Short History Of... - Prohibition

Episode Date: March 21, 2022

For thirteen years from 1920, the manufacture, sale, and transportation of alcoholic drinks was banned in the USA. The age of prohibition was a rowdy time: enlivened by jazz and wild parties; darkened by violence and lawlessness. But how did it come about? Who were its heroes and villains? And how did it change the face of the country it sought to purify? This is a Short History of Prohibition. Written by Danny Marshall. With thanks to Daniel Okrent, author of Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition. For ad-free listening, exclusive content and early access to new episodes, join Noiser+. Now available for Apple and Android users. Click the Noiser+ banner on Apple or go to noiser.com/subscriptions to get started with a 7-day free trial. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It's late on November the 23rd, 1923. The full moon glitters on the bay of Seabright, New Jersey, where a hundred or more ships are anchored in the shallow waters. Rum Row, as it's known, becomes a floating street of iniquity after sundown. Open boats filled with jazz bands motor between the flotilla of larger ships, plying their trade. Tourists and revelers turn out each night for the spectacle, mingling with the hundreds of contact boats, ferrying their cargo to shore.

A little way off, rocking in the light swell, is a low, sleek schooner, the Tomoka. Standing near the wheel of the aft deck is Bill McCoy. He pushes up the sleeves of his whiteft deck is Bill McCoy. He pushes up the sleeves of his white shirt and leans on the railing, watching the water. After a while there's movement. A loud, powerful speedboat is coming to do business with him. McCoy glances into the hold, where his crew are stacking small triangular packages. Each contains six bottles, wrapped in hay and coconut fibre, and sewn up tightly inside burlap sacking.

They're also crowned with salt, meaning they'll sink if they need to be dropped overboard, but will later float back up to the surface for collection. McCoy is confident that won't be necessary. Three miles out, he's in international waters. Suddenly there's a shout from a lookout at the bow. A large ship is approaching, fast. It's the Coast Guard.

McCoy recognizes their ship, a powerful ex-Navy destroyer named the Seneca, from previous tangles. Although he knows he's not within their jurisdiction, McCoy realizes they mean to stop him. He orders the anchor up and the bow turned. But it's too late. Before the crew can react, a launch is pulled alongside, and a Coast Guard party is climbing aboard. alongside, and a coastguard party is climbing aboard. Under the orders of Lieutenant Commander Perkins and the protection of the Seneca's powerful guns, fourteen sailors demand that

McCoy's crew surrender the vessel. But McCoy doesn't want to give in that easily. Taking the boarding party with him, he immediately sets sail, turning the bow to make a run for the open Atlantic. His only chance is to use his superior speed to put him out of range. The Coast Guard respond by firing on Tomoka. The sound of her four-inch guns can be heard all along Rom Roe. Still, McCoy doesn't back down. He orders his crew to return fire from a large machine gun mounted on the forward deck. A running sea battle ensues as the Tomoka flees. It's brief.

Shells from the Seneca are landing close enough to shower salt spray onto Tomoka's deck. The crew knows it's only a matter of time before the Coast Guard commander grows tired of firing warning shots. Finally, listening to the pleas from the boarding party, McCoy surrenders. The chase is over, and neither the Tomoka nor Bill McCoy will ever return to rum-running. It's a rowdy time, enlivened by jazz and wild parties, but also violence and lawlessness. It's the age of prohibition. A ban in the USA of the manufacture, sale and transportation of alcoholic drinks. But how did it come about?

What did it achieve? And why was it repealed 13 years later? Its heroes and villains have been immortalized in songs, TV shows, movies and books. But what's the truth behind their stories? But what's the truth behind their stories? I'm Paul McGann, and this is a short history of Prohibition. The first roots of Prohibition reach back almost to the Declaration of Independence. As early as the start of the 19th century, concerns are being raised about the effect of alcohol on social stability.

By the mid-1800s, there is a network of so-called temperance societies, calling for complete abstinence. Best supported in Protestant areas, their members argue that drinking is immoral and is leading to social instability and decline. Daniel Okrent is a prohibition expert and author of the book Last Call, The Rise and Fall of Prohibition.

The American prohibition movement begins really around 1840, a temperance movement, because alcohol was such a pervasive and destructive force in so much of American life. Particularly on the frontiers in the small towns that were growing up in the frontiers where the only entertainment was the local saloon, which was an all-male institution. And men would go there and spend way too much time and drink far too much, which was very destructive to family life. They would come home and mistreat the wife and children. They often would lose jobs because of drunkenness, failure to show up for work. They would bring home venereal diseases because there were brothels attached to so many of the saloons. The end of the century sees the rise of the most influential of these groups.

