>> From the Library of Congress in Washington DC.
[ Silence ]
>> Good afternoon everyone and welcome to our Books
and Beyond Program for today.
I'm Guy Lamolinara from the Center for the Book and for those of you
who don't know about us, we are the Reading Promotional Office here
at the Library of Congress and we have affiliated centers for the book
in every state, the District of Columbia
and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
You can also find us on the web at read.gov,
and we have a Facebook page that's dedicated to this author's series
where you can look at webcasts of our previous Books
and Beyond Programs and you can enter into discussions
with other people about the Books and Beyond Programs.
One thing I need to tell you is that we're webcasting today,
so if you ask a question at the end
of the program you'll be a part of the webcast.
Also I need to let you know that,
could you please turn off all your electronic devices.
I'm pleased today to welcome Garrett Peck to our Books
and Beyond Author Series.
Garrett is a self-described literary journalist, but not only is he
that he's also, as he says, a craft, beer-drinking, wine-collecting,
gin-loving, bourbon-sipping, Simpson's-quoting dork.
So you can see that Garrett's very well qualified to be here today
to talk about the subject of prohibition.
He is the author of one book called The Prohibition Hangover
and he leads the Temperance Tour of prohibition-related sites here
in Washington D.C. This is his second book,
which we'll be discussing today and it will be for sale here
after the presentation and Garrett will be signing it as well
and it's called Prohibition in Washington, D.C. How Dry We Weren't.
Please welcome Garrett Peck.   [ Applause ]
>> Thanks to everyone here for coming out here today, and for--
hopefully not sacrificing your lunch hour
but hopefully we'll get an enjoyable talk about prohibition in D.C.
and basically how-- to see how much the nation's capital is expected
to be this model dry city for the country during the--
as [inaudible] may call it, the 13 awful years of prohibition.
And then ultimately how prohibition unraveled.
And of course what happened here
in Washington D.C. really had national ramifications
because the spotlight was on the city,
it was expected to be the dry city.
And in fact we ended up having 3,000 speakeasies' across the city.
We didn't quite have the same big club scene like New York City had
and other cities but certainly there was a great deal
of law-breaking going on including within the halls of Congress.
Congress had its own bootleggers at that time.
So it's really, really a remarkable story and one
that hasn't been told yet.
The research itself I did, it's almost entirely primary research.
So it's really getting back into memoirs, biographies,
finding original pictures and original newspaper accounts and,
so really just dove deeply in the archives.
And I really want to give a plug here for the Prints
and Photographs Division here at the Library of Congress.
We included in the book here--
by the way the cover of the image here is actually based
on two photographs from-- they come out of the archives right here
in the Library of Congress.
The one on the right, you'll see both of these here.
And then the wine bottle images actually come
out of the Woodrow Wilson House and I took that particular photo.
We included in the book 80 different images and about half of those came
from the Library of Congress, so really, really significant.
We have a treasure trove, or as one person said,
this is really like our attic.
And you keep digging further and further
and you keep finding these amazing things.
You have an incredible prohibition era archive here
in the Library of Congress.
And when I discovered-- when I was going through this--
I'm very fortunate, I live in Orrington
so if I need anything I can just run over here and get something, right?
What about researchers who live outside of the city?
This is where digitization really comes in handy.
And the vast majority of these images, I was able to download,
so really, really tremendous.
I only had to come in for two, two images which are important
for the unraveling of Prohibition.   I'll point out to both of those.
One was already scanned but not put online
and the other one just hadn't been scanned at all yet.
And I dug through the archives and I found it.
I'm like, "Oh my gosh, I have to include it!"
I felt like, you know, finding the source of the Nile or something.
So really it's an incredible treasure trove what we have right
here in the Prints and Photographs Division.
We also included here with this book, besides the 80 images,
we also included 11 vintage cocktail recipes.
So for those you guys who-- whom like cocktails.
And nine of those are specific to D.C. and two of those--
the other two are specific to the Prohibition era.
And then finally we also included five different neighborhood maps.
And this is the Capital Hill map.
So we wanted to show where all the mayhem occurred across the city
so you could actually get out there.
It's a 40,000-word book so you can take it in your hand,
put it in your pocket, take it with you and go see some
of these different sights across the city including right here
in Capitol Hill.
So if you wanna get out in your lunch hour and go see a couple
of sights then, you know, it's all available here right here for you.
Alright, as Guy mentioned I lead a tour called the Temperance Tour
which I largely lead it through walking town D.C.
which is our free tour-- free tours
that we give twice a year then I give it was well a couple of times.
But believe it or not, we actually have a Temperance Fountain here
in Washington D.C. Most of them have been ripped
out but we still have ours.   It's right across the archives.
That's where we start the tour.   We go to Calvary Baptist Church
where the Anti-Saloon League had its first national convention in 1895
and we end up at the Woodrow Wilson House which was--
Wilson was the only president to retire in Washington D.C. He lived
at this house here less than three years before he died.
And they have, as you see from the wine bottles here,
a Prohibition Era Wine Cellar, which is very rare.
Those are all original bottles, pretty, pretty significant.
So, who here saw the Ken Burns Series?
Pretty good, so about half the room?
And how many of you have it on your--
the tape or you've probably bought the DVD and you're gonna watch it?
Very cool, just about everyone else, so really cool.
So, how did we get into the mess of Prohibition?
And we changed the Constitution to ban alcohol in American society
and less than fourteen years later we changed the Constitution back
because it failed poorly.   But how did we get into this?
We've forgotten about this altogether
but the key word here is written across the screen here,
and this is a photograph-- the lower two photographs
from The Great Hall right across the street.
And that's the word Temperance.
We had a century long social reform movement
in the United States called the Temperance Movement.
It's one of those funny words like The Gold Standard or Anarchy
or Communism and this really isn't part
of our cultural vocabulary anymore.   But for a century this movement,
led largely by evangelical white Protestants really stigmatized
alcohol within the United States and ultimately led
to the 18th Amendment, which banned the manufacture,
sale and transportation of alcohol in the country.
Yeah you think that's kind of extreme,
only we're banning a consumer product
that Americans had always drank and always enjoyed.
But when you think-- where the roots of the Temperance Movement came
from was huge whiskey event that took place by the 1820s.
And as a result these churches rose up and said,
"We've got to do something about this problem."
A century later, they decided
to change the Constitution was the way to go.
And if we basically drive the country then we'll have a more
God-like, God-fearing country
and we'll have more middle class sobriety and so on.
It didn't quite turn out that way,
a lot of unintended consequences throughout it all.
One thing I did wanna point out was Frances Willard.
This is in Statuary Hall, by the way.
Has anybody ever seen this photo?   Or has seen the statue?
