On January 16, 1920, America ran dry. After two decades of campaigning by the Anti-Saloon League and the Women's Christian Temperance Union, the United States federal government prohibited the manufacture, storage, transportation, and sale of alcohol and alcoholic beverages in the Volstead Act. With the eighteenth amendment to the U.S. Constitution, the American government has inadvertently ushered in a new era of illicit activity in the form of crime and corruption. In America's attempt to improve the lives of its citizens by introducing a nationwide ban on all alcohol, the introduction of the Volstead Act instead caused the country "untold harm." In preparation for the introduction of the Volstead Law, people began to stock up on alcohol, it was illegal to drink it but not consume it in their own homes. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay The introduction of Prohibition must have been a grave mistake on the part of the American federal government. Instead of preventing the American people from engaging in disapproved of behaviors and reducing the crime rate, they have instead intensified alcohol-related problems and, in a circular manner, encouraged increased crime and corruption. Before the Volstead Act, which outlawed alcohol, went into effect in 1920, street gangs in big cities were small, insignificant collections of angry young men who specialized in illegal vices, such as gambling. But the arrival of the Eighteenth Amendment fueled the rise of aggressive and violent gangsters. Prohibition gave rise to the years of bootlegging, and bootlegging led to organized crime. Gangsters and their accomplices were now suddenly everywhere. Prohibition was supposed to herald a new era of sobriety and clean living. Instead it was the dawn of unprecedented violence in American life. Prohibition took loosely organized neighborhood gangs and put them in organized communication with each other. The onset of Prohibition proved to be a huge and profitable opportunity for the underworld. The money that could be made by violating the Eighteenth Amendment, which prohibited the sale, manufacture, and transportation of spirits and beer, was enormous. Annual sales of bootleg liquor were believed to have amounted to $3. 6 billion nationwide by 1926. Prohibition proved unpopular with many Americans who viewed it as an infringement on their freedom, and many Americans simply did not want to stop drinking. They had suffered for four years during the First World War and now they wanted to have fun. A strong demand for alcohol was created and the mobsters, or rather the opportunists, began their reign in some of America's largest cities. One of America's most infamous mob bosses of the 1920s, Al 'Scarface' Capone, said when asked if he was a bootlegger that 'All [he] did was sell whiskey and beer to [their] best people. All [he] did was satisfy a pretty popular demand. Making, distributing, and selling beer and liquor was a natural fit for the experience of gangs like Capone's, as well as gangs in cities like New York, Detroit, Kansas City, Philadelphia, Cincinnati, and St. Louis. To satisfy the seemingly endless thirst, the leaders of the clandestine activities produced and distributed a plentiful supply of beer and liquor. also created in the form of money laundering and a growing arms race was also financed. Despite the efforts of the US Coast Guard, gangsters have become bootleggers, smuggling alcohol from theGreat Britain, from Europe and Canada. With America's extensive coastline, only twenty-six coastal vessels available, and the Coast Guard severely understaffed, it was extremely difficult to control, with only 5% of the alcohol being requisitioned. Gangsters have organized massive cross-border trafficking of liquor from Canada, often going to great lengths to hide it all in cars. Fleets of trucks owned by gangsters brought this beer and whiskey to the cities. Prohibition had brought the gangland to the forefront of American life, and gangsters became experts in liquor and bootlegging. Budding gangsters in the cities were quick to spot an opportunity and if that meant going to war with rival gangs for control of lucrative liquor franchises, then it didn't matter. From 1920 onwards the new gangs, younger and greedier, behaved much more ferociously, using terror as a weapon. Nowhere was this more true than in Chicago. The front lines of the bootlegging wars were fought in Chicago, and the names of a generation of gangsters like Al Capone and Dion 'Dean' O' Banion would achieve immortality. For a personal venture, each gangster wanted a larger share of the trade. Gang leaders competed for geographic share in brothels and speakeasies. A speakeasy was a place where the illegal sale and distribution of alcohol took place. As individual gangsters became more demanding and territorial, few stooped to resolve their differences through discussion. A revolver worked better. And even more effective was the Thompson submachine gun, better known as the Tommy gun. Not long after the gang wars broke out, O' Banion began challenging the Torrio-Capone gang's territory. O'Banion's thugs tried to intimidate saloon owners into buying him beer, and O'Banion began paying the police more for protection than he paid Capone. In one incident, three men entered the flower shop of O' Banion, who was a florist by day, and one man shook his hand and resisted, while another man fired five bullets into his body at close range and a sixth in O' Banion's flower shop. Head. In revenge, Capone's car was riddled with bullets, but Capone was not inside. Throughout the 1920s the killings continued and intensified. The police would show up and investigate, and occasionally make and arrest. But gang members maintained a code of silence and no one ever seemed to be tried and convicted. During the first five years of prohibition there were 136 gangland murders in Chicago alone, of these murders only six were brought to trial, and all but one ended in acquittal. The sixth involved a gang member who blew off the head of a rival inside a police precinct. One of the main reasons why organized crime emerged as prominently as it did during the Prohibition years was corruption within the system. Everyone agreed. No doubt the negligence of those who were supposed to enforce the law during the Prohibition years encouraged the belief among crime bosses that everyone had a price. Many police officers and public officials were corrupt, as were those employed specifically as prohibition agents. The most visible of these offenders were in Chicago. The mayor at the time, Big Bill Thompson, was bought and bluffed by gangsters who kept him in office and, subsequently, in alcohol. It seemed that if it was acceptable for the mayor to be corrupt, it was also acceptable for everyone else on the city's payroll. Police corruption in Chicago was rampant. Only a very small number could be trusted 1933.