What made things worse for Black people was the Ku Klux Klan, the KKK. This was an organisation of white people, who disliked Blacks, Catholics and Jews; they wanted white supremacy. Also, they believed is WASP which was White Anglo Saxon Protestants. The KKK terrorised black people, as well as lynching them. In 1925, there were 135 lynching in the state of Georgia alone. This shows that the Ku Klux Klan was a difficulty people faced however gangsterism was still a more important problem. Although, racism was a more important problem as even though gangsterism caused alot of problems, after a long while it stopped; however racism was an ongoing trouble.
Another problem Americans faced in the 1920s was agriculture problems. During the 1920s people who lived in the industrial cities and town benefitted from the effects of ‘Mass Production’. Industrial towns gave people jobs which meant that they could now afford to buy washing machines, vacuums, cars and other luxuries they never had. Nevertheless, many people living in the farming areas of America couldn’t afford to buy these new goods. They suffered from the effects of ‘Mass Production’. Before mass production, farming techniques were introduced in farming; everything was done using muscle power. This involved employing hundreds of people to plant and harvest crops. However after as farmers produced more food using their new machines the price of crops dropped, this was caused by producing more food than what was needed by the population. As farmers couldn’t sell their produce, their prices dropped further. This situation was made worse by the introduction of Prohibition. In the past when the price of wheat had been too low they had used it to make whisky or ‘Moonshine’. Prohibition, the banning of production and drinking of alcohol, prevented them from doing this. Prohibition didn’t just make things worse for farmers, but it also led to a whole lot of other problems.
In 1920, the 18th Amendment was passed making the manufacture and sale of alcohol illegal. However, many people in this time of 'Prohibition' continued to drink and gangsters made enormous amounts of money from supplying illegal liquor. There was obviously a huge market for what in the 1920s was an illegal commodity. It was the gangsters who dominated various cities and provided them with alcohol. Gangsters hired bootleggers who got the alcohol for them. As people wanted the alcohol, the gangsters were there to provide it for them, obviously at a cost. They made so much money they could bribe authorities – police, judges and state officials, to cooperate with them or just turn a blind eye. Each major city had its gangster element but the most famous was Chicago, with Al Capone who made $60 million a year from bootlegging. His gang was like a private army. One by one, Capone had rival gangs killed until he controlled all the illegal drink in Chicago. Al Capone was able to get away with crime because he had Chicago's police and politicians in his pay; over half of the police force took bribes from him. The most notorious incident was the , which happened on 14th February 1929, when seven leading members of the Bugs Moran gang were executed by gangsters’ part of Al Capone’s group, dressed in police uniforms. All of this was a result of prohibition, and the main effect of prohibition was organised crime and gangsters.
Overall, I think that gangsterism was not the most important problem in America during the 1920s because there were other factors that arose that were more significant. For example, the agriculture problem was quite huge; due to the effects of ‘Mass Production’ farmers were losing their money; although in comparison to gangsterism, it wasn’t such a large problem. The Ku Klux Klan was also a problem in America as they were killing people for no reason as they wanted white supremacy. Another problem was the ‘Red Scare’. This was the fear of Russian immigrants coming to America and spreading the thought of communism around. A key problem however was racism around America, though mainly occurring in the southern states. This was a main problem as racism was something that kept on happening; gangsterism was just a cause of prohibition and only started once the Volstead Act was in place. Even after gangsterism slowly calmed down, racism was still ongoing in the southern states. Black people were still getting discriminated against. Overall, in my opinion, I disagree with the statement; gangsterism was not the most important problem in America in the 1920s.