A number of people have.
This is-- Frances Willard was a hugely important woman here
for the 19th century.
She led the Women's Christian Temperance Union for about 20 years.
And she was the first woman to get a statue in Statuary Hall placed there
by the State of Illinois.
And WCTU basically linked their cause together
with the Women Suffrage Movement.
The Suffrage Movement was actually much smaller than the WCTU
and therefore they linked their two causes together,
that way they could each get their goal.
And as a result you see both the 18th Amendment which banned alcohol
and the 19th Amendment which gave women the right
to vote both went in effect in 1920.   That is not a coincidence at all.
That is because they had this alliance.
And what happened so of course in the 1920 is once it's illegal
for everyone to drink well now it's equally illegal for women to drink.
And they decide that they're gonna be equal in breaking the law, right?
So women in the 1920s started going to the speakeasies
and they started smoking cigarettes.
It's this huge era of social change in the 1920s.
It is the era, after all of Sigmund Freud.
And consumerism is really saying the right
and also probably the country's first sexual revolution takes place
in the 1920s.
The real person who gets the 18th Amendment passed
and put a huge amount of pressure upon the country is this man,
Wayne Wheeler.   Has anybody heard of Wayne Wheeler?
If you watch the Prohibition Series they talked about him quite a bit.
He was a hugely powerful, powerful person of his time.
I like to harken him possibly compare him to Karl Rove
or Grover Norquist for the power that he had over the politicians.
And with-- in his case, he basically came
up with the term pressure politics.
He figured out how to squeeze the politicians,
to force them to vote dry.
Even if they were wet in their personal lives he didn't
really care.
But he wanted to force them to vote dry.
And he figured out a way of how to--
first going after the states to allow local option laws.
And then once the local option laws were in place
at the county level then the state gradually would dry up and then
that would force the Congressmen and the Senators to go dry as well
and to vote most importantly, to vote dry.
>> And so hugely an influential person the ASL,
it was actually headquartered just outside of Columbus, Ohio.
But Wheeler has office, if you know
where Robert A. Taft Memorial Park is, that's where his office was.
There was a building there called the Bliss Building.
And, which was ripped down I think in the 1950s
when they created the park, but so basically right
across the street from the senate, right?
So really, really, really important place.
He also has some key allies.
Again, this was an evangelical Protestant-led mission--
I'm sorry, movement.   A faith based initiative.
Do you all recognize this building?
This is the Methodist building [inaudible], the Methodist building.
I took this photo by the way
from the Supreme Court, which was built in 1935.
So this building, if you go stand at the front
of the Methodist building it points right to the dome
of the capitol 'cause it's right there at the corner
of Maryland and First Street.   The point is-- by the way that's--
in the background you can see the Russell Senate Office Building
and then right next to it was where Wayne Wheeler's office was.
So you can imagine, one block here are the Methodists,
right around the corner is where the Anti-Saloon League has
its headquarters.
So they really put the squeeze on Congress.
And this building by the way was built in 1923.
So the point was to remind Congress, This is the law of the land
and you are required to enforce it.
Not that Congress, or the Presidency actually did a great deal
on enforcement, but that's another story.
This photo here we used on the cover of the book, and I think it's one
of the most clever Prohibition era photos that we found.
It shows William Upshaw, who's one of the key and probably one
of the few Congressmen who actually was dry
in both voting and his personal life.
And of course he's holding an umbrella over to the capitol,
to basically signify that the capitol, and The White House,
and Congress is hereby now dry.   This photo got was taken in 1926.
And then he ran for the Presidency, he was a Democrat but he ran in 1932
against Roosevelt's
as the Prohibition Party candidate and he was not elected.
Roosevelt was instead.   At that point, of course,
Prohibition was really coming undone.
This photo here, this is the one photo I'll show you here that's
black and white that did not come out of--
out of Prints and Photographs Division, this actually came
from the Tom Aiken's Estate.   But I love this quote.
I found a cocktail recipe in his memoirs which were published
in 1992, it was called the Coffin Varnish, from a bar that he found
up in New York City and-- they had a Coffin Varnish.
It's a boozy little number.
And with-- when he's describing this cocktail he said,
"At the start of the thirteen awful years" in capitalized letters,
so very clearly he was a wonderful Greek
and very acerbic Greek [inaudible] about Prohibition,
didn't think too highly of the moment.
And clearly saw through the Temperance Movement for what it was
which was this faith-based initiative and it was trying
to essentially impose a vision of middle-class sobriety from a country
that had always been a drinking country in the past, right?
So Aiken did everything in his writing power
to undermine Prohibition.
Probably about half of my research time was investing
in one single question which I've never seen written on before
which was, what was the African-American experience
during Prohibition?
What did black people think about Prohibition?
And I discovered that this was actually a very difficult topic
to go research.
It really took a great deal of digging into the archives.
And predominantly I ended up using the Black Studies Center
over at the Martin Luther King Library because they have all kinds
of newspapers on microform and it was digitized, unfortunately.
But at that time I really, really discovered that D.C. was so--
because we're a Southern City was-- and we had Jim Crow [phonetic] here.
So Washington Post with four big newspapers, all--
I should say four, big, white newspapers.
They would not cover black issues.
They wouldn't-- they would only mention black people
if they were arrested.
And so I really wanted to cover this other side of the story
because we know during Prohibition that U Street boomed, right?
We know that there were always jazz clubs, wherever there was jazz,
there was cocktails, right?
I mean all these things go hand in hand.
So I really wanted to get to the bottom of--
what was the African-American experience here during Prohibition.
And so I found a couple of different thought leaders
within the black community who wrote
about the Temperance Movement and Prohibition.
One of the leaders was Calvin Chase from The Washington Bee,
who unfortunately died in 1922.
But I got the name of the chapter that deals
with the black community I called the Jim Crow Annex,
from this one quote which he said,
"Why should the colored people ally themselves
with a white Temperance organization as the Jim Crow Annex?"
I mean he really saw through the Temperance Movement for what it was.
Which was, you're trying to impose this upon my people
and we don't want that, right?   So he really strongly pushed
against the Temperance Movement in all of his writings.
And that picture, by the way,
which comes out of the archives here, was his office.
If you know where that [inaudible] is, so right north
of where the former-- it's now a huge pit in the ground,
where the old Convention Center was?
So right across the street from there was torn down I think
in the late 1980s or early 1990s but that's where he wrote the newspaper
and his family lived in that building and it was all torn down,
Other things we lost here in Washington D.C., we lost our major--
by the way before Prohibition started we had 247 bars here,
licensed in the city, and of course ostensibly once Prohibition begins
we have zero but we ended up with three thousand speakeasies.
