Rum Running And The Roaring Twenties

On January 17, 1920, the Eighteenth Amendment took effect in the United States, prohibiting the manufacture, sale, use, or importation of alcoholic beverages. Many thought this action would bring peace and tranquility to the country, but that was not the case. Instead, the Prohibition experiment failed dismally in the United States, and nowhere worse than in Michigan. The state’s proximity to Canada, where large amounts of liquor were manufactured, made it a major center for the smuggling and sale of illegal alcohol. Although federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies attempted to stop the flow of liquor into Michigan, an astounding 75 percent of all illegal liquor brought into the United States was transported across the Detroit River from Canada. Philip P. Mason regales readers with stories of the bungled efforts by officials at every level to control the smuggling and sale of illegal alcohol. Most entertaining are the creative smuggling efforts undertaken by citizens from all walks of life—from the poor to the affluent, from upstanding citizens to organized criminals and gangsters. Using police and court records, newspaper accounts, and interviews with those who lived during the time, Mason has constructed a fascinating history of life in Michigan during Prohibition.

Using police and court records, newspaper accounts and interviews, this work is a history of the prohibition era, when from 1920 to 1933 all alcoholic beveridges were banned. The book focuses on the Michigan-Ontario waterway, separating Canada and the US, which was used to illegally import liquor.

It was a whiskey-soaked age that was supposed to be dry. Prohibition may have been the law of the land, but hte Chesapeake Bay country was awash in a sea of illegal alcohol. The marshes were teeming with hidden stills, and bootleg liquor was smuggled throughout the waterways and the adjoining countryside by daring men in fast boats and faster cars. Chesapeake Rumrunners of the Roaring Twenties is a saga of people--watermen and steamer captains, mob raketeers and "legitimate" buisnessmen--all of them wanting part of the action. In the maze of Bay waters, boats played a key role in that action, many disguised as workboats but built for speed and the ability to out-maneuver the law. On the other side, Billy Sunday and an army of temerpance crusaders campaigned tirelessly to encourage Prohibition, while federal agents and Coast Guardsmen shared the impossible task of enforcing it.

Retells the story of America--and of its engagement with its neighbors and the rest of the world--as a series of highly contentious battles over clandestine commerce.

The Roaring Twenties were filled with a range of events, experiences, fears, laws and advances that impacted Martha's Vineyard. Island residents were involved in rumrunning. Dozens died of the Spanish Flu. Women voted on Island. Dorothy West joined the Harlem Renaissance. Immigration from the Azores slowed, and airplanes landed in Katama. Tourism blossomed and business boomed. Local author Thomas Dresser shares the back story and the import of this remarkable decade and how it has shaped Vineyarders.

When Edwin Sutherland introduced the concept of white-collar crime, he referred to the respectable businessmen of his day who had, in the course of their occupations, violated the law whenever it was advantageous to do so. Yet since the founding of the American Republic, numerous otherwise respectable individuals had been involved in white-collar criminality. Using organized smuggling as an exemplar, this narrative history of American smuggling establishes that white-collar crime has always been an integral part of American history when conditions were favorable to violating the law. This dark side of the American Dream originally exposed itself in colonial times with elite merchants of communities such as Boston trafficking contraband into the colonies. It again came to the forefront during the Embargo of 1809 and continued through the War of 1812, the Civil War, nineteenth century filibustering, the Mexican Revolution and Prohibition. The author also shows that the years of illegal opium trade with China by American merchants served as precursor to the later smuggling of opium into the United States. The author confirms that each period of smuggling was a link in the continuing chain of white-collar crime in the 150 years prior to Sutherland’s assertion of corporate criminality.

In 1920, the 18th Amendment made the production, transportation and sale of alcohol not merely illegal—it was unconstitutional. Yet no legislation could end the demand for alcohol. Enterprising rumrunners worked to meet that demand with cunning, courage, machineguns and speedboats powered by aircraft engines. They out-maneuvered the U.S. Coast Guard and risked their lives to deliver illicit liquor. Smugglers like Bill McCoy, the Bahama Queen, and the Gulf Stream Pirate, along with many others, ran operations along the U.S. coastline until Prohibition was repealed in 1933. Drawing on legal records, newspaper articles and Coast Guard files, this history describes how rumrunners battled the Dry Navy and corrupted U.S. law enforcement, in order to keep America wet.