The Day's Dumpster Fire
In this podcast, Kara and Ed regale history's greatest mess ups. They do not celebrate humanity's successes but its most fantastic failures! This show is not dedicated to those who have accomplished incredible things, but to those who have accomplished incredible things and how they royally screwed things up in the process.
You might ask why they are doing this podcast: it's because you've botched up the best laid plans and you know what? THAT'S OKAY!
Let this show help you navigate the mishaps that you have come across where there is no clear answer available.
So sit back, relax, and listen about people who messed up way more than what you could of possibly imagine.
The Day's Dumpster Fire
Prohibition Fire Part 2. - Episode 60
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In this episode, Kara expands on Prohibition and how it started to affect society and all the different ways people tried to skirt around the 18th Amendment. She dives into how the Federal government tried to crack down on the sale and consumption of alcohol to how people would figure out loopholes and straight up brazen methods of procuring, producing, and transferring alcohol into America.
What was supposed to be movement that entailed women's rights and voting to making a society of men who could be trusted and be reliable, instead the whole amendment backfired horrifically and Kara's only two episodes in! She's got two more in the works involving Prohibition.
If you have not listened to Prohibition Fire Part 1. - Episode 59 be sure to check it out in the feed or wherever you get your podcasts.
Some other episodes that were mentioned that you might find interest:
Britain's Sketchy Bread Recipes Fire
Credit for the closing music:
SPEAKEASY STRUT
royalty free Music by Giorgio Di Campo for @FreeSound Music
http://freesoundmusic.eu
/ freemusicforyoutube
/ freesoundmusic
original video:
• Speakeasy Strut - 1920s vintage Jazz (Proh...
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A hatchet wielding psychopath?
SPEAKER_04:She was great, but like I said before, I would never actually want to meet her.
SPEAKER_03:That's why we said hag. I was like, you know, she's probably a lot.
SPEAKER_04:She's she's just passionate. She's just passionate.
SPEAKER_00:But she's not ha wielding a hatchet, right? Or is she like legit?
SPEAKER_04:The woman we're talking about today is not wielding a hatchet, but she's wielding assistant attorney general.
SPEAKER_00:Period, sister. All right. Hitting the credits now.
SPEAKER_04:Let's go.
SPEAKER_00:Because we've been recording for the past four minute.
SPEAKER_04:Oh. Hit that music. Hello, everybody, and welcome to the day's Dumpster Fire. As ever, I am one of your hosts, Cara, and with me, like always, is Ed and Deja. How are you guys today?
SPEAKER_03:Well, I'm freaking great today. Um got my sister, I gave my sister my old phone. She cried in my arms about it out of happiness because she lost her phone in the ocean. So that was a good feeling. I saved, I was, you know, playing Captain Save. Captain phone saving. I almost said Captain Save a host, so we'll have to bleep that we'll work on it.
SPEAKER_00:Oh no, that that that's staying in. Amazing.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, so I had to play Superman. But it's okay. It's good. All good. Such a good time.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, no, this is um, yeah, it's been a wild two weeks, I think, for everybody.
SPEAKER_03:It's just uh seven-ish months, eight, nine months has been pretty crazy. It's been a ride.
SPEAKER_04:It's been a ride. That's okay. We're hanging in there, we're writing it out on this ride. So we're here for you all. We're gonna talk about prohibition. Yeah, not drinking, not drinking for the next like month. Welcome to Kara's mind. After I just got back from a brewery, it's fine.
SPEAKER_03:After I just made the loudest noise out of my body. And happy birthday to Kara. That birthday much.
SPEAKER_00:Look, that is right. Yeah, because by the time you hear this, Kara will be what two weeks into your 33 years.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, I'll be a whopping 33 years old. Go me. One of my favorite people. Yeah. One of my favorite people. Just wearing one of my favorite numbers for year.
SPEAKER_04:Thanks, friend. I love that for you. Appreciate that so much.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. I'm turning 43 this year. So I'm just getting older and crotchetier.
SPEAKER_04:At least you're at the rain. That is a crazy word. Yeah. It's a good word, though.
SPEAKER_00:Dude, like ever since I turned 40, I wake up at 2 o'clock in the morning sharp. Every fricking day, I wake up at 2 o'clock in the morning to pee.
SPEAKER_03:Oh, I had two kids. That's that that I get it. But I'm only 30. So Yeah. You know, I sneeze and I pee myself, but it's okay.
SPEAKER_04:Right. On that note, should we uh maybe talk about prohibition?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. I prohibit peeing at two o'clock in the morning. That's all I care about.
SPEAKER_03:Right. Don't make me laugh too hard, I'll pee myself.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. So Deja, you and I, we got our depends on strong. Let's strap up and let's go.
SPEAKER_04:Okay, the last time I'm on the day's dumpster fire.
SPEAKER_00:Lord. Alrighty, Kara. Send us down the bunghole of the barrel. Let's go.
SPEAKER_04:Boy. All right, bottom of the bottle. Last time on the day's dumpster fire. Alcohol was deeply rooted in American life from the colonial period onward. Colonists relied on beer and cider, and by the early 1800s, the United States had thousands of distilleries and saloons. With alcohol consumption peaking around 1830, saloons became symbols of vice, and reformers, especially women, began organizing. Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton pushed for women's voices in the movement, but the Civil War slowed progress. In the 1870s, the temperance movement revived with the Women's Crusades where women prayed outside of saloons. This inspired the founding of the Women's Christian Temperance Union of 1874. Under Frances Willard, the WCTU grew into the nation's largest women's organization, linking temperance to broader reforms like suffrage and labor's rights. Carrie Nation kept the cause in the headlines with her hatchet-wielding saloon raids. At the same time, the Anti-Saloon League, founded in 1893, focused solely on prohibition and became a powerful political force. The alcohol industry pushed back, brewers tied beer to immigrant identity and promoted it as wholesome, while distillers argued that liquor taxes funded the government. But divisions between brewers and distillers weakened their cause while the driving movement remained unified. World War I tipped the balance, anti-German sentiment targeted brewers, grain was diverted for the war effort, and saloons were cast as unpatriotic. By 1917, nearly half of the states had already passed prohibition laws, and Congress moved to nationalize the issue with wartime restrictions. In 1919, the 18th Amendment was ratified, banning the manufacturer, sale, and transport of intoxicating liquor, the Volsett Act, defining intoxicating as anything over half a percentage of alcohol, closed loopholes, and set up enforcement with exceptions for medicine, religion, and industry. On January 17, 1920, national prohibition officially began. You're welcome. There's your recap.
SPEAKER_03:You should like double speed that up so that it's like right?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, like the last hour and a half long episode has just been recited. Brought down in two minutes. You're welcome. Yeah, like two minutes. That was it.
SPEAKER_04:Good job.
SPEAKER_00:So, yes, we are now working on two-minute episodes. That's it.
SPEAKER_04:Now I do highly recommend listening to the uh the first part, part one. There's more information there, it's great.
SPEAKER_00:But yeah, no, you really gotta listen to part one, and you really gotta focus on Carry Nation because that is a badass check right there.
SPEAKER_04:She's great. We love her.
SPEAKER_00:She is.
SPEAKER_03:We need her on a t-shirt. Oh, don't start me. I know a person. My mom has a cricket. See? She makes t-shirts.
SPEAKER_04:That's it. We'll make t-shirts.
SPEAKER_00:Carry nation is legit hardcore protesting at its best.
SPEAKER_04:So today.
SPEAKER_00:Especially with a hatchet and a pool ball.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, you don't mess with carry nation. Now, today we're gonna we're gonna we're gonna mess with we're gonna talk about another carry nation.
SPEAKER_05:Not gonna mess with carry nation.
SPEAKER_04:We're gonna talk about another woman today who has her fingers all up in prohibition. In fact, I'm gonna start this episode. Fingers?
SPEAKER_03:Are we looking are we doing like a weird thing with the fingers? Is there gonna be a thing about fingers in this? Spirit fingers. Oh, okay. You just put a little emphasis on the fingers. I was like, did she throw her fingers into the crowd? What happened?
SPEAKER_04:All right, so part two, part two. I'm gonna call it the source, meaning the source of liquor. Where are we getting all of this alcohol from? I'm gonna start it with a quote from Maybelle Walker Willembrandt. She says, Give me the authority and let me have my pick of 300 men, and I'll make this country as dry as it is humanly possible. There's one way it can be done. Get at the source of this supply. I know them and I know how they can be cut off. I have no patience with this policy of going after the hip pocket and speakeasy cases. That's like trying to dry up the Atlantic Ocean with a blotter. I love her. She's great. This this woman I would have lunch with, and we will get to her in just a second.
SPEAKER_00:But first, what's well it's interesting that she's like, let me have my pick of 300 men.
SPEAKER_04:Yes, there's a reason for that, and we'll talk about it.
SPEAKER_00:Because it's like you can find 300 men that aren't like absolute douchebags.
SPEAKER_04:You can. You just have to look for them, especially really hard when corruption is as high as it is in the 1920s.
SPEAKER_03:All right. Gotta do some d dig deepen. Dig deep in is crazy. I said that so wrong. Sorry guys. So I don't know if anyone heard that.
SPEAKER_02:Let's start with chapter six.
SPEAKER_03:It's too late for this.
SPEAKER_04:It's fine. We're doing great. Chapter six, near beer. 1920, a year full of major events. Women would gain the right to vote in August after the passage of the 19th Amendment. The League of Nations would be formed. It was announced that Babe Ruth would be traded to the Yankees from the Red Sox beginning the curse of the Bambino. It would be a year of navigation through an ocean of wet and dry legal questions throughout the United States. On the morning of January 16th, 1920, in Norfolk, Virginia, a crowd of 10 to 15,000 people gathered at a wooden tabernacle built for Billy Sunday. The well-known preacher was holding a funeral procession that featured a 20-foot casket holding John Barleycorn, along with the sins and the diseases he carried with him. Beginning at the railroad station, the casket was removed from a train car carried through the streets of Norfolk by pallbearers, reportedly followed by a giant Satan, as the procession led to the stage of the tabernacle. Billy Sunday held a speech about the end of alcohol in America, explaining, quote, Goodbye, John. You were God's worst enemy. You were hell's best friend. I hate you with a perfect hatred. I love to hate you. That's a direct quote from the New York Times in 1920.
SPEAKER_00:That's hardcore.