[ Laughter ]
>> Sort of unintended consequences once you deal away with regulation,
and licensing and so on
and it becomes simply a business opportunity for a lot of people.
We had a one-block row in the city called Rum Row.
That was the finest place in the city.
It was one bar one restaurant after the next,
where you could go to drink.
And the most famous of all the bars was nicknamed Cobweb Hall
but its official name was Shoomaker's.
And this was closed down in--
D.C. actually went dry on November 1st, 1917 by Congress.
Congress mandated that the city had to go dry,
we didn't have a home rule at that time.
And so Shoomaker's tried to make it for a couple more months
as a soft drink joint and people didn't want soft drinks,
they wanted beer, they wanted cocktail.
So Shoomaker's unfortunately went out of business.
The important thing about Shoomaker's wasn't just that, okay,
every president except for Rutherford B. Hayes
from when the place opened up in 1858 all the way to when it closed
in 1917, every president drank there.
All the politicians drank there, Mark Twain drank there,
this was a hugely historic site.
By the way it's now where the J.W. Marriott Hotel is.
What happened to this bar here in the 1880s was
that The Rickey was invented.
And I worked for Derek Brown from the D.C. Craft Bartenders Guild
and we got the city council to give us a proclamation back
in July declaring that The Rickey is now D.C.'s official--
I'm sorry, our native cocktail
because the guild had a Rickey month for the last four years.
So we use the book actually as documentation
to prove the providence of the Rickey.
So it says the one cocktail we can certifiably establish
that in fact was invented at Shoomaker's in the 1880s.
So it's a great little part of our local history.
There's only two cities by the way that have an official cocktail,
the other one being New Orleans.
And can you guess what that cocktail is?
[ Inaudible Remark ]   >> No. Sazerac.
It's the Sazerac.
Yeah the Sazerac is-- I'm sorry the Hurricane has several different
origin stories, including most likely, Wisconsin, strangely, yeah.
Yeah. But the Sazerac is we know, in fact was invented.
We also lost, because of Prohibition,
a significant brewing culture we had in this city.
We had four big breweries in the city.
Today, starting last year,
we have now three breweries [inaudible] this year.
The first brewery opened-- now these are micro breweries,
so very, very small.
The four breweries that we had before were significant enterprises.
Brewing was the second largest employer in Washington D.C.
after the Federal Government, so really significant.
And on Capitol Hill, there were-- I'm sorry-- the four breweries,
two were in Foggy Bottom, and two were on Capitol Hill.
So we're the-- on Capitol Hill itself the brewers were the second
largest employer after the Navy Yard,
so pretty remarkable how many people worked in brewing at that time.
You know we have this being German culture,
German population here within the city.
And of course that's what German's brought us.
It was a great gift the Germans brought
that the American people was lager beer.
And you know how hot and sticky our summers are.
Before we had air-conditioning starting
in the 1920s how do you think people survived?
They drank big Rickey's and they drink beer, you know?
So, this particular footage here, which you can guess
where it comes from, this was the largest brewery we had in the city,
which was the Christian Heurich Brewing Company.
It's now the site of the Kennedy Center.
It was closed in 1956, took--
it was all built of steel reinforced concrete, took three days
of dynamite to knock the thing over.
Yeah. I'll show you two different pictures
of the breweries here in Capitol Hill.
This is the National Capitol Brewery
and another pretty large brewery took up an entire city block.
And some of you-- who here lives in Capitol Hill, any one?
A few people.
I assume some of you have probably gone shopping at Safeway?
That's where the brewery was.
It existed until the 1960s as an ice cream factory.
And then they knocked it over and that's
where the Safeway is now on 14th Street.
Even closer was this brewery.   This is Washington Brewery.
And that is-- was knocked over in the 1920's
to form Stuart-Hobson Junior High, so also quite a large facility.
If you walk around that thing it's an entire city block.
So pretty, pretty large.
>> The new breweries that were opening up are, you know,
a fraction of this size because they're microbreweries.
But these were designed to produce half a million barrels
of beer a year because we had such high demand here
to drink beer here, in the nation's capital.
In my research I found, as you all probably know,
there're two big novels that come out of the 1920's,
one being the Great Gatsby, right?
You know you all know the story about--
about Gatsby which is really George Remus,
a larger than life bootlegger.
The other big novel that comes out in 1920's is by Sinclair Lewis
and that's called Babbitt, which is a much larger book.
And in my research I found this incredible quote which he wrote
in 1922, by the way, and he gets the Nobel Prize
for this 1930, for this novel.
And it sort of skewers-- it's a satire, satirical novel
and it skewers mid-western values of the 1920's.
So-- And I found that in the-- the setup, what happens in the scene,
George Babbitt the hero, is riding on a train with 4, 5, or 6 other men
and one of them breaks out a flask of gin and he passes it
around to the other people.
And the guy who brought the bottle of gin asked this question,
or makes more of a statement, "I don't know how you fellows feel
about prohibition, but the way it strikes me is
that it's a mighty beneficial thing for the poor zob
that hasn't got any will-power but for fellows like us,
it's an infringement of personal liberty."
This is 1922 he pens this.
You see right here, this is why Prohibition's gonna fail.
Because every person says Prohibition is
for someone else to obey, but not me.
I like my cocktail and I'm not giving it up, right?
That's not how laws work, you know?
Especially the cons-- the law of the land, the constitution, you know?
But everyone decides that no-no, I'm not gonna obey it.
And Sinclair Lewis was right on with this.
The general public initially was sort of, hmm, wait and see,
but pretty soon they realized, you know what?
I kind of miss having my cocktail.
So-- and it turns out there were bootleggers everywhere already
and all you got to do is just ask and you could, you know,
you could get your-- your [inaudible] gin or your rye whiskey,
and so on, so really remarkable here.
By the way, he wrote this on 19th street, Dupont Circle.
So about half a block up from that restaurant Raku, there's a house
where he wrote that, where he wrote Babbitt in 1920.
He also wrote Main Street
in Washington D.C. in the nineteen teens.
So Prohibition begins, this is one
of the most famous images of Prohibition.
I included this one in the Ken Burns series.
And of course this took place on Pennsylvania Avenue, Northwest.
So this took place actually where the Federal Triangle is now.
This was called the Carl Hammel Buffet Lunch,
which was formerly a bar but he converted it
in to a lunch room during Prohibition but seemed
to keep the little dark room in the back, so people just had
to kinda know someone and they could be invited back and get a drink.
So, the Prohibition agents are raiding the place here and pulling
out all the beer barrels, 'cause he was a German.
Alright so, he was raided numerous times here during Prohibition
and he didn't [inaudible] quite wanna shut down.
We think it was worth for him just to pay the fines or risk jail time
because that's what his customers wanted, alright?
