The Failure of the 18th Amendment: Why 1920s Prohibition Didn't Work

Federal Agents Enforcing "The Law"

On January 16, 1920 the 18th Amendment was signed into law and made liquor and alcohol of all kinds illegal to manufacture or consume throughout the United States.

Little did lawmakers know that the bill’s passage would set the stage for one of the bloodiest and most raucous decades in American history. Prohibition automatically turned many law-abiding citizens into criminals.

More Harm Than Good

President Herbert Hoover called Prohibition “a great social and economic experiment, noble in motive.” As an experiment and as a noble cause it failed.

If it wasn’t already alcohol became big business. Whereas before it was produced in small batches, legally, now alcohol production and consumption transformed into a pastime and became a cornerstone of the economy.

Al Capone: The American Antihero

Rum-running, gin-mills, smuggling, conspiracy, speakeasies and racketeering were the real fruits of Prohibition. There was no possible way to enforce the law as it was written, since much of the undermanned police force and the newly formed F.B.I. were simply outmatched by the deep-pockets, cunning and drive of bootleggers and gangsters.

This inequality gave rise to some of the most famous names to come out of the 1920s: Al Capone, Jack “Legs” Diamond, Lucky Luciano and many others became household names.

Americans drank with a renewed fervor. And with the nation’s attention focused on booze, they drank more than ever before. Industrious folks invented ways to dupe the law, from whisky flasks in women’s garter-belts to hollow walking-canes full of gin.

“Hello, Suckers”

1920s Prohibition was unenforceable, there simply weren’t enough straight police to compete with the crooked ones. The borders and seaboards of the United States being overrun with booze smugglers: rum from the Caribbean and whiskey from Canada.

Texas Guinan: "The Queen of the Nightclub"

In 1921 alone, the second year of Prohibition, Federal agents captured 500,000 gallons of hard liquor and 5,000,000 gallons of beer. That’s quite a party!

The Big Business of Booze

All in all, liquor production, smuggling and distribution became a large chunk of the American economy and industry.

Homemade stills popped up across the landscape. In fact Federal agents seized 96,000 stills in 1921, 170,000 in 1925, and 282,000 in 1930. Something is wrong with this picture. Prohibition was supposed to stop alcohol production, sale and consumption, but things progressively got worse.

George Remus, a former lawyer, was one of those opportunistic people that saw the profit potential of the liquor trade. He positioned himself to become “the King of the Bootleggers”.

Remus devised a way to produce pure “medicinal” alcohol legally. He bought up the several legal “medicinal” distilleries around the United States, then hired goons to “steal” this alcohol from his plants. They then tuned around and sold these booze throughout New York, Chicago, and the East Coast.

1920s Prohibition and Crime

Hymie Weiss: Busted As A Result of Prohibition

If there is one major theme to come out of the 1920s other than fashion and music, it is crime as a career. The rise of organized crime was thanks in most part to the passage of Prohibition in 1920.

Gangsters and business people like Owney Madden (Owner of the “Cotton Club“), Dutch Schultz, Hymie Weiss, Texas Guinan (who would typically meet her brothel customers with a "Hello, Suckers"), The “Purple Gang” of Detroit, all took advantage of the public’s demand for booze and debauchery and turned it into power and influence throughout society. They forced nightclub and speakeasy owners to buy their booze under the intimidation of death.

Large cities like New York, Kansas City, and of course Chicago were taken over by these powerful business men and women with a penchant for crime and murder. Chicago alone averaged over 400 gang related murders a year during the decade of 1920s Prohibition.

Many of these murders of course came at the hands of Capone’s henchmen.

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