Corruption In The 1920's Essay

Illegal Activity in the 1920’s
The 1920’s was an era of prosperity for ones living inside of the United States of America. Although money was easy to come by and most everybody was employed, the ammount of corruption throughout the States was great and many criminal were running rampid thorughout the country. Prohibition caused an outspread of illegal bootlegging rings and greatly increased the ammount of criminal activity going about in the U.S.. The corruption was not confined to the average citizens; but rather, corruption was present on all levels of society. Whether the corruption was in government, crime reinforcement, or the daily lives of the American citizens, it surely left a stain in American history leaving the 1920’s as one

Millions of bottles of “medicinal” whisky were sold at drug stores across the country. Whether the perscription was real or not did not matter, the people were getting their alcohol. In addition many American industeries were still able to produce lawful alcohol, but the alcohol had been mixed with obnoxious chemicals to render it unfit for drinking. The chemicals did not stop many. Millions of gallons of the “tainted” alcohol were illegally diverted and stripped of its obnoxious chemicals. The clean alcohol would then be mixed with tap water and perhaps a dash of real alcohol for flavor. Finally, bootleggers had, had enough. The bootleggers began to bottle and create their own concoctions of home made liquor. Many of the faulty batches of liquor were called rotgut. Rotgut could be dangerous and potentially cause blindness, paralysis, and even

The companies then “gifted” about four hundred thousand dollars to Fall. Fall attempted to keep the scandal a secret, but his new, lavish lifestyle raised speculation. Fall was eventually found guilty of his wrong doing after being accused of corruption by Thomas J. Walsh, a democrat from Montana. ("Should we expect our politicians to be more honest than we are?" 1). The 1920’s was surely a corrupt time in the United States, but at least Americans were able to escape all of the corruption when they all turned to their all American passtime, right? Sadly, there was even corruption in the aspect of life that captured the heart of almost all Americans. In 1919, the World Series between the Chicago White Sox and the Cincinnati Reds was fixed. This scandelous event was named the Black Sox scandal.
There was no one single mastermind behind the fixing of the World Series. Two, however, stood out avove the rest: Wiliam Thomas Burns and Billy Maharg. Burns was an ex-major baseball pitcher who could very easily get in contact with the players, and Maharg was a gambler with all the underground connections. With high hopes those two men approached two of the White Sox players, Pitcher Ed Cicotte and First Baseman Arnold Gandil. The four men realized it would take more than two players to fix the world series, and began to ask for