American History Tellers - Prohibition - Drying Out | 2

Episode Date: February 14, 2018

When a German U-boat torpedoed the RMS Lusitania on Friday, May 7th, 1915, Americans found two new enemies: Germany and the beer it was so associated with. Anti-German sentiment grew, and with it hostility to the breweries founded in the 19th century by German immigrants. Soon, the war effort and the temperance movement were linked: it was patriotic to abstain, and Prohibition became law.How did America cope? They swapped their stool at the bar for a seat at the soda shop, listening to new radios and the first ever baseball broadcasts. But Americans’ thirst wasn’t ever fully quenched: they turned to family doctors who prescribed “medicinal alcohol,” and then finally to the bootleggers, moonshiners and rum-runners who made, smuggled and sold hooch of all types, from top-shelf French cognac to homemade swill that might just kill you.For more about the Lusitania, check out Dead Wake: The Crossing of the Lusitania by Erik Larson.Daniel Okrent’s Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition has more information on medicinal alcohol and how it was prescribed by doctors. To learn more about medicinal beer, this article by Beverly Gage for The Smithsonian is excellent.The 1991 study “Alcohol Consumption During Prohibition” by Jeffrey A. Miron and Jeffrey Zwiebel, is considered the definitive study about how much people actually drank during the noble experiment. For more information on how Prohibition played out in the early days, check out Professor David J. Hanson’s, “Alcohol Problems and Solutions,” a comprehensive, interactive site that outlines all the various stakeholders in the Noble Experiment.To read more about Americans behaving badly in Cuba and other places during Prohibition, check out Wayne Curtis’s And A Bootle of Rum: A History of the World in Ten Cocktails, as well as Matthew Rowley’s Lost Recipes of Prohibition. And, to learn more about rum-runners, Daniel Francis’s book, Closing Time: Prohibition, Rum-Runners and Border Wars is an excellent reference.Further references can be found in America Walks Into a Bar: A Spirited History of Taverns and Saloons, Speakeasies and Grog Shops by Christine Sismondo.Support this show by supporting our sponsors!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can binge new seasons of American History Tellers early and ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Imagine it's May, 1915, and you're standing on the deck of the RMS Lusitania, hoping to catch your first sight of land. It's a bright, sunny day. There's a taste of sea salt in the air. Beneath your feet, you can feel the enormous ocean liner's engines powering away. After a week on the ocean, you've almost reached your destination, Liverpool, England. But it's been a tense voyage. You can't wait to set foot on solid ground. You've tried not

to act nervous. You just got married, had a big society wedding, and your newlywed husband has told you not to worry. The two of you decided to go on your honeymoon in England, a week at the Savoy Hotel in London, then the Cotswolds, even though Germany and England are at war. Before you left, you even read an ominous ad the German embassy ran in the New York Times, warning you and your fellow travelers you could be a target for the U-boats. Notice, travelers intending to embark on the Atlantic voyage are reminded that a state of war exists between Germany and her allies and Great Britain. Vessels flying the flag of Great Britain are liable to destruction and do so at their own risk. That didn't stop you or many other people, though. Your husband assured you Germany's U-boats aren't

powerful enough to sink a big cruiser like the Lusitania. It's the largest passenger ship in the world, and the Lusitania is fast. So fast, it can cross the Atlantic in four days under good conditions. The captain assures everyone that the Lusitania is too fast for the German submarines to even catch. And it probably would have been. Except the captain slows the boat to save coal. And that's when the torpedo hits. The Lusitania sank in just 18 minutes. Nearly 1,200 passengers perished at sea.

In England, people were shocked and horrified and propelled to action. Many enlisted in the army the moment they heard the news. 128 Americans were among the dead. And since the ship had set sail from New York, some here felt Germany had personally attacked the United States. But Americans couldn't agree whether to join England or not in the war against Germany. Many cited with President Woodrow Wilson that there was no upside in getting involved in a foreign conflict. Others in the United States were itching for war. The New York Herald printed the

headline, What a Pity Theodore Roosevelt is Not President. Roosevelt, the ex-president, felt it was America's duty to meet this aggression with swift military action. It took nearly two years after the sinking of the Lusitania for the United States to finally declare war against Germany. But anti-German sentiment grew much more quickly. Schools canceled German language classes. Germantown, Nebraska renamed itself Garland. German taverns and saloons came up with new, more English-sounding names overnight.

