re of an ideal than a reality. It was on this basis that the Bootleg Wars began.
             "The mid-1920's saw the birth of organized crime. From Boston to Kansas City, powerful gangs carved up all the major cities. Added together, they controlled an enormous empire of breweries distilleries, warehouses, fleets of trucks and fast boats, and tens of thousands of speakeasies," (Gingold 28).
             New York City was the nation's largest market for bootleg liquor and home to dozens of big-time mobsters.
             Two of New York's most dangerous gangsters were Meyer Lanksy and Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel. They eventually
             became partners with the Italian gangsters Joe Adonis, Frank Costello, and Charlie "Lucky" Luciano in the Broadway Mob. The Broadway Mob took over most of the bootlegging in Manhattan. Their growing power provoked a bloody two-year was for control of the city's Italian mobs in which dozens of gangsters were killed. When it came to gang warfare, however, Chicago was in a class by itself. There, gangsters made little effort to conceal their activities.
             The leading Italian mobster was Johnny Torrio, who had worked out a series of agreements that gave each gang a fair share of Chicago's bootlegging profits. Dion O'Banion led the largely Irish North Side gang. "O'Banion had begun hijacking trucks and buying up breweries and distilleries even before Prohibition went into effect. On Chicago's South Side, the area known as Little Italy, was run by six Sicilian-born brothers, the Terrible Gennas,"(Gingold 31). The Gennas installed thousands of portable stills throughout the tenements and then collected homemade alcohol from the residents.
             In 1924, O'Banion went to war with the Italians. Before the year was over, he was shot to death in his flower shop. O'Banion's North Side gang was taken over by Hymie Weiss, who retaliated with an attack on Johnny Tor...