bootlegger and gangster Alcohol was a billion dollar

1
Wet vs. Dry

• Prohibition during the 1920s

2
The Dry Perspective

• Celebrated the 18th Amendment
• Prohibition of production, distribution, and
  sales of alcohol
• Alcohol leads to crime, violence, and breakup of
  families
• Immigration
• Many Americans associated alcohol with immigrants
  
• Germans beer Italians wine
• This was the drys way of curbing foreign
  influences
• At first prohibition appears to work
• Alcohol consumption down from 2.6 to less than 1
  gallon per year

3
The Wet Perspective

• Government attempting to legislate morality
• Volstead Act
• Law passed to enforce prohibition
• Not provided with enough men and money
• Increase in illegal behavior
• People begin making their own bathtub gin
• Bootlegging
• Distilled or smuggled alcohol

4

• Speak easies
• As bars closed, secret, underground clubs open
• Estimated 32,000 speak easies in New York
• Al Capone
• Chicago bootlegger and gangster
• Alcohol was a billion dollar industry
• Capone showed off wealth driving around in a
  30,000 car and wearing 11 ½ carat diamond
• Bribed public officials to avoid jail and keep
  money coming

5

• St. Valentines Day Massacre
• Gang members dressed up as police and acted as
  though their were raiding a local rival of
  Capones
• Busted their alcohol containers and lined the
  workers up to arrest them
• Capones men then executed members of the Moran
  gang
• Capones end
• Arrested!
• Not for alcohol or gang related activities, but
  tax evasion
• Prohibition support dwindles
• 1933 states ratify the 21st Amendment ending
  prohibition