Changes

In the early days of prohibition, enforcement was straightforward. Many of the iconic images from this period show federal officials breaking bottles of alcohol or dumping barrels of beer into open drains. Despite these dramatic scenes, large swathes of the nation were not ready to give up the intoxicating liquid. Wherever there is demand for a product, market forces will provide a supply. When the demand is for an illegal substance, that supply will also be illegal. As a result, Prohibition coincided with a spectacular rise in organized crime in the United States. Speakeasies, or illegally hidden saloons, sprang up in major cities across America. To provide the alcohol these establishments served, a whole network of illegal businesses dedicated to the production and delivery of alcohol appeared.  Major crime organizations that would later be romanticized by Hollywood rose to prominence through the lucrative business of supplying thirsty Americans with the alcohol they demanded. The gang wars that resulted were brutal in their efficiency and in their death toll. Rival gangs fought over territory, and the money they made often flowed into local politics. Federal enforcement of Prohibition seemed to consistently stay a step behind the gangs who provided the illegal alcohol and the 1920s saw increasing division between the fast-moving urban life and the more traditional and conservative rural society. Depending on your perspective, Prohibition was either a failure or at best a muted success. By all accounts, it contributed to the rise of other societal ills, regardless of the benefits achieved through less public drunkenness. As people who wanted to drink found ways around the law, and the immediate statistical benefits of Prohibition became less clear by the end of the 1920s, the popularity of the ban dwindled.