SPEAKER_04:Oh yeah, that guy. 148 miles away, at the first congressional church in Washington, D.C., a place in which Frederick Douglass once attended, a special congressional meeting was held in celebration on the night of January 16th, 1920. In attendance were Wayne Wheeler, Andrew Volstead, and Anna A. Gordon of the Women's Christian Temperance Union. The crowd in the church were hushed and serious as they listened to the speakers in the night. At 11:15 p.m., just before midnight, William Jennings Bryan stepped up onto the podium. The famous order spoke with fervor, making biblical references, comparing the wet movement trying to kill the 18th Amendment to Herod, who tried to kill baby Jesus. Brian spoke for 40. Yeah. Brian spoke for 45 minutes, ending his sermon at midnight while the crowd cheered.
SPEAKER_00:Wait, which which one was the uh the guy that was like spearheading the dry movement? Was that politically?
SPEAKER_04:It was Wayne Wheeler.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, yeah. Wayne Wheeler was the the politician that was like, I don't care if you're left or right, if you're for a dry movement, you've got my vote.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, that was Wayne Wheeler, the head of the um anti-saloon league.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, short guy, vast glasses, kind of nerdy.
SPEAKER_04:That's it. The guy who would probably own a pocket protector.
SPEAKER_00:Nice.
SPEAKER_04:On the other side of the spectrum, distilleries and breweries were sold out of their inventories across the country as aristocrats, business owners, restaurants, and the average Joe who enjoyed an occasional drink stocked up as much as they could before the 18th Amendment went into effect. That includes the molasses incident in Boston.
SPEAKER_05:Yes.
SPEAKER_04:Even people who publicly supported the 18th Amendment stocked up with their own sellers, including John Deal Rockefeller Jr., Woodrow Wilson, and Alfred P. Sloan, the future president of GM. The next one.
SPEAKER_00:Now keep in mind, Rockefeller Jr. got eaten by cannibals in some years later.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, that's a different fire.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. His boat sank and he swam to shore and he thought that he was going to survive. Nobody found anything of him other than his bones and the fact that he was chopped up and eaten.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, that was a bad deal.
SPEAKER_00:Yes. That's a that's a dumpster fire for another day.
SPEAKER_04:That's an episode for another day for sure.
SPEAKER_00:Yes.
SPEAKER_04:If you want to listen to any cannibalism episodes, though, check out the Donner Party.
SPEAKER_00:Oh yeah. Yeah, the Donner Party, that's a barbecue and a half right there.
SPEAKER_04:That's uh my other big episode.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, jeez. Yeah. Anyway. I couldn't eat meat after that for like weeks.
SPEAKER_03:You're welcome. He's like for like two hours until I started smoking some of my the meat in my bag.
SPEAKER_00:Yes, yeah, yeah. Like I pulled my ribs off the barbecue, and I'm like, I can't. I I'm a vegetarian. I'm just gonna eat snow.
SPEAKER_04:Uh the next morning, on January 17th, 1920, the nation woke up to a dry nation. Naturally, those who were supporters of the dry movement celebrated, and those who supported the wet movement were born full. Saloons across the country closed their doors, distillers, wineries, and brewers shut down, or they looked for other means of income. Hundreds of thousands of people, mostly immigrants, lost their jobs in the months following January 17th. These included those who worked in breweries, distilleries, bottling factories, farmers, saloons, truckers, and hospitality workers. Some historians put the number of unemployed people directly affected by the implementation of prohibition as high as 500,000 to a million people. It's a lot of people. After the mass loss of employment, people generally found other means of income. It wasn't like they were just left high and literally dry. They were kind of left dry, but they did find other means of employment. Some worked for brewers who were brewing alternative drinks. Some went to factories, some to restaurants, and some went to the black market, as we'll see. For the most part, though, in the early years of Prohibition, people did try to follow the law as best they could, finding alternative beverages and entertainment. The popularity of professional sporting events, while already on the rise, increased just that much further, especially baseball and boxing. In fact, baseball became America's pastime during this time period. Some historians, yeah, some historians argue that men would transition from saloons to stadiums after prohibition went into effect. But there are other factors that contributed to the rise of pro sports, and you know, they were in play. However, it can be argued that prohibition just boosted it that much more. Welch's grape juice made record profits, marketing themselves as the perfect alternative to wine, which is smart. Smaller beer breweries went out of business, larger ones were able to pivot to other beverages such as soft drinks like root beer, ginger ale, that kind of thing. Um, some made something called near beer, which we'll get to, and even ice cream. Anheuser Busch made a bevo, that's what the drink was called, bevo, bevo, be-e-v-o. It was a malt drink that ended up selling about 5 million cases per year in the early 20s. Cabst sold near beer that contained 0.5 alcohol or less. So they were following the Volc Act to a T and it worked. They called it Near Beer. It's estimated that alcohol consumption declined about 30 to 40 percent between 1920 and 1925. But that doesn't mean that alcohol was entirely eliminated, much to the chagrin of Wayne Wheeler.
SPEAKER_00:I feel like at this point, though, like uh capitalists would be like, oh, if I can find a way to manufacture alcohol under the radar, then I can make a grip of money.
SPEAKER_04:That is the entire theme of this episode.
SPEAKER_00:Okay.
SPEAKER_04:Yes, it's true. At 12 59 a.m. on January 17, 1920, an hour after Prohibition went into effect, six men armed with pistols stole a hundred thousand dollars in nineteen twenties money worth of medicinal whiskey from two freight train cars. This could be the first known offense in the prohibition era that defied the Volsid Act. Others began immediately selling the stock they had purchased before at a premium price for anyone who was willing to buy it. So while in some ways prohibition seemed to be working in the early days, in other ways it was exposing its sweet spots that were getting ready to burst at the seams.
SPEAKER_00:I like how it's medicinal whiskey.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, you like that?
SPEAKER_00:We'll get to it. It's like, oh hey, yeah, no, I got some medicinal crack cocaine, or here's some medicinal heroin, which is sad because it was considered medicinal at one point in time.
SPEAKER_04:They they sure did do that. That yeah, I was gonna say that also.
SPEAKER_00:Turn of the century, 1900s.
SPEAKER_03:Uh yeah, cocaine was like I mean, 2025, we still have Vicodin and Oxycodone and Percosets. We we can expand on those things a little bit.
unknown:Yeah. America!
SPEAKER_02:Let's go. All right.
SPEAKER_04:Chapter seven, the last word. Before the passage of the 18th Amendment, Senator Henry Cabot Lodge from Massachusetts, if you remember this from part one, argued that enforcing the amendment would be next to impossible. Even with the addition of the Volstead Act in 1919, he would eventually be proven correct. In 1921, Warren G. Harding was elected president following Woodrow Wilson. In terms of prohibition, Harding was publicly in support of the movement. However, behind closed doors, Harding was very much a web president. Famously, he stopped up a full bore uh in the White House, essentially replacing Wilson's alcohol with his own. Harding had also put in a few cabinet members with questionable intentions who would take advantage of him throughout his presidency, especially his attorney general, Harry Dowherty. Dowherty would be knee-deep in scandals throughout his time in the cabinet, including being personal friends with the openly wet and corrupt officials that he decided to hire. According to the Times article, which I found and I thought was interesting, the Cabinet, enforcer in chief, written in 1930. Many at the time believed that he would be the one to open the door to the Justice Department to prohibition corruption. More on Dorney shortly. But first, the IRS, which probably seems like it's out of blood field. You're welcome, taxes.
SPEAKER_00:Well, in the IRS, like I feel like that's gonna that's gonna come back again next. Because there are certain figures in this time period who committed a lot of murders, but they could only bust them on the premise of tax evasion.
SPEAKER_04:That will be not next episode, but the episode after that. Stick around.
SPEAKER_00:My God, we we still got two more episodes to go. Oh, yes.
SPEAKER_04:This is this is a big topic. I wasn't kidding. It's a monster.
SPEAKER_00:Holy crap. It's like half the year. She said so many early hours.
SPEAKER_03:I love it though. I've been having so much time. Doing the damn thing. I'm so happy for it.
SPEAKER_04:In general, prohibition enforcement would be divided. Divided into two departments on the federal level. The Department of Treasury would be handling the enforcing part, and the Department of Justice would take care of the persecutions as the follow-up to the Treasury's enforcement efforts. Led by the IRS, which to me is interesting, the Department of Treasury began working on enforcement as soon as the Volstead Act was passed. Note. This was probably because either they didn't know where else to put the Prohibition Department, or they assumed that prohibition and the taxes that were being lost or rewritten or whatever should be controlled by the IRS, I guess. I don't know. Anyway, the department created a prohibition unit that was to oversee prohibition enforcement across the country and were provided funds from the government to get their act together. The funding? Well, it was enough for about 1,500 prohibition agents to cover 48 states. Mathematically, that's about one agent for every 70,666 American citizens.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, that that's something that like, because my my grandfather was born in in 1918, and he grew up in the 20s and the 30s, and he remembers prohibition. And he remembers his dad talking about like, how do you enforce this?
SPEAKER_04:Enforcement's gonna be a problem.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, it it's like it's like trying to enforce a law in America where people can't wear socks. How in the world do you enforce a law where people can't wear socks?
SPEAKER_04:One in 70,000 amongst all the people.
SPEAKER_00:You can't yeah, it's just it it and so like there were my grandfather remembers one prohibition agent coming into Elgin, Illinois, and he sat at the diner, actually ate at that same diner years ago. Um he ate some eggs and bacon and just moved on because there's just there was nothing he could do, there was nothing that he could do individually to to stop anything that was going on. So, like from the outset, like prohibition was unenforceable.
SPEAKER_04:Well, let's keep getting into it because there's more.
SPEAKER_00:And the fun continues. Let's go.
SPEAKER_04:Not only was the prohibition unit grossly understaffed, but it was also underpaid. And they would take anybody and everybody who was willing to work for them. Prohibition agents had very little training or very poor training. Paired with the lack of background checks, they became just as bad as the petty criminals in the streets, if not worse, considering they were given guns and badges and they could legally basically do whatever they want. Often, if they weren't trigger happy, they were easily bribed by the bootleggers. In New York, for example, about half of the agents were fired within the first year that they were hired. So it was really hard finding a good man, back to Miss Willem Brant's point. Different states had varying levels of enforcement. Some states had strict enforcement codes, especially those who had already had some type of state-level prohibition law like Kansas or whatever, in place before 1920. Others, such as New York, New Jersey, and Illinois, had weaker enforcement. In fact, and I loved this quote, I just thought it was hilarious, made me laugh. The governor of New Jersey was quoted, and it's like some newspaper or something. I got this from uh the Ralston Cider Mill Museum, but it's a cool quote. He said, the state would remain as wet as the Atlantic Ocean. All right, New Jersey.
SPEAKER_00:Yes, there was an Atlantic accent.
SPEAKER_03:Oh, yeah. This is why New Jersey is the way that it is.
SPEAKER_00:And New Jersey will stay as wet as the Atlantic Ocean.