The Anti-Saloon League, or ASL, is formed in 1893 by Reverend Howard Hyde Russell. By 1900, it's the most powerful prohibition lobby in America. It draws its support from a wide base. On the one hand, the Ku Klux Klan's resurgence in the 20s is credited to its prohibition stance. They play on social tensions and employ an anti-Semitic, anti-Catholic and anti-immigration position. One contemporary newspaper claims that in Alabama, it's hard to tell where the Anti-Saloon League ends and the Klan begins. In Arkansas in 1922, 200 Klan members burned saloons to the ground. But the allegiance of the far right doesn't deter other groups with very different agendas

from coalescing on the issue. Black civil rights leaders such as Booker T. Washington and Ida B. Wells endorsed temperance and prohibition. Often, early abolitionists and equal rights campaigners go hand in hand. The fight to escape a system of oppressive capitalism cuts across many causes. Often, regardless of race, it's women who are the most vocal in favor of temperance. Drink was used to ease the pain of laboring life, both in the farms and the city, and became such a problem that there began a movement that was started by women in Ohio

that we have to do something about this alcohol problem in American life. Susan B. Anthony, who later became well-known as the woman who brought women's suffrage to the U.S., she began her life as a temperance worker and rose to give a speech at the Sons of Temperance Conference in New York, this late 1840s, early 1850s. And she was told, the sisters are here to listen, not to speak. And that's what provoked her to get the vote for women. But what started her in her public life was temperance and get the vote so that women could vote in temperance or prohibition. That's the origin of it back in the middle of the 19th century.

Not everyone supports the idea. Many German Americans in particular, with their connections to the big breweries, have a lot riding on the drinks industry. As the First World War looms, the ASL and nationalist groups play on anti-German sentiment. The USA enters World War I in 1917, and an emergency law diverts grain used for brewing into producing food for the war effort. Then in 1919, the National Prohibition Bill is proposed. President Woodrow Wilson vetoes the bill,

but with prohibitionists controlling Congress, it passes anyway. The act, known as the Volstead Act, after the congressman of the same name, passes into law. As of New Year's Day 1920, it is now illegal to manufacture, transport and sell alcoholic beverages. The age of prohibition has begun. But where demand exists, there will always be supply. Illegal manufacture of liquor has been around for at least as long as taxes on alcohol have

existed. But now, production escalates rapidly. Immediately small stills or alky-cookers find their way to the market as people start to brew their own moonshine. In the first few years of the decade, law enforcement officers seized just under 700,000 stills. So-called bathtub gin is originally brewed in households for personal consumption. But criminals quickly realized the potential of the crowded tenements and deprived neighborhoods. It doesn't take long before they're delivering new stills and ingredients to families,

then coming back to collect the finished product. The enormous margins are too good to resist, with production costs at a dollar a gallon, a mere sixth of the resale price. It's risky for the brewers themselves, a mere sixth of the resale price. It's risky for the brewers themselves, but working-class Americans can make the equivalent of $188 per day in today's money. At the other end of the spectrum are altogether bigger operations.

Enterprising criminals buy up closed breweries, rehiring former employees to produce the same alcoholic drinks illegally. But for some, it's booze from beyond the borders that offers the best opportunities. The first noted illegal sale of liquor under arrest was two hours after Prohibition went into effect in January of 1920. And, you know, it didn't stop for them. But there were a variety of sources. Over time, the primary source was liquor imported from Canada, brought illegally through the rail tunnel between Windsor, Ontario and Detroit, Michigan,

and also at various spots along the Great Lakes in Buffalo, New York, for instance, where there was direct access to Canada, where there was a great deal of liquor being manufactured entirely legally. The land border between Canada and the lower 48 states is the longest in the world at about 3,500 miles. And it's extremely permeable, much of it just a vast prairie with simple markers

to tell you which country you're in. Over into Canada, there are motels full of booze, offering crates for anyone willing to take the risk of hauling it back to the States. On the US side of the border, roving bands of government agents chase down anyone crossing international lines. Rum running, as it's known, is big business. Some smugglers prefer subterfuge. Lumber trucks with secret compartments or big

saloon cars with false floors and hollow seats. Other drivers opt for speed. Fast cars are modified, their engines beefed up and suspension improved to handle the weight of illicit booze. The rumrunners get so good at outpacing the police on the rural dirt roads that they start to meet at weekends to race and to show off. After prohibition ends, these meetings will develop into NASCAR. Not the only sport to develop from an illegal profession, but probably the fastest. the fastest. Further south, American businessmen take advantage of Mexican incentives to open casinos and saloons across the border.

Tijuana grows from a sleepy frontier village of just over a thousand people in 1920 to a sin city of 12,000 by the early 30s. But the land crossing which offers the greatest potential for shifting booze in large quantities is the railroads. The trains came through Canada, came largely through the rail tunnel, and then would be forwarded from Detroit, which was a totally mob-controlled town and a totally wet town during Prohibition, and would be forwarded from there to various places in the upper Midwest

and to some degree to the lower Midwest and to some degree to the South. It was the distribution point. And the connection between the gangsters in Detroit and the gangsters in Chicago, these would be bonded rail cars that would be sealed when they crossed the border, and then they would be illegally unsealed. So, you know, to do this, it just meant that you needed to have Confederates who were involved in your operation on both sides of the border, and they would make it possible to distribute the alcohol. During Prohibition, booze even takes to the skies. Recently out of work, army pilots realized they can make a lot more from bootlegging than crop dusting, and begin to fly

liquor down from Canada. In the East, planes set down in Long Island in the dead of night. They are met by fast cars and trucks that can deliver the liquor straight to the bars of New York. But the biggest opportunity for smuggling is across water. With many of the more populous and modern cities within a stone's throw from the Atlantic, running rum up the coast becomes a lucrative career.

