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The Prohibition did not achieve its goals. Instead, it added to the problems it was intended to solve. (Thorton, 15) On January 16, 1920, a popular American pastime was suddenly seized from the public, and labeled a crime. The 18 th Amendment, known as the Voltstead Act, was put into effect and attempted to efficiently remove the importing, exporting, transporting, selling, and manufacturing of any liquor with an alcohol content exceeding 0. 5 %. The law was passed in order to reduce crimes such as domestic violence, rape, fighting, and automobile accidents. However, as the government failed in enforcing the ban, the Prohibition Act led to far more serious problems than it was intended to solve. Crime organizations, felonies, and an explosive growth in alcohol trade and consumption erupted directly because of the inability, and lack of desire to control the people from drinking.
And the results of the Prohibition show that its goals backfired entirely, as crime and drinking ended up increasing drastically. Strong Temperance and Reform movements of the early 1900 s spawned to life the Prohibition Act. These movements made the concept of social good as the backbone of their causes. Social good was the desire to make society better and more efficient - economically, politically, and morally speaking. Held highest was the need for strong morals in cultures. They made alcohol consumption out to be a benefactor to the problems in society, and blamed it for violence, spousal abuse, and worsened productivity in the labor forces of the nation.
Alcohol was basically the scapegoat the movements believed was the cause for any and every domestic problem found within the nation. As the Temperance and Reform Movements strengthened, more and more political pressure was put on to promote forms of prohibiting the use of alcoholic beverages. By the elections of 1916, a large number of prohibition advocates found their way into congressional offices. Not three years afterwards, the 18 th Amendment was finally ratified (1919), and then, in 1920, the supporters of the Voltstead Act had their wish granted as the law went into effect. Little did they realize that they had just given birth to organized crime and the beginning of 13 devastating years in American society. Early 20 th century organized crime was experiencing its most tumultuous days.
The largest gang in New York, the Eastman Gang, was falling into pieces, as was their rivals, the Five Pointers. All across the nation, gangs and crime rings organized to operate as enforcers of the political machines of the big cities were disbanding, or dying from internal gang affairs. Reform movements had been effective in scaring away gangs and hitting other roots of society's problems. Without goals or environments to operate, organized crime was nearly dead. But just as the nation seemed to have successfully beaten established criminal families, the Prohibition Act came like an angel out of Heaven, giving incredible fuel for more a rebirth of crime tenfold of what it used to be. The people were not swayed by the fact that alcohol was banned as a criminal activity, and the mobsters took heed to the call of the commoners.
Gangs such as the Jewish Purple Gang quickly rerouted their criminal activity from robbery and murder, to controlling the illegal flow of liquor from Canada into Detroit. In Cleveland, the Mayfield Road Gang turned their attention to alcohol, as well as New Yorks Broadway Mob and gangs all over the country dedicated their time to smuggling in booze and giving it to the corrupt speakeasies spreading throughout the nation. The most infamous bootlegging came from Al Capone's racketeering in Chicago, which drew in about $ 60 million for Capone himself. Along with Capone, most organizations were pulling in well over a million dollars profit from the illegal activity. Crime syndicates were so lucrative that they were easily matching the largest businesses in the country.
Practically every mob, gang, and criminal running their business in the United States had started out by petty felonies carried out by a few unorganized men in city ghettos. However, these gangs over time got smarter and more efficient in their looting and murdering, and grew in size as well. What let these still paltry gangs break out into large, incredibly powerful organizations was the Prohibition Act, as it gave rise to the demand for a simple product where millions of dollars could be gained from acquiring it. Bootlegging became a simple feat as syndicates created systems to which the booze was smuggled from Mexico, Canada, or overseas, and then the bribing of law enforcement, and sneaking the beer into speakeasies and other places of beer flow.
The entire bootlegging process enveloped more people into crime than there had ever been before the Prohibition. As it started in foreign nations where the beer came from, through US Customs officials and then into the country where the real payoffs and corruption began. Each mob or gang had about 100 people on their payroll, including drivers, bookkeepers, enforcers (hired thugs), messengers, guards, and people to scout for other bootlegging infringing on a gangs turf. As well as those on the payroll, thousands of bribes were given off. Many police officials and government agents sold out to the mobs, and turned the other way when alcohol was imported and distributed into America.