Chicago's Bismarck Hotel, for example, became the Randolph. By 1918, even Sauerkraut would be renamed Liberty Cabbage. And beer, served in every saloon, tavern, and bar in America, would not escape the rising anti-German sentiment. Not a change of name, there was no Freedom Ale or American Draft. Instead, with the help of the Anti-Saloon League, beer became a symbol of an enemy within. Loyal citizens had a duty to defend the country against brewers helping the pro-German

alliance, at least according to the Anti-Saloon League. Its leaders had called for investigations into the breweries owned by alien enemies, the fight for prohibition, and become part of the war effort. Kill List is a true story of how I ended up in a race against time to warn those whose lives were in danger. Follow Kill List wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to Kill List and more Exhibit C True Crime shows like Morbid early and ad-free right now

by joining Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. From Wondery, this is American History Tellers. Our history, your story. I'm Lindsey Graham. We're continuing American History Tellers with a six-episode series about prohibition. This is part two, Drying Out. Last episode, we learned how a rising feeling of anxiety over the nation changing drew Americans to support the idea of temperance. But how did this popular support lead to the passing of a constitutional amendment? After all, it is not easy to pass one. Only 27 amendments have been passed in our entire history, and either a two-thirds majority in both houses of Congress

or a two-thirds majority vote from all state legislatures is required. For Prohibition, it actually started with a different amendment altogether that passed just a few years earlier. In 1913, the 16th Amendment was passed, which allowed the government to start collecting income tax from its citizens for the first time. The anti-alcohol forces believed this amendment would allow the government to operate without the revenue they were used to receiving from lucrative alcohol taxes.

Now, the Anti-Saloon League saw a path to a constitutional amendment banning alcohol, and they began their push. An amendment would make the ban on alcohol as permanent and wide-reaching as possible. After all, no amendment, once it had been ratified, had ever been repealed. The League and its broad coalition of allies had worked for years to lay the groundwork. The same year the Income Tax Amendment passed, there was the Webb-Kenyon Act, which made it illegal to transport liquor across state lines. The 1916 election was another victory. The Anti-Saloon League had successfully backed individual candidates across the country,

transforming Congress into a legislative body that was two-thirds in favor of the nation going dry. Then, with the declaration of war against Germany in April 1917, the popular tides turned in favor of Prohibition. The 18th Amendment was passed on January 16, 1919, when Nebraska became the 38th state to vote in favor of it. One year later to the day, the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors was banned. On that day, prohibition was the law of the land. Imagine it's a chilly January day in 1920. You're a young boy

in Norfolk, Virginia, and like most Friday mornings, you're getting ready to go to school. As you pack up your books, your mother tells you that today you're going to a parade instead. Make sure to wear your good black coat. It's freezing. You walk hand in hand with your mother towards the train station. As you get closer, you see a huge crowd of people. Everyone's dressed in black, and at the center, a giant coffin. It must be a funeral. But the people don't look sad. They look happy, almost like they're celebrating. Hall bearers start marching the coffin towards the meeting hall. They're being followed by a man in a devil mask, skulking behind the coffin. It's Satan, and he is going to his grave too. You

squint your eyes to see who is leading the procession. It's Billy Sunday, the famous preacher. He's here to bury John Barleycorn in that coffin. It's 20 feet long to hold all the sin and disease and heartbreak that John Barleycorn used to bring. Who's John Barleycorn? Alcohol, wine, beer, and whiskey. We won't have it anymore, thank goodness, because of prohibition. The crowd starts singing, glory, glory, hallelujah. John Barleycorn's body goes into the grave. Billy Sunday turns to the crowd,

speaking a mile a minute. Slums will disappear. Men will walk upright again. Women will smile, and children will laugh again. But he says one more thing that makes you wonder. He promises he'll keep fighting. We don't know why he'd have to. John Barleycorn's already dead, right? Norfolk, Virginia really did hold a funeral for John Barleycorn on January 16, 1920. 10,000 people turned up to hear the Reverend Billy Sunday speak and watch vice and legal alcohol head to the grave. Norfolk's celebration wasn't the only one. Mock funerals were held for John Barleycorn

all across the country. But not every funeral was joyful. At bars and hotels across America that Friday night, the mood was somewhere between sadness and disbelief. Some bars hung black decor and brought in their own fake caskets so that customers could pay respects. Others stayed open until every last drop was gone.