They still wanted to drink.
Another famous founder from Prohibition from the largest still
on captivity, largest still that was found
in Washington D.C. This is quite a large still here, by the way.
So-- and by the way we have two gentlemen here
who are next year going to be opening
up Washington D.C.'s First Distillery since Lord knows when.
And you'll see most stills that people had
in their houses were a fraction
of a size might even produce a gallon a day,
this a pretty sizable still here.
You could produce an awful lot of corn-- corn liquor here, corn juice,
with this particular still.   The amazing thing with Prohibition
in Washington D.C. is we didn't have the organized crime like Cleveland,
like New York, like Boston, other cities did.
We had too many police jurisdictions.
You can never bribe all the different authorities, and so on.
You think about, okay we got the Capitol Police,
we got the National Park Service Police,
we have the Washington-Metropolitan Police Department,
we have the Secret Service.
And on top of that we have the Prohibition Bureau.
You can't bribe everyone, right?
And as a result, we ended up not getting the organized crime,
the Mafia, the Irish Mob and so on, that the major cities had.
As a result we-- the-- and by the way there was plenty
of law-breaking going on but it was largely low-level bootleggers.
This was a scene dominated by amateurs.
If you wanted to get on the game, you could.
That's really the remarkable thing, and of course thousands
of people did get involve her in breaking Prohibition,
in violating Prohibition just because there was
so much money to be made.
There was also very little violence in the city
because we did not have the turf wars
that other major cities had therefore there wasn't necessarily
all the shoot-outs and things that took place.
The most famous execution that took place was the Saint Valentines Day
Massacre in 1929, right?   And that took place in Chicago.
So, nationwide news and that helped to really turn the public
against Prohibition when people realized this thing wasn't working.
And that organized crime is taking over the cities.
One of the few examples though
where violence actually did take place was this man right here.
This was Senator Greene, who from Vermont and he happened
to be walking up Pennsylvania Avenue to get back to the Driskill Hotel,
which was right next tot the Bliss Building at that time
where the Anti-Saloon League was.
Up an alleyway, there was a bootlegger--
a couple of bootleggers who were unloading their car
and a Prohibition Bureau Agent surprised them.
They also were exchanging shots
and the Prohibition Bureau Agent missed the bootleggers
and that wild shot went down Pennsylvania Avenue
and hit Senator Greene on the head.
And he happened to just be walking down the street.
Yeah, it wounded him severely from this and he ended up dying
from it about six years later.
He never ever really fully recovered from this.
So this is one of the few examples here
of violence actually taking place here across the cities.
Proctor do you have a question?   >> Oh no.
>> No-- Okay, you and your hand up, so.
I talked about women being involved in Prohibition.
They were involved in getting Prohibition passed,
and of course once Prohibition takes place, it's not a lot of land
that women are active violators of the Dry Law here within the country.
And this is a very famous photograph here from Prohibition from a dancer
who came to Washington D.C. I think around 1925, 1926?
And here she's demonstrating the latest fashion
on how you carry your hip flask with your new garter belt, right?
I included this together--
this is an image to be included on the cover along
with the image of Congressman Upshaw.
The worse scoff law was invented in 1924 based on a national competition
to come up with a word to label those lawbreakers.
And the winner of the contest was scofflaw,
someone who scoffs at the law.
One week later in Harry's Bar in Paris,
the scofflaw cocktail is invented.
And if you never had this cocktail, if you like cocktails,
this is absolutely delicious.   It's a really good cocktail.
This comes from January of 1924.
A famous case happened here in Washington D.C. on--
in the Navy Yard, where two different Navy nurses were arrested
for bootlegging.
And what happened within the Navy beforehand that the--
the standard protocol with the Navy was if you were caught with liquor
in your luggage, the standard thing was simply just
to confiscate the liquor.
But they would never bring anyone up on charges.
These two nurses were transferred from Guantanamo Bay,
Cuba up to the Navy Yard.
And customs found a whole bunch of liquor in their suitcases
when they were moving up.
So the Department Secretary, the Navy ordered them court-martialed.
Of course the officer core
of the Navy was absolutely incensed over this.
It was like, we never court-martialed anyone
over this and, you know,
hell if we're gonna court-martial anyone now.
So they were required to basically put them on trial but it was sort
of a foreground conclusion there--
that they were gonna be found innocent.
The two nurses simply pleaded these were gifts, people gave them to us,
we didn't know what they were, we just put them in our luggage
and [laughter], you know, yeah.
And that's all they had to say, right?
And, you know, just plausible deniability, you know?
So, one afternoon trial, the Washington Post report,
and this is a paraphrase, actually it was a good time was had
by all except for the accused.
[Laughter] But I mean they were acquitted at the end of this.
One of the interesting stories and probably one of the leading things
that took place in the city, this took place in 1929,
was the largest liquor ring, our city was busted up in 1929.
This was led by this man, his name was Herbie Glassman--
or Herbert Glassman?   Glassman became a major developer
within Washington D.C. He didn't stay very long in jail at all
but he was running about a 10, 12 person operation
out of this rental car agency.   It was the perfect front.
All he had to do was he got his liquor largely from Baltimore
so he owned these trucks that would basically truck it
down the parkway into the city everyday.
And then he had a rental car agency garage,
and then he could distribute it from there, so the perfect front, right?
He was cited for bravery in July, 1919 we had a huge race riot
in the city it lasted four days.
He was a Metropolitan Police Department Officer,
who then left shortly after this and--
and decided to open up this agency and become a bootlegger,
so really a fascinating character.   I was contacted-- and it's--
since this book came about six months ago I've been contacted
by so many people who are descendants
of the people I wrote about.
You think that people-- D.C. has this reputation
that people don't stay very long here?
Well I've heard from great-grandchildren of people
who were bootleggers who I wrote about--
in this case Herbie Glassman's great-granddaughter contacted me.
She's the editor-in-chief for Capitol File Magazine,
her name's Kate Bennett, and she was--
I sent her over all the articles from Washington Post about her--
about her great-grandfather and she's like, "Oh my Gosh,
we need to write a book about this guy", you know, so.
>> You know, he divorced his wife in the '70s, and, you know,
moved to Miami Beach, picked up a much younger woman
and proceeded to have another child.
I mean just-- a really kind of crazy story, you know,
that this guy had going from a policeman
to becoming the biggest bootlegger in the city
to becoming a major developer, I mean all within Washington D.C. and,
you know, largely because of his getting arrested in 1929,
for running this liquor ring.
By the way he had two different-- two different offices.
One was over on L Street, and that's been developed
through the high-rise.
The other one was on 14th Street and U Street, right about U Street.
If you know where that restaurant Eatonville is?
