Chapter 511: Mob Land
East Harlem, New York City. A slum, a ghetto, or a charming and quaint part of town just in need of a little renovation? That would depend on who you asked. But one thing was certain. In 1920s America, it was the same as it was in Bruno’s past life.
Teeming with greaseballs and dirtbags. Men who would rather steal from others through brute force and intimidation than work an honest day’s wage. And these days were no different.
Sure, there were still more honest men and women than crooks — but not enough to keep the streets clean.
And it’s not like this kind of behavior was exclusive to the Italians. Hell, The Irish, the Jews and all the other recent immigrant groups had some kind of criminal racket going on. But the Italians? Well, they were the first to turn it into something on the scale of an empire.
And in 1922, that was the trajectory that was happening. Bootlegging was big business. Alcohol was the lifeblood of civilization. It had been brewed since before properly paved streets were a thing. And was the way many a man coped with the stresses of life.
To ban it, to strip it away outright? Well... That was a difficult thing to process, especially in a society that had chosen to do so seemingly overnight to many who were caught unprepared for the sudden changes in society.
In Chicago, a war was already being waged between the Italian South Side Gang and the Irish North Side Gang. But New York? New York was notoriously bloody, and they had not even begun getting into the thick of it yet.
Either way, President Hughes, who was now halfway through his second term was at an impasse. He had promised security, prosperity, and independence for the Americans. But the headlines made the violence appear so much worse than it was.
The odds were, if you were not a part of that lifestyle, you weren’t going to get shot, stabbed, or disappeared.
But the public, unaccustomed to any crime being this publicized, and this bloody now that a new generation of weapons was hitting the American streets. Well, they had a way of overreacting to sensationalism.