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By: Max Blomquist The book “Eliot Ness: the Rise and Fall of an American Hero” is a biography about a man who, with help of several others, took down Al Capone, one the most well known gangsters in America. Eliot Ness was a very serious and dedicated man, especially when it came to his job at the Bureau of Prohibition. He took this job very seriously and made it his life to enforce prohibition on any and all citizens. In his life he was the golden boy of the Bureau but he died a nobody. Without the headlines he was making every week the public quickly forgot about his large part in taking down the most well known criminals of the twenties. It wasn’t until he and Oscar Fraley worked together on his book “The Untouchables” that people started remembering his legacy. The book he wrote was largely exaggerated but that didn’t stop the public from taking a large notice to it. The Eighteenth Amendment prohibiting the sale and transportation of alcohol in the United States impowered criminals like Al Capone to take advantage of the American people. While doing so he gained power, money, and notoriety. Prohibition affected the lives of thousands ranging from alcohol related violence to death from drinking unregulated alcohol. In today’s society, after repealing the Eighteenth Amendment, we haven’t seen a criminal rise to such power and authority as Al Capone did.
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The book “Eliot Ness: The Rise and Fall of an American Hero” is a biography about a man who with several other people took down the crime ruler of Chicago, Al Capone. My book takes place throughout the roaring twenties, a time period in which the economy was picking up and prohibition was starting. Prohibition in America was the ban of all sale and consumption of alcohol, which of course leads to people finding out how to get it into America and turn a profit from it. The American people after prohibition went into effect quickly realized it was not going to work very well. Citizens quickly started hopping onto different methods of obtaining alcohol, varying from creating it to buying it illegally off usually dangerous bootleggers. It was very clear that not many were happy about this new change in lifestyle and there would be consequences.
The infamous Al Capone started off as a small time criminal running smaller crime operations before he started his bootlegging career which turned him into the most well known gangster in all of Chicago and maybe even America. To Al Capone bootlegging alcohol was the perfect opportunity for a man like him to earn a name for himself among other large criminals. His previous illegal businesses he was running were gambling, and prostitution which although provided sufficient funds it didn’t provide him with the fame he craved. Eliot Ness however had a completely different standpoint from the mob boss himself, Eliot Ness strongly supported prohibition to the point where he made it his life to protect and enforce it on any and all people. “He believed ruthlessness was the only way to win the war against bootleggers.” (Page 16) . Even people in the Bureau of Prohibition wanted to have a taste of alcohol again which led to a group of secretaries taking a weekend off and spending it out in a cabin by a lake. Within this group of secretaries they had all privately agreed to purchase some bootlegged liquor and have a little bit of extra fun on this weekend out. One of the secretaries had started a more private relationship with Eliot, while they were away at the cabin Eliot knew where they were staying. On the second day of the trip Eliot wanted to make sure the girls weekend was made up of just the girls so he paid them a visit. When Eliot started knocking on the front door the girls all hid the liquor around the cabin because they all knew that if Eliot find out that the girls had bought bootlegged liquor he would get them all immediately fired and possibly even arrested. |
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April 2018
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