American History Tellers - Prohibition - Speakeasy | 3

Episode Date: February 21, 2018

While Prohibition was successful in closing the saloon, it didn’t quench America’s thirst. Enterprising bootleggers found more ways to provide more alcohol to parched Americans – so much that there was finally enough supply to meet demand. New drinking establishments popped up across the nation: speakeasies.Forced underground, these new types of saloons operated under new rules, too. Women drank right alongside the men, and both black and white patrons danced together to Duke Ellington and Cab Calloway, all while local cops shrugged or were paid off to look the other way.But the Feds hadn’t turned their backs on the bootleggers. They went undercover, arresting thousands in stings that some claimed were entrapment. Increasingly, Federal agents took the job of enforcing Prohibition seriously. They had to; the business of illicit alcohol was growing dangerous – and violent.To learn more about Izzy Einstein and Moe Smith and the problems involved in the enforcement of Prohibition, check out Professor David J. Hanson’s, “Alcohol Problems and Solutions,” is an excellent resource.If you want to read more about the raids on Prohibition-era speakeasies in New Orleans, this “Intemperance” map by Hannah C. Griggs is an amazing resource that shows every single raid over in that city. For New York speakeasies, Michael Lerner’s Dry Manhattan is a thorough investigation of that city. Queen of the Nightclubs by Louise Berliner is also a fun read.To learn more about Harlem and the generation gap in the 1920s, Terrible Honesty by Ann Douglas is required reading.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 1923. You're sitting at a diner counter in downtown Detroit. It's been a long day at work in the Lincoln Motor Company plant. There's pie, cake, and coffee on the menu, but you're here for something else. Give me a cold tea, Jake. Cold tea, coming up. Cold tea, also known as alcohol, served in the teapot. Jake slides you over a pot filled with beer. You're sipping on your drink and chatting

with Jake, the bartender, when a new customer comes in and sits down next to you. He puts his hat down on the counter. What's a guy got to do to find a beer in this town? You look at Jake, and he looks a little suspicious. You from out of town? Never been here? I feel like I've seen you before. From New York, pal. There's a place around here I can get a drink. I heard you're the guy to ask. I know who you are. You're Izzy Epstein, the famous prohibition agent that puts on all the disguises. You're thinking of Izzy Einstein. No, I'm sure it's Epstein. We've even got a picture of him in the back room. I'll bet you a drink it's Einstein, not Epstein.

Jake pulls out a bottle of Canadian rye whiskey from under the counter. You're on. Suddenly, the man from New York pulls out a badge and a pair of handcuffs. Jake definitely just lost the bet. The man is indeed Izzy Einstein, the famous early prohibition agent. There's sad news here, pal. You're under arrest. That was Einstein's catchphrase whenever he busted anyone. And if you think this sounds more like a scene out of a vaudeville comedy routine than a raid on a bar by a federal agent, that was by design. Izzy Einstein and his partner Mo Smith brought an element of showmanship to their work. Einstein spoke seven or eight languages and was keen on dressing up in character. Over the years, he disguised himself as a Texas cattleman, a French maitre d' and an Italian fruit vendor, among many others.

Together, Izzy and Moe made nearly 5,000 arrests in under five years. At times, they made nearly 50 busts a day. But those arrests represent only a drop in the ocean of moonshine being made and sold at the time. Only after a few years of prohibition, America's attempt to go alcohol-free was already in danger of falling apart, thanks to a audience of potential customers. If the audience liked the product, it gets them in front of our panel of experts. Gwyneth Paltrow. Anthony Anderson. Tabitha Brown. Tony Hawk.

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app or wherever you get your podcasts. From Wondery, this is American History Tellers. Our history, your story. I'm Lindsey Graham. This is episode three of our six-part series on prohibition, speakeasy. The saloon had been at the heart of American life. Prohibition tried to put an end to that, but now it was being brought back in illegal underground joints. They were called speakeasies because, quite literally, people needed to speakeasy or whisper about them.