As well as them, department store clerks, shopkeepers, and other straight businessmen were paid off in order to stash the alcohol, keep their mouth shut when illegal activity came in, or use their resources to transfer and distribute the goods. Along with being directly involved with bootlegging, millions of law abiding citizens found that it was extremely easy to obtain alcohol, as just about anyone could walk down any given city street and find numerous speak-easier (illegal saloons) to quench their thirst for booze. In fact, these illegal drinking sites became so plentiful that their were anywhere between 200, 000 - 500, 000 of them nationwide, New York having 100, 000 alone. The speakeasies were also cheap and easy to run, as it simply consisted of a connection to a smuggler, a few payoffs, and some raid-proof security systems installed in an old warehouse or basement. And with the paid off police, the lack of uncorrupted government agents, and the state of the art alarm systems and secret membership codes to enter these saloons, nothing could stand in the way from a thirsty drinker and his beer. As bad as the speak-easier were, thousands of Americans took it upon themselves to manufacture alcoholic products, and soon converted their bathtubs or sinks into small distilleries.
With the ease of buying Wort (beer with low concentration of alcohol), Vine-Glo grape juice (which could ferment into wine in a matter of days), and medicinal alcohols were all taken advantage of. Sales of medical alcohol, which was for the most part pure alcohol went up 400 % during the Prohibition days, and the public soon found it quite simple to become minor deliverers of home-brewed alcohol to illegal drinking establishments. And since the price of beer became more expensive (since it was hard to smuggle in large quantities), society took a turn for the worst and relied on drinking hard concentrated liquor. Over the thirteen year period, disorderly conduct arrests (caused by intoxication) increased 40 %, drunk driving arrests increased nearly 80 %, and alcohol related deaths increased from 1, 064 to 4, 154 within five years of the Act. This shows that the Voltstead Act was not at all able to stop drinking in the United States. Along with increases of intoxication-related crimes, the crimes caused by gangs nearly doubled in all categories.
Death rates went from about 6 (per 100, 000) to 10 (per 100, 000). Homicides, assault and battery, and other crimes of this caliber jumped up 13 % over the years, and other crimes such as vandalism and burglary raised 24 %. All in all, about a 560 % rise in lawbreakers resulted during the Prohibition Period. Prohibition destroyed legal jobs, created black-market violence, diverted resources from enforcement of other lawes, and increased prices people had to pay for prohibited goods (Thorton, 10).
Everywhere in the country people were breaking crimes from large scale felonies, to murders, to simply breaking the 18 th Amendment, and there was not enough formidable government competition to defeat the crime wave. And the root of the problem, the smuggling was not going to be stopped as there was scarcely 2, 000 honest agents attempting to cover thousands of miles of US border, and docks and shipyards to prevent the importing of the booze. That, and it was incredibly hard to put up a campaign to shut down the well guarded speak-easier, or to even find evidence to convict gang leaders of breaking the law. Along with the ease of getting alcohol, people started losing respect for the laws of the nation, as it became fashionable for even the most respected citizens to serve bootleg liquor in their homes and visit lavish speakeasies (Sifakas, 299).
While staunch dry law advocates still remained in Washington, the rest of the government was being paid off, running their own bootlegging practices, and allowing the bootlegging to go on, as they found themselves in favor of the people. When they heads of the nations law system became poisoned by the corruption out in the nation, the entire enforcement operation went to pieces. Corrupt officials were make ridiculously low fines when dry law politicians pressured them, and the business went on unscathed. The corruption went from the street patrolling police officers all the way to the top of the national government, and nothing could stop it because the racketeering was entrenched too deep in the country. Even after the Democrats won the elections of 32, and dispelled the disastrous Amendment (by issuing the 21 st Amendment of 1933) the Mafia and mobster families did not die, as some hoped it would.
The Prohibition allowed the crime syndicates to gain connections into the police, political, and business world of the nation, and by the time the 18 th was countered alcohol was not even a major necessity for the gangs to operate. The results of the great experiment were clear. It developed organized crime from small time looting and robberies into something that reached into the highest seats in national government, with international connections too. The work of the Temperance movement was devastated as people found a stronger passion for alcohol, and as new drinkers emerged from the era. Finally, because of the miserable corruption within the lawmakers and law enforcement of the country, people began to disrespect the law more and more.
Recalling that the Prohibitions goals were to stop alcohol consumption and reduce crime backfired as both goals went so bad that they never, to this day, have been restored to pre-Prohibition days. Allowing the 18 th Amendment to go on for thirteen years, and even making the pitiful law, was one of the biggest blunders our nation has ever done. Bibliography: none
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Research essay sample on 18 Th Amendment Reform Movements
