Our Bootleg Aristocracy

“Opposite the park on Fifth avenue he was walking in pearl-gray clothes perfectly fitting, an overcoat folded over his arm, a great black pearl in his cravat—a resplendent vision of masculine fashion noticeable in these days of careless dress among men. He stopped with a wide smile and held out his hand to a man approaching. “Dontcher remember me? I’m -----, dontcher know?—bartender at ------ Club in the Adirondacks back in the good old days. Doin' fine since prohibition, soaking it away for fair; cleaned up a couple of million already. Say, don’t you want something? Just tip me the word and I kin get you any kind of booze you like.”

“This is not an isolated case; his kind are many. Big fortunes are easily won in a short time in the bootlegging business and the bootlegger is the type of man who stops at nothing he is ready to commit any kind of violence even murder.
“It is a new aristocracy of wealth that is being built up since prohibition and the money is being made with the direct help of men and women who think of themselves as the better element in the community.

“This is another serious side to the lack of enforcement of the Eighteenth Amendment and one little considered. Wealth means power and prestige in the United States as everywhere else. Can we tolerate a new aristocracy of the class which is now engaged in the bootlegging business?”

[Woman Citizen, April 19, 1924, p.18]