Today, the Detroit River is one of the busiest waterways in the United States, carrying iron ore and other goods to and from Canada. Just 100 years ago, those waterways were used to transport illegal liquor from Canada to the United States (“Rum-running in Windsor”). The men who picked him up were called the Purple Gang. The Purple Gang was a predominantly Jewish, well-established group of criminals who controlled the city's drug, liquor, vice and gambling trade in the late 1920s ("The Purple Gang"). The war of the cleaners and the dyers In 1924, the laundry business was going terribly. Companies kept prices too low to make a profit, and their tailors threatened to leave if they had to pay their cleaning bills. Business was bad because the laundry service union run by the Purple Gang was wreaking havoc in Detroit. They threatened anyone who did not join the union by bombing or harassing them (Fitzpatrick, “Cleaners and Dyers War”). Seeing an opportunity for crime, Francis X. Martel asked Ben Abrams to start an organization, which could then be used as a front for th...