Second Only to Bootlegging

Even as distillers around the world shipped their products to Cuba to be smuggled into the United States to circumvent Prohibition, immigrants from around the world made their way to Havana to be smuggled into the United States to circumvent new laws restricting immigration. The two forms of contraband cargoes utilized the same routes, the same organizations, and even the same boats. Smugglers also brought narcotics into the United States illegally as well, seeking to increase their profits. Bureaucratic confusion among the agencies seeking to stem liquor smuggling and immigrant smuggling hampered enforcement of both laws, allowing the smuggling of both illegal cargoes to continue.

Uncle Sam’s Efforts

With the passage of the Eighteenth Amendment, the federal government developed and enforcement strategy that charged the U.S. Coast Guard with preventing the illegal importation of liquor on the high seas surrounding the United States. The U.S. Customs Bureau guarded the nation's ports and borders, and the Prohibition Bureau working with state and local law enforcement patrolled the nation's interior. Congress, however, failed to appropriate the resources needed to enforce the law. The Coast Guard lacked enough ships to patrol U.S. waters, and faced uncertainty over the extent to which American authority extended out from shore. The Coast Guard picketed, tracked and trailed suspected rum runners, and disrupted the Rum Rows that developed off the coasts of American cities, but could not fully stop liquor smuggling.

Booze Cops in Cuba

While the United States established anti-smuggling treaties with many countries, and a “Rum Treaty” with Cuba, it was a small band of undercover agents in Havana who stopped the liquor traffic out of Havana, but only temporarily. Led by American Henry Kime with the help of Commander Charles S. Root of the Coast Guard Intelligence Division, these agents determined how smugglers obtained forged customs documents, and convinced Cuban Customs authorities to prevent the departure from port of suspected rum runners. It was only a temporary victory. Bureaucratic inefficiency and confusion among federal agencies involved in Prohibition enforcement, and Cuban frustration with failure of U.S. enforcement efforts overall, eventually allowed the liquor traffic to resume.

Introduction

While most histories of Prohibition focus on the northeastern United States and the organized crime that flourished during the era, this book turns the attention to the South. The South's proximity to islands where liquor was legal, its long coastline, and presence of people interested in profit or drinking attracted smugglers. Despite temperance advocates hopes that Prohibition would bring reform, a widespread black market in illegal liquor soon developed. The continued trade in alcohol helped make the South more modern, and drew federal law enforcement efforts to the South and into Cuba.

Conclusion

Despite Prohibition's failure to end alcohol consumption, it fostered numerous important changes. Federal law enforcement efforts became more visible in the South, and even extended beyond the nation's borders. The strategies developed during Prohibition to counter the smuggling of liquor shaped efforts to prevent narcotics smuggling and immigrant smuggling through the end of the century. The liquor traffic established economic ties between enterprising southerners and partners both to the north and across the sea, while new consumption patterns tied the South to modern trends of leisure and consumption across the country. Prohibition began the rise of Havana as a tourist mecca that continued, with the help of the mob, until the Cuban Revolution. Prohibition helped make the South more modern, while it also expanded the scope of American power and influence at home and abroad.

The Liquor Market

Throughout Prohibition, the Prohibition Bureau struggled to enforce Prohibition effectively. It experienced changes in leadership and strategies, and complaints about ineptitude and corruption among prohibition agents. Agents attempted to purchase liquor at the commercial establishments proliferating across the southern landscape, including at hotels, cafes, garages, gas stations and produce stands. Their efforts reveal the growth of a culture of consumption across the South. The vast amounts of liquor in the South and traveling through the South, however, tempted law enforcement into corruption, from local and state police, federal prohibition agents, to members of the Coast Guard. Some of them used their power to develop and control vice markets in their communities, and to enforce Prohibition unequally across race and class lines.

Cocktail Time

Despite Prohibition, over the course of the 1920s, increasing numbers of Americans, and southerners among them, saw drinking liquor as a modern and pleasurable pastime. Court records indicate significant arrests for drunkenness and court officials reported considerable disdain for Prohibition laws among the public. Many officials were particularly concerned about drinking among the nation's youth. On college campuses in the South, drinking became an expected aspect of socializing as men and women increasingly saw liquor as part of an evening's entertainment. Others travelled to locations like Miami and Havana, where liquor was widely available. Over the course of the decade, drinking became an accepted part of social life, severing the link between temperance and respectability.

The Traffic in Liquor

Havana, Cuba was an active smuggling port, with a long history of shipping. European distillers shipped large amounts of their products to Havana, knowing it would likely be smuggled into the United States. Liquor wholesalers provided a wide variety of liquors to smugglers and facilitated the production of forged customs documents that allowed smuggling ships to depart with illegal cargoes of liquor. Smuggling networks landed these cargoes on southern beaches, either to supply local liquor markets or to transport to markets via road or rail to markets in midwestern or northeastern cities.