SPEAKER_04:It's true. I will say though, famously say your transatlantic ocean.
SPEAKER_00:Sorry, I've been watching videos and and I'm trying to work on my Atlantic action.
SPEAKER_03:I like that. You gotta put it together. You're like dun dun dun dun dun dun dun.
SPEAKER_00:Well, I still have the the James T. Kirk in me. And the Atlantic Ocean. Well, stay as wet as the Western Coast.
SPEAKER_03:Not bad. So unlike someone from the 1920s that had a wheelchair that spoke for them.
SPEAKER_00:Yay, Polio, let's go.
SPEAKER_04:Oh my goodness. Twenty years before they came up a chair for poly.
SPEAKER_00:Oh man. Alrighty, Kara. All right, let's set us back on track.
SPEAKER_04:Sorry to temper the mood a little bit, but in rural areas where enforcement was weak or non-existent, the KKK had taken the opportunity to enforce the areas themselves. Originally created during Reconstruction, which is a dumpster fire in itself, to enforce those areas. The KKK was a group who actively fought against equality for African Americans and other immigrants. Their influence waned during the First World War but gained steam again after the war and ended prohibition. They would use prohibition as a moral cause to spread their hatred and vitrol, where they would most active where they were, sorry, where they were most active targeting minorities and people who supported equality under the guise of enforcing prohibition laws. And they wouldn't only target African Americans. That was probably the most common target for them, but they would also target people who were Catholic, Irish immigrants, Chinese immigrants, Jewish immigrants. It wasn't, it was um a lot of people don't know that.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, a lot of people don't know that the KKK didn't just target people of color necessarily. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04:It was most common in Kingdoms.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, they were like hardcore America-only kind of folks. Like if you weren't born here, you don't belong here, kind of a thing.
SPEAKER_03:For them, even if you were born here, you didn't belong here. Yeah, even if you if you just aren't white. They were bad, essentially. And also believed in everything that they believed in. Very intolerant, essentially, people.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, it almost sounds like a another group of people that despite their claims, however.
SPEAKER_04:Anyways, Clansmid would often take liquor from those uh Prohibition.
SPEAKER_00:Let's go.
SPEAKER_04:Clansmid would also would often take liquor from those they terrorize and drink it themselves, proving that their mission was not in fact enforcing prohibition and they were total hypocrites. Membership of the group grew from 1920 to 1925 from about two million to five million people nationwide. Uh, and they tried to align themselves with the WCTU and the ASL, even though they were much more hateful and militant than those other groups. So I don't want to put in the notion that they were very much in line with those other groups. It could be said that maybe some members of those other groups were in the KKK, uh, but I would say that I wouldn't put their ideals with the other two groups, because that's not fair. This iteration of the KKK in the 1920s would eventually die out during the 1930s, during the Depression, but it wouldn't be the last time they'd pop up in the US. They would rise back to popularity after World War II and into the civil rights movements of the 1960s. I do encourage you to read about that because it is good to know the good and the bad and the ugly of American history. And it's also very empowering and impactful to read about uh how people overcame that.
SPEAKER_00:I do uh I do remember my grandfather telling me when his dad would take him into Chicago, and um there would be prohibition agents like raiding locations and bringing up barrels of liquor, and then what they would do is they would break holes in them and they just dump it in the sewers.
SPEAKER_04:Yes, that was very common.
SPEAKER_00:That happened quite a lot, but there was people in those sewers with barrels themselves that were collecting it, and those were police officers, and my grandfather remember seeing police officers in the sewers collecting the alcohol because then they would distribute it themselves.
SPEAKER_04:I 100% believe that. 100% believe it. So on top of everything, America, America, on top of everything else, there was a general assumption around enforcement amongst the federal prohibition unit and the state police in the states, especially more lenient states like New York, they took the view that if the federal government wanted prohibition so bad, they could be the ones to spend the money and the resources to take care of it. If they wanted it so bad, they can do it, like whatever. On the federal level, at the same time, the government was being run by a largely conservative group of people, which meant that they were cutting back on spending and resources, leaving room for the states to handle it. The states want their rights so bad they can handle it. So both sectors of government were like, no, the other guys got it. That's a lot of miscommunication for you. The second division, so the first remember was the IRS, the Department of Treasury handling enforcement. We just talked about that. The second division on the prohibition front was the Justice Department in charge of persecution. A little bit different than the enforcement. As mentioned before, the head of the department at the time was Harry Daughtery. Daughtery, sorry. Daughtery stacked his office with friends who saw their role as an opportunity to make more money than to follow the 18th Amendment. Throughout the Prohibition era, Daughtery and his office would do frequent business with bootleggers who would come into their department after being caught or arrested, smuggling alcohol or what have you. In general, what would happen is the bootlegger would come in and pay his own bail in cash, and usually it was thousands of dollars, and they'd in return they'd be offered not just bail, but protection from being officially prosecuted through pardons, paroles, or deals for a price. And the Jotry Justice Department would just uh become as corrupt as the prohibition officers who were in the street catching the people who would eventually pay them, anyways. The corruption in enforcement as well as in persecution would be a hard-fought battle for the people who would swear to do their duty as officials of the law without being enticed by bootleggers deep in pockets with sorry, enticed by bootleggers with deep pockets.
SPEAKER_00:So from the outset, we are seeing we're we're seeing this whole amendment, we're seeing this whole constitutional act just fall apart.
SPEAKER_04:Oh, within an hour.
SPEAKER_00:That's yeah, it's it was literally that fast that this whole thing just fell apart.
SPEAKER_04:So fast.
SPEAKER_00:Wow.
SPEAKER_04:Yes, it's uh it's bad. And I do want to remind you the intention, these women were you know domestic fighting domestic abuse, and their husbands were out all night, and prostitution was rampant, which means S T Ds were rampant, and they blamed the alcohol, and they it was a m it was a women's movement. They wanted to make sure that their husbands were safe. They wanted to be safe, they wanted their children to be safe. It was, you know, the intentions were there, and the intentions were good, but it kind of blew up.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, you know, it's it's just fascinating because it's it it really kind of sheds light, especially at that time, the weakness of men. Like, yes, they did work ungodly hours, especially during the Great Depression. Like, they really did try to provide, but for some odd reason, these men had no way of coming home and unwinding in a healthy way, and their only solution was to turn to alcohol, which then turned to prostitution, which then turned to STDs and and all that stuff.
SPEAKER_04:And I I have two yes and to that.
SPEAKER_00:Okay.
SPEAKER_04:Yes and I think it was more of a societal problem than it was a men's problem.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, okay.
SPEAKER_04:And then yes and um, and I keep running into this theme over and over again. Country is a big place. There are a lot of people. It's not all men, it's not all families, maybe a majority or maybe the loudest group, but there are also, remember, pockets of good men who are going home, they're doing their job, they're paying for their family, they're doing the best they can. So, and it's also one of those things, too, where, and this person we're gonna talk about is one of them where, hey, I'd like a social drink every once in a while. I don't really agree with prohibition, but I'll do my best to follow the law.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah.
SPEAKER_04:There's a lot of people like that too. So it's actually a really complicated thing, just like any other point in history, just like it is today, where you have a lot of different people with a lot of different ideas and a lot of different ideals. And sometimes a lot of voices are just a lot of voices, and sometimes the national movements are movements that we really need, even when people really don't want them. 100%.
SPEAKER_03:So it's that it's it's like the constant con what is it, like a contradict contradiction almost because you have two two ends of something that you know, like prohibition or like for right now, guns, gun control, you know, gun violence. It's a big thing. As a woman, as a tiny woman, I like to protect myself. I would like to have that right, but I also, you know, you also have these feelings towards how things in society are playing out because of what we have now, you know what I mean? So it's like as a person who doesn't really drink very often, I like to have the right to be able to go to the bar and have a drink. Am I abusing my family when I go home? No. Do I like to have that right? Yeah. Will I fight for that right? I don't know if we go through an interesting thing. To abuse your family, or no, no, no, no. To be able to make the choice because I'm not someone who is abusing that, you know what I mean? I'm not someone who abuses that power that that privilege that I have, you know, to be able to go to the bar and have a drink with my whoever's.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:I don't go home and you know, abuse my family, but there are so many people that at what point what do we do to help the situation? You know, is it a societal thing? Is it the liquor? Is it the like how do we fix this as an as as a whole? But there's so many different avenues and so many different approaches to it.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and I I agree. It's it's a really tricky thing to figure out because I I personally think that 99.9% of men out there are decent human beings that aren't abusive, that aren't wanting to cause harm to their families. But I do think there's a significant percentage of them that when they have a significant amount of alcohol in them, they become a completely different person. Yes. And 100% as as it's so like in their heart, they're not bad people. Like my dad was not a bad person. Good people make bad choices, but then when my dad had alcohol in him, he was an absolute monster.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And so, like, how do you pass a law that that singles out those men who are decent human beings that become something else in the presence of alcohol versus those people that aren't monsters or or violent people when they do have alcohol in their system? Like, how do you pass a law that separates that out? And I I just don't think there's a way that you can do it, and also successfully enforce it. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, no, I agree. And I think to just add more complexity into it, because you're welcome. That's what I do here. The mid to late 1800s and the early 1900s, you didn't have things like mental health and therapy and medicine like we do today.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah.
SPEAKER_04:So they this is the best they felt that they could do to make change for for themselves and for you know where they live. And and in that regard, I get it. I get both sides. Like I get wanting to just, you know, unwind after a long day. I've been there. I I I totally get it. After a long day of work, you want to go and have a drink and just decompress 100%. I totally get that. I also understand, you know, the women who were having a rough go at it at the same time. So yeah, it's a really complicated issue, and I think it's something that a lot of people lose uh the complexities of it sometimes when you learn it in broad strokes. So anyway, that was my point. I think we all have some good input. This is the lady that I want to have lunch with.
SPEAKER_00:Mabel Walker Willembrand?
SPEAKER_04:Sure. She's wonderful, I think.
SPEAKER_00:Anybody named Mabel is gonna be badass.
SPEAKER_04:She's wonderful. And I'm gonna make you like her more. You ready? I'm gonna try to convince you to want to have lunch with her. Mabel Walker Willembrandt would be appointed at U.S. Assistant Attorney General in 1920, shortly after the Volstead Act was put into action. She was appointed. Oh yeah, she was Okay. She's great.
SPEAKER_00:A U.S. Assistant Attorney General?
SPEAKER_04:That's it.
SPEAKER_00:Okay.