That's where it was.
Alright, so the public-- by the late 1920's the public was already
souring on the idea of Prohibition.
Everybody knows that everyone is disobeying the law of the land
where we've become this nation of hypocrites
as the Ken Burns series called it.
And as well what happened in 1929 in October was
that the stock market collapsed.
And the Great Depression started and so many people were like, you know,
we could really use these jobs again, you know?
When Prohibition started in 1920 we lost a quarter million jobs.
Now suddenly 1930, a quarter million jobs looked pretty darn nice, right?
I mean if we could restart the liquor industry again we could put a
lot of people back to work.   And by the way we could tax it.
So the man who sponsored D.C. Going Dry was Senator Morris Sheppard
from Texas, one of the leading progressives and probably one
of the few Senators who actually was dry.
And he also had-- was the key sponsor behind the 18th Amendment,
the Prohibition Amendment.
And the run up to the 1930 midterm Congressional Election,
he was challenged repeatedly on-- about Prohibition.
And he said this very famous statement: "There is as much chance
of repealing the 18th Amendment as there is for a humming bird to fly
to the planet Mars with the Washington Monument tied
to its tail."
So effectively he's-- this September, 1930 he says this.
He's laying out the gauntlet to the white cause saying, okay, go ahead,
you know, like Clint Eastwood, right, "Make my day" right?
And boy, howdy do they ever.
It's just remarkable what happens here.
A couple weeks later there is a group called the--
a local group called The Crusaders, actually a national group
but there's a local chapter under a man named Rufus Lusk whose grandson,
Rufus Lusk III, if I have photos here for me.
This guy's a real estate guy.
He-- and was over one infantry Captain.
And he figured out basically, we can take all the data
from all the police raids on speakeasies and put them on maps,
and then we can publish it.
And that will show that in fact Washington D.C. is anything
but the small, dry city, right?   So he publishes two maps.
The first one is based on 1929 data based on seven months of raids,
from the Metropolitan Police Department raid data,
934 speakeasies in seven months that were raided
where they found liquor, so really remarkable.
Then when this map gets published and makes nationwide,
even international news because it shows the hypocrisy.
D.C. is not the small, dry city.
In fact, all around the city there's plenty of speakeasies,
it's-- liquor is easy to get.
1932 he publishes an updated map based on 1931 information.
And this is sort of my, you know, doctor-- Dr.
[inaudible] I presume moment.
You know, you go down to an isle and you find this one,
the little treasure trove piece,
which is I found the 1932 speakeasy map right here, in the Prints
and Photographs Division.
And it's just absolutely amazing to see.
And, you guys ready for it?   This is it.
Dots mark the spot where booze has been bought.
Yeah. [Laughter] 1,155 locations where the police
and the Prohibition Bureau raided where they found like a--
there were another 600 or so spots that they'd raided
where they didn't find any liquor either
because they've been tipped off, or they managed to destroy it so,
you know, they were on a payroll or something, you know,
but just remarkable, right?
The intention of this of course, just to remind you,
is to embarrass the dry cause.
To show that in fact, D.C. is anything but this model dry city.
If you look closely on this, unfortunately the size we have
on the book is really small, but if you guys wanna go look
at the thing it's just amazing.   Or I can e-mail it to people.
It's-- when you look on there, you see where the stars are?
Can you see those?
I mean it's sort of an orientation map is actually sort of on the side,
so true north is actually that way.
The stars are government offices where raids took place.
[Laughter] Yeah, there were a lot of bootleggers including in Congress.
And then you'll see-- if you look closely throughout the map,
he was very careful about showing
where the different dry cause offices were.
For example, the Prohibition Bureau Office, which is right--
if you see Pennsylvania Avenue, it's right below the P
in Pennsylvania, almost dead center.
And you'll see right behind it, two raids, two little dots.
The Women's Christian Temperance Union is on there.
Of course it's got a bunch of raids right around there.
The Anti-Saloon League had lots of raids,
and look around the Methodist building.
I mean, it has a bunch of raids as well taking place.
So all over the city there's raids taking place in every neighborhood.
There's more of a concentration in certain neighborhoods.
What's so surprising on U Street and someone mentioned in a talk
that perhaps the proprietors on U Street were either better armed or,
you know, had better connections with the police
and therefore they could get tipped off or something.
I haven't been able to document that at all.
But certainly a great deal of where the African-American community lived
at the time was Southwest, Foggy Bottom in the west end,
as well in Georgetown and of course seventh aven--
7th Street and 9th Street.
And of course you see great concentration
of the speakeasy raids that take place there.
So again there are raids taking place throughout the city here.
And the intention of those maps again was really
This happened in September 1930.
Just a couple weeks later in October of 1930, one particular man named,
well, let me ask first off, has anybody ever heard--
or who might have worked here on Capitol Hill long enough
to remember a restaurant bar called The Man in the Green Hat?
And a few other people?   This was the man in the green hat.
This-- his name was George Cassidy, and he was a bootlegger
for Congress for ten years.   Yeah, he had an office.
He worked first on the House side, and they gave him an office
in the Cannon House Office Building.
[Laughter] Yeah, and everyday he trudged in with a suitcase full
of liquor, back then you were only searched when you left the building.
And Congressmen weren't searched at all.
So therefore they can take their liquor with them.
He was arrested in 1925, and then he shifted over to the Senate side.
The Senate gave him an office in the Russell Senate Office Building.
Because as he said, Senators were more discreet
than Congressmen were, so remarkable story.
What happens he is arrested for the second
and final time in February 1930.
And in October of 1930, he goes public with the story.
He's the only bootlegger that I know of who spills the beans.
He did it in an incredible style,
five front page articles in the Washington Post.
So this is a national story.
Here's this guy, every other bootlegger is very quite
about their story.
They get arrested, there's sort of this embarrassment.
He goes out and does everything but name names.
It's the one thing he doesn't do.
But he tells exactly where he bought his booze,
how he got it into the Senate and House Office Buildings and so on.
Who his customers were, it's a remarkable story, and the story,
the very last article which dealt with Congressional culpability,
in other words where he basically said "Look, I admit my guilt,
but if I'm guilty so is virtually every other member of Congress
because they were my customers, right?"
In that article he said he estimated that based on his experience dealing
with all these Congressmen-- and by the way there were other bootleggers
as well but he was the main one.
He estimated that four out of five Congressmen and Senators drank,
so absolutely embarrassing.
This was a huge betrayal here to the dry cause.
Because the-- the allies of the Anti-Saloon League was Congress,
they basically squeezed, you know?
The midterm election takes place just a week later.
This last article takes place, you know,
one week to the day before the midterm election.
Alright, it was-- the [inaudible] was very clear about this.
