The corrupt 20's

All right!  So, continuing with our journey on corruption in american society we take our second stop in he 1920's america, also known as the roaring 20's.  The economy was booming, jazz was just comng into its own right, and congress passed the 18th amendmant.  This particular law was prohibiton, preventing the sale and distribution of alcoholic bevrages.  This ended up fostering the biggest undergorund smuggling empire in hisotry.  Bringing fame to people like Al Capone and Lucky Lucciano.  Some examples of coruuption o like this, "Prohibition quickly produced bootleggers, speakeasies, moonshine, bathtub gin, and rum runners smuggling supplies of alcohol across state lines. In 1927, there were an estimated 30,000 illegal speakeasies--twice the number of legal bars before Prohibition. In 1919, a year before Prohibition went into effect, Cleveland had 1,200 legal bars. By 1923, the city had an estimated 3,000 illegal speakeasies, along with 10,000 stills. An estimated 30,000 city residents sold liquor during Prohibition, and another 100,000 made home brew or bathtub gin for themselves and friends.



Al- Capone



Prohibition also fostered corruption and contempt for law and law enforcement among large segments of the population. Harry Daughtery, attorney general under Warren Harding, accepted bribes from bootleggers. George Remus, a Cincinnati bootlegger, had a thousand salesmen on his payroll, many of them police officers. He estimated that half his receipts went as bribes. Al Capone's Chicago organization reportedly took in $60 million in 1927 and had half the city's police on its payroll."  Prohibition produced these wealthy, ruthless, and powerful men and turned hundreds of thousands of ordinary citizens into regular lawbreakers.  Police officers took bribes to look the other way as lquor was smuggled in, and people were going so far as to make alcohol in their bathtubs.  The greatest irony of prohibition, was that it created more criminals than it destoyed and killed dozens of people in gang violence, such as the St. Valentine's day massacere.  So, for everyone out there who thinks that corruption is worse now then it ever was.... at least Al-Capone's not still running around with a tommy gun in his hands and a cigar in his mouth.