SPEAKER_04:She's she's no slouch. Big stuff. Oh yeah. She was appointed after she was recommended by U.S. Senator Hiram Johnson, legal mentors and circuit judges in her state at the time, California, putting her in the highest office a woman has ever held in the U.S. government at that time. So she was considered the most powerful woman in the country in 1920. Willembrandt was born in Kansas on May 28th, in 1889. As an adult, she became a school teacher and married her principal, Arthur Willembrandt, before moving to Arizona in 1910 for a brief period to assist Arthur's health as he was diagnosed with tuberculosis. While she was there, Maybelle Willembrandt received her teaching degree from the Tempe Normal School in 1911. I.e. ASU. So she is an ASU grad. She got her teaching degree there.
SPEAKER_00:That is actually the same place that I got my teaching degree from. Yeah, isn't that cool? In fact, if you look at my teaching degree, it says Arizona State University, and then underneath it, it says Tempe Normal School.
SPEAKER_04:Alumni along with Maybelle Walker Willembrand.
SPEAKER_00:So yeah, I'm old school teaching and I'm in trucking.
SPEAKER_04:It's fine. We're doing great. The couple moved to California in 1912. While there, she got a teaching job and put herself through school, law school, in fact, attending classes at night. Willembrandt earned her law degree from USC in 1916, then spent the next four years as Los Angeles' first female public defender, primarily working on cases involving prostitution. She would gain a reputation as a tenacious vocal prosecutor who took great pride in her work. And I will say she divorced her husband in 1916 because the deal was that she would work full time while he went to law school full time and she went to law school at night. When he graduated, the deal would switch, right? Makes sense. A lot of couples do that. He didn't do that, he didn't pull his weight. So she was like, you know what? Bye. And she divorced him. I'm divorcing you. So goodbye. That's the kind of person we're dealing with.
SPEAKER_00:Dang.
SPEAKER_04:Willem. And then this this is 1916. This is way before the things we have now.
SPEAKER_03:She sounds like someone in 2025. Straight up.
SPEAKER_04:I would love to talk to this person.
SPEAKER_03:She's like, oh, your priorities are all messed up. I don't need to be with you. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04:We have different goals.
SPEAKER_00:See, at least when I was dating my fiancee, she was going to school for biochemistry. And I'm like, sugar mama, sugar mama, let's go. And so, like, the the policy was that we would not have kids or anything until she got done with her degree and making a grip of money working for some pharmaceutical company. And then I could pursue my lofty aspirations of making a ton of money in teaching. Uh neither of those panned out. We had our first kid nine months later, and yeah, she got her biochem degree, and that whole thing fell apart. So, so much for the sugar mama thing.
SPEAKER_04:But life do be like that.
SPEAKER_00:But still, like, dude, if you're gonna be dating a girl who's going to college and she's further along than you, let her finish. Work until she can finish, so then she can work and let you finish.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, Arthur made a mistake, period.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah. That's uh I know it's fine.
SPEAKER_04:She she's got this, yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:She I I feel like she filled out her own divorce papers, represented herself.
SPEAKER_04:The whole thing.
SPEAKER_00:Like, I feel like she she took half of his estate, no matter what, like she signed the prenup and everything. Yeah, yeah. She she got all this figured out.
SPEAKER_04:Willow Brandt would become known as the person who took her job as a lawyer and attorney general very seriously, as somebody who enjoyed an occasional drink socially and far from passionate about the temperance issue. Willem Brandt was not somebody who was a staunch dry supporter, which I thought this is very interesting. And the bootleg error we're gonna talk about in a little bit. He was 100% dry, didn't touch alcohol. But Willem Brandt, she liked her glass of wine every once in a while. She would drink socially, like she didn't care. But once she took this job and the 18th Amendment was passed, she went completely dry because it was the law and it was her duty to uphold it personally and professionally. So you know what? I give her credit. Good for her. Going into her assignment, Willem Brandt knew it was an uphill battle. She already knew this. In an interview, Willem Brandt was asked why she was given the task of leading the prohibition unit in the Justice Department. She responded with, quote, Well, as one of my friends said, nobody in the Justice Department wanted that job. It had no political advantages at all. So of course they gave it to Maybell. Unquote. Willem Brandt began fighting not only prohibition but corruption within her department at the Department of Treasury. In terms of corruption, Willem Brandt understood who she was dealing with in Daughtery and his cronies. In a 1929 interview with Time magazine, she said, quote, it will take many a day for law enforcement to recover from the setback it suffered under General Lincoln Andrews, he multiplied publicity, created a public psychology in his own favor, began to put in office men who were temperamentally and in every other way unfitted for the task. His notorious appointments, Roscoe Harper, Frank Hale, Major Walton Green, Ned M. Green, I refuse to believe that out of our a hundred thousand population, and perhaps twenty, I think it's supposed to be two.
SPEAKER_00:That's a hundred million.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, hundred million population, and perhaps the twenty million who believe in prohibition. 4,000 agents cannot be found who cannot be bought. So good for her. She knows what's going on. And that was from uh 1929 out of Time magazine. You can find that interview. It's actually very fascinating.
SPEAKER_00:Were all the uh ellipses and brackets from that original article?
SPEAKER_04:Yep, I just copy-pasted it.
SPEAKER_00:Wow, I feel like I'm sorry, whatever I see, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, and then we throw in the brackets nine and ten. I feel like somebody was being quoted kinda loosely.
SPEAKER_04:It's possible, considering it was just an interview. I'm sure that they were writing it down, handwriting it as fast as they could.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah, that's true. That's just the uh English lip major in me, because we would be like, as soon as you see more than two ellipses in a quote, you just have to discredit it as a valid quote because somebody is editing it for a specific purpose. Um, but then again, though, you're right, this is all probably being handwritten. So it was like scribbles on a notepad.
SPEAKER_04:Yep. And again, with every source, you do have to take into consideration all of the contingencies that go on with it. So you could have a very valid point, and you could be right, or I could have a really valid point, or it could be both. We don't really know. I just know that this is 1929 and it's a primary source, and I'm gonna take it.
unknown:Okay.
SPEAKER_00:And it's from Time magazine. It's not like it's uh Yeah, yeah. It's it's it's not like uh some weird, sketchy um tabloid magazine.
SPEAKER_04:Right. Um, and I have the article linked at the bottom in these notes. So if anybody wants to read it, of course you do. Of course I do.
SPEAKER_00:If you ever want to find it, it's there.
SPEAKER_04:In other words, Willem Brandt was looking for an incorruptible people to aid her in her work, and in some ways she was right in, or she was right that there were untouchable, you know, call it's untouchable, huh? You get huh? Untouchable agents out there who did their best despite the circumstances to enforce prohibition. Willem Brandt's approach to enforce prohibition would be to stop it at the source of alcohol where smuggling was happening over land and oversea. Chapter 8. Rum. Now we're gonna get to the fun stuff. You're welcome. In the fall of 1921, Captain William Bill McCoy eased his schooner Henry L. Marshall out of the Nassau harbor, her holds stacked tight with burlap rack parcels of Scotch whiskey. Each bundle contained six straw jacketed bottles. Steering north, the handsome former yacht maker aimed for a point just beyond a three-mile limit off New Jersey. There he dropped anchor alongside other schooners forming what reporters would eventually call Rum Row. Smaller wooden contact boats, often piloted by fishermen and opportunistic smugglers, buzzed out from shore. Cash in hand, they were ready to shop. McCoy made his terms clear while working with smugglers or buyers, no brides, no dilution of alcoholic drinks, no gangster involvement. Those were his rules. Quote, he says, I was outside the limit selling whiskey and good whiskey, he later told the Coast Guard officer. Customers knew they were getting the genuine article, the real stuff, the good alcohol, which earned him the title of the real McCoy. Note, he did not come up with this term. It came before him. It was not coined by him, but he did use it. And it was good marketing, so good on him. For several days at a time, Bill McCoy would hold his position offshore, conducting his wholesale trade. Small boats, shuttered cases, shuttled, cases back to hidden coves, and private slips along the New Jersey and Long Island coasts. By keeping the international waters and refusing entanglements with organized crime, McCoy earned himself the reputation as a gentleman smuggler. His business relied on efficiency, maritime skills, and reputation rather than violence and political protection, like some others that we will talk about in the future. This routine, loading at Nassau or St. Pierre, sailing north, anchoring offshore, and selling in sail, and sorry, selling alcohol until the hold was empty, to find McCoy's career until his capture by the Coast Guard and the Coast Guard cutter, Seneca, in 1923. Even then, as he faced jail, he insisted he had nothing but regret. Nothing to regret. Sorry, he had no regrets. No regrets for Mr. McCoy here. William Bill McCoy was one of the first rum runners to operate during Prohibition. Rum Row was a row of various shipped parked ships parked about three or more miles off the New York coast and New Jersey coastlines. The ships were essentially floating liquor stores. Bootleggers and smugglers would sail out at night, tell the ships what they wanted, and they would get the supply to sell in the States. Three miles, at least early on, was the general consensus for international waters. So ships that were not under prohibition laws would often fly like the Union Jack or some international flag to stay out of trouble. Bootleggers like McCoy would sail out to the West Indies, usually Nassau and the Bahamas, Europe, or sometimes Canada, on these big ships, supply their stock there, stop at another island, wait for a dark rainy day, then get to the three-mile mark in the US, where they would be met with smaller and faster contact boats. The contact boats would be loaded and they would use isolated coves or pre-arranged docky points for quick offloading. Sometimes crates were dropped overboard and they were washed ashore in the early hours of the day. So I um watched a lady's interview and she said that she had like a grandfather or somebody during prohibition. They would go to the shore early in the morning, like super early in the morning overnight, and they'd watch these crates of alcohol wash up on the on the shore, and they'd like try to jack one or two for themselves and then try to go off. I thought it was pretty interesting. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:How many sharks do you think got a little tipsy from those from scrates? In the Atlantic Ocean? Maybe a few. Like the well, isn't like uh the like gosh, I isn't there like a lot of sharks around Nassau in Nessua and Nassau Islands? Nassau. I think so. Nassau Island. Yeah, that's like where a bunch of ship like uh shark attacks.
SPEAKER_04:Shark activity.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_04:I think closer down there, yeah. I think so.
SPEAKER_00:And then you think about all the crab and lobster that's this game.
SPEAKER_03:I'm not talking about crab, that's for sure. I don't care about the crab and the lobster.
SPEAKER_05:Oh no.
SPEAKER_00:Well, I think it's easier to catch when they're just all like flopping all over the place because they're drunk off their butts.
SPEAKER_03:Feel a little tipsy while you need so yeah, you catch them in their pre-beer battered.
SPEAKER_00:Let's go.
SPEAKER_03:That's it. Sounds kind of good.