And these underground drinking establishments took all forms, from diners selling cold tea to underground bars. As one police officer at the time said, all you need is two bottles and a room, and you have a speakeasy. By 1924, the many saloons and taverns across America that had closed down with the passage of the 18th Amendment had been replaced with all kinds of illegal drinking establishments. The bar scene survived, even thrived during this time, despite the efforts of the Bureau of Prohibition. On this episode, we'll hear how forcing those bars to go underground changed America in ways supporters of Prohibition could

never have imagined. There's no way of knowing for sure how many speakeasies were operating by this point, but even mid-sized cities had thousands. And depending on how seriously law enforcement took its job, they could be pretty easy to find. And in the wettest cities, New York, Chicago, Detroit, Baltimore, San Francisco, and New Orleans, where cops were either paid off or didn't care, you did not have to be quiet or speakeasy about them. The cities had never been in favor of prohibition in the first place. Cleveland, for example, had an estimated 3,000 speakeasies just five years into prohibition.

Atlantic City was called the world's playground, and in neighboring Pennsylvania, it was said that every city was as wet as the Atlantic Ocean. Chicago and Detroit, both of which were mob strongholds, had thousands of gin mills. The West Coast was just as wet, if not wetter, than the rest of the country. San Francisco's port was receiving shipments from Canada and Central America. As historian Daniel Okren put it, in San Francisco, prohibition was only a rumor. A few of these bars are actually still open today, giving people a chance to drink in a real, one-time speakeasy and get a feel for what it might have been like to drink illegally. One former San Francisco

speakeasy-turned-bar, House of Shields, is even rumored to be the true site of President Warren G. Harding's sudden death in 1923. The bar is connected by tunnel to the Palace Hotel, and urban legend has it that, out of respect for the office of the president, patrons carried his lifeless body underground back to his room. Izzy Einstein, the Bureau of Prohibition agent, actually kept notes on how long it took him to find booze in the different cities he visited. In Washington, D.C., it took him a couple of hours. In Chicago, 21 minutes.

He was offered a drink in Atlanta 17 minutes after he got there. But in New Orleans, Einstein only got as far as the taxi at the train station. He climbed into the cab and asked the driver where he might be able to get a drink. The cabbie turned around with a bottle in his hand. It was a new record, 35 seconds. Judging by New Orleans' reaction to Prohibition, it was like they took it almost as a personal insult. In those first years, many residents had been shocked to discover that the ban applied to all alcohol, even the cooking liquor and sherry wine needed for their traditional dishes like turtle soup. And some saw the ban on alcohol as an attack on the city's soul. Prohibition wasn't the first time the city had felt the long arm of federal

regulation. In 1917, just a few years earlier, a wartime federal order shut down all the brothels in Storyville, the city's red light district. But Storyville's brothels were one thing. Its bars were another. The city did put up a fight, taking to the streets in noisy, wet parade protests before and after the law came into effect. Some 3,000 people had marched through the streets in 1921 to voice their opposition to the looming law. Among them were groups like Lovers of Bibulous Liberty and the Dixie Social Club. Their placards read, We want beer in our saloons, not in the cellars of the rich. Those parades didn't stop Prohibition coming into effect. But when it did, New Orleanians moved straight out of the saloons and into speakeasies. All across the city,

the law was broken every single day. Aside from back alley speakeasies. All across the city, the law was broken every single day. Aside from back alley speakeasies, basement bars, and back rooms and groceries, there were secret rooms in upscale hotels and at high-end restaurants. The city's wealthiest businessmen and politicians ate and drank in those institutions, so they were fairly safe from raids. But travelers to the city had to be careful. Imagine it's a summer New Orleans evening, and you're strolling along Royal Street. The city is disgustingly hot. Your clothes are sticking to you,

and the night air around you is thick. You work for the Hoover Suction Sweeper Company, based in central Ohio, but you're here in New Orleans on business. After a day spent in a conference on household cleaning products, you and a colleague from Baltimore have decided to try and find a cold beer. A helpful concierge at your hotel gave you directions and passwords to a few places in the French Quarter that might be open. You think you know what you're doing, but you're far from home in a strange city. Don't worry, it'll be easy to find

a drink here. It's even wetter than Baltimore. Sure, but I just don't want to walk around all night looking for a place. It's way too hot for this. What's the name we're looking for again? The Idle Hour Cafe up here on Iberville. At home, it's always the places that advertise seafood, you know, because they're wet. Everybody sells seafood here. I heard that we should look for places with doors that are painted green. You've heard half the city's bars and cafes are still selling booze under the table. And when you reach 831 Iberville Street, it's dark. The door is padlocked. Well, they must not be paying the right people.

