On January 17, 1920, the Eighteenth Amendment took effect in the
United States, prohibiting the manufacture, sale, use, or
importation of alcoholic beverages except for scientific and
medicinal purposes. Church and business leaders, temperance
advocates, and state and national officials predicted that a
tranquil new era was about to begin-an era when prisons would be
empty, police forces could be drastically cut, and workers would be
more productive, spending time with their families rather than in
saloons. As Rumrunning and the Roaring Twenties illustrates, peace
and tranquillity and abstinence never arrived. The Prohibition
experiment failed dismally in the United States, and nowhere worse
than in Michigan. The state's close proximity and easy access 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 and its
widespread sale and use in blind pigs, joints, speakeasies, and
exclusive clubs and restaurants, an astounding seventy-five percent
of all illegal liquor brought into the United States was
transported across the Detroit River from Canada, especially the
thirty-mile stretch from Lake Erie to the St. Clair River. In fact,
the city's two major industries during most of the 1920s were the
manufacture of automobiles and the distribution of Canadian liquor.
Using police and court records, newspaper accounts, and interviews
with those who lived during the time, Philip P. Mason has
constructed a fascinating history of life in Michigan during
Prohibition. He 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 hundreds of photos
capturing the essence of the era: the creative smuggling efforts
undertaken by citizens of all walks of life-the poor, middle class,
and affluent, upstanding citizens and organized criminals and gang
members. The smugglers concocted both practical and ingenious
methods to transport liquor into the state. Boats of all sizes were
used, from small rowboats to powerful river crafts that could
easily outrun police boats. Jalopies, trucks, airplanes, and
railroad freight cars also carried large amounts of alcohol across
the border. Clever smugglers rigged electronically controlled
torpedoes to cross the river, laid pipes underwater and pumped
alcohol into a bottling facility in Detroit, and concealed
contraband in every conceivable device-hot water bottles, chest
protectors, false breasts, hollowed out eggs and loaves of bread,
picnic baskets, shopping bags, and baby carriages. By 1928
Prohibition was so obviously flawed and controversial that it
became a major issue in the presidential campaign. In 1933, with
the support of President Franklin Roosevelt, Michigan's governor
William Comstock, and other leaders, the Twenty-first Amendment was
passed, repealing Prohibition. Michigan was the first state to
ratify the amendment on April 10, 1933, and soon the Detroit River
was returned to pleasure boats and fishing and commercial vessels
whose holds no longer carried illegal liquor.
General
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