As a three-year-old child McKenty had been brought from Ireland by his emigrant parents during a period of famine.

He had been raised on the far South Side in a shanty which stood near a maze of railroad-tracks, and as a naked baby he had crawled on its earthen floor.

His father had been promoted to a section boss after working for years as a day-laborer on the adjoining railroad, and John, junior, one of eight other children, had been sent out early to do many things--to be an errand-boy in a store, a messenger-boy for a telegraph company, an emergency sweep about a saloon, and finally a bartender.

This last was his true beginning, for he was discovered by a keen-minded politician and encouraged to run for the state legislature and to study law.

Even as a stripling what things had he not learned--robbery, ballot-box stuffing, the sale of votes, the appointive power of leaders, graft, nepotism, vice exploitation--all the things that go to make up (or did) the American world of politics and financial and social strife.