The Vanderbilt Hotel in New York went through a hundred cases of champagne as the band played Goodbye Forever. But once saloon goers had shook off that historic hangover, they began looking for alcohol-free amusements the newly dry country had to offer. Right away, instead of booze, America discovered its sweet tooth. A soda pop or an ice cream sundae at the local soda fountain replaced a long night at the bar. Soft drinks weren't new, of course. Ginger ale, root beer, and cola had been around for years,

sold as temperance drinks and health tonics for people with ailments like upset stomach. But now the demand for these sugary drinks really took off. Five years after Prohibition, soda sales had multiplied 25 times over. Ice cream sales boomed too. Behind the counter, soda jerks showed off their creative skills, mixing up ice cream sodas, egg creams, malts, and sundaes. And for entertainment, soda fountains installed the country's first radios, which were too expensive for the typical family to own at home.

Gathered at the Soda Fountain, they could listen to soap operas, music hours, mystery stories, and vaudeville comedy acts. It's a Friday night. Imagine you're off to the Soda Fountain with your old drinking buddy. You slide onto the stool. You order a root beer float. He orders an egg cream. At 9 p.m., your favorite show

comes on. Now, let us take you over 3,000 miles of distance to the heart of the frozen north, the Cliqueau Club, the nightclub of Eskimo land. Hello, everybody. The barking dogs and carefree Eskimos of the far north welcome you once again to Cliquot Club, the one bright spot in Eskimo land. All the Eskimos from miles around are here tonight to enjoy Harry Reznor's sparkling banjo rhythms, to dance and make merry, and to refresh themselves with that sparkling mellow drink, Cliquot Club, America's own fine ginger ale. So here we go, off to a bright start with a happy song. You and your drinking buddy strike up a conversation with the soda jerk. You talk about the new massive Yankee ballpark they're building in New York,

and whether they'll ever be able to fill all the seats. You're having so much fun, you almost don't mind. Your root beer float will never give you a buzz. After finishing your ice cream soda, the two of you might have chosen to take in a motion picture. Theaters build themselves as wholesome alternatives to the saloon. In the early days of cinema, old temperance plays like Ten Nights in a Bar Room were turned into movies. But as movie theaters gained popularity in the 20s, the industry invested in better technology, eventually leading to talking pictures and animated films. The 1920s also kicked off a golden age of sports. People took

up golf, tennis became incredibly popular, and baseball officially came to be known as America's national pastime, thanks in no small part to the radio broadcasts. Fans could actually hear the play-by-play on the radio and not just read about the games the next day in the paper. It's 1921. You're a young baseball fan in Pittsburgh. Your dad has been reading you the ball scores from newspapers all summer long. It's August 5th, and the Pirates are having a great summer, even leading the mighty New York Giants, the whole National League, in fact. Your dad's taking you to the soda shop for a Sunday. Hey, Dad, after this, can we have a catch? Well, sure, if you want to, but let's see what's on

the radio first. Your dad winks at the owner, who starts fiddling with the receiver. After a moment of static, you hear a voice and the sound of a ball hitting a bat. It's the game. Dad, how is this possible? How can we hear this? They're at the park right now. They've rigged up some microphone. I cannot believe this.

That ball game, the Pirates versus the Phillies, was the first baseball game ever broadcast on the radio. Americans tried all kinds of fads. Badminton, competitive swimming, fence pole sitting, crossword puzzle tournaments, dance competitions. Dance crazes came and went. The Foxtrot, the Charleston, the Lindy Hop, the Jitterbug. Maybe the preacher Billy Sunday was right.

Maybe it was the dawn of a new era. The saloon was gone, and Americans were finding new ways to pass the time. But from the beginning, cracks were already forming in Prohibition's wholesome facade. Big problems were showing up in an unlikely place. The doctor's office. For more than two centuries, the White House has been the stage for some of the most dramatic scenes in American history.

Inspired by the hit podcast American History Tellers, Wondery and William Morrow present the new book, The Hidden History of the White House. Each chapter will bring you inside the fierce power struggles, the world-altering decisions, and shocking scandals that have shaped our nation.