You walk a little further and notice a small pack of drunken men in suits. They're stumbling down the street, spilling out of a building on St. Peter just off the main drag. As you get closer, you hear people laughing, the sound of a piano. I think we've found it. The door is green. You knock. You're a little nervous, hoping you've got the right password for the right place. The doorman looks at you. Storm's brewing. He nods and opens the door. You're in. Inside,

it's loud, smoky, and hot. You haven't seen anything like this for a long while. You start to experience a flash of excitement at the raucous, lively scene, and you push your way to the bar. The booze selection is impressive. There's rum, gin, whiskey, and even champagne. I'll get a gin ricky. The night is starting off well. When you get back to your hotel, the groom wall, you even discover a nightclub in the basement called The Cave. It looks perfect for a nightcap or two. But if it was easy for these two salesmen to find a speakeasy in New Orleans, then it was just as easy for the federal government. That padlock cafe on Iberville that the salesmen tried to visit was a real speakeasy.

It was raided seven times in 1922, one of hundreds of cafes, groceries, restaurants, and drugstores in New Orleans busted for selling liquor by the newly created Bureau of Prohibition. After Prohibition went into effect, the government had immediately found itself short of agents to help enforce the new law. That's how Izzy Einstein and Mo Smith ended up getting hired, despite their lack of previous law enforcement experience. They went on to become two of the most famous agents in the country. They were no moral crusaders themselves, but they believed that the law was the law, and they thought it should be enforced. And they had fun doing it, too. Still, by 1924, it had become clear that despite the best efforts of agents like Izzy and Moe, the government had failed to shut down illegal drinking.

To many Americans, it seemed like for every speakeasy padlocked, two new ones opened. As Baltimore newspaperman H.L. Mencken wrote, There's not less drunkenness in the republic, but more. There's not less crime, but more. There's not less insanity, but more. The cost of government is not smaller, but vastly greater. Respect for law has not increased, but diminished. And it wasn't just respect for the

law that was on the decline. Old values and traditions were also crumbling. I'm Tristan Redman, and as a journalist, I've never believed in ghosts. But when I discovered that my wife's great-grandmother was murdered in the house next door to where I grew up, I started wondering about the inexplicable things that happened in my childhood bedroom. When I tried to find out more, I discovered that someone who slept in my room after me, someone I'd never met, was visited by the ghost of a faceless woman. So I started digging into the murder in my wife's family, and I unearthed family secrets nobody could have imagined. Ghost Story won Best Documentary Podcast at the 2024 Ambies and is a Best True Crime nominee at the British Podcast Awards 2024. Ghost Story is now the first ever Apple Podcast Series Essential.

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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. Many young people were tired of what they saw as the farce of prohibition. In their eyes, their parents were just hypocrites, publicly supporting prohibition but secretly buying bootleg liquor. And they rebelled by breaking norms, going to nightclubs, and talking openly about it. Before prohibition, many saloons had back rooms for women and families. But for the most part, middle and upper class women didn't drink in public. Prohibition changed that. Women

began mixing with men in speakeasies, abandoning suppressive conventions. They threw away their floor-length Victorian gowns and picked up knee-length shift dresses. They gave up black shawls for bright sweaters and dared to wear makeup. They cut their hair short into bobs. They even smoked cigarettes in public, sometimes calling them torches of freedom. The word flapper was originally pejorative, an insult describing the callow, wild, and immoral girls flitting about in speakeasies. But the women of the roaring 20s generation reclaimed the name.

After years of zipped-up Victorian morality, they weren't ashamed of their sexual liberation. Perhaps unsurprisingly, there was a backlash to this. One male writer complained that drinking during Prohibition meant having to fight for space at the bar with a bunch of schoolgirls. For women, this came at a time when the suffragettes and the first-wave feminists had made real gains. In 1920, the 19th Amendment had given women the right to vote for the first time. And many women had gone out to work during World War I, returning with an increased sense of freedom and independence that they weren't about to give up.

Imagine you're 21 years old and the heiress to a massive fortune. You live on your father's estate on Long Island, New York. Your father is a staunch traditionalist. Your parents are divorced, but your father won't remarry as long as his first wife is alive. You are out the night before with a piano player you've been seeing. The two of you met at a speakeasy several months ago, but your father has just learned of the affair. You will not go out to the cafes anymore.

I just won't have it. Father, you've been listening too much to backstairs gossip. Never before has any young lady from a good family gone out to the cabaret to dance and rub elbows with all sorts of kinds of people. When young ladies are ready to go out into the world, they should attend grand balls to meet men from their own circles.