A second source was so-called Rum Row, which was a long, long line of ocean-going vessels that sat idle outside first the three mile and then the 12 mile limit and were sort of depots for rum runners who were bringing liquor in either from the Bahamas or from the French islands of Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon off the Canadian coast. By the end of Prohibition, it's reckoned that nearly two billion gallons of whiskey have flowed through the hastily built warehouses on those French islands. Most of it is destined for the east coast of the United States of America. But if you live inland, away from the land or sea borders that provide access to

genuine booze, there are other ways to get hold of a drink. The Volstead Act allowed for the production of alcohol for industrial purposes. Specifically, for instance, you know, you couldn't do a photographic film. You couldn't make it without alcohol. The graphite and pencils required alcohol, cleaning solutions, a variety of other things. So industrial alcohol continued to be produced. And then it was denatured. It was made undrinkable before it went out into the trade for which it was presumably meant. But people in the chemistry business soon learned that it was very easy to renature it after it had been denatured, to flavor it, color it, and put it in bottles.

And that was particularly done on a huge industrial scale in the Delaware River Valley, which is a stretch that goes from the city of Wilmington, Delaware, up toward Philadelphia. The DuPont Company, which is the leading chemical producer in the U.S., is based in Wilmington. And there were many, many other factories related to that industry. But similar things happened all over the country. Industrial alcohol diverted for potable uses. There are other loopholes, too. Exemptions are allowed for alcohol used in religious ceremonies. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the number of registered priests and rabbis rockets overnight. The production of alcohol for medicinal reasons is another way to slip through the net of the law.

Whiskey can be prescribed for everything from depression to indigestion to cancer. An unscrupulous physician may take a bribe to write you a prescription. The big American pharmacy chain, Walgreens, had 20 stores in 1919. Thanks to sales of medicinal whiskey, often under the counter, By 1930, there are nearly 400 stores nationwide. Drinking at home is all well and good, but it's the illegal bars or speakeasies that offer the real fun. Flamboyant cocktails are often the drink of choice. Flavoured sodas and fruit juices disguise the visible contents, but they also mask the taste of bathtub gin or tainted industrial booze.

While cocktails had been drunk previously, prohibition makes them a necessity. The speakeasies aren't just wildly popular, but hugely profitable. When they're raided by police and shut down, they spring back up again just as quickly. Sometimes they're hidden in plain sight, as legitimate soda shops and entertainment venues. Other times they're hidden.

The customers need to know where to look. Well, many of them were former saloons, taverns that just converted. But others popped up early on in places where they wouldn't be expected because there was a fear early on in Prohibition, the first few years, that this was going to be seriously enforced and you had to hide and you had to use all sorts of subterfuge. The most imaginative one I know about is a freight elevator in a building in New York City. That was a building that was devoted to other uses. I think it was a garment industry factory, but the freight elevator was a functioning bar.

People would get on the elevator and ride up and down while they're drinking. The door was closed and there was no immediate access to it. People used their imaginations, but it was estimated by the New York Police Commissioner in the late 1920s that there were 32,000 speakeasies in New York City. Now, that could mean a table for two in the back of a tailor's shop, or it could mean a huge nightclub with hundreds of patrons. You could not reach a number like that without speakeasies being sort of everywhere. The speakeasies themselves usher in societal changes in America. Unlike the old saloons, they're places where women and men drink together. As traditional saloons disappear, so too do the macho connotations of drinking after work.

There's more social acceptance of women drinking, particularly those too young to cling to the etiquette of earlier decades. The saloon was a male-only institution. Women and men did not drink together in public except in fancy hotel restaurants where the wealthy might gather. But once you've broken the law, then tradition goes out with the same laws. So that saloons that had been male-only, now that this was this kind of exciting law breaking area, women came in as well because we are breaking with the established order. That meant the entire change in the nature of the saloon or the bar or the speakeasy business. When you have men and women together, you got to have entertainment.

So music comes in. It's the jazz age. And that is the primary form of music comes in. It's the jazz age. And that is the primary form of music that is played in speakeasies. The idea of men and women drinking together and listening to music, that's the birth of the nightclub, as we know it even today, the cabaret that comes directly out of Prohibition. A great mix of people and cultures brings an explosion of dancing, jazz music, exotic drinks, drugs. Rather than drinking as an accompaniment to a social event, people are now going out to

drink for the sake of getting drunk. Having a good time is a social activity in itself. Binge drinking becomes de rigueur. The 20s have truly begun to roar. The number of African Americans in Chicago has risen by over 1,000 percent in recent years. Diversity forces change, and bars specifically target these new markets. Very slowly, the seeds of the social shifts of the mid-20th century are being sown. As for diversity, it was present but limited.

