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The Ogden Gas Affair represented the biggest political scandal of Chicago's first sixty years. Mayor John P. Hopkins and Democratic Party boss Roger Sullivan conspired with ten other insiders to form a dummy corporation to blackmail Peoples Gas Company. The scam poured money into the coffers of beneficiaries who were never prosecuted, including the governor of Illinois, John P. Altgeld. As their lengthy swindle ran its course, Hopkins and Sullivan rubbed elbows with the most notorious grafters of the robber baron era, including Charles Yerkes and Big Bill Thompson. Author John Hogan follows the money in a scheme that became a template for the enrichment of the connected at the expense of the citizenry.

The story of Chicago gangsters in the 1920s is legendary. Less talked about is the tale of the politicians who allowed those gangsters to thrive. During the heyday of organized crime in the Prohibition era, Chicago mayor "Big Bill" Thompson and Gov. Len Small were the two most powerful political figures in Illinois. Thompson campaigned on making Chicago "a wide open town" for bootleggers. Small sold thousands of pardons and paroles to criminals, embezzled $1 million, and was then acquitted after mobsters bribed the jury. This book is the story of those Jazz Age politicians whose careers in government thrived on and endorsed corruption and racketeering, from Chicago to Springfield. It complements author Jim Ridings's groundbreaking biography, Len Small: Governors and Gangsters, which was praised by critics and situated Ridings as a trailblazer among Chicago crime authors.