The great experiment

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  Prohibition: ‘being forbidden to do something; oftentimes refers to alcohol’
  

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  Differences in Canadian and American laws made rum running possible...
  

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  in Canada: decisions about alcohol were left to the individual provinces
  

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  Ontario prohibited domestic sale (to individuals), BUT not manufacture or export
  

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  in the U.S... there was a complete ban on the manufacture, sale, and transportation of intoxicants from 1919-1933
  

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  Women’s groups, church groups, business owners, farmers
  

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  Why? it was the source of broken homes, bad health, lost productivity, and the loss of morals
  

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  criminals, gangs, some doctors, and alcohol manufactures saw it as a business opportunity
  

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  bar owners, average people, police and customs officers
  

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  ingenious, inventive, and creative…
  

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  on the water smugglers used… rafts, canoes, speed boats and transport ships
  

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  in the winter… ice skates, old jalopies, sleds
  

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  also... in boots and brassieres, under skirts and jackets, in baby carriages, re-fitted cars, airplanes, railway cars, and maybe even an underwater pipeline!
  

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  Think of Windsor/Essex County’s proximity to the U.S.... the Detroit River is only 1 mile wide and it’s surrounded by the Great Lakes
  

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  This area became known as “Rum Alley” or “The Windsor-Detroit Funnel”
  

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  75% of all illegal booze smuggled into the U.S. went across the Detroit River
  

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  1 in 4 local residents were somehow employed in bootlegging
  

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  locals, such as Cecil Smith and Harry Low, made fortunes and built mansions in Walkerville
  

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  in Detroit, booze became the second largest industry after the automobile
  

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  enforcement efforts largely failed…
  

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  enforcement temporarily decreased crime rates and increased productivity, however, it created a monster…
  

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  it was the beginning of some of North America’s most vicious criminals and gangsters like Al Capone and The Purple Gang
  

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  corrupt police “looked the other way,” corrupt doctors wrote prescriptions for alcohol… some had line-ups stretching down the block
  

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  average people were criminalized for drinking while big-time criminals got rich bootlegging, largely without penalty
  

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  the government made millions in tax revenue
  

→ the end of the boom… by 1930, under pressure from U.S., the government shuts down the export of alcohol, effectively ending bootlegging and smuggling