Paige SailorsMrs. KennedyAP English 311 March 2014Organised CrimeIn the 1920s, Prohibition caused organized crime to reach its highest levels, and so gangsters were at their peak, dealing in bootlegging and the illegal distillation and distribution of alcohol. Big time gangsters and their crimes had a great impact on the society and economy of the 1920s. Many gangsters became very infamous during the 1920s. The gangster most people have heard of, Al Capone, was a major player in crime during that time. He built a criminal empire in Chicago that became the model for today's organized crime operations (World Book Online). It began when, at the invitation of Johnny Torrio, Capone joined Torrio in Chicago where he had become an influential lieutenant in the Colosimo mob (FBI). Johnny Torrio was called to Chicago to manage and expand Big Jim Colosimo's chain of brothels. In 1919 Torrio summoned his old friend Al Capone from New York to run one of the brothels and, in 1920, had either him or Frankie Yale (another gangster) kill Colosimo. Torrio thus inherited Colosimo's empire and immediately expanded into the large bootlegging and gambling casinos of the Prohibition era. In 1925, after being shot and wounded by a rival gang and serving nine months in prison for running a brewery, Torrio turned over his racket to Capone and retreated to Italy (The Editors of Encyclopædia Britannica. " Torrio) The great demand and simultaneous illegalization of alcohol opened up a new illegal market for gangsters to develop and monopolize. As Al Capone said, "All I do is satisfy a public demand...someone had to throw in some ' of liquor on that thirst. Why not me?" ("Organized C... middle of paper... the main reasons why money was being taken out of the economy. One of the exceptions to Prohibition was that pharmacists could still prescribe whiskey for any number of ailments , so bootleggers quickly realized that running a pharmacy was a perfect fit for their business. Furthermore, the cost to produce the alcohol was zero compared to the amount they could make from sales in a year during Prohibition. professional bootleggers are estimated to have walked away with $4,000,000,000 ("Prohibition and Its Effects"). In summary, Prohibition caused much of the organized crime in the 1920s, yes, it didn't result from it, but it did. established Gangsters like Al Capone and George "Bugs" managed to rise up. Bootlegger operations took money out of the economy, and Prohibition caused a decline in sales of industries that should have thrived...