Samuel Bronfman and for Joe Kennedy and hundreds of other incipient millionaires across this great freedom-loving land, it was indeed the dawn of a new day. Unfortunately, it turned out to be the bootleggers instead of the bishop who had the most accurate fix on human nature.

Laying hands on the booze itself proved to be the least of their problems. A Niagra of whisky began flowing over the Canadian border, which proved to be as porous then as now, and clandestine mother ships plied the seas off both coasts, offloading European and Latin American produce onto high-powered motor launches for the midnight run to shore. And onshore, illegal distilleries and breweries of all sizes flourished everywhere. The “Terrible Gennas” who controlled Little Italy on Chicago’s near West Side organized alcohol cooking as a cottage industry. They installed hundreds of stills in tenement flats and spare rooms, supplying the mash, yeast, and sugar, paying $15 a day to the man or woman or child who stoked the fire.^[13]  At the other end of the spectrum there were huge distilleries operating openly wherever they could arrange political cover. Breweries were still allowed to make non-alcoholic beer and a sizeable draft of the product was either diverted before the alcohol was taken out or had the alcohol put back in later. But the most common ingredient in booze was industrial alcohol, which is used for manufacturing everything from paint and printing ink to plastics and cosmetics.  To discourage people from drinking it, industrial alcohol was laced with poison, but this poison could be boiled off through re-distilling. Industrial alcohol was siphoned into the illegal market at such a phenomenal rate that it ultimately accounted for half the booze drunk in the 1920s.^[14]  To give it the taste and color of scotch, you added caramel, prune juice, and creosote.

Torrio originally entered the market as a wholesaler, and with Capone as his right arm, they set up arrangements with importers in Detroit, New York, New Orleans, and Florida, with brewers from Joliet to Racine, and illegal distillers throughout