production fell by more than 9% between the market crashes in October and .
December 1929. Consequently, jobs were lost, and soon people began .
defaulting on their interest payment. Radios and cars bought with .
instalment credit had to be returned. All of the sudden warehouses were .
piling up with inventory and the thriving industries that had been connected .
with the automobile and radio industries, started falling apart. Without a .
car people did not need fuel or tires; without a radio people had less need .
for electricity. On the international scene, the rich had practically stopped .
lending money to foreign countries. With such tremendous profits to be .
made in the stock market nobody wanted to make low interest loans. To .
protect the nation's businesses the U.S. imposed higher trade barriers .
through the Hawley-Smoot Tariff of 1930. Foreigners stopped buying .
American products. More jobs were lost, more shops were closed, more .
banks declared bankruptcy, and more factories closed down. Unemployment .
grew to five million in 1930, and up to thirteen million in 1932. The country .
spiralled quickly into catastrophe. The Great Depression had begun.
Al Capone.
"Gabriele Capone arrived in the U.S. in 1894. Gabriele, who was thirty .
years old, brought with him his pregnant twenty-seven-year-old wife .
Teresina (called Teresa), his two-year-old son Vincenzo and his infant son .
Raffaele. He was a barber by trade and could read and write his native .
language. .
Gabriele's ability to read and write allowed him to get a job in a .
grocery store until he was able to open his barbershop. Teresina, in spite of .
her duties as a mother of a growing brood of boys, took in sewing piecework .
to add to the family income. Her third child, Salvatore was born in 1895. .
Her fourth son and the first to be born and conceived in the New World was .
born January 17, 1899. His name was Alphonse.
At the age of five in 1904, Capone went to Public School 7 on Adams .