The notion of progress: crime

Enzo Deronzier                                                                                                                                            T7

Notion 2

Hello,

I’m going to talk about the notion “The idea of progress”.

First of all I would like to give a definition of the idea of progress. The Progress is a gradual betterment; especially: the progressive development of humankind. To illustrate the notion we'll talk about prohibition in the USA. Thus, we can ask ourselves how has Prohibition backfired and led the nation to crime ? In the first place we will talk about the Prohibition and why it has been enforced,  secondly about the consequences of this and then about Al Capone.

I- Prohibition

Prohibition is the name given to the 18th Amendment to the constitution passed in 1919 and enforced on January 20th in 1920. It prohibited manufacture, sale and importation of alcohol.

Firstly, in the united states, mainly men were drinking too much. It led them to lose their jobs, spend all of their money and to be unable to provide for their families. They also lost their faith and became lost. They ended up turning on their wives and children, beating on them. Unemployment, domestic violence and poverty became huge problems for the government and the country. In A nation of drunkards by Ken Burns a women is complaining about her husband's fondness for drink which had overcome his love for her.

Furthermore, there were  demonstrations and a division of the society:  those who supported prohibition, the drys, mainly Protestants and women and those who opposed Prohibition, the wets, mainly Catholics and men. In the TV show Boardwalk Empire we can see that some person like Thompson told fake story as if he was supporting prohibition to move women (in this case) and to secure their votes for an election.

Besides, in the same TV show, we saw that on the night before prohibition was enforced, people were in a very festive mood. They were partying, drinking heavily and storing alcohol.  Indeed, drinking wasn't forbidden during prohibition. In a bar, when the clock stroke the beginning of prohibition, they  resumed drinking. Anyway, they didn't seem ready to stop it.

II- Consequences

The prohibition questionned the right to individual liberty and a part of the population became criminals because they didn't abide by the law.

In the first place, we saw in Boardwalk Empire that the most powerful leaders of the city were together to plan on supplying alcohol.  So the men who were in charge of enforcing the law were organizing the illegal trafficking oh alcohol. They will increase the prices and provide the city with alcohol. They are completely corrupted.

Along with, they had an illegal alcohol factury. It was hide in a morgue to cover the smell and to have access to a lot of chemicals. They also had to come up with new recipes to manufacture alcohol. But, thousands of people actually died from tainted alcohol and many more suffered from permanent injuries. Another solution to get alcohol was the smuggling.  Some people smuggled whisky from Canada at sea.

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