Smuggler Nation (72 page)

14
. Quoted in Woodiwiss,
Organized Crime and American Power
, 183.

15
. Quoted in Michael Woodiwiss,
Crime, Crusades and Corruption: Prohibitions in the United States, 1900–1987
(London: Pinter, 1988), 9.

16
. Okrent,
Last Call
, 132.

17
. Thomas R. Pegram,
Battling Demon Rum
(Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1998), 159.

18
. For these and additional details, see Michael A. Lerner,
Dry Manhattan: Prohibition in New York City
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007), 68.

19
. Quoted in Edward Behr,
Prohibition: Thirteen Years That Changed America
(New York: Arcade, 1996), 241.

20
. Quoted in Okrent,
Last Call
, 232.

21
. See especially Garrett Peck,
Prohibition in Washington DC: How Dry We Weren’t
(Charleston, SC: History Press, 2011), 125–31.

22
. For these and other details, see Kobler,
Ardent Spirits
, 244.

23
. Quoted in Peck,
Prohibition in Washington DC
, 133.

24
. Quoted in Cashman,
Prohibition
, 132.

25
. Quoted in Behr,
Prohibition
, 164.

26
. For more details, see Okrent,
Last Call
, 324–25.

27
. Behr,
Prohibition
, 164.

28
. Carl E. Prince and Mollie Keller,
The U.S. Customs Service: A Bicentennial History
(Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Treasury, 1989), 217.

29
. The Jones law amended Volstead by turning liquor law violations into felonies. The penalty for first-time offenders, initially six months in jail or a fine of $1,000, was increased to up to five years in jail and/or $10,000.

30
. Quoted in Woodiwiss,
Organized Crime and American Power
, 198.

31
. Lender and Martin,
Drinking in America
, 145.

32
. Quoted in Okrent,
Last Call
, 172.

33
. Malcolm F. Willoughby,
Rum War at Sea
(Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Treasury, 1964), 29.

34
. Lawrence Spinelli,
Dry Diplomacy: The United States, Great Britain, and Prohibition
(Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2008), 3.

35
. Quoted in Okrent,
Last Call
, 160.

36
. Okrent,
Last Call
, 160.

37
. Okrent,
Last Call
, 161.

38
. Spinelli,
Dry Diplomacy
, 3.

39
. William P. Helm, Jr., “20 to 50 Ships Supply New York Liquor Trade,”
New York Times
, 3 September 1924.

40
. See, for example, Robert Carse,
Rum Row: The Liquor Fleet That Fueled the Roaring Twenties
(Mystic, CT: Flat Hammock Press, 2007, reprint of 1928 book).

41
. “332 Foreign Ships Found in Rum Trade,”
New York Times
, 3 February 1925.

42
. See Jean Pierre Andrieux,
Rumrunners: The Smugglers from St. Pierre and Miquelon and the Burin Peninsula from Prohibition to Present Day
(St. John’s, Newfoundland, Can.: Flanker Press, 2009), 22.

43
. Andrieux,
Rumrunners
, 30, 67.

44
. Coffey,
The Long Thirst
, 178.

45
. Frederick F. Van de Water,
The Real McCoy
(Mystic, CT: Flat Hammock Press, 2007, originally published 1931), 5–6.

46
. Willoughby,
Rum War at Sea
, 43.

47
. Willoughby,
Rum War at Sea
, 163.

48
. David Kahn,
The Codebreakers: The Comprehensive History of Secret Communication from Ancient Times to the Internet
(New York: Scribner, 1996), 802–54.

49
. Harold Waters,
Smugglers of Spirits: Prohibition and the Coast Guard Patrol
(New York: Hastings House, 1971), 17.

50
. Waters,
Smugglers of Spirits
, 17.

51
. Everett S. Allen,
The Black Ships: Rumrunners of Prohibition
(Boston: Little, Brown, 1979), 53, 110.

52
. Former Coast Guardsman Harold Waters notes that smugglers often repurchased their seized boats at bargain prices: “No starry-eyed outsider ever made a bid at these auctions, not with the cold-eyed gunmen standing around to discourage ‘outside’ bidding. Very often we would catch the very same boat and its very same crew, who were meanwhile out on bail, all over again.” Waters,
Smugglers of Spirits
, 56.

53
. Quoted in Allen,
The Black Ships
, 53.

54
. Waters,
Smugglers of Spirits
, 62.

55
. Willoughby,
Rum War at Sea
, 58.

56
. Okrent,
Last Call
, 280.

57
. See Kobler,
Ardent Spirits
, 262–65.

58
. Quoted in Okrent,
Last Call
, 170.

59
. Waters,
Smugglers of Spirits
, 114.

60
. Quoted in Waters,
Smugglers of Spirits
, 152.

61
. Waters,
Smugglers of Spirits
, 167.

62
. Waters,
Smugglers of Spirits
, 199.

63
. See especially Philip P. Mason,
Rumrunning and the Roaring Twenties: Prohibition on the Michigan-Ontario Waterway
(Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1995).

64
. Amounting to more than two hundred bottles per person in the area, this was far in excess of local consumption capacity. See Okrent,
Last Call
, 124.

65
. Mason,
Rumrunning and the Roaring
Twenties, 42.