You'll be there when the very foundations of the White House are laid in 1792, and you'll watch as the British burn it down in 1814. Then you'll hear the intimate conversations between FDR and Winston Churchill as they make plans to defeat Nazi forces in 1941. And you'll be in the Situation Room when President Barack Obama approves the raid to bring down the most infamous terrorist in American history. Order The Hidden History of the White House now in hardcover or digital edition wherever you get your books. How did Birkenstocks go from a German cobbler's passion project 250 years ago to the Barbie movie today? Who created that bottle of red Sriracha with a green top that's permanently living in your fridge?

Did you know that the Air Jordans were initially banned by the NBA? We'll explore all that and more in The Best Idea Yet, a brand new podcast from Wondery and T-Boy. This is Nick. This is Jack. And we've covered over a thousand episodes of pop business news stories on our daily podcast. we've identified the most viral products of all time and their wild

origin stories that you had no idea about from the levi's 501 jeans to legos come for the products you're obsessed with stay for the business insights that are gonna blow up your group chat jack nintendo super mario brothers best-selling video game of all time, had they do it. Nintendo never fires anyone. Ever. Follow The Best Idea Yet on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to The Best Idea Yet early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus.

Imagine it's the fall of 1920. You live in Cleveland, and just after summer ended, you caught a nasty cold. After weeks of coughing, you're worried you might have to miss work, so you go to the doctor. The waiting room is packed. Some people are coughing worse than you, but others just look annoyed that the wait is so long. The doctor finally calls you in. What seems to be the problem? I have a terrible cough at night. Can't sleep. Any sharp pains in the chest? Yes. Terrible. Have you

been taking any alcohol for it? No, sir. I don't have any liquor at home. Well, that's a shame. I've always maintained that every family ought to have an alcohol stimulant in the house at all times. Well, yes, sir, but nobody has any. There's nothing more valuable than an emergency. Really? Yes, I use it myself. I find it raises me up. But you can't buy alcohol anymore. Oh, you can if you're sick. And I think you might have walking pneumonia. Best thing for it is a shot or two of whiskey every night before bed. I'll write you a prescription. You can take it over to the pharmacist. That's right. You could go to the hospital with a legitimate illness and leave with a prescription for what doctors called medicinal liquor. Or you could feel completely healthy, go to the doctor,

and fake your way through an illness until you had a little piece of paper to take to the pharmacy to buy some booze. Was the doctor really fooled? No, probably not. But in the first few months of Prohibition, 15,000 doctors applied for permits to prescribe alcohol. It was good business for the pharmacies filling the prescriptions, too. Hundreds of new drugstores opened in major cities across the country. In 1919, the Chicago-based company Walgreens had 20 stores, but by the end of Prohibition, it had opened nearly 600. Alcohol had been a panacea throughout history, for everything from stomach problems to gout. But now, going to the doctor's office took on a whole new meaning. There was even a song called O Doctor, which showed that the whole scheme was kind of an open secret. It went, Most everybody you meet nowadays seems to be feeling so blue.

They say it's an imposition to enforce this prohibition, and I think so too. But Congress has given doctors the power to hand out the brandy and rye, and now in their office at most any hour, you're bound to hear somebody cry. Doctors could even prescribe beer, even if beer's alleged health effects were less than obvious. It was a controversial practice, but the Justice Department allowed it, which made Wayne Wheeler and his Anti-Saloon League furious. So what was the Anti-Saloon League up to now that Prohibition had passed? They'd already won the war, right? They'd gotten the saloon shuttered and put old John Barleycorn six feet under. Yes and no. Wheeler understood pretty

quickly that what the law said was one thing, while making sure it was enforced was entirely another. This loophole where doctors could prescribe booze turned out to be the league's next crusade. Wheeler and his anti-saloon league pressured Congress to clamp down on medicinal alcohol, and it worked. In 1921, Congress passed the Wills-Campbell Act, which banned the practice of prescribing beer and limited the amount of liquor doctors could prescribe to half pint per patient every 10 days. The Anti-Saloon League tried to get them to ban all medicinal liquor, but that effort was met with fierce opposition from doctors. But why? It wasn't just that doctors made a lot of money off liquor prescriptions, which they did.

It was also that doctors didn't want the government to tell them how they should practice medicine. There were other ways to find alcohol legally, too. Possession of alcohol was never actually against the law. It was making or selling it that was illegal. So long as you said those bottles were in your cellar before Prohibition took effect on January 16, 1920, you were not breaking any laws. So, anybody who could afford to stock up before the country went dry did. J.P. Morgan, the legendary banker, bought a thousand cases of champagne to weather the impending dry spell.

The newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst had a legendary wine cellar stuffed with the finest wine and spirits. Even President Woodrow Wilson kept his own personal supply in the White House, which he took with him when he left office in 1921. And that cleared the way for the incoming president, Warren G. Harding, to arrive with his own stash. California wineries, forced to hold everything must-go sales, sold more than 140 million bottles of wine to private collectors the year before Prohibition took effect. As supplies dwindled and alcohol grew more scarce, prices skyrocketed. Before, you could buy a quart of beer for 10 cents. Now the same beer would run you 80 cents as contraband. Gin and whiskey prices went up even more, assuming you could find it. In those

early years of Prohibition, it was not easy to track down illegal booze. But despite the drunken parties, moonshiners, speakeasies, and bootleggers, all the things we now associate with Prohibition, people were drinking less, not more. Because everything was happening under the table, there aren't any official sales figures to look at. But historians have found another way to guess how much drinking was actually happening, by looking at police reports and doctors' records. Drunk and disorderly charges dropped in half. Cirrhosis and liver failure fell substantially. So did alcohol-related psychoses. By historians' best estimates, Americans were drinking a third less what they drank before Prohibition. By 1922, private sellers were going bare.

And after the passage of the Wills-Campbell Law, doctors couldn't prescribe as much medicinal alcohol. So some folks did what Americans had always done when they see a gap in the marketplace. They turn it into a business. A black market of illegally imported booze quickly took shape. And the people who ran it? These were bootleggers. After Prohibition became law, bootleggers started springing up everywhere. Smugglers bringing in alcohol from other countries,

and thieves who stole medicinal alcohol and sold it on the black market. Bootleggers came up with thousands of creative ways to hide, transport, and sell alcohol. Some built false bottom suitcases and trunks. Others paid cops to look the other way. Even the word bootlegger comes from an old smuggling trick soldiers used before Prohibition to hide flasks of alcohol in their boots. By 1922, the bootlegging business was booming. Cases of scotch were running $150 each. Everybody wanted liquor. Some of it was high quality, smuggled in from overseas.

But there was also cheaper, counterfeit alcohol on the market. A two-tiered black market developed. High end for the rich clientele and cheaper prices for the regular customers. But this cheaper alcohol made some people nervous, and with good reason. Because not everyone was selling the good stuff. What they were selling, well, some of it could kill you. In the Pacific Ocean, halfway between Peru and New Zealand, lies a tiny volcanic island. It's a little-known British territory called Pitcairn, and it harboured a deep, dark scandal.

There wouldn't be a girl on Pitcairn once they reach the age of 10 that would still have heard it. It just happens to all of us. I'm journalist Luke Jones, and for almost two years I've been investigating a shocking story that has left deep scars on generations of women and girls from Pitcairn when there's nobody watching nobody going to report it people will get away with what they can get away with in the Pitcairn trials I'll be uncovering a story of abuse and the fight for justice that has brought a unique lonely lonely Pacific island to the brink of extinction. Listen to the Pitcairn Trials exclusively on Wondery+.

Join Wondery in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts or Spotify. In a quiet suburb, a community is shattered by the death of a beloved wife and mother. But this tragic loss of life quickly turns into something even darker. Her husband had tried to hire a hitman on the dark web to kill her. And she wasn't the only target. Because buried in the depths of the internet is The Kill List, a cache of chilling documents containing names, photos, addresses, and specific instructions for people's murders. This podcast is the true story of how I ended up in a race against time

to warn those whose lives were in danger. And it turns out, convincing a total stranger someone wants them dead is not easy. Follow Kill List on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to Kill List and more Exhibit C true crime shows like Morbid early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery+. The Quality of bootleg liquor was an issue almost right away. Every city had seen major outbreaks of alcohol poisoning.

Fatalities were usually at their worst around the holidays. Poison hooch typically came from a few different sources. One was from people who tried to make alcohol to sell out of whatever they could find, from paint thinner to shoe polish. The second was when people made it the old-fashioned way, in small pot stills from grain or sugar. The people who operated stills usually taught themselves how to do it, and not always with the safest results. You've probably heard of these folks referred to as moonshiners.

