Prohibition

prohibition was the 18th amendment that made it against the law to make, sell or transport alcohol in the USA from january 1920 and december 1933,

by 1917, the anti saloon league had managed to make prohibition one of the biggest issues in American politics. at election times, every politician was asked where he stood on this issue. anybody who admitted to “wet” sympathies lost hundreds of votes.

however prohibition didn’t completely work, bootleggers and smugglers brought illegal liquor supplies into the cities. tum was smuggled from the west indies, whisky crossed the river to Detroit from Canada. it was soon big business and big businessmen got involved. joseph Kennedy, the father of the future president, made a great deal fo the Kennedy fortune in the illegal liquor trade. bootleggers organised themselves into gangs to transport goods. the gangs became rich and powerful.

by the late 1920s most alcohol was made at home in illegal stills. it was known as moonshine. home brewed bathtub gin could be made drinkable by adding other ingredients to it. in 1930, 122 illicit stills were seized by government agents. this homemade alcohol was often deadly and caused a lot of serious poisoning or blindness. alcohol was still needed for industrial processes, and although the govornment added poison to the alcohol, it went missing and was resold for drinking. deaths increased from 98 in 1920 to 760 in 1926.

organised crime started because the banning of the sale of alcohol created a black market, and with a black market comes a gang of people who take over the market, increasing their power and activity. these gangsters were making up to $2 billion a year from this. rival gangs fought with each other to supply the speakeasies with illegal alcohol, hijacking each others booze supplies and and murdering the opposition. police were bribed to pretend not to know. between 1926 and 1927, there were one hundred and thirty gangland murders in Chicago, for which no one was ever convicted. by the ned of the decade only the most powerful gangs had survived such as “al Capone”

al Capone under took the systematic corruption of the city of Chicago, buying up policemen, judges and local officials. on polling days, he stationed gunmen on roofs of polling station to make sure that people elected the officials on his payroll. by the beginning of the 1930s he essentially controlled the city. he spent over $250,000 to get his own man, big bill Thomas elected mayor.