Erik Visits an American Grave, Part 1,986

This is the grave of Big Bill Thompson.

Born in 1869 in Boston, William Hale Thompson grew up in Chicago. In fact, his parents moved there when their baby boy was a mere 9 days old, which seems pretty early to move a baby! The family had roots in Chicago from its very beginning; his grandfather had founded the fire department in the city back in 1837. The family was pretty wealthy too. His father was a naval officer in the Civil War and a successful businessman. So the kid had all the advantages. The idea was for the boy to attend Yale, but he had a more adventurous streak and he joined the flood of rich people investing in the cattle industry of the Great Plains in the 1880s after the genocide against the Tribes and the extermination of the bison, moving out to Wyoming at the age of 14 to work on the family’s ranch. He made money, bought ranches in Texas and New Mexico, traveled to Europe, and was quite successful on his own by the time he was in his early 20s.

Thompson returned to Chicago to manage the family business interests after his father died in 1892. A big guy and very athletic, he earned his nickname Big Bill due to his sports prowess back in the Chicago club athletic world. It was a good name for an ambitious kid. And Thompson was certainly ambitious. He wanted to run Chicago. This was the era of amazing corruption in Chicago and he had no problem engaging in it. In fact, that would be his whole career. He was happy to run vice if he got his cut. And when he got in real power, he would let it rip, again, so long as he got his cut.

While we think of political machines in the early 20th century to be Democratic, in fact, they were often run by Republicans too and Thompson was a one of the latter. He started entering politics in 1900, when he became an alderman. He soon became an ally of the most corrupt people in this most corrupted city, especially after 1902 when he won a spot on the Cook County Board of Commissioners. He and a functionary named Frederik Lundin made an alliance. Thompson had looks and charisma, Lundin was cunning and smart. Both were committed to stealing a lot of money. They made a great team.

In 1915, Thompson ran for mayor and won. He did a good job of being the kind of populist that can allow for the money to flow. He was very big on building major projects and when disasters struck, being super generous with the people. What liberals never understand is that no one actually cares about good government, not in an electoral manner. The voters are stupid and they will respond to big acts without any concern for what they mean. Donald Trump very much understands this. So did Big Bill Thompson. He could put on a show and get the votes and it drove reformer types crazy. When Mary McDowell, one of Chicago’s leading Progressives, led a public campaign for Thompson to appoint a woman to government, he readily agreed–and then appointed a woman who almost immediately got caught up in a kickback scheme. Like ridiculous beliefs you see in some political feminist circles even today that women would govern better, McDowell and Jane Addams and the like believed women would clean up politics. Talk about underselling women. They can be as corrupt and scummy as any man! Now that’s feminism in action!

Thompson wanted to be a senator, but because he opposed U.S. intervention into World War I–even after Wilson declared war–he lost the political ground to do that. But he always had Chicago. He was reelected mayor in 1919. He took a term off after it finished in 1923 and then won a third term in 1927. Thompson’s ethics were always….er…..dicey. Then along came prohibition and the world of the gangsters. Thompson was cool with Al Capone and the like, so long as he got paid. Men such as Thompson and Capone understood each other well, because at their heart, they were both gangsters. Capone funded Thompson’s run that year and was generously paid back by the city looking the other way. And when reform politicians ran against Thompson’s machine guys, Capone might just have the polling booths bombed.

Thompson was also a proto-fascist in some important ways. After he was reelected in 1927, he started a war against honest education in his city. He ordered the school board to suspend Chicago Public Schools superintendent William McAndrew, who was a major school reformer who was not an unproblematic figure in his own right–he was basically a dictator who would have been very comfortable in a room with Michelle Rhee and other charter school hacks in the 21st century but who also did things such as introduce the concept of the middle school and the standardized test (not unproblematic in its own right of course). But in this case, Thompson despised McAndrew because here was a power base who did not genuflect to the mayor but rather thought of himself as an honest man against a corrupt politician, which was basically true. Thompson then went on to try and ban materials in the public libraries coming over from the UK. See, Thompson pledged to clean up Chicago from crime during his 1927 run–it’s just that he considered reformers to be the criminals and for some reason, he thought the English were the worst kind of criminals. He used to brag that if King George V visited Chicago, he’d punch the king in the nose.

By 1931, the violence of Chicago finally led reform forces to get it together and kick Thompson out of office. He was defeated by Anton Cermak, after Thompson tried to racebait him because of his funny name. He tried to run for governor in 1936 and mayor again in 1939, but was crushed both times. Chicago voters finally had enough of their lunatic corrupt scumbag mayor. When political scientists create lists of best and worst mayors in American history, Thompson is the Andrew Johnson of the polls–at the very bottom all the time, or at least the bottom 2 or 3.

Thompson died in 1944, at the age of 74. Will you be shocked that after his death, safes were found in Thompson’s house that contained a mere $1.8 million in cash? No, I don’t think you would be. People pretended to be shocked, including a whole lot of Chicagoans who excused all this away during his lifetime for their own interests.

Big Bill Thompson is buried in Oak Woods Cemetery, Chicago, Illinois.

If you would like this series to visit other terrible mayors, you can donate to cover the required expenses here. Frank Hague is in Jersey City, New Jersey and Oakey Hall is in Manhattan. Previous posts in this series are archived here and here.