SPEAKER_04:Once ashore, the crates of liquor were loaded onto trucks at the port, usually labeled fresh fish or Bob's meat supply or what have you, before heading to a distribution point. The autos would also have false compartments in them for safer transit. McCoy would have his schooner outfitted with faster and smaller engines and then remit renamed her the Tomoka. He could transport between 1,500 and 2,000 cases of liquor in one trip, making anywhere between 60,000 and$100,000 in 1920s money for that trip. So today's conversion is one to one point six million dollars for one trip. He was able to charge so much because he had a reputation for selling high quality products. Uh yeah, yeah, real McCoy. All right. After he was arrested.
SPEAKER_00:Are we getting into the uh the uh beginnings of the rum runners? Yes, where they would soup up their Ford cars.
SPEAKER_04:Oh, that's that happens in the south, and we'll talk about that. Rum runners.
SPEAKER_00:Because that's where NASCAR comes from.
SPEAKER_04:Yes, and I do talk about that. It's true.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, all right, I'll shut up.
SPEAKER_04:No, you're good, you're good. But rum runners were generally off the coast, off the Atlantic coast, three to twelve miles, depending on what year it was, uh, to avoid US waters, and they would take really fast boats, not quite cars, uh, back and forth, and then they would use the cars to get to wherever speakeasy they're selling it to.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, okay. So they're so they were like final mile in transportation. They were they were they were the final mile guys that would be.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, the car, the car guys were the final mile guys, and they would soup up their cars to go vroom vroom and go super fast. Uh, but that comes from the south with moonshine, and we'll talk about that here soon.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, got it, got it. Okay.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah. So after McCoy was arrested in 1923, and essentially he retired from bootlegging after that, Rumro would continue to be in operation until December of 1933 with the 21st Amendment amendment that ended prohibition. Over Nassau, supplying McCoy was Gertrude Chloe, the bootlegging Queen Lithgow.
SPEAKER_00:Here we go.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah. Originally a stenographer from Ohio, Lithgow moved to Nassau to work for a British wholesale liquor company there. Because she was in a British colony working for a British company, every ounce of liquor sold was legal on her part. Lithgoe would supply bootleggers with so much money that when the U.S. government went to the British to do something about the operation in the Bahamas, they refused because they were making so much money off of it. Lithgo eventually earned a reputation among for herself amongst bootleggers for having quality product. She ran her business out of the Lucerne Hotel in Nassau, which was often a place in which bootleggers and journalists would often hang out and have a drink. According to most contemporary accounts, Lithgo was a proud woman who wasn't afraid to confront anybody who threatened her. Her business were her product. One source even claimed that a man once criticized her liquor, and she responded by pointing her pistol at him and threatened to shoot him. Go girl.
SPEAKER_00:I like this person.
SPEAKER_04:She's pretty cool.
SPEAKER_03:She's funny.
SPEAKER_04:She's pretty cool. Lithgo did have a run in with the city. She's hardcore. Yeah, she you don't mess with her and you don't mess with her reputation, man. Lithgo did have a run-in with the law in 1924. She was arrested for smuggling a thousand barrels of whiskey into New Orleans. But she was acquitted of all charges because she was in Nassau at the time working for the British. So that was her loophole. And for the next two years, Lithgow continued to operate with caution. However, she did decide to retire from bootlegging in 1926 to avoid being arrested again.
SPEAKER_00:I I love how brazen these people are.
SPEAKER_04:Oh, so much.
SPEAKER_00:Like they just don't give a crap. Like they're great. Like the real McCoy, you know, Lithgo. Like, I don't care what the government says. I'm doing this and I'm getting away with it, whether they like it or not.
SPEAKER_04:Yes, I think that's why this time period is so popular, is because of all the colorful people that were um documented back then. It's great. By 1923, Rumrose stretched from New England all the way down to Florida with dozens of ships anchored offshore, ready to sell booze they were holding. According to the Coast Guard's annual reports, which you can find, it's not as colorful or interesting to read, especially today. You might get bored. But hey, there's tables, it's cool, there's numbers. It's estimated that about 500 ships supplying the eastern United States by 1944. 1924, sorry. However, by 1927, a decline began to occur due to the Coast Guard's efforts to mitigate rum running along the coast. In 1924, the U.S. jurisdiction was extended from three miles to 12 miles, that's why I said it depends on the year you look, making liquor transportation riskier. With Maybell Willenbrandt lobbying for more Coast Guard funding in the background, the Guard began to increase the number of seizures, searches of ships or boats, and reassigned Coast Guard destroyers to the water between Rumro and the shore. By the late 1920s, the popularity of Rumro was overtaken by other forms of transit over land, including domestic products made illegally or liquor made in Canada that was smuggled into the United States. Alright, chapter 9. Gin Ricky. The McCoy and Rumro runners would utilize the ocean to smuggle booze from other countries. Other smugglers would use vast borders, the vast border between Canada and the US. Some use the Great Lakes, and other more creative types would fly it in. Canada was the most popular source to smuggle in liquor. Because of the sheer size of the border, it makes a lot of sense. To smuggle alcohol over land, bootleggers had various tactics that worked depending on how much they wanted to put how much effort they wanted to put into it. Some smugglers simply walked or ran across the border on foot in areas where the border patrol was a little scarce. There are stories of bootleggers who would use sleds and horses to smuggle in liquor during the winter, which I thought was pretty interesting. The most popular overland form of smuggling over the Canadian border was automobiles. A lot of bootleggers would create false bottoms in trucks, alter car trunks to make secret spaces for contraband, or simply make their engines faster to outrun border patrol. All of this was done under the cover of night, so it's very rare you would see this during the day. In the Midwest, bootleggers would utilize the Great Lakes to smuggle and booze in a myriad of different ways. The simplest and probably the most likely to get you caught was packing it into little boats and sailing it across. Others would pack the alcohol into their own luggage and then take the ferry into Detroit with all of the other international travelers who went in and out of Canada, like a souvenir after a lovely Canadian getaway. Others would ferry their cars over, hide their alcohol in the car somewhere, and then ferry it back, which is kind of clever too. In other parts of the country, smugglers would use the railway systems that were meant for international trade. Often bonded legal alcohol from Canada would come in sealed freight cars, and it would come over the border legally, and U.S. bootleggers wouldn't unseal them once they arrived in the States, take the liquor from the train car, and then turn around and sell it. They wouldn't even bother sealing it back up, I don't think. In freight shipments, alcohol would be found hidden in the cars, in the train cars with other goods coming in the US from you know regular groceries or what have you, resources, goods, all that fun stuff. And then they would also come in on passenger lines, people would smuggle it into their luggage. That's where we get bootlegging from. Um, that term actually comes from a Civil War, maybe around the same time as the Civil War. Essentially, it's a smuggling trick where, you know, you'd put the rum in your bootleg. That's where the term comes from.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, okay.
SPEAKER_04:Yep. And then there were the pilot. There are several cases, which I read a few, and I was too lazy to type them out, but I encourage you to look them up. Especially in Washington State, where pilots would fly from Canada into the U.S. with liquor and tow. They would fly at night over remote locations. The most common practice was landing in like a farm or a field or somewhere like that to avoid detection. They would be unloaded and they would do it all over again. The most famous one is a World War I, but he got really rich doing it. Probably got paid better than the army, so good for him, or the Air Force, or whatever it was for World War I. Chapter 10 Tonic. Since ancient times, and maybe not so much today. Alcohol was considered an important medical drug and thought to have qualities that heal. This was still a widely held belief up until 1920 when the Volstead Act was passed. Which earned the medical field their exemption from enforcement of prohibition law. The intention of the exemption I think is fairly reasonable, but considering the beliefs at the time, doctors commonly prescribed a certain amount of alcohol to treat several ailments that ranged from headaches to tuberculosis. It was even common to mix with medicinal herbs to give them to sick children. The most common liquor for medicine by the 1920s was whiskey and brandy. Surprisingly, the prescribed amounts weren't huge. Like you would think that it's massive considering we're still talking about it. In reality, it's not. According to the American Institute of the History of Pharmacy, adults were usually given one fluid ounce every two to three hours, and children were given half to two teaspoons every three hours. By 1917, there was some discussion about the efficiency of medicinal liquor. The American Health Association passed a result on condemning its uses, claiming their benefits were not founded on scientific fact. Wayne Wheeler and the ASL had even worked on trying to convince physicians to discount alcohol as a medicine, but they weren't able to get it done by 1920 to be affected by the Volstead Act. Despite these efforts, a survey in 1921 showed that 51% of acting physicians believed the therapeutic qualities of whiskey were affected. With half of the country's physicians, maybe more, were okay with providing alcohol for medicine. It became common practice for people to get sick, get sick, and be prescribed alcohol. There were whole families who would just suddenly come down with some sort of illness all at the same time. It was wild, crazy epidemics were happening.
SPEAKER_00:So everybody was just having to just guzzle Nyquil as much as they could.
SPEAKER_02:I'm sick. I need some whiskey. I need whiskey. Timmy and Jojo were all sick with tuberculosis. That's a coma. And we need some brandy.
SPEAKER_00:We need some scotch for my gonna herpacephalitis that's just running rampant right now.
SPEAKER_04:Excellent.
SPEAKER_03:That's pretty funny. That's not funny, actually. It is terrible.
SPEAKER_04:There are also doctors and pharmacists who would use their prescription powers to make some extra money on the side while selling prescriptions to those who are willing to pay for it. Historical estimates put the number of prescription for alcohol from 1920 to 1933 somewhere in the 11 million per year range.
SPEAKER_05:11 million.
SPEAKER_04:That's so much. So if our math is right, based on the numbers historians have generally agreed on, that's 150 to 180 million uh prescriptions over the 13 years of prohibition. There's one physician that I found out found he uh he's on record and he wrote 475 prescriptions in a single day. Holy crap. Remember, this is before doctors had that little rule where you can only write so many prescriptions. This is way before that. That that's not a thing yet.
SPEAKER_03:Oh well look what's coming up soon.
SPEAKER_04:The doctor's offices and pharmacies became they became extremely busy, as you can imagine, between 1920 and 1933. One example is from a far a small pharmacy out of Chicago who grew from 20 stores in 1919 to over 500 stores nationwide in 1921. That little pharmacy, Walgreens. Oh, my mom just said I need a switch.
SPEAKER_00:What's so funny is like in the last episode, I mentioned the great Gatsby and how James Gats built his empire was through drug stores. Well, this guy might sound familiar.
SPEAKER_04:I have a story for you. Keep that in mind.
SPEAKER_00:Okay.