They have sided with the wet cause at that point and they really wanted
to embarrass the wet-- the dry cause.
So they published this article, the series of articles.
Congress then flips, not necessarily because of Cassidy but largely
because the Great Depression.   But as a result well you see,
up until 1930 was a dry Republican Congress, starting in-- I'm sorry.
Beginning in 1931 where the new Congress comes
in is a wet Democratic Congress.
And now they're very hostile towards Prohibition
and Prohibition starts to come undone.
In fact-- this is a -- the Cannon House Office Building
where Cassidy worked for five years.   So because of the Great Depression,
because of all the endemic law-breaking,
the idea behind Prohibition was
to create this dry utopia within the country.
But in fact, it turned out to be anything but, you know.
If anything, we roll out the red carpet to organized crime
and unorganized crime, there was a great deal of violence,
there was poisoning of alcohol going on during this era.
And a general disregard for the law of the land, you know?
Can we change the Constitution to ban alcohol?
But everyone's blowing it off, right?
Everyone's manufacturing and selling and transportation--
transporting alcohol and buying it and so on,
so the country had really decided that they didn't want this.
And there was this national movement
and by the early 1930's to end Prohibition.
And the Democrats were very smart in the 1932 Presidential election.
The FDR ran on a platform of repeal.
And part of the big promise of that and--
repeal became 21st Amendment, right?
The big promise was, we are gonna get everybody back to work.
We're gonna re-establish the liquor trade,
but it's gonna be different this time.
States will have the power to regulate it,
according to the 21st Amendment.
>> And a number of states actually stayed dry
like Oklahoma and Mississippi.
Oklahoma State is drive 'til 1959 and Mississippi 'til 1966, you know.
So it-- the promise is greater regulation and taxation
and we're basically gonna get this unregulated beast back
under control.
So that's really the promise of repeal, and the country decides yes,
that's absolutely what we want.
So on March 1933, this is the last inauguration day that takes place
in March, Herbert Hoover rides in the car together
with Franklin Delano Roosevelt, they hardly speak to each other
because they had a very vicious campaign and Hoover is quite bitter
about losing but it was sort of a foreground conclusion
because of the Great Depression that he was gonna lose the election.
Roosevelt in his first two weeks in office promises to legalize beer
which those of you who come from the states
where you still see 3-2 beers, 3.2 percent beer.
That came about from the winning days of prohibition
when Congress simply just declared that 3.2 percent
of beer was not intoxicating.
And therefore didn't violate the 18th amendments.
And that went into effect on April 7th and so two 2 weeks
into Roosevelt term in office and the country.
I think that's really just the beginning of the end of Prohibition.
The first state Michigan had voted just a couple of days before
and how long do you think it's took to get three quarters of the states
to vote for Prohibition to end?   Any guesses?
>> A year?   >> Less than a year.
It took 13 months for-- which is remarkable,
13 months to get prohibition passed.   Repeal takes to 8 months.
[ Laughter ]
>> I mean this was a true national consensus.
The country wanted this thing
over with really desperately by this point.
So the first state is Michigan, any Michiganders here?
Your state went first on I think March 3rd or 4th--
sorry April 3rd or 4th 1933.
So what was the 36th state, the state that put it over the top?
Anyone wanna guess?   >> Arkansas.
>> What's that?   >> Arkansas?
>> No not Arkansas.   And that's might, it was Utah.
Utah was the 36th state yeah, the state where 70 percent
of people are Mormon, right?   But the promise that they--
the Democrats by the way were in firm control of the country
at this point, the promise they made to their constituents wasn't
that that they're in favor 'cause most the delegates
of course are Mormon, right?
They're not in favor of alcohol but rather we were
in favor of law and order.
If you wanna get this thing reestablished and Utah ended
up forming a system minority of states
to these 18 states formed a system whereby the state itself becomes the
retail, the retailer.
So we see that in Virginia where I live as well
and Montgomery County has that as well.
So that was again, part of the promise
of repeal is we're gonna have far more regulation than we did before.
And the states have far more control over alcohol
than they did before Prohibition ended.
What's remarkable to see, okay,
we went through this whole century long temperance moment.
We heavily stigmatized alcohol in the country.
We ban out the manufacture, sale, and transportation of alcohol
by putting into the constitution.
Less than 14 years it fails, you fast forward to today,
and more than two-thirds of American at all does not drink.
And that stigma is largely gone in American society.
And that's actually the topic of my first book,
"The Prohibition Hangover".
It's a subtle and yet really remarkable social shift, you know,
like when I lead the Temperance Tour and I always ask people,
"Who can define what temperance is?"   And no one can.
You know a century ago, this was
like after slavery abolishing it's own--
this was the social reform movement, this was, you know,
we're gonna get make us into a sober country.
And now of course we even don't remember that anymore,
we remember prohibition but no one knows how and why we got
into this mess, you know, or why it ended so,
so quickly here within the country.
This concludes my presentation here today and I will be glad
and answer any questions you have.   So she had her hand up your first.
>> Can you talk to us about Tune Inn
and its involvement [inaudible] prohibition?
>> Sure thing.
The question was can I talk about Tune Inn
and its role on Prohibition.
Has everybody here have been to Tune Inn?
I think everyone has, very cool, so yeah, Tune Inn is just a couple
of blocks up to street here and it's currently close
but it's gonna reopen, they had all the kitchen fire a few months ago.
In-- during Prohibition it was a candy store.
And it was a speakeasy at the same time.
And you think a speakeasy is always being these swanky New York clubs
like the cotton club and so on.
Well speakeasy is where do you run the gamut?
It was just simply-- it's the place where you can go buy illegal booze.
So this was a candy store, they kept their liquor in the basement
of the place and they-- when they were asked about it
and they showed me, if you're going there for lunch sometime
when it reopens, look right under the coffee maker,
and there's a little staircase-- I'm sorry a ladder that goes straight,
that's how they brought the liquor up.
So if somebody came in, they'd ask for, you know,
something if they knew the password.
They'd wrap it up for them and then bring up the ladder for them,
so really kind of remarkable, but again a candy store
that was also as Big Easy.   Rock you had a question?
>> Yes the one photograph I thought was interesting,
the busting of the barrels there or visiting the [inaudible].
I suppose those prevent the covered spectacles
like they wanted that's [inaudible].   Can you comment on this?
>> Yeah the question was about the reign on the Carl Hammel Lunch Room
with all the barrels and they're, you know, pulling them all out
and was that-- that was kinda meant to be a public spectacle right,
takes place in broad daylight and it's right downtown.
Yeah, there was a certainly an elements
of trying to shame the owners.
