Prohibition Failed!During prohibition, which lasted from 1920 to 1933 many people became corrupted and criminally creative about how to consume alcohol. Everyone seemed to be in on the action. Prohibition was a massive social experiment that failed because it turned regular citizens into criminals, created organized crime, and corrupted government officials; it also harmed people physically, financially, and morally.
America right before prohibition; with the exception of the World War One years, in the early 20th century approximately a million new immigrants arrived in America every year. They migrated mainly from Southern and Eastern Europe. Unlike earlier waves of immigration, these people brought with them their own values and their own religion, mainly Catholicism and Judaism (McWilliams 4). With the influx of these immigrants people’s attitudes and values in America started to change.People from all over the world flocked in to America and it became a huge melting pot of ethnicities; the differences in culture between the immigrants and citizens in the urban areas were merging to become a more liberal culture. This new culture wasn’t as focused on religion.
Attitudes about sex and gender changed and the main goal in life was no longer spiritual salvation but material wealth. Even literature in the 20’s reflected this. For example the Great Gatsby!The landscape of America during prohibition also changed partly because of this influx of immigrants. In 1920, for the first time in American history, a majority of the people lived in cities, which started to become crowded. The population of many cities like Chicago exploded and this also had affected the impact of prohibition because when cities or urban areas are crowded, criminal activities increase. This was a shift of the vision of a Jeffersonian America.
In other words, less farms more booze.During the prohibition, some Americans decided it was time to force some morality on the new liberal culture mostly found in the urban areas. The most important The more conservative citizens didn’t like the thought of a more liberal America. They used the bible as their platform and thought that by implementing the prohibition of alcohol that crime rates would drop.
But instead it did the exact opposite. Prohibition became a breathing ground of social terror.Regular citizens became criminals. Eventually the American government passed the Eighteenth Amendment outlawing the sale, manufacturing, and transportation of alcohol (Bergeen 62).
For whatever reason, it was not illegal to consume alcohol; but people who enjoyed a drink, from time to time, became criminals for purchasing it (Nash).Now that alcohol was illegal and people continued to drink. They were breaking the law. Many people still wanted to drink alcohol regardless of the law.
But it wasn’t as easy as just going down to your local pub or liquor store and buying a beer. It was illegal now so people found creative ways to buy it. All methods were illegal. It took significant organization to bootleg the quantities of alcohol people desired. The result was organized crime, which didn’t differentiate between petty crimes like transporting liquor and real crimes like violence, murder, and theft (Florien).
Where there is demand there will always be supply. Groups of people banded together to start distributing alcohol. Gangsters like Al Capone, Bonnie and Clyde, and John Dillinger thrived off of this black market (Florien). They gained financially, materially and politically from their organized criminal activities.Prohibition corrupted Government Officials and organized crime grew. In order for it to be successful it circulated a lot of money and exerted a lot of influence on policemen, government officials, and politicians who were bribed and blackmailed.
Organized crime was so rampant and profitable that even lawyers, politicians, and government officials got in on the action. According to Cashman, a comment of Chicago’s chief of police Charles Fitzmorris exposed the situation in the police force, as he argued, “sixty percent of my police is in the bootleg business” (68). Corruption started to become obvious. Judges and police officers were being paid to look the other way.
For example: Capone’s organization handled bribing of officials systematically, as every Sunday his headquarter, The Metropole Hotel, was “teemed with lawyers, judges and politicians, who all came to deal with Capone (Bergeen 226).Consequently, Capone had a big say in Chicago politics, either by manipulating voters at the ballot box, by donating big sums of money to preferred candidates or by ‘silencing’ dangerous opponents; Capone’s contribution of 260.000 dollars to anti-prohibitionist politician William Hale Thompson helped him become mayor of Chicago in 1927. Political candidates were only open to the highest bidder. The quality of black market alcohol was poor and many people became sick, deaths from alcohol poisoning had risen 400% during the prohibition (Nash). Since alcohol was illegal there were no health regulations on the bootleg liquor people were drinking.
Some of it was made out of unsafe ingredients that could cause permanent blindness; sever organ damage, and sometimes death. Prohibition was undermining the family and corrupting the morals of women and children because families also had to be creative to survive.When the eighteenth amendment was past the original idea was to protect families from alcohol abuse. Instead the prohibition made people have no respect for the law, because some thing that was perfectly moral and normal to them was now being outlawed for no good reason. Hundreds of thousands of people lost their jobs because of Prohibition.
People in the alcohol business had two options, to find lower-paying work or become criminals (Florien). The people who had been selling alcohol all of their life had no other business experience. Coming from what they called the “devils job” it was very hard to find jobs. So in order to survive they had to continue to sell alcohol under the radar of the law by any means necessary to support their families. Unfortunately, Prohibition not only failed in its promises but also actually created additional serious and disturbing social problems throughout society.
Good intentions soured as prohibition turned regular citizens into criminals, created organized crime, and corrupted government officials; it also harmed people physically, financially, and morally. Prohibition was an obvious failure because it impacted people and society negatively and it was outlawed after a measly 13 years. The government’s social experiment was destined for failure from the beginning. Effective enforcement of the alcohol ban during the Prohibition Era proved to be very difficult.
The lack of a solid popular consensus for the ban resulted in the growth of vast criminal organizations, including the modern American Mafia, and various other criminal posses. Widespread disregard of the law also generated rampant corruption among politicians and within police forces, which trickled down to society and most significantly to families.
