught a lesson by other criminals; a man who had the audacity to rob a bank in the Midway District was turned over to the police the very next day by his colleagues in crime. All this two full decades before Prohibition and thirty years before the city would become a home away from home for killers like John Dillinger.
Of course, the O’Connor System didn’t apply to surrounding communities. Gangsters sworn to keep their noses clean in St. Paul thought nothing of raiding neighboring cities. The Minnesota Bankers’ Association would later report that 21 percent of all the bank holdups in the United States in 1932—an amazing forty-three daylight robberies—occurred in Minnesota. As long as they didn’t occur in St. Paul, O’Connor didn’t care.
The original liaison between the criminals and the O’Connors was a red-haired Irishman named Billy Griffin who held court at the old Hotel Savoy on Minnesota Street. When he died of apoplexy in 1913, Dapper Dan Hogan replaced him. Now, with Hogan’s murder,
Similar Books