Largely big cities, I think the best example is New York. There's the famous Rodgers and Hart song, The Lady is a Tramp, says she won't go to Harlem and ermine and pearls. Going uptown to Harlem to nightclubs with really good jazz and really good liquor became a very stylish thing to do. It was at first called Slumming, and then it wasn't so slummish. And then, you know, the best known such club in New York was the Cotton Club in West

Harlem. And interestingly, it was all black entertainment, and it was all white audience. It was not diverse. It was the opposite of diverse. It was very segregated, but in a way, it was a coming together of two different cultures. So Duke Ellington, for instance, he played in several New York clubs of that nature, including the Cotton Club, and he and his orchestra would be on the stage playing to an audience of white people. When there's demand for anything illegal, profits can soar. And when big money is on the table,

organized crime is always ready to step in. Criminal gangs have operated for years in deprived areas of every city, concerned mainly with gambling, prostitution, and racketeering. Almost overnight, they move into alcohol. Many of the speakeasies are owned by the gangs themselves, and those that aren't are often forced to buy from them.

And the gangs are growing by the day. With their entire industry outlawed, every bartender, saloon owner and brewery worker has a choice to make Face unemployment or risk bootlegging for the mob The prohibition laws are enforced to varying degrees across the country In some, bootleggers are relentlessly hounded But in other areas, the police and local government turn a blind eye One city in particular becomes synonymous with organized crime during Prohibition. Chicago.

The largest gang is an Italian-American crime syndicate formed a decade earlier from the street gangs in the south side of the city. They are known as the Chicago Outfit. At the start of Prohibition, a tough 20-year-old Brooklyn native spies an opportunity. He moves out to Chicago to become a bouncer for the Outfit. Thanks to his nimble mind

and easy brutality, he quickly makes a name for himself. Soon, everyone has heard of Alphonse Gabriel Capone. By 1925, Big Al is the new boss of the Chicago Outfit. He oversees a rapid expansion program, accompanied by unprecedented violence. In that year alone, 133 gangsters are murdered. Soon the Chicago Out outfit's operations reach

as far as the Canadian border. A knife fight in his bouncer days earns him a facial injury and an alias, Scarface. It's a name he hates, but it does help forge a larger-than-life character that will become a touchstone of the era. Hollywood has given most of the English-speaking world a sense of what Prohibition was

because there were a few colorful characters there, but particularly Al Capone and a few colorful events like the St. Valentine's Day Massacre. But Chicago was not any more, in fact, I would say it was even less of a center of Prohibition violations than, say, Detroit or New York or New Orleans or any number of other cities. Chicago was not special. Chicago was

telegenic. Capone controlled Chicago for four years. It was not this long tenure. He was also a kid. You know, he was in his 20s when he took over the mob there. He was a master of publicity. He dressed in these outlandish colors. He sponsored and attended charitable events. He would give an interview to any reporter who came. He was absolutely immune from law enforcement and local law enforcement because he owned local law enforcement.

He paid people off. Same thing in New York, same thing in Boston, same thing in Baltimore. All over the country, there were versions of Capone, but Capone himself was such a colorful character, and he really knew how to play it. By the late 1920s, Capone is clearing over $60 million annually from bootlegging activities.

He's instrumental in rigging the 1927 mayoral election. When his guy wins, he is rewarded with complete immunity from law enforcement and is protected by local government. But Capone's not without his rivals. Elsewhere in Chicago, the North Side gang have a near monopoly on the city's distilleries. They control the working class neighborhoods in the North and enjoy their own level of political protection. At one point, they steal almost 2,000 barrels of whiskey from a federal distillery in broad daylight, thanks to assistance from the Chicago

PD. They're also hijacking Capone's liquor shipments, diverting it into their own speakeasies or supply chains. Capone cracks down, hard. The bloody battles spill over, turning the city's streets into a war zone. When the Northside gang's boss is murdered, retaliation is swift. In Capone's hotel, the Hawthorne, Big Al is thrown to the ground by his bodyguard as eight carloads of men spray the restaurant with hundreds of bullets. After that, Capone travels in a specially armoured Cadillac with bulletproof glass. His men enact their revenge by gunning down the North Siders' boss in the street. Bugs Moran takes over.

He is ruthless and hates Capone with a passion. Moran kidnaps Big Al's bodyguard, torturing him for information before dumping his body. Capone needs to deal with him permanently and end the gang war for good. him permanently and end the gang war for good. It's half past ten on the morning of February 14th, 1929, St. Valentine's Day. Several inches of snow coat the streets of Chicago. Clark Street, in the Lincoln Park neighborhood, is a wide road of fine buildings and small

businesses. Making his way through the snow is Bugs Moran. He heads towards a squat brick building with wide doors for trucks to come and go. The sign says SMC Cartage Company, but everyone who frequents this place knows it's a front. In reality it's a booze depot, owned by Moran's Northside gang. In the alley, round the back, other gang members arrive by truck.

