Fleishman knew the assignment would be dangerous. Yet he saw no reason why he shouldn’t take his bride along. He could rent an apartment and the stay in Detroit could be pleasant for both of them as long as business was separated from their home life.
This wasn’t an era for Fleishman or anyone else to be surprised over reports of graft and corruption in law enforcement. The papers were full of stories of prohibition agents and other officers being involved with gangsters in liquor smuggling. If Congress wasn’t ordering an investigation of a breakdown in law enforcement, others were. Bootlegging and racketeering had grown to be a multi-million-dollar industry. It was hardly surprising that an underpaid police officer was tempted when he could make $100 merely by looking the other way while a cargo of liquor was being unloaded.
There were times when Fleishman and his fellow agents were not proud of their agency. But the Customs Service was by no means the only enforcement agency tainted by crooks and weaklings. There was corruption rampant throughout the United States. The Federal government itself was only beginning to recover from the shocking scandals in the administration of President Harding. It was all a part of the revolution in manners and morals which had swept the country after the close of World War I. It seemed after the war that the vast majority of the citizens of the United States were eager for prohibition. Congress had voted overwhelmingly for the Nineteenth Amendment to establish prohibition throughout the United States. The dry forces had easily won ratification of the amendment when it was placed before the various states.
Then came the revolt. As soon as Congress passed the Volstead Act, to enforce the prohibition amendment, the country developed a prodigious thirst. Bootlegging became one of the country’s major industries. Revenue from the sale of illegal whiskey provided mobsters with unbelievably rich treasuries. It made millionaires out of bums. The gangsters were better armed, better disciplined, and better organized than the average law enforcement agency throughout the country. The cynicism of the period was summed up by Franklin P. Adams, who wrote in the New York World:
Prohibition is an awful flop.
We like it.
It can’t stop what it’s meant to stop.
We like it.
It’s left a trail of graft and slime,
It’s filled our land with vice and crime.