Prohibition and organised crime
Why Prohibition Was Introduced
On 17 January 1920, Prohibition came into force across the United States. The Eighteenth Amendment, ratified in January 1919, was supported by a powerful coalition of social reformers, religious groups and temperance campaigners who argued that alcohol destroyed families, fuelled crime and reduced industrial productivity. The Women’s Christian Temperance Union and the Anti-Saloon League had lobbied Congress for decades.
The timing of Prohibition was shaped by the First World War. The large number of German-American families who owned breweries gave temperance campaigners a patriotic argument: banning alcohol would hurt German immigrants and free up grain for the war effort. The Volstead Act of October 1919 defined the beverages covered by the amendment and gave the federal government the power to enforce the ban.
Prohibition began on 17 January 1920 under the Eighteenth Amendment, enforced by the Volstead Act. It was supported by temperance groups, religious organisations and some progressives who believed alcohol was a social evil. It lasted until the Twenty-First Amendment ended it in December 1933.
Life Under Prohibition: Speakeasies and Bootleggers
Prohibition did not stop Americans drinking — it drove the trade underground. Speakeasies sprang up in every major city. Estimates suggest that by the late 1920s there were around 30,000 speakeasies in New York City alone — more than double the number of legal bars before Prohibition. Customers needed a password to enter, and owners bribed police officers to look the other way.
Bootlegging — the illegal manufacture and sale of alcohol — became enormously profitable. Criminals who had previously run small-scale operations now controlled vast networks for importing, manufacturing and distributing spirits and beer. Alcohol was smuggled across the Canadian and Mexican borders and brewed illegally in private stills known as “moonshine” operations. The profits from bootlegging bankrolled the rise of organised crime in American cities.
No figure better symbolised organised crime during Prohibition than Al Capone. Born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1899, Capone moved to Chicago and by the mid-1920s controlled the city’s illegal alcohol trade. His gang, known as the Chicago Outfit, earned an estimated $60 million per year at its peak — equivalent to hundreds of millions in today’s money. Capone’s operations covered bootlegging, gambling, prostitution and extortion. He employed over 600 gunmen and routinely bribed police officers, judges and local politicians.
On 14 February 1929, members of Capone’s gang, dressed as police officers, murdered seven members of a rival gang in a Chicago garage. The St Valentine's Day Massacre shocked even a public accustomed to gang violence. It illustrated how completely Prohibition had empowered criminal organisations. Despite being widely blamed, Capone was never charged with the murders. He was eventually convicted in October 1931 of tax evasion and sentenced to eleven years in prison.
The St Valentine’s Day Massacre took place on 14 February 1929. Seven members of the Bugs Moran gang were killed in Chicago, widely attributed to Capone’s organisation. It demonstrated the lethal power of criminal syndicates that Prohibition had created and helped turn public opinion against the Eighteenth Amendment.
Political Corruption: Harding and the Ohio Gang
Organised crime could not have flourished without political corruption. President Warren G. Harding, elected in 1920, surrounded himself with cronies from Ohio who used their positions for personal gain — a group known as the Ohio Gang. Harding himself was not shown to be personally corrupt in the major scandals, but his administration was riddled with dishonesty.
The most damaging scandal was the Teapot Dome Scandal. Interior Secretary Albert Fall secretly leased government oil reserves at Teapot Dome, Wyoming, and Elk Hills, California, to private oil companies in exchange for cash bribes totalling around $400,000. Fall became the first United States Cabinet member to be convicted of a crime committed while in office. Harding died in August 1923, before the full scale of the corruption was revealed, but his presidency is remembered as one of the most corrupt in American history.
Prohibition failed for several interconnected reasons. The federal government employed only around 1,500 Prohibition agents to police the entire country — a hopelessly small force that was also poorly paid and therefore vulnerable to bribery. Enforcement was inconsistent: in rural areas, especially in the South, Prohibition was often accepted; in major cities it was widely defied.
The profits from bootlegging were so enormous that criminal gangs could afford to bribe almost anyone who stood in their way. Public opinion also shifted over the decade. Many Americans who had initially supported Prohibition came to see it as an infringement of personal liberty that had simply created a more dangerous society. The Wall Street Crash of 1929 provided the final push — legalising alcohol would create jobs and generate tax revenue for a struggling government. The Twenty-First Amendment, which repealed Prohibition, was ratified in December 1933.