They head inside, waiting for him, in the building's garage. Moran is late to the meet, but as he approaches, he slows. A police car is pulling up. It's a raid. The boss and his associate retrace their steps, heading to a nearby coffee shop to see what happens.

Back in the alley, a lookout signals to the men in the police car that Moran has entered the building. He's confused another gang member for the boss. It's good news for Moran, but it spells disaster for his men. Two uniformed policemen climb out of their car carrying shotguns and enter the garage. They find a man working on a truck while his dog sits in the camp. Further in are another six gang members, all impeccably dressed for their meeting. The police officers order the seven men to line up

facing the whitewashed brick wall of the garage to be searched. The men comply, knowing that the police never really do any harm. Unfortunately for Moran's men, these are not real police. They are from Capone's Chicago outfit, and are not here to strike a truce. Once the Northsiders are frisked and disarmed, two more men enter from the street. From their overcoats, each pulls a Thompson submachine gun. The dog in the truck is barking wildly, but his warning is soon drowned out by the hailstorm of.45 caliber bullets.

The seven gang members are floored instantly, but the gunmen don't stop until their magazines click empty. There is silence. Even the dog has stopped barking. The stench of blood and cordite fills the enclosed space. By the time the real police arrive, the killers are long gone. But to everyone's surprise, one man is still alive. Frank Gussenberg has 14 bullet wounds, with seven of the bullets still lodged inside his body.

A sergeant asks who shot him. But even in his dying moments, Gusenberg observes the gangster's code of omerta, or silence. He replies, Nobody shot me. Three hours later, he's dead. Nobody shot me. Three hours later, he's dead. The only survivor of the massacre is the dog, an Alsatian called Highball, who goes to live with a reporter.

Moran escapes, but before long the Northside gang has run out of road. He moves away, ending up penniless by the 40s. The massacre though is a turning point, not just for the gangs, but for Chicago, and ultimately for prohibition nationwide. The country is shocked by the photos of this dark moment in the Windy City's bloody war. Chicagoans turn their anger towards Thompson, the city's corrupt mayor. And the tide is turning for Capone too. The editor of the Chicago Daily News approaches his friend, newly inaugurated President Herbert Hoover. He makes a convincing case.

Shortly afterwards, the president launches a multi-agency task force with one aim, to bring down Capone. It's going to be a challenge. The government has had a bureau of prohibition since 1920, but it's not been a success. The pay is bad, the job is thankless. It's hardly a surprise that the agents are notoriously susceptible to corruption. It's a time when everyone is taking bribes. Much of the profits of bootlegging end up in the pockets of officials tasked with preventing it.

Customs agents and coastguard patrols make good money escorting rum runners into port, or simply confiscating it and then selling it on. In Chicago, Al Capone supposedly has half the city's police on his payroll. This explains why some police officers on salaries of around $4,000 have hundreds of thousands in their bank accounts, the equivalent of millions today. It's not just Illinois, though. In Fort Lauderdale, the sheriff himself is arrested for conspiracy. A Philadelphia magistrate is found guilty of taking nearly $90,000 in bribes. In Florida, almost the entire city administration of Jacksonville, including the mayor, chief of police, and president of the council, is indicted.

Even the Attorney General, Harry Daughtry, is found guilty of taking bribes. Now, Hoover wants action, starting with Capone. A hand-picked squad of men, believed to be immune from corruption, is tasked with proving his crimes. Heading the squad is 27-year-old Chicago native, Elliot Ness. Ness and his small team waste no time getting started, and within six months, they cost Capone massive amounts in lost revenue, almost $34 million in today's money. In addition, they're putting together a 5,000-count indictment against Capone for violations of the Prohibition Act. Capone repeatedly tries to buy off Ness and his agents,

but their resistance to bribery earns them a nickname in the press. The Untouchables. It hasn't happened by accident. The way the government now sees it, the big gangsters have been mythologized for too long. They're seen by many as modern-day Robin Hood figures. What's needed, therefore, is a moral hero, a larger-than-life character to rival Capone. Ness courts the reporter's flashbulbs, but it's all for show. While he's inflicting financial damage on Capone, depriving him of some of the revenue he needs to pay all those bribes,

nothing he's doing is big enough to put him away. It doesn't matter. The public needs new heroes to look up to. And now, in Ness and the Untouchables, they have them. It's March 1931. Chicago's South Loop Industrial District is pitch black. It's after 11pm, and there's no street lighting here. In a narrow alley, Elliot Ness takes a pull on a cigarette. He's watching a squat, white-painted brick building, where a sign above the door advertises the furniture haulage business inside.

