Neighbors, attracted by the firing, summoned the police and the fire department. Within a short time the intersection was thronged. Bomb experts from Chicago arrived as firemen were filling the coal chute with water, retrieved the bomb, and on examination pronounced it one of the strongest explosive devices ever reaching their attention. That it failed to explode was due, they believed, to the wetting of the fuse by soggy basement ground.
Speculate on Motive.
The attempted bombing, police said, probably was due to the fact that Hackett insisted on playing a lone hand in gambling in Blue Island. According to reports, Hackett operated a handbook without partnership or allegiance to any gambling group. Recently, it is said, a powerful combine has harassed Hackett to join their syndicate. To all advances Hackett is said to have turned a deaf ear and turned the emissaries away with sharp refusals.Hackett said he knew of no reasons for an attack. His connections, if he has any, are unknown, but he appeared to be a man of influence. While the excitement over the incident was at its height Hackett appeared at the hospital and at a Blue Island police station. At the later place he imperatively ordered the captain to detail a couple of bluecoats at his gambling place and a couple more at the bedside of the slugged Mexican.
Frances told me a story when I was staying with her one summer. A man came into Jim Hackett's establishment carrying a keg of beer from his boss, telling Hackett he would be buying beer from this boss from now on. Hackett picked the man up by the collar and the back of the pants, threw him into the street and the keg after him saying "Tell that polack son-of-a bitch I'm not buying his beer!" Frances was proud of her father's physical strength and courage in delivering this decidedly "sharp refusal" and she had a right to be. Based on Hackett's choice of abusive epithets it is likely that the boss in question was Joseph "Polack Joe" Saltis who, with his exceptionally violent partner Frank McErlane, controlled bootlegging on Chicago's southwest side.