There's a certain romance associated with moonshine. American entrepreneurship, hiding stills in the woods, running whiskey in souped-up cars. But moonshiners had been around a long time, since before Prohibition, back when the government put a tax on whiskey in 1791. But with the banning of alcohol, many Americans turned to moonshine as the answer. Some moonshiners toiled over a single still buried in the countryside, while others ran major operations. But even those big operations, the ones who could truck their spoils from rural southern towns into Nashville,

the big southern distribution hub, were still largely run by novice distillers who'd never made alcohol before. Operating a still is fairly simple. You put corn or wheat, and hopefully not shoe polish or paint thinner, into the bottom of a still and let it ferment for a few days. Then you light a fire underneath. Just like boiling water turns into steam, boiling a fermented mixture creates alcoholic steam. The steam collects and condenses into pure, drinkable alcohol. If you do it right.

But often, the first stuff that came off of a still was actually poison. It boiled at a lower temperature than the alcohol. So distinguishing poison from drinkable alcohol took time and experience. And more often than not, several batches would get shipped off for sale before the novice distiller really got the process down pat. In many ways, knowing where your alcohol came from

was a matter of life and death. And if you had the money and really knew the scene, you didn't touch the mediocre swill made at home. You wanted the good stuff from abroad, or you traveled abroad to get it. On the first 4th of July, after Prohibition took effect, more than 50,000 people crossed the border to Tijuana, Mexico, to celebrate by drinking. Tourists flocked to towns like Ensenada, Monterey, and Tijuana. They walked down streets under the hot summer sun, past hotels and public houses,

to duck into casinos and bars to get out of the heat, many of which were owned by and operated for Americans. Tijuana quickly became a favorite for Californians. Cool breezes rolled in off the Pacific, and men and women spent long summer evenings sipping cocktails and smoking on rooftop patios. Where the night took them did not matter. A little gambling or drinking was always on the menu, because in Mexico, all of it was legal.

The nation fell in love with going abroad, and the Alco-t alcohol tourism industry thrived. Even in Canadian towns, where the rules were a bit stricter. Canada didn't have a national prohibition like the U.S. did, but many provinces chose to remain dry after the First World War. Legal alcohol was still available in Quebec, Manitoba, and British Columbia, and soon other Canadian provinces followed. Half of the country

was wet again by the mid-1920s. Bordertown roadhouses and taverns popped up immediately and thrived. One Canadian poem was certainly inspired by the neighbors to the south. Four-and-twenty Yankees, feeling very dry, went across the border to get a drink of rye. When the rye was open, the Yanks began to sing, God bless America, but God save the king. And even if you were nowhere near the Canadian or Mexican borders, there were always international waters. It wasn't long before scrappy tour guides invented the first booze cruises, which brought thirsty Americans to places like the Bahamas, Bimini, and... Cuba, where all is gay. Why don't you plan a wonderful trip to Havana?

Hop on a ship and I'll see you in the U.B.A. Just 90 miles from Key West, Havana would become a very successful destination for a little dancing, gambling, and rum. And of course, wherever you went, you could bring home a souvenir or two or three. It wasn't legal to bring liquor home, but most people couldn't resist, and sometimes in staggering quantities. Since alcohol from overseas was the most valuable,

the most successful bootleggers were not selling moonshine made by amateurs in the countryside. They were illegally bringing in top-shelf stuff any way they could. And no one transformed the bootlegging industry more than Captain Bill McCoy. McCoy was a Daytona Beach boatyard owner who had fallen on hard times. Although not a drinker himself, he saw that prohibition was a big opportunity for someone who could captain a boat. So in 1921, he invested every last penny into a 90-foot schooner, the Henry L. Marshall, and set off for Nassau, capital of the Bahamas. Once there, he bought 1,500 cases of whiskey, loaded it onto the boat, and delivered it to Georgia, selling them for a $15,000 profit.