Ness knows the sign is a lie. An hour earlier, his driver followed a truck from a speakeasy to this building. What Ness suspects is that this is one of Capone's breweries. From previous raids on similar premises, Ness knows the doors will be reinforced with steel bars. His men could use axes, but that wastes precious minutes, allowing whoever's inside to escape. So tonight, he's doing things differently. This time he's brought a key to the doors, of sorts. key to the doors of sorts. Flicking the cigarette at the gutter, he turns and walks back to the heavy flatbed truck, modified with a large snowplow fitted to the front. It almost fills the alleyway. He climbs into the passenger seat, then nods to the driver. The truck rumbles into life. The truck rumbles into life.

Barreling towards the double doors, the vehicle gathers pace. Ness unholsters his Colt 38 Detective Special. He then braces for impact. The truck explodes through the locked entrance before anyone inside knows what's happening. The driver breaks, skidding the truck to a halt, and agents pour through the shattered doors behind it. Inside, Ness sees that his suspicions were correct. Barrels line the walls, and the place is alive of brewery workers and hoodlums in sharp suits.

He announces the federal raid, and his team start making their arrests. When the last of the men has been led outside to the waiting police, Ness orders the axes be brought from the rear of the truck. Several reporters and cameramen rush inside to capture the big moment. The untouchables go to work, swinging at the barrels. Fountains of foam and golden liquid spray across the room, until the floor is awash with almost $30,000 worth of illicit beer. Just as Capone is always ready to give an interview to a reporter, so too is Ness. When the morning papers are delivered to Capone at his headquarters at the Lexington Hotel, the story of another of his breweries falling to the untouchables is splashed across the front page.

Ness's battle with Capone becomes a grudge match, an epic personal battle. On one occasion, a fleet of Big Al's trucks are confiscated and put up for public auction. But before they're sold, Ness has them driven in convoy through the city. He calls Capone, telling him to look out of his hotel window at 11am as the parade passes. Though Ness starts as little more than a nuisance, Capone knows that bit by bit his adversary is turning public opinion against him. He eventually resorts to death threats against Ness and his untouchables, but these are no more effective than the bribes. But while Capone is distracted, a far more dangerous scheme against him is gaining momentum. a far more dangerous scheme against him is gaining momentum.

Assistant Attorney General Mabel Walker-Wilbrand may be personally opposed to Prohibition, but she's got a job to do. Even in an administration riddled with corruption, she has been aggressively pursuing prosecutions against bootleggers for years. During just one year, her office processed almost 50,000 violations of the Prohibition Act, 80% of them resulting in successful convictions. What she really wants,

though, is the big fish. But between witness intimidation, police corruption, and disappearing evidence, it's all but impossible to prosecute the real power behind the gangs. In the late 20s, she tests her theory that even illegally earned income is taxable. A bootlegger from the South is successfully prosecuted for non-payment of tax on his criminal income. The precedent is set, and Big Al Capone has never filed a tax return. Even so, he's already been under scrutiny for years without success. Government investigators have examined over two million documents. They've questioned bank clerks, hotel staff, bartenders, estate agents, accountants, searching

for evidence that could bring Big Al down. But no one will talk. Despite Capone's extravagant lifestyle, there is no proof that he's earned anything at all. But then, in 1930, Prohibition agents uncover evidence that Capone's older brother, Ralph, has received sizable illegal income. Ralph is successfully prosecuted for tax evasion. Now, Capone knows what's coming. He orders his accountants to smarten up his tax affairs, and his lawyers start talks with the Treasury Department.

tax affairs, and his lawyers start talks with the Treasury Department. Though these talks eventually break down, by the time they do, the Treasury Department have the very thing they need. Sworn documents list Capone's income for the 1928-29 tax year as $100,000. In March 1931, Capone is charged with income tax evasion. Eliot Ness compounds this with an indictment for 5,000 violations of the Prohibition Act. Initially Capone is offered a plea bargain to cap his sentence of two and a half years, but the judge refuses to honor it, and Capone withdraws his guilty plea. Now with a trial on the cards, the judge has to make a call.

An honest jury dislikes a tax cheat far more than it dislikes the person who's been supplying their booze for the last decade. In the end, Capone is prosecuted, only for the tax evasion. The defence is weak, deliberately so, according to some. There's speculation that the mob have grown tired of the violence, the controversy and of Capone's flashy lifestyle and public profile. On October the 17th 1931 Capone is found guilty and sentenced to 11 years in a federal prison. It's a lengthy sentence for tax evasion but this is the culmination of years of work by

the government. Capone is public enemy number one, the most notorious criminal in history. An example has to be made. His transfer from Chicago's Dearborn station to the federal penitentiary at Atlanta is overseen by Elliot Ness. It's the only time the two men are known to have met in person. Al Capone is finally leaving town. But times have changed since he moved out to Chicago at the start of Prohibition. Two years prior to the trial, the United States suffers the most devastating stock market crash in history.