SPEAKER_04:George Remus, the son of German immigrants in Chicago, was a trained pharmacist, turned lawyer when the Volstead Act went into effect in 1920. Remus specialized in criminal law, so naturally he defended bootleggers early in prohibition. But Remus saw a lot of potential in bootlegging. His clients would pay him an enormous amount in cash, believing he could make more money bootlegging than he could being a lawyer, which is crazy. Remus decided to give it a shot. He knew that manufacturing, transportation, and selling liquor for medicinal purposes was still legal. Likely using the money he had earned defending bootleggers, he bought a few rick houses, which are warehouses that stored whiskey or other liquors for medical or manufacturing purposes. All above board. All legal. He bought all the stored liquor. To do this and to do it right, Remus moved to Ohio, just outside of Cincinnati, where about 80% of all of the medicinal liquor was stored for the country. These rig houses were stocked by local distillers, still operating under the medicinal manufacturing and religious exemption. Then Remus bought the warehouse's bonded inventory that had been verified by the paperwork he obtained and companies that handled warehouse receipts so he could legally possess, at least on paper, huge amounts of whiskey. He also bought his own pharmacies and wholesale drugstore fronts that could lawfully handle medicinal whiskey. Scholars call this uh the circle. In a nutshell, Remus bought up distilled spirits made and stored for medicinal purposes. He bought the paperwork that showed he could store them legally. He then bought stores he could sell his own medicinal liquor, then used all of the paperwork going through the drugstores, including prescriptions, to buy up more alcohol and then resell it again. He essentially made a cycle of paperwork that covered his illegal bootlegging with the legal paper trail. Genius. Now, Remus had to ask himself, wouldn't it be fishy if the liquor from my rick houses went only to my drugstores? Yes, George, yes, it would be. Therefore, what Remus did was stage robberies on his own trucks. Remus would create a consignee address on his paperwork that was scheduled to go to a legitimate pharmacy. And then he would have his own guys hijack his own truck and then reroute the product to a third location, usually a farm somewhere desolate. And those barrels would be relabeled, stored, and blended with stuff he had already in stock before sending it out to his own pharmacies, speakeasies, or bootleggers in other states. Crazy. Wow. So he would take these bonded barrels and rickhouses, buy all the paperwork, get more paperwork, buy more alcohol based on that paperwork, and then sell it. Ridiculous. By the beginning of 1922, Remus was controlling about a third of the U.S.'s alcohol distribution and had made a fortune doing it. His wife, Augusta Imogen Holmes, was likely to rebel in it. She and Remus had a tumultuous relationship. They had started an affair which would eventually end up in divorce with their previous spouses, and then they married each other in 1920 while Remus was still a lawyer. Together, Remus and Holmes would hold lavish parties at their mansion, which they called the Marble Palace. Glutches. Made it from scratch. In 1921 to 22, they held a New Year's Eve party with all of the hottest, richest couples in attendance. As party gifts, the men received diamond stick pens and the women were given a new car. Imogen appeared mid-party in a bathing suit, being sung to by a 15-piece orchestra. So this is wild. But the fund wasn't destined to last forever. Maybell Willenbrand, our girl, received a telegram from Ohio asking for federal help with a whiskey problem. Willenbrandt sent federal agents to Cincinnati to root out Remus. In October of 1921, Remus was arrested for bootlegging activities right before that big fancy party that they had. And he wasn't worried because he paid off a ton of people on the local and federal level. He's paying off people in Washington, friends. While awaiting trial, Remus continued to run his circle business as usual. Willembrandt continued to send trusted agents to Ohio, including one of her best, Franklin Dodge. The agent sent back information to Willowbrandt about the circle, dealings with corrupt White House officials, and other dealings that Remus was involved in. The information was so overwhelming that Willembrandt would go to Cincinnati herself to assist. Once enough evidence was collected, she returned to Washington, leaving Dodge in charge of the case in her absence. Dodge continued to collect evidence until the trial began in May of 1922. Despite his confidence in his connections within the government, Remus was convicted and sentenced to two years in prison.
SPEAKER_01:Nice.
SPEAKER_04:For the next few years, Remus would be in and out of federal prison. In his first term between 1923 and 25, his wife, Imogen, would begin to take control of the whiskey empire they had built together. She had legal control of the mansion. Remus put it in her name when it was built as a birthday present, and began an affair with the prohibition agent Franklin Dawn. Juicy friends. Imogen and Franklin began to work together in conspiring against Remus without him knowing while he was in jail. After dude, I know it's crazy. Oh, it's so juicy. After Remus was released from jail, he learned about Imogen and Franklin's affair at the mansion he had built, the state of his empire, which had been financially cleaned out from under him, and all of the documentation he meticulously put together were erased. Between 1925 and 1927, Remus and Holmes attacked each other with lawsuits and divorce hearings. It was really ugly. Then on October 6, 1927, Remus spotted Imogen and her daughter Ruth getting in a car while he was on his way to a meeting with Dodge to talk about legal stuff, trying to figure it out. Immediately, he told his driver to follow them. Imogen spotted an irate Remus chasing her down, turning the day into an action movie scene with a car chase and a chase on foot, like all the things. Remus eventually caught up with his wife and shot her in the stomach. Remus turned himself in, then during his trial, he pleaded not guilty.
SPEAKER_00:How do you plead not guilty to the trial itself? I'm sorry, I accidentally shot my dude spouse in the stomach.
SPEAKER_03:And drove my cart and oh this story was fascinating.
SPEAKER_04:Like this needs to be a movie right now. The trial itself was a sensation all over the country. It had drama, a love triangle, a murdered wife. It had everything. In the end, and this is infuriating, but in the end, Remus was sent to an insane asylum with a jury that felt sympathy for him. He would later be released to live out the rest of his days quietly in Kentucky without issue until his death in 1952. Oh. You're joking. George Remus. Now, I mean, he moved to him.
SPEAKER_00:I mean, he he lived those lives his life in Kentucky. So uh I don't care.
SPEAKER_03:He should have been behind bars are still in the asylum.
SPEAKER_04:Here's the interesting thing about George Remus. It's been pretty much proven that George Remus was the inspiration for Jay Gatsby.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. He I was going to say I've heard of him.
SPEAKER_04:Um they it hasn't been proven that they actually ever met, but Remus was famous enough in the papers for for Fitzgerald to make something out of it.
SPEAKER_00:And there was a Native American guy, Tremulchio, that uh Fitzgerald kind of like laid claim to. It was a Native American uh chief that would house these lavish parties for white folks. And that was the the legend has that that is also the other part of his vision of Gatsby is that like let's house these super lavish parties and get everybody on East and West Egg involved, and that's how I'm going to elevate my status.
SPEAKER_04:Interesting. I haven't read that part before. I'd like to read that.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, it's actually in a foreword for uh the Great Gatsby now.
SPEAKER_04:I'll check that out. Yeah, I don't know.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, the original title of the book was supposed to be The Great Tremulchio, and then it changed to the you know Great Gatsby. So sweet. But you it would make sense though, like this dude was an inspiration unto himself. He was I mean, it's almost like Fitzgerald is like once he sobered up for a whopping two, three months, that's where he slammed out the great Gatsby. Uh, because he was able to like look at everything that was going on in society, and he plowed through that book, he hand wrote everything in the course of a summer, and then he submitted it to his editor. The editor's like, Yeah, no, we gotta make a lot of changes. And Gatsby's like, nope, nope, just or uh Fitzgerald was like, nope, just publish it as it is, and so that's the copy that we have today.
SPEAKER_04:There you go. There you go.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I've read the book like 20 times. I freaking love it.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, I haven't read it since high school. I need to pick it up again. But yeah, also, uh, one more fun fact before we move on. George Remus was the guy I was telling you about completely dry. Never drank a drop of alcohol during prohibition.
SPEAKER_03:Yep, that's what I've also heard too. I mean, that's something that wasn't what was that in Greg Gatsby? I don't remember.
SPEAKER_00:Uh Gatsby never drank.
SPEAKER_03:Yep. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I do remember hearing about George Remus. I don't I didn't know the ending to that title there, but there you go. Well, now you know.
SPEAKER_04:Definitely knew that yeah, he was completely dry, and the woman trying to arrest him was um somebody who enjoyed a little bit of alcohol every once in a while.
SPEAKER_00:That's fascinating.
SPEAKER_04:So I always find that really interesting, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Again, you can't separate the literature from the culture. Yeah, that that's really cool. Yeah, I I I didn't know about Remus. I knew about Tremulchio, but I didn't know about Remus.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, I thought you'd like that.
SPEAKER_00:No, I appreciate that.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, I got you.
SPEAKER_00:You're like an historian for the win. Loser. You no literature major crap.
SPEAKER_04:No, that's not it.
SPEAKER_00:That's not what she meant. It's more like a long-standing joke between Kara and I. Because I look at history through the lens of literature, whereas like Kara looks at history through the lens of like primary sources and and all that kind of stuff. And so, like, we Kara and I are notorious for having arguments about the same stupid thing over and over and over again. It's true that like we come to the same conclusions, but we just do it differently. Yeah, wait, wait, we care and I need to have a whole episode on like the cause of the civil war.
SPEAKER_01:Oh god.
SPEAKER_03:No, I was just thinking that, and I was like, we don't want to talk about the civil war and the reasons why it started. We don't have to be going there. It's a vetoed discussion.
SPEAKER_00:I wouldn't say it's bad. I I would just say that like we have two different perspectives. Both perspectives end up on the same conclusion, but it's just fascinating to look at it from the perspective of a historian versus a literature major and how they both kind of like come together in the end, and it really flushes out a lot of humanity in terms of the civil war.
SPEAKER_03:And it also flushes out my comfort when I walk into the room and I get the p argument version. I'm like, um, mom, can you?
SPEAKER_00:Or like our students are recording us in time lapse. Yeah. That was so funny. That was funny.
SPEAKER_03:Kara looks like she's like blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.
SPEAKER_04:All right, chapter 11.
SPEAKER_00:Sacramental wine.
SPEAKER_04:Sacramental wine. While some used medicinal exemptions as a loophole to get alcohol, others used the religious exemption. The Volstead Act states, nothing in this title, and this is a quote, by the way, quote, nothing in this title shall be held to apply to the manufacturer, sale, transportation, importation, possession, or distribution of wine for sacramental purposes or like religious rights, except section six, save as the same requirements to permit purchase and section ten hereof and the provisions of this act prescribing penalties for the violation of either of sad sections.
SPEAKER_00:Wow, that's that's just beautiful.
SPEAKER_04:Very lolly right there. Yeah, very lolly.
SPEAKER_00:Just tugs the heartstrings.
SPEAKER_04:Very official. In order to obtain alcohol, in other words, religious institutions were required to gain a permit through an admissions process. It went something like this only official church leaders could obtain a permit. This would include rabbis, ministers, and priests. Sellers of alcohol, usually wineries, would also need a permit to sell religious and to religious institutions. The act then says that religious heads, bishops, conference heads, whatever, would designate a clergy member to oversee the manufacture of the sacramental wine, and they would need a permit as well. Lots of permits being around. Basically, everyone involved in this process needed a permit approved by the IRS. If anyone was found going against the regulations of Volsid Act's terms for sacramental wine, they could lose their permit, be fined, or held accountable with criminal penalties depending on the severity of the uh crime.
