Perception Changed: Prohibition In The 1920's

America: A Perception Changed

Prohibition, the age of ‘dry states’, illegal drinking, and, all in all, the height of organized criminal activity; veterans joined the crime as a last option, vulnerable humans ran the streets unemployed and looking for a way to drown their sorrows. Organized criminals defiantly took advantage of the “Roaring Twenties” misfortunes, they provided illegal alcohol to the people, gave jobs to the unemployed, who needed the lucrative labor, and drove the number of alcoholics up the wall in droves. “The arrests under the Volstead Act from 1920- 1929 reached 550,307 with 1928 having the highest at 75,307 arrests” (Volstead). With Mafia members, like Al Capone, taking the cake on headliners, the people of America slowly

Alcohol, in the 1920’s, was something many people took a great joy, but they only did so because it was illegal. If someone is told ‘Whatever you do, don’t think about a pink elephant’ the person will almost always end up picturing a pink elephant in their head. This same principle applies to prohibition; the law made it so that alcohol was illegal: “the researchers call this the ‘forbidden fruit hypothesis,’ based upon previous research that has demonstrated that people find things more desirable when they off-limits or forbidden. There’s something in human nature that wants what it can’t have” (Grohol). Organized criminals such as Al Capone and John Dillinger were popular, both in the papers and in their under life as part of the Mafia, were looked upon with a reverence not ever seen among common people to criminals. “To many people, he (Al Capone) seemed like a real-life Robin Hood, opening soup kitchens for the unemployed and giving large sums to charity” (Sandbrook). Prohibition changed the way people saw these

Veterans were in need of the money they were promised by the government but, the government didn’t give it until hundreds, if not thousands of veterans were looking for a quick way to earn money (i.e. organized crime). The people of the prohibition age already looked upon the criminals in organized crime as heroes because they supply their need, but when the veterans, the war heroes that saved them from communism and gave them freedom, started taking jobs with the Mafia and, other organized crime organizations, the people assumed that it wasn’t so bad. “Organized crime is lucrative” (Organized Crime) so veterans that needed money were basically forced into the only jobs available to them. The government definitely didn’t help prohibition by avoiding paying the vets, if anything, it was the straw that broke the camel’s back, with the end term being the fact that prohibition