That's about $200,000 in today's money on his first trip. McCoy's first foray into smuggling was a smashing success. The entrepreneurial spirit took hold of McCoy, who started to think of ways to maximize his profits. His eureka moment came when he realized two islands off the coast of Canada, Saint-Pierre and Miquelon, were actually still considered part of France. Most of Canada was, as we said, under its own prohibition, but France never had one. So producers from all over Europe could legally ship to Saint-Pierre and Miquelon. Anyone with a good boat could buy practically anything they wanted and then run it down the coast to the Jersey shore. So McCoy bought more and bigger

ships. But how do you get a big ship capable of carrying thousands of cases of liquor to shore without being caught by the Coast Guard? McCoy came up with an answer for that too. Instead of unloading on shore, he just sailed the boats to an imaginary line three miles off the coast, where American law ended and international waters started. Smaller boats, manned by bootleggers, sailed out to meet him, bought the booze, and smuggled it into America. Best of all, the two islands were close to New York and other large cities in the Northeast, cities where alcohol was in high demand and people had the money to pay for expensive champagne and scotch whiskey. McCoy was one of many entrepreneurs who came to be known as rum runners. But there was never as much rum involved as there was whiskey and wine. The

liquor McCoy brought in became the gold standard of illicit alcohol. He liked to think of himself as an honest smuggler. His booze was legit. It was uncut. The real McCoy? Yeah, some people would have called it that, though that's not actually the origin of that phrase. Let's go back to the beginning of the previous episode. We described a waiter in Manhattan in 1920 who had just been approached to connect his wealthy clientele with a supplier of illicit booze. Imagine you're that same waiter again, but now it's 1922, a couple of years into Prohibition. You've worked your way up the bootlegging supply chain. You're tired of being an errand boy for the local importer. So when you hear about this

pipeline of high-quality French booze that McCoy has created, you want in. You get a tip that a man named Wolfsheim has an office in Times Square. He's high up enough to connect you with McCoy. Yeah, come in. You get a tip that a man named Wolfsheim has an office in Times Square. He's high up enough to connect you with McCoy. Yeah, come in. Uh, hello. Nice to meet you, sir. Can I have a few minutes of your time? I have a business proposition for you regarding some goods I've seen of yours over in a garage in Brooklyn. I met your man over there. For Christ's sake, shut the door. Yeah, he told me you'd be by, but with all due respect, I've never heard of you. I don't do business with strangers. Wait, give me a second. We're not really strangers. We have a friend in common, Mr. Spencer. He's a customer of mine. Oh, you know Spencer, huh? Yes. So please give me a moment. I can make it worth

your while. You see, I have what's called a supply problem. I've got more clients than I can serve. You want me to help you? Yes, to get the good stuff. The stuff McCoy's bringing in through Jersey. That's what my clients want. I see. Well, I need a $1,000 partnership fee to even get started.

You were warned about this. You pull out the money and hand it over. Wolfsheim thumbs through the cash approvingly. I see you're prepared. I think we're going to get along fine. I'll set up a meeting for next week. And with that, you've taken your first step towards a bootlegging empire. A lot of money would come from this partnership. Your life is about to change. With over a million gallons of booze making its way down to rum row every year, there would be finally enough alcohol to bring back drinking establishments.

Not the saloon, but something pretty close. It would become known as the speakeasy. From Wondery, this is episode two of Prohibition from American History Tellers. On the next episode, while Prohibition was successful in closing the saloon, it didn't quench America's thirst for alcohol. Soon, enterprising bootleggers found the supply to meet demand,

and new drinking establishments popped up across the nation. Speakeasies. American History Tellers. You can binge all episodes early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Prime members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music. And before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey at wondery.com slash survey. American History Tellers is hosted, sound designed, and edited by me, Lindsey Graham, for Airship, with additional production assistance from Derek Behrens. This episode is written by Christine Sismondo, Ph.D. Executive producers are Hernán López, Marcia Louis, and Ben Adair for Wondery. In November 1991, media tycoon Robert Maxwell mysteriously vanished from his luxury yacht in the Canary Islands. But it wasn't just his body that would come to the surface in the days that followed.

It soon emerged that Robert's business was on the brink of collapse, and behind his facade of wealth and success was a litany of bad investments, mounting debt, and multi-million dollar fraud. Hi, I'm Lindsey Graham, the host of Wondery Show Business Movers. We tell the true stories of business leaders who risked it all, the critical moments that define their journey, and the ideas that transform the way we live our lives. In our latest series, a young refugee fleeing the Nazis arrives in Britain determined to make something of his life. Taking the name Robert Maxwell, he builds a publishing and newspaper empire that spans the globe. But ambition eventually curdles into desperation,

and Robert's determination to succeed turns into a willingness to do anything to get ahead. Follow Business Movers wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen ad-free on the Amazon Music or Wondery app.