WEBVTT - S3E7: Judgement Day 0:00:01.040 --> 0:00:04.160 Hey there, it's your host ed helms. Here real quick, 0:00:04.240 --> 0:00:06.960 before we dive into this episode, I wanted to remind 0:00:07.000 --> 0:00:09.920 you that my brand new book is coming out on 0:00:10.039 --> 0:00:13.840 April twenty ninth. It's called Snaffo, The Definitive Guide to 0:00:13.960 --> 0:00:17.600 History's Greatest screw Ups, and you can pre order it 0:00:17.800 --> 0:00:22.159 right now at snafudashbook dot com. Trust me, if you 0:00:22.280 --> 0:00:25.200 like this show, you're gonna love this book. It's got 0:00:25.239 --> 0:00:29.400 all the wild disasters spectacular face plants we just couldn't 0:00:29.440 --> 0:00:33.279 squeeze into this podcast. And here's the kicker. I am 0:00:33.440 --> 0:00:37.480 also going on tour to celebrate. That's right. I'm coming 0:00:37.520 --> 0:00:41.360 to New York, DC, Boston, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Chicago, San Francisco, 0:00:41.479 --> 0:00:45.240 and my hometown Los Angeles. So if you've ever wanted 0:00:45.280 --> 0:00:47.120 to see me stumble through a live Q and A 0:00:47.320 --> 0:00:50.080 or dramatically read about a kiddie cat getting turned into 0:00:50.080 --> 0:00:54.640 a CIA operative, now's your chance again. Head to snafoo 0:00:54.880 --> 0:00:58.080 dashbook dot com to pre order the book and check 0:00:58.080 --> 0:01:01.680 out all the tour details in day's or just click 0:01:01.760 --> 0:01:04.320 the link in the show notes. That'll work too. Okay, 0:01:04.400 --> 0:01:08.080 that's it, on with the chaos. This is Snafu Season 0:01:08.160 --> 0:01:16.240 three Formula six previously on Snaffou As Mabel Walker Willebrandt 0:01:16.240 --> 0:01:18.320 was doing everything in her power to stop the tide 0:01:18.319 --> 0:01:20.120 of liquor washing into America. 0:01:20.360 --> 0:01:23.399 Clan took over the city, Dryes and Wets Clan and 0:01:23.440 --> 0:01:25.240 anti clan contending forces. 0:01:25.680 --> 0:01:29.959 Prohibition agents were enforcing the law by repeatedly breaking it. 0:01:30.040 --> 0:01:34.040 By putting a prohibition agent, Tugenhart, on trial for manslaughter, 0:01:34.440 --> 0:01:37.520 it's making him a martyr of prohibition. 0:01:37.360 --> 0:01:40.400 And the US government kept upping the ante in their 0:01:40.440 --> 0:01:43.400 misguided plan to get people to stop drinking. 0:01:43.880 --> 0:01:47.440 When the federal government starts coming up with formulas, they 0:01:47.600 --> 0:01:52.800 supercharge poisons into the alcohol that the bootleggers are stealing. 0:01:57.760 --> 0:02:01.400 Nineteen twenty eight was a momentous year at the movies. 0:02:01.520 --> 0:02:04.240 The world was introduced to a dapper mouse named Mickey 0:02:04.800 --> 0:02:10.320 and a nifty new innovation fund. Radio had just gone national, 0:02:10.520 --> 0:02:13.040 and the World Series was heard from coast to coast, 0:02:13.800 --> 0:02:18.360 much to the delight of Yankee superfan Alexander Gettler, who's 0:02:18.400 --> 0:02:21.400 tuning in to hear the Yankees sweep the Cardinals as 0:02:21.440 --> 0:02:27.240 he's slicing and dicing bodies in his lab at Bellevue Hospital, YEP. 0:02:27.400 --> 0:02:31.200 Nineteen twenty eight was a real barnburner alright, but most 0:02:31.280 --> 0:02:34.280 of all because it was a big election year. The 0:02:34.360 --> 0:02:39.320 presidency was up for grabs. In one corner was Herbert Hoover, Republican, 0:02:39.560 --> 0:02:42.720 and the guy for the dries. In the other corner 0:02:43.080 --> 0:02:47.240 the wet warrior, longtime Governor of New York, Al Smith. 