You start to get angry. You hate those grand balls. They feel so old-fashioned. The men at those debutante balls are dull and unappealing. At the cabarets, at least we can say no. Your father is stunned into silence. You push further. Irving and I plan to marry, father, over my dead

body. You are not going to marry some tin pan alley song man. First thing in the morning, I'm arranging for you to go to Europe with your aunt. This was Ellen McKay, a real heiress, and her father really did send her to Europe, away from her lover, the songwriter, Irving Berlin. Years later, Berlin would go on to huge success, writing American classics like Anything You Can Do, White Christmas, and There's No Business Like Show Business. But while McKay was out of the country, he spent the time writing sad, romantic songs for her like All Alone, hoping she would hear them on the radio. Just like a melody that lingers on, you seem to haunt me night and day.

I never realized till you had gone how much I cared about you. I can't live without you. When Ellen McKay returned, she and Irving Berlin were married. True to his word, her father, Clarence McKay, disowned her because of the marriage. He couldn't stand that she disobeyed him. He also couldn't stand the fact that Berlin was Jewish. Her interfaith marriage became the romance of the decade and was covered in every gossip column. Some treated it as a scandal, but others simply saw it as a sign of the decade and was covered in every gossip column. Some treated it as

a scandal, but others simply saw it as a sign of the changing times. And McKay was outspoken, not about to change her mind. As she wrote in the brand new New Yorker magazine, modern girls are conscious of their own identity and they marry whom they choose. She and Irving ended up staying married for 62 years. Speakeasies were transforming the world of dating. Now women like McKay had the chance to meet new people on their own terms, instead of having their relationships controlled by their parents. And women weren't just visiting speakeasies, they were running the show too. You live in New York City.

You're a construction worker on a new suspension bridge being built across the Hudson. You hear about this great new club on West 47th Street. It's owned by one of the era's most famous run runners, who is now selling his smuggled booze at the club. The fact that it's high-quality liquor is half the reason it's so popular. The other half is the emcee and hostess, Texas Guinan. You head over there one night. The bouncer looks you over as you come up to the door.

You try to act as casual as possible. Joe sent me? He waves you in. You're thrilled to have the right password. After you check your coat and get into the main room, you see a glamorous woman next to the stage. She's perched on a bar stool and looks your way when you come in. Hello, sucker. Come on in and leave your wallet on the bar.

The young woman has just finished her dance number. Give the little girl a great big hand. The crowd starts applauding as the dancer takes a bow. The band starts to play again. The drunk from the audience gets up, stumbles over the stage, and starts handing out $50 bills to each band member. Wow! Just what business are you in, sir, to have such cash to throw around? I'm in dairy produce. Give a big hand for the big butter and egg man!

The audience laughs and gives a big round of applause. That was the scene at the famous El Fae Club, where patrons were gouged $25 a bottle but did not care because Texas Guinan, queen of the nightclubs, presided over all the fun. She was a larger-than-life character. She ran nightclub after nightclub, becoming one of the richest businesswomen in New York. In its first year, the El Faye was said to have raked in over $600,000 gross, roughly $7 million in today's money. Of course, some of that money had to go to paying off the cops. Even though New York was pretty openly wet, there was a limit on how far the city could go.

In fact, most New York politicians, like State Senator Jimmy Walker, Congressman Fiorello LaGuardia, and Governor Alfred Smith, were actually opposed to prohibition. They couldn't openly defy federal law, but at least they could weaken its enforcement. Governor Smith opposed giving prohibition agents greater powers of surveillance, search, and seizure. When he was elected governor in 1922, he introduced the Culliver Bill, which repealed some of the harshest and most intrusive laws used by police. It also sent a clear signal to local law enforcement.

Speakeasies and bootleggers were no longer a high priority. That said, New York politicians and law enforcement officials had to look as if they were trying to comply with the feds. This was especially true for Smith, who had his eye on running for president in a few years. It was in everybody's interest to make some high-profile arrests, and who better to arrest than famous offenders like Texas Guinan? When Texas Guinan's and Larry Frey's first club was padlocked, they just opened a new one a block over. Their bold-faced defiance only led to more arrests, but Guinan made breaking the law part of her shtick, using her arrest to increase her fame. She even had a padlock necklace made. Uptown from Texas Guinan's club, a different kind of revolution was underway.

