History
Detroit was a predecessor to Prohibition, because Michigan adopted a state law, the Damon Act of 1916, which prohibited liquor effective in 1917. Henry Ford, who owned the River Rouge plant, was a proponent in advocating a sober workforce. Due to Detroit's convenient proximity to Canada and Ohio, several bootleggers and individuals traveled toward Toledo to obtain booze; judges took a lenient view of offenders, and in 1919 the Damon Act was declared unconstitutional. However, in 1920 the Eighteenth Amendment was adopted, and prohibition took effect throughout the United States. Canada became a major port for running alcohol products because the Canadian federal government approved and licensed distilleries and breweries to manufacture, distribute, and export.
Read more about this topic: The Purple Gang
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“I am not a literary man.... I am a man of science, and I am interested in that branch of Anthropology which deals with the history of human speech.”
—J.A.H. (James Augustus Henry)
“The history of work has been, in part, the history of the worker’s body. Production depended on what the body could accomplish with strength and skill. Techniques that improve output have been driven by a general desire to decrease the pain of labor as well as by employers’ intentions to escape dependency upon that knowledge which only the sentient laboring body could provide.”
—Shoshana Zuboff (b. 1951)
“... all big changes in human history have been arrived at slowly and through many compromises.”
—Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962)