It triggers panicked savers to retrieve their savings, which in turn closes thousands of banks. What follows is the Great Depression and a new chapter in the story of Prohibition. During Capone's first year behind bars, unemployment rockets. When it peaks, almost one in four are out of work. Millions are destitute and homeless. As depression bites, the class divide widens. Now more than ever, working-class Americans resent the blatant hypocrisy of the speakeasies. The side effects of prohibition have disproportionately affected marginalized groups. It was much tougher on poor families. Like everything else that government does, it's tougher on poor families than it is on wealthy families.

The wealthy never had any problem getting the liquor that they wanted. And in the South, as always for Black people, it was much, much harder. People got their alcohol. It was much lower quality alcohol. So yeah, it did have a disproportionate effects on social classes. And it's not just financial. Rotgut, so named for sickness caused by drinking cheap liquor, is a constant risk. Rich Americans can afford the good stuff,

the branded liquor flowing from over the border in Canada or the Caribbean. Poorer customers have to take their chances with moonshine that could contain dangerous alcohols or impurities from homemade stills. But these are accidental poisonings. A far more sinister threat lurks behind the bar. The manufacture of denatured alcohol for industrial needs is still legal, but it has to be mixed with a poisonous methyl alcohol and other chemicals to make it taste and smell too awful to drink. All the bootleggers care about, though, is that it's cheap.

Criminal gangs employ chemists to innovate new ways to remove the toxins, or at least to mask them. The government doubles down, increasing the amount of poison to be mixed with industrial alcohol, adding ever worse chemical concoctions. Hardliners take a bitter view that drinkers have brought any consequences upon themselves. In New York alone, 750 people die from poisoning in a single year. Hundreds more follow. In one unlucky county in Kansas, 15,000 people are

reported as having been poisoned. Over 13 years of prohibition, it's estimated that 10,000 people have died from drinking poisoned alcohol. Thousands more have been paralyzed or blinded. All the while, they're looked down upon by officials with access to pure rum and whiskey. Critics of Prohibition lay the blame for the poisoning squarely at the door of the White House. And the movement against it is swelling. Even those who originally supported Prohibition

are horrified by the hypocrisy and rampant lawlessness that it's brought about. But the government won't be swayed. are horrified by the hypocrisy and rampant lawlessness that it's brought about. But the government won't be swayed. The Increased Penalties Act strengthens the sentences imposed and punishes bootleggers more harshly. It proves deeply unpopular. One of the legal cases that led to a huge popular opposition to what had happened to prohibition in the late 20s was in Michigan. It was a woman, a single mother,

who was arrested for the third time. She had a pint in her possession, and she got sentenced to 20 years because the third crime was a three strikes and out law. With Capone behind bars and America gripped by depression, the roaring 20s seem a distant memory. Lawlessness is endemic.

Rebellion and revolt are in the air. Some of the politically-minded working class are questioning whether the capitalist system is working for them. The country's ruling business elite had taken credit for the high times. Now they're forced to confront their part in the decline. As the voices of discontent grow louder, a perfect storm gathers. At a time when the Russian Revolution is not much more than a decade old, this train of thought is dangerous. Henry Ford, long a pacifist, now routinely carries a gun.

Wealthy businessmen form protection committees. Some even go as far as mounting machine guns on their roofs. J.D. Rockefeller, the wealthy business leader and philanthropist, has donated over a million dollars to the temperance movement. Though he's still a teetotaler, he's under no illusions about the reality of the prohibition he supported. He announces his belief that the law should be repealed. It's a bombshell.

In its wake, business leaders across the country back his call for repeal. Upper-class support for prohibition collapses. The 1932 presidential election is held against the backdrop of the worst economic crisis in history. Hoover is opposed by the Democrat Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who promises a radical New Deal for Americans. His proposals cover public works projects to provide employment, financial reforms, and stimulus packages for the economy. But he's clear about the biggest obstacle to change. The government needs cash.

There wasn't enough money to do its base functions, do the things that governments might do to bring a country out of economic trouble. There was a desperate need for tax revenue. Where do you get tax revenue? What was the largest single source of domestic tax revenue before Prohibition? Alcohol. Roosevelt promises that if elected, he'll repeal the 18th Amendment and put an end to Prohibition. To the American people, it's a no-brainer. He wins by a landslide. Franklin D. Roosevelt is sworn in as the 32nd President of the United States of America on the 4th of March, 1933. A month later, just after midnight on the morning of the 7th of April,

a truck arrives at the White House to cheers from a raucous crowd gathered at the gate. Because inside the truck are barrels of beer, newly legalized. The date is still celebrated today as National Beer Day. Finally, on the 5th of December, 1933, the 18th Amendment is repealed. On the 5th of December, 1933, the 18th Amendment is repealed. The manufacture, transport and sale of alcohol is once again legal. As people are visiting bars to buy their first legal drink in over 13 years, Al Capone is beginning his second year in Atlanta Penitentiary.