Harlem had been settled by African Americans in the first couple of decades of the 20th century, largely by people moving from the South. It was part of what's called the Great Migration, Black Southerners moving North. Some were fleeing racist Jim Crow laws. Others were merely looking for work. Some were veterans of the First World War. They had been treated as heroes in Europe and were unwilling to return to Southern states where they'd felt they'd still be treated as second-class citizens. By the time Prohibition hit, the Harlem Renaissance was in full swing. Harlem, the largely African-American neighborhood in Upper Manhattan, had become a cultural hotspot with a burgeoning theater scene, vibrant literary movements, and some of the liveliest music in the country. The new sound was called the Harlem Stride, inspired by Jelly Roll Morton and Fats Waller. If I was whiskey, you were the duck. I'd dive to the bottom and I'd never come up. Oh, how long

do I have to wait? Can I get it now? Do I have to hesitate? Duke Ellington was the most famous performer in Harlem, with regular gigs at the Cotton Club. Other bands, headed by the likes of Cab Calloway, Don Redmond, and Garland Wilson, got their starts in Harlem, too. Tuxedo-clad Gladys Bentley,

one of the first-known cross-dressing Black their starts in Harlem, too. Tuxedo-clad Gladys Bentley, one of the first known cross-dressing Black lesbian performers in America, was so popular that the bar she sang at became known as Gladys' Clam House. Most of the action was centered between 7th Avenue and Lenox, now Malcolm X Boulevard, just north of Central Park. Most of these clubs didn't even get going until well after midnight. And when they got going, they got going for both black and white patrons. It wasn't just Harlem where white and black people were dancing and drinking together. Most cities in the United States had areas that were starting to become known for so-called black and tan clubs.

In Dallas, there was Deep Ellum. In Washington, D.C., there was an area in the U Street corridor known as Black Broadway. Jelly Roll Morton was optimistic. In one interview, he suggested that the interaction between Blacks and whites at jazz clubs would eventually lead to understanding and racial equality. He wasn't the only one to think so. One newspaper saw fit to educate white people on black culture. It read almost like a travel guidebook. There were tidbits of advice on food, like chitterlings is a tripe-like food, and snouts are pickled pig snouts, a popular delicacy. And there was also information about social situations. Hunching is a dance, sweet man is a lover, and freakish is an effeminate man or mannish woman. But there were others who were less enthusiastic about what was going on in the burgeoning scene.

New York's Board of Aldermen studied the situation and concluded that there was too much running wild in Harlem's nightclubs. One alderman put it, and concluded that there was too much running wild in Harlem's nightclubs. One alderman put it, The wild stranger and the foolish native should have the check rain applied. These wild people should not be tumbling out of these resorts at six or seven in the morning to the scandal and annoyance of decent residents on their way to daily employment. But the city couldn't revoke their liquor license. They didn't have any. And the places that got shut down just moved to an

empty space next door. One old map of Harlem's nightlife had an annotation for the corner of Lenox and 110th that read, in this section of Harlem, there are clubs opening and closing at all times. There's too many to put them all on this map. So, as the Bureau of Prohibition came under growing pressure to clamp down on the speakeasies, they tried newer, shadier tactics. This is the emergency broadcast system. A ballistic missile threat has been detected inbound to your area. Your phone buzzes and you look down to find this alert. What do you do next?

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The Bridge Whist Club was a speakeasy on East 44th Street. At the time, one writer called it a plush joint that did a roaring business day and night. It was a lot like other Midtown speakeasies, except for one big difference. It was owned and run by federal agents. The club was created as an elaborate and expensive sting operation set up by law enforcement agents who worked undercover at the fake speakeasy. When bootleggers came in with deliveries for the club, the undercover agents would press them for information

in hopes of learning about the smuggling kingpins. The whole place was wired with microphones in the lampshades. But it didn't take long for word to get out. Bootlegger soon knew what was up, and even tried to have a little fun with the fence. So what are the big clubs people are going to these days? A blunt but common opening line. The, the same old places. You know where they all are, I'm sure. But what's really keeping us in business are all the steady private customers, you know. Oh, like who? John Leach, for one. The bootlegger leans into the lampshade.