But very quickly during the Prohibition, getting arrested
for a prohibition offense turned out to be anything but shameful,
if anything it turned out to be, you know, it added years
to your street crowd, there was glamor to it, right?
You remember the woman, the dancer with the hip flask
in her garter belt, right?
Suddenly disobeying the law becomes glamorous like, oh,
you're a bootlegger, oh, hello, you know, here's my number, you know.
It's--   [ Laughter ]
>> It's remarkable the social change that happens during this point
where we suddenly elevate law breakers into becoming people
that are really cool and so and so.
Alright you-- yes sir, you had your hand up.
>> Thanks.
You mentioned the Woodrow Wilson house
in your book called the [inaudible] and the current curator.
Did they mention and did you see that wonderful exhibit that they had
in 2005, 2006 Woodrow Wilson
and the Prohibition Amendment the No Temperance in It?
>> Unfortunate-- the question was if I had seen the exhibit that they had
in the Woodrow Wilson house, No Temperance In It back in 2005,
unfortunately I missed that exhibit.   I would have loved to see it.
And Mark [inaudible] was the director
at that time and he's now the--   >> Was he the curator too?
Did he curate that?   >> I assume he did, yeah.
Yeah. He's now actually the director now
of the Arlington Historical Society.   Yeah. Yes?
>> How long were the sentences usually when they were arrested?
>> How long were the-- ?   >> Sentences.
>> Sentences.   They really varied-- I'm sorry,
the question was how long were the sentences during prohibition.
The really varied, generally what happened was you would get arrested,
you post bond, you're on the street the next day or even that night.
And then you reopen the next day in the same place.
So that was a huge problem during Prohibition.
That people just-- all you had to do was call
up bootlegger and resupply you.
By about 1925, '26 or so, New York led this way which was padlocking
which was if we find that you've, if you're selling booze,
well we're gonna put a padlock on the door for a year.
And of course that led the bootleggers
and speakeasies simply just to reopen
down the street at a different place.
I mean there were so much money to be made
that people weren't gonna give this thing up.
And then during Hoover's time in office, he was the only president
who really tried to enforce prohibition which I think helped
to undermine Prohibition even more because people just got sick
of the heavy hand enforcement during that time.
People are already going into a well like,
what up with this [inaudible], right?
And here comes the Prohibition Bureau even more now, right?
And they've passed the Jones 5 and 10 law which was 5 years
in prison and 10,000 dollar fine.
Not that many people went to jail for that term but, yeah, why--
as you see, what happens very quickly is this totally bogs
down the legal system in the country,
the court system is absolutely crowded with cases.
The smart bootleggers know to plead innocent and demand a trial by jury
because that's just gonna absolutely just throw cogs in the wheel, right?
You know. And of course the jails and so
on are absolutely full of people.   You can't handle the number
of people who've been arrested and so on.
So judges very quickly are trying to get people to plea
and 'cause they know they can't put them on jail, you know?
So they're back on the streets very quickly.
So not that many people actually go to jail for the Jones 5
and 10 law although it certainly angered an awful lot
of people, yeah.
So Michael-- oh sorry, actually Kevin you had your hand up first
and then will go back to Michael.
>> You mentioned the '80s and '90s were met-- how--
[inaudible] suffered was kind of tied in to prohibition.
I wondered if you could say a few words
about the paid tax [inaudible].   >> Got you.
The question was how the income tax amendment was tied
into the prohibition, so the Temperance Movement
and the Prohibition Amendment.
Before prohibition that the US government got its main sources
of income from the tariff, so it's amazing
if you look how much it has shifted over time.
So the land sales was huge as we're developing the West.
The tariff was an enormous source of income and alcohol
and tobacco excise taxes were enormous sources of funding
for the Federal Government.
And of course if you're gonna propose banning alcohol,
well there goes that source of revenue, right?
So one of the key things that takes place during the Progressive era is
this constitutional amendment to allow the national income tax
and therefore we find a replacement for the alcohol excise tax.
And with that in place that one went in effect in 1912 I think.
Now you've got this effective replacement
for the Federal Government to find its operations, so Michael.
[ Inaudible Remark ]
>> Yeah. That the question was describe George Cassidy's process
of going to prison after he got busted for the second time in 1930.
So again, that is-- this is during the era
of the Jones 5 and 10 law, right?
He spent very, very little time actually in jail.
He basically made a promise to the judge
that that he would not bootleg again.
And he was firm with his word.
So again, one of these cases where throwing the book at the--
at someone in fact ended up with a plea agreement and, you know,
that they being back out in the street again.
But he didn't really spend-- he spent a little bit of time in jail
but not very, very much so.   Guy, and then the man back here, so.
>> Can you tell us how prevalent speakeasies were
in the Washington suburbs?
>> The question was how prevalence speakeasies were
in the Washington suburbs.
At-- during the 1920s the suburbs of Washington is still pretty small,
D.C. by 1930 was approaching 500,000 people in the city.
And Arlington where I live 1930 census I just wrote an article
by the way on Prohibition on Arlington that's gonna come
out in January for the New Arlington Magazine.
In the 1930s census we had 30,000 people.
So which doubled the population from 1920, right?
So this was largely just-- the suburbs were just beginning to grow.
What I found I this article on my research was that they had largely--
they're appointed law breakers certainly within Arlington
but we didn't really have much
of a speakeasy scene rather Arlington surd
because we have three big bridges, we had 14th Street Bridge,
we have the Key Bridge and we have Tan Bridge.
This basically formed the transit route through the county to get
to the D.C. liquor market, right?
So a lot of the liquor came from either Baltimore,
it came from the Appalachians or it came
from like the Great Dismal Swamps, so that's outside Virginia.
And it was then trucked in
and frequently would happen they would truck it in to
like say [inaudible] by big trucks.
And then they would stop and have transfer points
where all the bootleggers with small very fast cars would then take a
shipment of that and then, if you remember
like Star Wars all the little TIE fighters, you know,
the rebels attacking the Death Star, you know, they would then race
for the city in these very small fast cars
and hopefully outrunning the police and the Prohibition Bureau
to get their liquor in the market.
'Cause by the way, this is how in NASCAR is formed.
This is formed by bootleggers who have these suited up cars
that out run the Prohibition Bureau
and on the weekends they get the other and they race each other.
And this was, you know, do you think NASCAR is this thing that comes
from Appalachians, right?
It's tied in together with corn liquor, it really is.
Yeah. Yes sir?   [ Inaudible Remark ]
>> What is that, sorry?   >> Volstead Act.
>> What is the Volstead Act?
The Volstead Act was the Prohibition Enforcement Act.
You had the 18th Amendment which simply just occurred
that intoxicating liquors are hereby-- so the manufacture, sale,
and transportation of intoxicating liquors are hereby now illegal.
