Narrator quotes

View Quote Back in this country, the boys who had returned from overseas begin to find out that the world has moved on during the time they spent in France...Everywhere, things have changed but particularly in New York. The old Broadway is only a memory. Gone are many of the famous landmarks, for already, America is feeling the effects of Prohibition. There is a concentrated effort at readjustment to normal peacetime activities, but unemployment coming in the wake of the wartime boom is beginning to grip the country and the soldiers find their return to face - on a different front - the same old struggle, the struggle to survive.

View Quote And so the Eddie of this story joins the thousands and thousands of other Eddies throughout America. He becomes a part of a criminal army - an army that was born of a marriage between an unpopular law and an unwilling public. Liquor is the password in this army. And it's a magic password that spells the dollar sign as it spreads from city to city, from state to state. The public is beginning to look upon the bootlegger as something of an adventuresome hero, a modern crusader who deals in bottles instead of battles. And so, because of a grotesque situation, this new kind of army grows and grows, always gaining new recruits who care nothing about tomorrow just so long as money is easy today.

View Quote 1924. By now, America is well-launched into an era of amazing madness. Bootlegging has grown from small, individual effort to big business embodying huge coalitions and combines. The chase after huge profits is followed closely by their inevitable partners: corruption, violence, and murder. A new and horrible tool appears - the tommy - a light, deadly wasp-like machine gun, and murder henceforth is parceled out in wholesale lots.

View Quote 1929. As the dizzy decade nears its end, the country is stock-market crazy. The great and the humble, the rich man and the working man, the housewife and the shopgirl, all take their daily flyer in the market. And no one seems to lose. Then like a bombshell comes that never-to-be-forgotten Black Tuesday, October 29, confusion spreads through the canyons of New York City's financial district and men stare wild-eyed at the spectacle of complete ruin. More than sixteen and a half million shares change hands in a single day of frenzied selling. The paper fortunes built up over the past few years crumble into nothing before this disaster which is to touch every man, woman, and child in America.

View Quote Finally comes the national referendum on repeal. Tired of years of violence, corruption, and loss of personal liberty, Americans go to the polls and overwhelmingly rout the dry forces. After thirteen years, Prohibition is dead, leaving in its wake a criminal element used to wealth and power but unable for the most part to cope with a new determination by an aroused public that law and order should once more reign.