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 banned the manufacture, storage, transportation, and sale of alcohol and alcoholic beverages under of the Volstead Act. With the Eighteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, the U.S. government 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 did the country "unspeakable harm." In anticipation of the introduction of the Volstead Act, people began to stock up on alcohol, it was illegal to drink but not to consume at home. Say no to plagiarism. Get a custom essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”?Get the original essayThe introduction of prohibition must have been a big mistake on the part of the US federal government. Instead of preventing the American people from engaging in unpopular behavior and reducing crime rates, they have instead exacerbated alcohol problems and, through the back door, encouraged the rise of crime and corruption. Before the Volstead Act went into effect in 1920, banning alcohol, big city street gangs were a small, insignificant group 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 birth to the years of bootlegging, and bootlegging led to organized crime. Gangsters and their accomplices were suddenly everywhere. Prohibition was supposed to herald a new era of sobriety and clean living. Instead, it was the dawn of violence unprecedented 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 lucrative opportunity for the underworld. The money that was to be made by violating the Eighteenth Amendment prohibiting the sale, manufacture, and transportation of liquor and beer was staggering. It is estimated that annual sales of moonshine were $3. 6 billion nationally in 1926. Prohibition proved unpopular among many Americans who saw it as a violation of their freedom, and many Americans simply did not want to stop drinking. They had suffered from the First World War for four years and now wanted to have fun. A strong demand for alcohol was created and the mobsters, or rather the opportunists, began their reign over some of the largest American cities. One of the most infamous American mob bosses of the 1920s, Al "Scarface" Capone, said when asked if he was a bootlegger: "All he did was selling whiskey and beer to the best people.” All it did was respond to a fairly popular demand. Manufacturing, distributing and selling beer and liquor was a natural fit for the expertise of gangs like Capone's, as well as gangs in cities like New York, Detroit, Kansas City, Philadelphia, Cincinnati and St. Louis. To feed this seemingly endless thirst, the leaders of the underground businesses produced and delivered copious amounts of beer and moonshine. The money that circulated in the contraband trade also led to the expansion of rackets such as gambling and moneylendingusurious. New rackets have been created. also created in the form of money laundering and an escalation of the arms race was also financed. Despite the efforts of the U.S. Coast Guard, gangsters became smugglers, smuggling alcohol from Britain, Europe and Canada. With America's long coastline, only twenty-six coastal vessels available, and the Coast Guard severely understaffed, it was extremely difficult to maintain the police force, with only five percent of the liquor requisitioned. Gangsters organized a massive cross-border smuggling of alcohol from Canada, often making ingenious efforts to hide it all in cars. Fleets of trucks owned by gangsters brought this beer and whiskey to the cities. Prohibition had brought the mob to the forefront of American life, and gangsters became experts in alcohol and bootlegging. Budding gangsters in the cities quickly spotted an opportunity and if that meant going to war with rival gangs for control of profitable liquor franchises, then bite it. From 1920 onwards, the new gangs, younger and greedier, behaved much more brutally, 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 such as Al Capone and Dion "Dean" O' Banion would achieve immortality. business for himself, each gangster wanted a bigger share of the trade. Gang leaders competed for geographic shares 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 settle their differences through discussion. A revolver worked better. And the Thompson submachine gun, better known as the Tommy gun, was even more effective. Shortly after the gang wars broke out, O'Banion began contesting the Torrio-Capone gang's territory. O'Banion's thugs tried to intimidate saloon owners into buying their beer from him and O'Banion began paying the police more for protection than Capone. In one incident, three men entered O' Banion's flower shop, he was a florist by day, and one man shook his hand and held him steady, while another man shot five bullets in his body at close range, and a sixth in O' Banion's magazine. head. In revenge, Capone's car was riddled with bullets, but Capone was not inside. Throughout the 1920s, the massacres continued and intensified. The police would show up and investigate, and occasionally make arrests. But gang members kept a code of silence and no one ever seemed to be tried or convicted. During the first five years of prohibition, 136 gang murders occurred in Chicago alone, and only six of those murders were brought to justice, with all but one ending in acquittal. The sixth involved a gang member who blew off a rival's head at a police station. One of the main reasons why organized crime became as big as it did during the Prohibition years was corruption within the system. Everyone was there. Undoubtedly, the laxity of those who were supposed to enforce the law during the years of Prohibition encouraged organized crime bosses to believe that everyone had a price. Many police officers and public officials were corrupt, as were those who were 1933.