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Prohibition During The Great Depression

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The great depression had many downfalls. One of the things that happened during the great depression was prohibition. Prohibition was a big deal. There were many people who were for prohibition expecting to make the United States better. In all reality they really made things worse. Crime rates started to rise. Gangsters were smuggling alcohol into the country. The economy declined rapidly. People lost their jobs. Police were being bribed to look the other way. The United States went billions of dollars in debt from paying law enforcement and court cases. What little money people had they were spending on liquor. People were getting killed over it. The crime rate jumped when the eighteenth amendment was put in place.
Prohibition was set into place on January 16, 1920. Prohibition had been tried before this. It never was successful when tried before. It was often referred to as “the noble experiment” (History Channel 2010). It was not illegal to drink alcohol it was illegal to manufacture and sell liquor (Andrews, E 2015). Manufacturing and selling alcohol was illegal and was punishable by law. There were special agents who investigated these crimes. There were half a million people involved in distilling (Engdahl, S 2012). These people were breaking the law. This was punishable with fines and jail time. There were seven thousand speakeasies in Chicago. There were thirty two thousand speakeasies in New York (Gitlin, M 2011). These speakeasies you needed a code to get into. …show more content…

Capone was believed to have brought in over 1 million dollars a year (Sandbrook, Dominick 2012). This is what led to his arrest. He was arrested for invasion of tax (Sandbrook, Dominick 2012). Capone was doing many good things for the community though. He donated lots of money to many different charities. He also built soup kitchens for the poor and homeless. Capone was sentenced to eleven years in prison for

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