Читать книгу Jacobs Beach. The Mob, the Garden and the Golden Age of Boxing онлайн

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And still fans thronged to the Garden, juiced up illegally and not giving a damn.

Crime, meanwhile, outpaced the zeal of the crime busters chasing down illegal booze. And there to cash in were gangsters who now had a sympathetic constituency of millions—ordinary, thirsty citizens who came to view the police with growing irreverence.

“The national prohibition of alcohol—the ‘noble experiment’—was undertaken to reduce crime and corruption, solve social problems, reduce the tax burden created by prisons and poorhouses, and improve health and hygiene in America,” wrote the American economist Mark Thornton.

Instead, it spawned the most complete expansion of organized gangsterism the world has ever seen. Prohibition gave birth to the Mob as we know it. It changed the moral landscape forever. Legal jobs disappeared. Decent people were driven to crime. What was considered wrong once became the norm. Stealing, casual violence, and deceit spread. And, most tellingly, so lucrative was bootlegging, the preserve of the established mobsters, that they turned themselves into businesses. This was the genesis of organized crime in America. The phenomenon grew with names attached: the Syndicate, the Outfit, and, chillingly, their dedicated killing unit, Murder Inc.