Thanks to neurosyphilis, gonorrhea, and a heavy cocaine addiction that has damaged his nose, at 33 his strength is already failing. Nevertheless, his time in Atlanta is comfortable. The officials inside are just as susceptible to corruption as they were on the outside. Photographs emerge of his cell, complete with carpet, lamps, artwork and a typewriter. He has cigars and other luxuries, and spends his afternoons playing tennis. It's exactly the kind of bad press the Bureau of Prisons wanted to avoid. On the 22nd of August 1934, just ten days after its opening, Capone is transferred to the already infamous Alcatraz Island, an inescapable fortress in the middle of San Francisco Bay, built to hold the most

dangerous of criminals. There are no comforts on the notorious rock. His cell is the same as the other prisoners, a cold, cramped room in a concrete building, constantly whipped by the freezing weather in the bay. Life here is dull, painful, and monotonous. And, to top it all, the staff are immune to bribery. His glory days behind him, Big Al finds himself a target for other inmates. Prisoners eager to make a name for themselves. He's stabbed with a pair of scissors and beaten. After four and a half years, he's transferred to the mainland, before finally being paroled in November 1939. Though he's one of the first patients to receive penicillin, it's already too late

to stop the neurosyphilis eating his brain. According to his doctor, by 1946 he has the mental capacities of a 12-year-old. His wife continues to care for him at their Florida mansion. But a year later, Alphonse Gabriel Capone dies. He's just 48 years old. His nemesis, Eliot Ness, the public face of prohibition law and order, does not survive him by long. Womanizing and drinking tarnish his reputation. A highly publicized drink driving accident and cover-up even more so. His career withers and he ends up working odd jobs, drinking heavily in bars, regaling locals with his tales

of prohibition raids. A chance meeting leads to a collaboration with writer Oscar Fraley, with whom he works on a book about his time in Chicago. It will be his last project. Penniless and apparently forgotten, on the 16th of May 1957, he enters his house, walks to the kitchen sink for a glass of water, and drops dead of a massive heart attack. In a cruel twist of fate,

his death comes just a month before the publication of the book. Titled The Untouchables, it sells 1.5 million copies. It also spawns a hugely popular television series that runs for four years from 1959. Though he died in near obscurity, these retellings of his years locked in battle against the gang bosses secure Eliot Ness

as a hero in the public's eyes. As Prohibition recedes into history, what is its legacy? Did it achieve its goals? Not according to many historians. Even at the time, most Americans were only too happy to see the back of the 18th Amendment. True, incidents of some diseases linked to alcohol dropped. Cirrhosis of the liver reduced during Prohibition, as did hospital admissions for alcohol-related psychosis. Arrests for drunkenness also plummeted, and absenteeism from work improved.

But arrests for other reasons rocketed. Organized crime flourished, along with widespread corruption. The poor got poorer. criminals got rich. In 1920, over 200 distilleries, a thousand breweries, and nearly 200,000 liquor stores closed overnight. Billions of dollars of tax revenue were lost over the next 13 years, and effectively funneled into the pockets of men like Al Capone. On top of this, the government had to pay the increased costs of policing the new laws. It's estimated that repealing prohibition had a social benefit of $432 million per year

in the mid-thirties. And yet even today there is still support for prohibition in the United States. And yet even today there is still support for prohibition in the United States. As the national law was repealed, the powers around control of alcohol were devolved to states and then to counties, cities and townships. Today there are more than 500 dry municipalities across the country, mostly in the deep south, Texas, the Appalachian Mountains, and the old manufacturing centers of the so-called Rust Belt of the Northeast. Famously, Jack Daniels, a major American distillery,

sits in Moore County, Tennessee, a dry county. Its whiskey is not available to purchase in its hometown. You know, there were states, I believe it was Mississippi that did not revoke its own prohibition law until the 1960s. Tennessee also was very late. So that, you know, the repeal amendment, the 21st Amendment, which comes in in 1933,

gives the authority of alcohol control back to the states. So the states could do whatever they wished. So there were many states that continued to be dry after repeal. And then after those states repealed statewide prohibition, there were towns and counties that remained dry at their own option. It was called local option. The state would pass a law that says it is up to the locality to decide whether this is going to be dry or not.

The trend over time has been for counties and townships to liberalize their drinking laws, rather than for more controls. The Prohibition Party has nominated a candidate for president every year since 1872. In 2016, they had their strongest results since the 1980s, with 5,617 votes nationwide. Today they're more realistic about the prospect of national prohibition, and advocate a change of public opinion first, in order to gather support rather than government-led laws.

A 2018 poll conducted by CNN found that 18% of Americans would like to see drinking made illegal again. However, in a country that fiercely defends its constitutional rights and personal freedoms, it's difficult to imagine a return to national prohibition. Next time on Short History Of, we'll bring you a short history of the Knights Templar. It was a very important point which was discussed.

Why, how, and in what situations they are allowed to kill. You know, it was a brotherhood. They were not really monks, but very close. But you know, monks like the Benedictines, they were only working a little and praying. But the difference is the brotherhood of the Knights Templars, they were praying, they were working, but they were also fighting, which was very different. You have never seen before a monk fighting because you have to kill somebody. That's next time on Short History Of.