THE ROARING 20S 1920 1929
AMERICAN ORGANIZED CRIME OF THE 1920S
|
Question
[CLICK ON ANY CHOICE TO KNOW THE RIGHT ANSWER]
|
|
|
Yes, it was a lot harder for Americans to get alcohol.
|
|
|
No, more Americans were drinking and it brought organized crime to America.
|
|
|
Yes, more people were working and fewer people were abusing their wives.
|
|
|
None of the above
|
Detailed explanation-1: -Though the advocates of prohibition had argued that banning sales of alcohol would reduce criminal activity, it in fact directly contributed to the rise of organized crime. After the Eighteenth Amendment went into force, bootlegging, or the illegal distillation and sale of alcoholic beverages, became widespread.
Detailed explanation-2: -The stringent prohibition imposed by the Volstead Act, however, represented a more drastic action than many Americans expected. Nevertheless, National Prohibition succeeded both in lowering consumption and in retaining political support until the onset of the Great Depression altered voters’ priorities.
Detailed explanation-3: -Organized crime emerged because of Prohibition, as it gave gangsters another racketeering operation. Mobsters made millions of dollars every year from bootlegging and running thousands of speakeasies.
Detailed explanation-4: -Rates of cirrhosis of the liver dropped by 10 to 20 percent, deaths from acute alcoholism fell from 7.3 per 100, 000 people in 1907 to 2.5 in 1932, and arrests for public drunkenness and rates of alcoholic psychosis declined as well. And, as the prohibitionists had hoped, wage earners altered patterns of consumption.
Detailed explanation-5: -Not only did Prohibition fail, over the long-run, to decrease the overall consumption of liquor, it also failed to decrease taxpayer burden, the prison population, and public corruption.