And the Volstead Act is the law to enforce the 18th Amendment.
This was largely written by Wayne Wheeler for the Anti-Saloon League.
And he put very strict guidelines behind it.
In fact Woodrow Wilson was the president at that time
who just had a stroke three weeks before vetoed the Volstead Act.
He wanted intoxicating liquors to be defined essentially
as distilled spirits but he wanted beer and liquor,
Siberian wines still to be legal.
Wayne Wheeler had a completely different philosophy.
He wanted anything with alcohol to be banned.
He wanted effectively zero tolerance.
So anything with 0.5 percent alcohol or higher was now illegal
to manufacture, sell, of transport it.
Now, so very strict interpretation of prohibition and again,
this is what [inaudible] beer, with FDR in 1933,
this is effectively their way of getting around the 18th amendment
by declaring that 3.2 percent beer, alcohol beer is non-intoxicating
and therefore doesn't violate the amendment.
And the man in the blue shirt had question then.
[ Inaudible Remark ]
>> Yeah especially with the Baptist Churches, yeah.
>> Yeah. I was wondering how did they fit into the mix,
how did the churches fit into these?
>> Yeah. They certainly fit in quite a bit as well.
It's a fascinating era if you think, okay, Prohibition largely coincides
with the great migration
of African-Americans out of the deep south.
But-- and largely was about 1915 until 1930.
Caused in part Jim Crow but the big opportunity
to let all these African-Americans to leave was World War I.
That all the different jobs and ammunitions factories
and the seal factories and they are like, okay,
let's get out of the deep south
and go somewhere they actually want us, you know?
So you had two million African-Americans leave the south
to come up north.
And a great number that came up here as well.
Oh we had-- within D.C. we had probably the wealthiest black
community in the country at that time.
Wasn't as large as Harlem,
if you think of 1920 is the Harlem renaissance
but we a significant middle class--
upper middle class and professional population
in the city largely centered around U Street, you know,
kind of North of Dupont circle.
There's a map by the way, it shows basically what African-American
section the city was that the wealthier section which is kind
of Loyal Plaza all the way over to Harvard University, you know,
so a huge section of the city, all north Dupont Circle.
That was all black, it was all built as upper middle class black.
So and today of course it's a different demographic in the city.
But yeah, within the established black community,
they were very anti Prohibition because they like many other people,
they wanted their cocktail.
At the same time, you'll have the Baptist ministers, you know?
And by the way, that element was more the Episcopalians
and Presbyterians and so on.
The Evangelical black men that serves
on either hand though were they fed in more with the temperance movement
so the black community was quite large, it was a quarter
of the city at that time.
So you can't say all black people believe this or believe that
but there's really a range of opinions that take place.
But certainly what we know form historical record was
that an awful lot
of African-Americans bootlegged during this time and a lot
of jazz clubs existed during this times.
You know, across the U Street corridors so.
It's a complex question and I hope you will read the chapter just
'cause it's probably the chapter I'm most proud
of because it took probably the most research to go find this information
because it was not readily available.
Over here in the black sweater.
>> I was wondering apart from customs,
how do the government alcohol from coming in from other countries?
>> How did alcohol-- how did the government prevent alcohol
from coming in to the country apart from customs?
[ Inaudible Remark ]   >> Now, no, not really.
No. Canada was partly dry at that time but again,
some of the big Canadians who made their money
at that time was the Seagram family [phonetic], you know,
'cause they were bootleggers and big time.
The-- we had plenty of ships we had
to cross fish off the east coast we had [inaudible] also called Rum Row,
we have Rum Row district in the city on Pennsylvania Avenue
but across the whole east coast outside of the--
first the three-mile limit and then it was extended our
for the 12 limits was Rum Row which was-- went all the way from,
you know, from Maine all the way down to Florida and over to Texas
and that's where these big ships would anchor
by the side of three-mile limit.
And then these little small ships would speed up to them everyday
and then upload alcohol, and then speed back to the shoreline.
The coast guard of course did their best to stop this
but they didn't captured 10 percent of the trade.
So that's actually by the way not where we got most
of our alcohol during that time.
Most of the alcohol produced during Prohibition was reconverted
industrial alcohol.
So, you know, go to CBS and buy denatured alcohol, right?
It's denatured for a reason because it's poisons, right?
So the bootleggers figured out how you-- how you denature it,
and then you add some flavorings to it and you then put them
in containers you wanna use and then you take it to the bath tub
and you fill up of water that's why it's called bath tub gin.
'Cause you tap, you cut it with water in the bath tubs.
>> Joe Kennedy involved in that thing?
>> That's actually-- the question was Joe Kennedy was he involved?
And that's a common myth.
Joe Kennedy actually was not involved
in the bootlegging business.
I've been asked that question quite a bit.
He made his money in the first half of the '20s
by shorting the stock market and then a lot of half
by becoming a Hollywood producer.
But he actually was not involved in the bootlegging trade.
Oh there was a question in the back, yes?
>> Do the medical and the religious exemptions apply in the district
and if so did you evidence in your research
of everyone getting religion and going
to the doctor all the time [inaudible]?
[ Laughter ]
>> Yes. I assume everybody heard the question so, okay.
Yeah the religious exemption was one of the huge
and medical exemptions were some of the biggest loopholes that exist
and probably the two biggest loopholes and the Volstead Act.
So we had plenty of people
for example suddenly claiming that they were Jewish.
You know, I'm a Jewish Rabbi.   My last name is Smith and, you know,
and because Judaism doesn't have any kind of hierarchy, there's no pope
or anything to go to, it's all basically evolved
out of synagogues and so on.
So I'm establishing a synagogue and hey I need to get a license
so therefore I can get my wine distribution
so I can therefore go sell it to my friends, you know, and so and so,
so that's a huge loophole that takes place.
The medicinal liquor one is another huge loophole that takes place
in the loop-- in the Volstead Act.
So for example you all know the story of Great Gatsby,
that's based on George Remus who's one of the first bootleggers.
And he bought up a huge number of distilleries
because they had all these whiskey still sitting
in their warehouses they couldn't sell it.
And then at the same time he went over
and bought a whole bunch of pharmacies.
And then the third leg of the stool was bribery.
So he bribed all these people in treasury department
and the Prohibition Bureau which was part of the Treasury Department
at that time to allow him to dispense far more alcohol
than his licenses actually allowed him to do, so hand over fist,
he was making just a ton of money, so really a remarkable story.
[ Inaudible Remark ]   >> Yeah so huge exemption.
Additional questions?
I know we're getting close to the top of the hour here.
Well very good, well thank you, thanks a lot--
>> Thank you very much.   [ Applause ]
>> This has been a presentation of the Library