PROHIBITION IN THE 1920s
In 1909, the creation of alcohol started to be a problem, it created attacks on the sale. A anti saloon league established in 1893 it started to complain about the use of liquor due to the accidents in factories and with the banning of alcohol it created an increase in efficiency of the workers. In 1919 congress passed the national Prohibition act. Although both federal and local government struggled to enforce Prohibition during the 1920s. The illegal sale of liquor known as “bootlegging” went on throughout the decade, along with the operation of “speakeasies”, which are stores or nightclubs that sell alcohol, the.In addition, the Prohibition era encouraged the rise of criminal activity associated with bootlegging. The most notorious example was the Chicago gangster Al Capone. According to History.com Alcapone made a staggering “$60 million annually from bootleg operations and speakeasies” . Such illegal operations fueled a corresponding rise in gang violence. Due to the limited amount of alcohol it created a high price of bootleg liquor meaning that the nation’s working class and poor were far more restricted during Prohibition than middle or upper class Americans. In the novel The great Gatsby tom tells Gatsby “I found out what your 'drug-stores' were." He turned to us and spoke rapidly. "He and this Wolfsheim bought up a lot of side-street drug-stores here and in Chicago and sold grain alcohol over the counter. That's one of his little stunts. I picked him for a bootlegger the first time I saw him, and I wasn't far wrong."Chapter 9 Page 133. This illustrates that the business at this time is corrupt and to get money like that means suspension. The only way Gatsby makes enough money to allow him to be able to live near daisy is by bootlegging, an illegal activity. Tom, Daisy's husband reveals the truth about Gatsby business .Gatsby makes it his life's mission to become rich, thinking that if he completes that goal daisy will come back to him.
"Meanwhile Tom brought out a bottle of whiskey from a locked bureau door. I have been drunk just twice in my life, and the second time was that afternoon."Chapter 2 page 29
In the main hall a bar with a real brass rail was set up, and stocked with gins and liquors and with cordials so long forgotten that most of his female guests were too young to know one from the other.”Chapter 3 Page 40
"I've been drunk for about a week now, and I thought it might sober me up to sit in a library." Chapter 3 page 46
“Anyhow, he gives large parties,” said Jordan, changing the subject with an urbane distaste for the concrete. “And I like large parties. They’re so intimate. At small parties there isn’t any privacy.” Chapter 3 Page 49
“Snell was there three days before he went to the penitentiary, so drunk out on the gravel drive that Mrs. Ulysses Swett’s automobile ran over his right hand. The Dancies came, too, and S. B. Whitebait, who was well over sixty, and Maurice A. Flink, and the Hammerheads, and Beluga the tobacco importer, and Beluga’s girls.” Chapter 4 page 62
I was a bridesmaid. I came into her room half an hour before the bridal dinner and found her lying on her bed as lovely as the June night in her flowered dress––and as drunk as a monkey. She had a bottle of sauterne in one hand and a letter in the other.“‘Gratulate me,” she muttered. “Never had a drink before but oh, how I do enjoy it.” Chapter 4, Page 76
“It's a great advantage not to drink among hard-drinking people. You can hold your tongue, and, moreover, you can time any little irregularity of your own so that everybody else is so blind that they don't see or care.” Chapter 4 Page 77
“He’s a bootlegger,” said the young ladies, moving somewhere between his cocktails and his flowers. Chapter 4, Page 61
I found out what your 'drug-stores' were." He turned to us and spoke rapidly. "He and this Wolfsheim bought up a lot of side-street drug-stores here and in Chicago and sold grain alcohol over the counter. That's one of his little stunts. I picked him for a bootlegger the first time I saw him, and I wasn't far wrong."Chapter 9 Page 133
"They were careless people, Tom and Daisy — they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money of their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made." Chapter 9
v
v