SPEAKER_05:Crime.
SPEAKER_04:Depends on who you talk to. Anyway, different religions generally had a different set of standards. For example, the Catholic Church used wines for communion, and it can be safe to say that they were allowed more wine than other religions due to their larger congregations, especially at this time. Despite that, the Catholic Church ran a very tight ship, and bootlegging was not as easy to pull off. The Protestant churches were smaller with smaller congregations, so they were allotted less wine than the Catholic churches. It was easier than to take some wine under the table, but I couldn't find anything super significant, probably because they were so small compared to other congregational churches and religions. So, yes, there was probably some bootlegging going on, but because the congregations were so small, it wasn't anything hugely significant, so it's harder to find any historical record of that happening in a Protestant community. In Jewish communities, wine is very important for religious ceremonies. The exemption to the Volcad Act was extended for rabbis and synagogues because of the importance to wine in their religious practices. While Jewish congregations were smaller than Catholic ones, they used wine more frequently. So they were allotted more than the Protestant churches, but maybe a little bit less than the Catholic ones. The extension for rabbis and synagogues, however, was abused by the population to get themselves some wine. Early in Prohibition, especially, people began claiming that they were rabbis from all over the place and from all kinds of different backgrounds. There were black rabbis and women rabbis and Latin rabbis and rabbis from the south and rabbis from the north and rabbis from the east, and rabbis from the rest. Just so many rabbis. So many. Nobody wanted to argue with anybody who was saying that they were a rabbi because, you know, it's disrespectful. And it makes you a jerk, right? So we just have a bunch of rabbis running around taking alcohol. It's fine.
SPEAKER_00:So America was Jewish children rabbis and rabbit rabbis.
SPEAKER_04:Congregation numbers also skyrocketed with people joining different churches or making up their own to get a little wine for themselves. Congregation from night congregations plural from 1920 to 1921 grew on average from 80 families in a community to like 900. It went like a hundredfold. It's crazy. According to IRS records from 1923 and 24, riveting. Read it. Millions of gallons of I read it, riveting. Millions of gallons of alcohol were used under religious permits.
SPEAKER_00:So yours are not going to get back.
SPEAKER_04:I committed. Between 23 and 24, millions of gallons of alcohols were used under religious permits. In the 1922 fiscal year, about two million gallons were pulled. And in 1924, about 2,944,000 gallons were pulled.
unknown:Jeez.
SPEAKER_04:Using these numbers, most historians all agree that this was a massive increase in usage during the early 20s and prohibition. Well it sounds crazy. A lot of wineries in the country only survived prohibition because of the churches, religious exemptions, and the people willing to abuse the loophole. For example, and I thought this was fascinating. The San Antonio winery in Los Angeles, if anybody's been there, was opened in 1917, three years before Prohibition passed. And it survived because of all of these circumstances. It's still in operation today. Pretty cool.
SPEAKER_00:Dang.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah. So there's your Sacramento wine.
SPEAKER_00:Go Texas.
SPEAKER_04:Um, that's California. That one's in California.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, the San Antonio. Oh. In Los Angeles. I just read the rest of it. I'm like, oh, San Antonio, go Texas. And then you're like, oh, in LA.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Never mind.
unknown:All right.
SPEAKER_04:We are on the home stretch here. Final chapter for this part. Chapter 12, bathtub gin in ginger jake. I'm gonna start with some definitions. Here we go. Jake.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, great.
SPEAKER_04:You're welcome. A term used to refer to poisoned alcohol, particularly methanol-laced spirits. What do you think of when you think of moonshine? I usually think of old guys in the Appalachian Mountains with big beer brewing things happening and they're brewing clear liquor in the woods. That's what I think of. But the official definition of moonshine is actually a lot broader. According to the Oxford Dictionary, it is illicitly distilled or smuggled liquor. That's it.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Yeah, no, because I actually know people that make moonshine. And there's a lot of chemistry involved because if you don't do it right, you will kill your patrons. Yes. At least make them go blind.
SPEAKER_04:Yes, that's what this chapter is about.
SPEAKER_00:So it's like like moonshiners are actually brilliant distillers as long as they're not like amateur night and killing people.
SPEAKER_03:Like if they applied themselves in chemistry, they probably would have gotten really far if they did good things with it.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. They're all like Walter Whites, just out in the woods. Crazy.
SPEAKER_03:Well, I'm just thinking of people in like jails that make moonshine. Like Yeah, I don't know how that works.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. So I feel like there's prison wallets involved and all sorts of weird crap going on.
SPEAKER_04:I didn't look that deep into it.
SPEAKER_03:It's it's a fun rabbit hole for sure. I sugg I highly suggest looking into.
SPEAKER_04:For sure. I went the historical route, but if anybody else wants to go the contemporary route, please by all means.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_04:Prohibition in the south, just like other parts of the country, had a very unique flavor to it. While the Northeast had Atlantic City, the West had Seattle bootlegging and the Mexico border, the South had rural moonshiners. Southerners would also get their alcohol from rum runners, especially early on, but it was definitely more expensive than alcohol that was made from homebrewers. Homebrewing and moonshine had been around long before prohibition had started. Many track it back to the 1790s after the whiskey tax was put into effect in 1791. So by 1920, there were a lot of people who were already making their own liquor. When the Volstead Act passed in 1920, the number of people who decided to make their own moonshine exploded. Went boom. Huge. The process, in a nutshell, goes something like this. And I'm no scientist, I'm no chemist, I literally just read a thing. Corn. Traditionally, other grains are used, but corn was often ground up into a mash, then soaked with yeast, sugar, and hot water to ferment. A still, which is a copper cooking pot thing, was heated up to 175 degrees Fahrenheit, creating steam from the alcohol that would be distilled in a copper pipe above the still, naming original, very good, which would then cool and turn back to a liquid alcohol. It doesn't sound that hard, right? I mean it's not that bad, complicated, sure. I don't understand the chemistry behind it, but we'll go with it. Well, if the distilled alcohol was not at the correct temperature when collected for consumption, it would be toxic to anybody who drank it. On top of that, when the moonshine was cooking, the sugar would give off of every sweet smell that prohibition agents could track when looking for moonshiners in the woods. Once the moonshine was distilled and stored, it would be put into a truck or a car, then transported to different species. Drivers frequently souped up their engines to make them faster in order to outrun prohibition agents or police while transporting moonshine or other forms of liquor illegally. This was extremely common throughout the nation, but in the south, they made it a sport. Drivers with redone engines would take their cars out on their downtime and race to see who was the fastest. They would eventually organize and become NASCAR, which still survives to this day. Moonshine or homemade liquor would be sold in speakeasies, other bootleggers and speakeas other bootleggers or drinking establishments in the area. If it came from an inexperienced moonshiner, though, people would often get sick. And it happened frequently. It happened a lot. The demand for moonshine became so high that moonshiners would often cut corners to try and speed up the process to keep up with the demand. Because of this, the quality of the liquor went down and the potential of toxic alcohol went up. This was a problem. Moonshiners would try to keep up with the demand by turning the temperature they cooked up. And when they cooked the mixture, they would often try to add industrial alcohol, even more unquestionable ingredients. That includes additional methanol and even a small doses that could lead to blindness or death. Some moonshiners would make their moonshine in car radiators, which I thought was kind of interesting, leading to lead poisoning. That's always a good time. We have an episode on that, so you're welcome. Go ahead and listen to that guy.
SPEAKER_00:So let me let me elaborate on this if I can. Is that okay?
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, go for it.
SPEAKER_00:Okay. So you take a loaf of bread, right? The when you cut a loaf of bread in half and you look at all the little pockets inside of it, that is caused from the fermentation process. That's where we get bread from. That's called the crumb. Basically, if you take yeast and you mix it with sugar of some sort and any sort of flour, because flour is a sugar, and water, it produces CO2, so carbon dioxide. So that's what it farts out. We have a whole episode on this sketchy ways that Britain made bread in the early 1800s, going all the way into the 1900s. We'll link to that in the show notes. But like yeast, water, and sugar make CO2 and alcohol, so it farts out CO2 and it poops out alcohol. And there are ways to regulate that. That is what distillation is. Now that if you can keep it at 175 degrees, then you know for sure what is coming out the other end is pure 100% ethanol. Like you can run your car off of this stuff. Now, if that fire is too hot, you're going to be mixing a lot of water vapor in with it, along with the alcohol. And unless you have what is known as a hydrometer, meaning an i uh it's a a tool that like measures buoyancy and temperature. If you don't have one of those devices that can measure the proper alcohol level, what you're spitting out, you have no idea how much alcohol it has. So, like if you were to go to the grocery store and just pick up a bottle of rubbing alcohol and just down it, it will kill you. But yet you can pick up a bottle of like Jack Daniels, which is 40% alcohol, down that thing, and you're just gonna get trash for the night, and that's it. So, like, if you don't have a way of measuring how much alcohol or ethanol that you're producing, yeah, you you run the risk of killing people. And usually one of the first signs of like absolute acute alcohol poisoning is blindness.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:So, like, that was the problem with these moonshiners, is that they were producing stuff that was so potent and so powerful, but so unregulated and so misinformed that whoever drank it, you just had no idea how strong it was, especially when they mix it with other things like coffee and whatnot. That's where you get Kahua from. Yeah. People were dying from alcohol poisoning from like one single drink.
SPEAKER_04:Yes, and it gets worse. Yes. I'll tell you how.
SPEAKER_00:All right, I'm all for it.
SPEAKER_04:All right. It's 1923. A 34-year-old speakeasy owner in a suburb of Chicago named Mary Wozniak was serving guests shots, beer, and whatever alcohol she alcohol she had in stock that night. So good alcohol, the real McCoy, was becoming increasingly expensive. And with three kids to feed, she had to find alcohol from local moonshiners to supplement her stock, as it was far cheaper, especially for a black market hotzippic item. One man named George Renton drank five to six shots of the local moonshine, though she probably didn't tell where she got it. Renton staggered out of her bar that night and walked about 200 feet out of the door, and he suddenly fell into the street, dead on the floor. An autopsy later revealed that Renton had a lethal amount of methanol or wood alcohol in his system and it killed him.
SPEAKER_01:Jeez.
SPEAKER_04:So whose fault was it? Was it Mary's fault? She certainly paid for it. She would be arrested and convicted of manslaughter by poisoning with one year to life in prison. Mary would become known by the public, thanks to the press, as Moonshine Mary and the first woman to be arrested for bootlegging.