66
. Charles A. Selden, “Our ‘Rum Capital’: An Amazing Picture,”
New York Times
, 27 May 1928.

67
. Okrent,
Last Call
, 256–57.

68
. Mason,
Rumrunning and the Roaring Twenties
, 109; Coffey,
The Long Thirst
, 317.

69
. Michael Woodiwiss,
Crime, Crusades, and Corruption
, 28.

70
. Mason,
Rumrunning and the Roaring Twenties
, 42–43.

71
. Quoted in Mason,
Rumrunning and the Roaring Twenties
, 111.

72
. Woodiwiss,
Organized Crime and American Power
, 191.

73
. Mason,
Rumrunning and the Roaring Twenties
, 37.

74
. Okrent,
Last Call
, 342.

75
. “Official Report Admits Failure of Prohibition,”
Chicago Daily Tribune
, 4 December 1928, 4.

76
. See Cashman,
Prohibition
, 30; and Spinelli,
Dry Diplomacy
, 129.

77
. Behr,
Prohibition
, 130.

78
. Charles O. Smith, “Rum Treaty Proposals as Seen by Canadians,”
New York Times
, 13 January 1929.

79
. Quoted in Morrow Mayo, “Rum Running on the Detroit River,”
Nation
, 4 September 1929, 244.

80
. “Canada’s Colossal Smuggling ‘Industry,’”
Literary Digest
, 29 May 1926.

81
. One smuggler defiantly boasted to the
Detroit Free Press
: “The government can block the river. Let them. Airplanes cost less than a good speedboat. Fly loads right to Chicago. They’ll have a tough time stopping us. We’ll fly right over their heads and laugh at them.” Quoted in Kobler,
Ardent Spirits
, 268.

82
. Mason,
Rumrunning and the Roaring Twenties
, 146.

83
. Quoted in Okrent,
Last Call
, 259.

84
. For more details, see Allan S. Everest,
Rum Across the Border: The Prohibition Era in Northern New York
(Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1978), 24, 37, 46–47.

85
. This sometimes included former border agents. For example, Ralph Hackmeister, nicknamed the “terror of rumrunners” until 1922, resigned from the customs patrol and a year later was arrested on charges of rumrunning (the charges were later dropped for insufficient evidence). Edward Cronk, a former border agent at Malone, was convicted and jailed for rumrunning and hijacking a shipment of alcohol. When he left the border force, he publicly announced his intention to become a smuggler and confidently predicted that he would never be caught. See Everest,
Rum Across the Border
, 77.

86
. This account of Fay’s career is taken from Coffey,
The Long Thirst
, 22–23, 53–55, 122, 161–62, 173. Fay’s business ventures had many ups and downs. Trying to go legit, Fay became the head of the New York Chain Milk Association, but his career in the milk business was cut short when he was indicted for conspiracy in restraining the milk trade. Fay was later shot to death by a drunk and disgruntled nightclub employee. See Coffey,
The Long Thirst
, 250, 313–14.

87
. Olmstead’s story is recounted in more detail in Emmett Watson,
Once upon a Time in Seattle
(Seattle: Lesser Seattle, 1992). Also see Behr,
Prohibition
, 138–39; and Okrent,
Last Call
, 284–85.

88
. Kobler,
Ardent Spirits
, 254.

89
. Quoted in John C. Burnham,
Bad Habits
(New York: NYU Press, 1003), 66.

90
. For these and other details on the Bronfman story, see Okrent,
Last Call
, 149–58.

91
. Morone,
Hellfire Nation
, 283.

92
. Claire Bond Potter,
War on Crime: Bandits, G-Men, and the Politics of Mass Culture
(New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1998), 12–13.

93
. Cashman,
Prohibition
, 124–25; Okrent,
Last Call
, 164.

94
. Quoted in Morone,
Hellfire Nation
, 329.

95
. Okrent,
Last Call
, 283.

Chapter 14

1
. See “Why People Take Drugs,” in Andrew Weil,
The Natural Mind
(New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1986), 17–38.

2
. The literature here is vast. For an especially useful historical introduction, see David T. Courtwright,
Forces of Habit: Drugs and the Making of the Modern World
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001).

3
. On the pivotal U.S. role in globalizing drug prohibition, see Peter Andreas and Ethan Nadelmann,
Policing the Globe: Criminalization and Crime Control in International Relations
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2006).

4
. Quoted in Courtwright,
Forces of Habit
, 34.

5
. David F. Musto,
The American Disease: Origins of Narcotics Control
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), 7.

6
. James A. Inciardi,
The War on Drugs: Heroin, Cocaine, Crime, and Public Policy
(Palo Alto, CA: Mayfield, 1986), 6–7.

7
. James A. Inciardi,
The War on Drugs III
(Boston: Allyn & Bacon, 2002), 24.

8
. Troy Duster,
The Legislation of Morality: Law, Drugs, and Moral Judgment
(New York: Free Press, 1970), 7.

9
. Edward M. Brecher and the editors of
Consumer Reports
, eds.,
Licit and Illicit Drugs
(Boston: Little, Brown, 1972), 7.

10
. Douglas Clark Kinder, “Shutting Out the Evil: Nativism and Narcotics Control in the United States,”
Journal of Policy History
3, no. 4 (1991): 472–73.

11
. Musto,
American Disease
, 6.