By the 1920s The United States and the provinces within Canada had adopted laws collectively known as prohibition, forbidding the sale of alcohol.[1] It was during that era that North America gave birth to some of the largest crime syndicates, the most vicious criminals, and the American Mafia leaders Al Capone, Bugs Moran, Johnny Torrio, The Purple Gang, and Peter Licavoli, who became household names.[2] For the Mafia and the gangsters, prohibition meant employment, easy money, good times, shiny new cars, and new suits.[3] The Mafia's tainted profits from bootlegging far exceeded that from prostituting, loan sharking, bookmaking, extorting and other racketeering.[4] Thus, in part, the action of Prohibition facilitated the atmosphere that the Mafia was exploiting; it financially enriched the Mafia, allowing its activities to fester, and it developed and fed the them a new network of associates, enabling the Mafia's overall influence to grow.
Less than a year after prohibition after the legislation was enacted, more than 900,000 cases of liquor were being shipped to the border cities for what was allowed as private consumption.[5] In the area of Windsor, Ontario Canada alone, the per capita consumption of liquor increased from a pre- 1914 level of 9 gallons to a staggering 102 gallons by 1924 while it was technically illegal to drink.[6] This mass consumption created a high demand for liquor products and the Mafia in Canada and in The United States was able to provide for this through numerous interconnected and highly efficient transport methods.
Liquor was transported from the province of Ontario, Canada mostly by the Licavoli Crime Family, into the states in America which bordered Canada; including Michigan, Ohio, New York, Pennsylvania, and Minnesota along the Detroit River.[7] Criminal gangs developed methods to speed up the delivery of contraband liquor and to avoid the jeopardy of the organized effort. The Mafia in North America carried out their operations on a national or corporate scale employing a system that worked like clockwork.[8] One group arranged the purchase of liquor at the export docks along the river, another crew transported the liquor across to a designated location; a third team quickly picked up the cases of whiskey and transported them to warehouses and later another arranged the shipments to speakeasies in Detroit, Chicago and other Midwestern cities. A favorite tactic of the Mafia was hijacking other gangs’ booze shipments or forcing rivals to pay them for “protection” to leave their operations alone, thus frequently if not always, armed guards accompanied the caravans that delivered the liquor.[9][10]
The aerial rum runners were big time and gang organized under contract. Al Capone and The Purple Gang were lucratively involved in this method, since they needed swift supplies on a daily basis. It was estimated that as much as $100,000 worth of booze left Windsor and neighboring areas each month for the American landing strips.[11] The Mafia also employed the use of the railway which crossed the Detroit and St Lawrence River for more efficient transportation. Liquor was hidden within legitimate cargo or the Mafia employed the use of bogus seals allowing the cars to pass undetected.[12]
The epitome of power that the Mafia held during prohibition would be felt long after its end in both the United States and Canada in the 1930s. Criminal empires which had expanded on bootleg money would find other avenues within North American life to continue to make large sums of money. Business was good and the bootlegging business even better. In the 1930s, prohibition petered out. This coincided with a declining economy and ultimately the great depression. As a result of these less than prosperous times, some of the smaller Mafia factions which arose because of prohibition disappeared altogether.[13]