SPEAKER_00:Dang.
SPEAKER_04:When prohibition went into effect in 1920, industrial alcohol manufacturing and selling was made exempt. The US government often added substances to industrial alcohol to ensure that it was not something people would want to drink. This practice was originally put into place before prohibition due to tax evasion concerns. They denatured the alcohol by creating methanol or wood alcohol, and it was generally alcohol made from a grain base and cooked at a different temperature than ethanol or the alcohol that was safer to drink. The government also added additional chemicals on top of that that made the industrial alcohol smell or taste unappealing to keep people from drinking it. At least that was their goal. When prohibition began, bootleggers would redistill industrial alcohol to attempt to burn off the additional chemicals. To combat this, the government created a new formula in 1926, essentially increasing the amount of methanol in the industrial stuff to make it harder to renature. According to the January 10th, 1927 edition of Time magazine, the formula was four parts methanol or wood alcohol, 2.25 parts pyridine basis, half part benzene to 100 parts ethyl alcohol. The same article noted that three regular glasses or drinks of this form of alcohol would cause blindness instantly. Those who drank poison alcohol would show different symptoms depending on how much wood wood alcohol was in the glass that they drank. Some suffered severe abdominal pain, some just got a headache, some would feel numbness in their legs, losing the ability to walk normally. Others just straight up died. Crazy. When the government began to put this new formula into place, some argued against it, noting the dangers that it could pose for people who drank it willingly or unknowingly. Others, including members of the Anti-Saloon League, and our friend Wayne Wheeler, were incredibly supportive of the change. Poison alcohol or the increased amount of wood alcohol would become a growing problem throughout the entirety of Prohibition. By the time Prohibition ended, it was estimated that more than 50,000 Americans were reported dead by alcohol poisoning.
SPEAKER_01:Jeez.
SPEAKER_04:Bootleggers, trying to keep up with the demand, would continue to attempt renaturing the industrial alcohol despite the new formula, essentially doubling the amount of wood alcohol. They would also relabel, repackage, or dilute the industrial alcohol and try to pass it off as drinkable versions to various speakeas across the country. Some people blamed the government, some blamed the bootleggers, and some blamed the drinkers for the responsibility of people dropping dead after drinking poison alcohol. Wayne Wheeler blamed the bootleggers and the drinkers, and the bootleggers blamed the government. It was a whole thing throughout the entire period. In 1928, two brothers from Boston named Harry Gross and Max Risman began creating their own version of a popular medication at the time called Jamaican Ginger. And this was also called ginger j, which was used for stomach problems normally. This medication, which had been around since the 1860s, contained 70 to 80 percent alcohol, basically.
SPEAKER_00:Whoa. Goodness. That's like ever clear.
SPEAKER_04:Like yeah, it's crazy. So these two bootleggers sound of that makes my body hurt. These two bootleggers made their version of the technically legal drink used using an industrial alcohol to replicate ginger Jake without the strong ginger taste. To do that, they use Lindell, a chemical normally used to make celluloid film and explosives.
SPEAKER_00:The Lindall laced alcoholic molasses flood. Yes. Jeez.
SPEAKER_04:The Lindall laced alcohol would be circulated throughout the country out to the public. Is that it caused what they oh sorry between 1929 and 1930. So it was circulated between 29 and 30. What they didn't know is that they released their new product out to the public and it caused severe paralysis, particularly in the legs. An estimated 35,000 to 100,000 people suffered that paralysis and developed a limp that would be known as Jake Walker Jake Leg. The two brothers were eventually found and convicted of taking medication. People would be seen for some years following the incident with a limp in their step. In fact, I'm gonna end it with some lyrics from a song by our friend Woody Guthrie. I think I mentioned Guthrie in our Dust Bowl episode. He's famous for his Dust Bowl songs. So I'm gonna read his lyrics here. Yeah, good. Good old Woody Guthrie. He wrote a song called Jake Walk Blue. Yeah. His song Jake Walk Blues, it goes something like this. I might drink liquor and I might drink rum. Might drink lemonade and buttermilk, some. But here's my drink, which I always choose. I'm a Jake Walk Daddy with the Jakewalk Blues. I got me a mama down in New Orleans. She's long and tall. She's keen, I mean. I lost my woman. I'm a singing the blues. I'm a jaqual daddy with the jawk blues. And then it goes on, and it's really interesting. The last lyric uh is down in Texas, there is a moonshine. Jamaica ginger make you paralyzed. I won't let that trouble my mind. I'm a jaqual daddy with the jaqual blues. If you don't want me, give me your left hand. Gonna take a jug to my barian land. Legs are stiff, like a new pair of shoes. I'm a jaqual daddy with the jaqual blues. That just proves that everybody knew about it. It was in the mainstream. It's a whole thing. And there you are, friends, all of the ways that you can get alcohol during prohibition.
SPEAKER_00:It's amazing how like it's it's no different today.
SPEAKER_04:Like the more today, you see a lot of the uh the echoes of prohibition.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, definitely.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, it it's it's it's just so fascinating how like the more we try to restrict stuff, the more creative ways that people find workarounds. Yeah, and and and when we'll look at the the Jake Walk Blues by Woody Guthrie, yeah, again, you can't separate the literature from the culture. Something written like that in the 1700s wouldn't work.
SPEAKER_04:No.
SPEAKER_00:But given given the 1920s, 1930s of it all, yeah, it makes perfect sense.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, so there you have it, guys. There's part two, the source. Next one, next one, we're gonna be talking about my favorite topic on prohibition culture, speakeasies, women's rights, black culture, harmon renaissance, jazz, other things. I'm excited for this next one. The March.
SPEAKER_00:Are we getting into the mob at all?
SPEAKER_04:We're gonna get to the mob in the episode after that.
SPEAKER_00:Oh my god, there's there's two more.
SPEAKER_04:So culture and then the mob. That's that's how we're gonna do it. Four patterns.
SPEAKER_00:Man, because like I really want to get like to like El Capone, because I actually stood in his cell in Alcatraz.
SPEAKER_04:So have I. Pretty cool.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, we're gonna get to that. Um, not this next episode, but the last episode. Partially because I'm leaving it for the end, but also partially because it happens at the end of Prohibition.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, that's true too. Like all the mob stuff kind of came to an end when Prohibition was lifted.
SPEAKER_04:It it was most active at the end of the 20s and the early 30s.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_04:At its peak.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Yeah. And then the mob had to shift to other things like casinos and and whatnot, which is something that I may explore like the Tangiers and the Flamingo.
SPEAKER_04:I do um recommend checking out the mob museum in Las Vegas. That's fascinating. And they do a really good job with their prohibition expedition expedition. And they have a good speakeasy. I went there.
SPEAKER_00:You remember it?
SPEAKER_04:Yeah. I do. Yes. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:You know what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.
SPEAKER_04:I only had like two cocktails, and I tasted some of my husband's. That was it.
SPEAKER_00:Next thing you know, you're dressed up a share and your husband is Elvis and No.
SPEAKER_04:Anyway, speakeasies, culture, all the fun stuff that I love. Next episode.
SPEAKER_00:Dang.
SPEAKER_03:I'm excited.
SPEAKER_04:Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. And I think uh Kara, you Exceeded even my time frame for an episode.
SPEAKER_04:No, I think the I think the record is like two and a half hours.
SPEAKER_00:I'm trying to think what episode that is, but I've we'll have to look, but I'm pretty sure it's like, oh wait.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, like wait.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, cuz because because I'm working on an episode of the most supreme dumpster fire of all of humanity. This is a dumpster fire that will end Earth. Well, thankfully, it's not gonna happen for a couple billion years.
SPEAKER_03:Okay, good.
SPEAKER_00:But I think that's my lifetime. I yeah, yeah, yeah. Like we're we're totally fine.
SPEAKER_03:But it's one of these time to think about.
SPEAKER_00:Yes, it it's one of those dumpster fires where it's like, dang, our sun is going to explode and it's gonna rock every single inner solar system planet. Okay, so it is a uh dumpster fire completely out of the realm of human involvement, but I think it's kind of interesting. It's a little sciencey. I like doing sciencey things, it's gonna involve some nuclear chemistry. Great. I can tell you two are just thrilled about this.
SPEAKER_04:It's also really late at night and we're ready for bed.
SPEAKER_00:Yes, yeah, it's it's only 11 o'clock at night.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, and I also know that Deja's got an episode coming up as well.
SPEAKER_00:That's true. Yeah, mine won't come until like December. By the time you guys get done with your won't be done until December.
SPEAKER_03:Let's talk about the 1920s.
SPEAKER_00:Prohibition episode 33. Let's go.
SPEAKER_03:Honestly, with all these stories, I could, but I'm not gonna keep going forever. I could you could have a whole separate podcast on the prohibition.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, talk about prohibition, baseball.
SPEAKER_03:Drink and talk about the prohibitions, uh all the things.
SPEAKER_04:Anyway, drinking. All right. Well, let's uh yeah, let's end it, shall we?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah so guys, uh be sure to check us out on Instagram. Uh, one of us is gonna update our Instagram, yeah.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, we'll get there.
SPEAKER_00:And uh one of us is gonna update our website.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, I'll get there. Once I'm done writing all of my freaking notes.
SPEAKER_00:But yeah, check us out. Check us out on the daysimpsifier.com. Uh, you can find us anywhere. Uh, be sure to tell friends and family uh the best thing to do is just grab their phones and just start like following us, whether they like it or not. Um, it it's one of these things where the more you learn about how humanity has tried to solve like every problem and then blowing up in their faces, it kind of helps you out a little bit because it's okay for things not to go right. So, yeah, be sure to check us out um anywhere. Be sure to tell friends and family. I encourage you to like pick three people, hijack them, tie them up consentfully, consentfully tie them up if they're into that sort of thing, and um uh ball gags. Hey man, that that's up to you. That's up to you and the consenting person. But ultimately, at the end of the day, try to try try to get them to find a better place in their life that revolves around other people screwing crap up unbelievably so that they can feel better about themselves. So, yeah, check us out, daysubsfire.com. Uh, we're on Instagram. I'm trying to think, are we on Facebook? No, we're not on Facebook.
SPEAKER_03:No, sir. Yeah, I'm not even on Facebook.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, Facebook is like so 2007. But yeah, reach out to friends and family, like and subscribe, leave a comment. You can also send us a text message uh via the link on our website. And um, yeah, yeah, stay.
SPEAKER_03:We'll see you guys later.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, stay put for part thirty-eight of Prohibition and uh keep it a hot mess.
SPEAKER_03:Bye. See you later, guys. See ya, you're gonna be able to do