As additional info, even though the policy game was always considered as a black mans racket, legend goes that Patsy King, an Irishman, was the one that devised the game and became very rich. King met a black man on one of the riverboats, named Sam Young that worked as a porter. Allegedly King has taught Sam on how the game worked and they started operating together. Policy Sam, as he was known, came to Chicago’s South Side in 1885 and explained the rules to the black people and used the same tactics as Patsy King, by taking bets and pulling numbers out of his hat. With the financial backing of Patsy King, Sam Young took the policy game on a higher level.Theres also a story that some Chinese guy who was a partner of King and Young, was in fact the one who brought the game.

Anyway during the 1910’s a lot of African-American people moved from the South Side to the Near North Side’s “Little Hell” Sicilian community. So Sam Young met a lot of influential Italians and made alliances that helped in spreading his policy racket big time. One of his best Italian connections was a tavern owner Julius Benvenuti, who was a Sicilian millionaire and well known among the black community. Benvenuti placed Young as the headman for his policy wheel and supervised the game at many carnivals or picnics that were organized by Benvenuti himself. Young and Benvenuti even payed for police protection and conducted the campaigns for many government officals and they were definitely big deals.

Back in those days there was less violence among Chicago's criminals. Obviously there were bombings and beatings but rarely a murder.So my point is that in those days there was a more of a "good business climate" between the operators,like in these two previous examples, rather than murderous rivalry.