How did Prohibition help to foster an increase in Crime across America, how did the crime evolve?
This question could be analyzed in any of the following ways:
- One could look at the obvious, the spike in bootlegging and other aspects of the alcohol production process. Also, taking into consideration the new idea of "Gangsters" and crime operating as a machine.
- Or, one could look at it as a broader image, dissecting the severity of the crimes and how prohibition not only increased crime, but was cause for an overall more violent society. Also focusing on the organization of crime.
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Vocabulary
Various aspects of prohibition:
- Bathtub Gin: Gin made, typically unsafely, at one's home. Called this because the largest pot in a home is typically the bathtub.
- Dry: Without liquor. Used to describe locations.
- Eighteenth Amendment: The amendment which made alcohol illegal.
- Speakeasy: An establishment which illegally sells alcohol. On some occasions you bought the ice and lemon then provided the liquor yourself.
- Al Capone: One of, if not, the most successful bootleggers of the era.
- Bootlegger: or "Rum Runner" Is a person who illegally makes or transports alcohol.
- Gangsters: A member of a gang or crime organization. Also called Mobsters.
- Anti-Saloon League: An organization which lobbied for prohibition.
- Temperance: The movement to ban alcohol (Occurred as a movement primarily in the 1800s didn't achieve success until prohibition).
- Women's Christian Temperance Union: First mass organization for women devoted to social reform.
- Andrew Volstead: Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee and author of the National Prohibition Act, often referred to as the Volstead Act.