He could practically drink the city dry, just him and his friends. Really? The deputy police commissioner? He puts on a pretty good show of being a good, honest cop. Nah, that was just an act. When the anti-saloon leaders come to town, the whole group goes on a real bender. The undercover agents were fed a lot of false information. The savvy bootleggers in New York were often one step ahead of the feds. But the Bridge Whisk Club wasn't the only sting operation.

In other cities, like Fort Lauderdale, speakeasy stings were more successful. One in Florida led to the arrests of over 30 men and the shuttering of four illegal moonshine stills. When the news broke in 1926 that the feds were in the speakeasy business, it was a huge scandal. The widespread public outrage was about the question of entrapment. Was it even legal to lure people into these speakeasies just to arrest them? The agents felt justified in running this fake speakeasy because in New York, bootlegging and illegal gin joints were such an open situation. Violations were blatant. New York Congressman Fiorella LaGuardia, one of the many anti-prohibition politicians in New York politics,

pushed for the fake club to be shut down. It finally closed in 1926. LaGuardia, who would eventually become mayor of the city, was opposed to prohibition for a range of reasons, not the least of which was that it seemed to unfairly target immigrants such as himself. On the surface, the Roaring Twenties were an exciting time to be alive. But thrilling as it might have been, speakeasy wasn't as much fun for those who couldn't afford to drink at swanky hotel bars and midtown clubs in New York.

For every sophisticated spot, there were five dives on the Bowery serving smoke, potentially lethal, redistilled industrial alcohol. By now, there was more demand for illegal booze than the rum runners could supply. Bootleggers had begun cutting corners by flavoring raw moonshine spirit with adulterants to make it look, taste, and smell like whiskey or gin. A visit to a speakeasy didn't just risk a rest. You could also risk your life. Imagine you're working as a secretary at the Treasury Department.

In walk two of the most famous agents, Izzy Einstein and his partner Mo Smith. They're deep in conversation and don't really pay you any attention. Einstein wonders aloud, how is it that he is always named in the newspaper accounts, in headlines even, when Smith barely gets mentioned? You need a good catchphrase, Mo. Like when I make a bust, I say, there's sad news here, pal. You don't always have to play the straight guy. Lincoln Andrews, the boss, opens his door and calls the agents into his office. You follow in behind to take notes. Thanks for coming in, fellas. As you know, I've got a big job here at the department. We're doing a giant overhaul. Yes, sir. We'll help in any way we can.

That's it, exactly. I saw you again in the morning papers. You're almost doing too swell a job. You're putting us on? Prohibition and illegal alcohol is a serious business, Izzy. And you're playing it up like comedians for the reporters. I was told you're even tipping off journalists to get there in time.

But that's good publicity for the department, right? We have the highest rate of arrests and conviction in the whole country. The newspapers are eating it up. Yeah, at first I didn't mind the way you operated, but now you're making a laughingstock of the job. Illegal booze is a serious business. Serious jobs can be done with a little style and

humor. You're not in Vaudeville here, boys. From here on in, agents are going to act with a little decorum and dignity befitting the office. As you would say, Izzy, there's sad news here. We're fired. I'm afraid we just don't think you two have a place in the new bureau we're planning. Thank you for your hard work, but I'm going to have to let you go. It's for the good of the service. And so, after nearly 5,000 arrests over five years, Izzy Einstein and Mo Smith were out of a job. They were among 35 agents to get the axe at the bureau. By 1925, when Einstein and Smith were fired, the United States government had little option but to rethink its approach. The Treasury Department and the federal government were in a bind.

They appeared to be losing control of the situation, and in the void, bootleggers and vigilantes seemed to be gaining power. The government was ready to make some big changes and try to put its foot down on bootleg alcohol. Not the stuff made in Canada, Cuba, or Mexico. It was going to take aim at the stuff made in the USA. The Bureau of Prohibition that would emerge in the latter half of the 20s would have a far more serious culture than the one Einstein and Smith were part of. And it would have to. Because the illegal alcohol business was also getting much more serious.

And more deadly. Next time on American History Tellers, we'll investigate the many unintended consequences of prohibition, from the rise of the KKK to mass poisonings. The battle over illegal drinking was turning deadly in more ways than one. From Wondery, this is episode three of Prohibition for American History Tellers. On the next episode, we'll investigate the many unintended consequences of going dry. From the rise of the KKK to mass poisonings, the battle over illegal drinking was turning deadly in more ways than one. If you like 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. For more than two centuries, the White House has been the stage for some of the most dramatic scenes in American history.

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