0:02:47.720 --> 0:02:50.520 I am entirely unwilling to accept the old order of 0:02:50.560 --> 0:02:54.400 things as the best unless and until I've become convinced 0:02:54.560 --> 0:02:55.960 that it cannot be made better. 0:02:56.960 --> 0:03:00.720 As Al's speeches buzz over radios across a mayor, I 0:03:00.800 --> 0:03:03.560 can picture Mabel Walker Willebrandt sitting in her office at 0:03:03.560 --> 0:03:09.160 the Department of Justice, listening and fuming. You might remember 0:03:09.160 --> 0:03:11.919 that Al thumbed his nose at the law and repealed 0:03:11.960 --> 0:03:16.120 the state's prohibition Enforcement Statute five years before. Well, that 0:03:16.240 --> 0:03:21.480 put Al in Mabel's crosshairs. In Mabel's eyes, Al was 0:03:21.520 --> 0:03:25.239 a man so morally bankrupt that he swept the Constitution 0:03:25.360 --> 0:03:29.280 aside to appeal to the masses. And appeal he did, 0:03:29.800 --> 0:03:32.280 promising to take his wet agenda all the way to 0:03:32.360 --> 0:03:39.240 sixteen hundred Pennsylvania Avenue. Mabel wasn't having it, because when 0:03:39.280 --> 0:03:43.520 al Smith said he refused the quote old order of things. 0:03:43.560 --> 0:03:47.200 Mabel heard him rejecting the thing that mattered most to her, 0:03:47.880 --> 0:03:51.440 sticking to the law and enforcing the Eighteenth Amendment. 0:03:52.040 --> 0:03:54.760 It's the bottom of the nine folks, two outs going on, 0:03:54.920 --> 0:03:56.560 and the crowd is on its feet. 0:03:56.920 --> 0:03:59.760 I haven't felt tension like this since the night they rated. 0:04:01.200 --> 0:04:04.000 Mabel and her team were entering the ninth inning. It 0:04:04.000 --> 0:04:06.920 felt like her squad, the dries, or as she saw it, 0:04:07.040 --> 0:04:11.040 the only ones who respected the Constitution were behind, with 0:04:11.120 --> 0:04:13.920 two outs and no runners on. Her colleagues at the 0:04:13.960 --> 0:04:17.640 Department of Treasury had made public their deadly poisoning program 0:04:17.720 --> 0:04:22.640 to stop Americans from drinking, and yet still America wasn't 0:04:22.680 --> 0:04:24.120 ready to give up the bottle. 0:04:25.000 --> 0:04:27.640 Mabel Walker Willebrandt steps up to the plate, and I 0:04:27.720 --> 0:04:30.479 tell you what ed. She's making the pictures sweat like 0:04:30.560 --> 0:04:31.919 a bootlegger in July. 0:04:33.360 --> 0:04:37.200 Now, Mabel was the last batter up, and you better 0:04:37.240 --> 0:04:49.080 believe she was gonna go down swing. I'm Ed Helms 0:04:49.160 --> 0:04:53.559 and this is Snafu, a show about history's greatest screw ups. 0:04:54.080 --> 0:04:57.720 This is season three, The Story of Formula six. How 0:04:57.800 --> 0:05:01.120 prohibitions wore on alcohol went so go off the rails, 0:05:01.560 --> 0:05:07.400 the government wound up poisoning its own people. In today's episode, 0:05:07.680 --> 0:05:12.239 our threads start weaving together. Prohibition hangs in the balance. 0:05:12.240 --> 0:05:15.520 In the nineteen twenty eight election, and for Richard two 0:05:15.560 --> 0:05:20.760 gun Heart, the chickens finally come home to roost. 0:05:35.320 --> 0:05:38.320 Herbert Hoover. It's the man to give America a case 0:05:38.480 --> 0:05:41.120 of a good life in his youth, I'm minding engineer. 0:05:41.279 --> 0:05:43.520 After the Great War, Hoover brought the golden graine of 0:05:43.600 --> 0:05:48.320 American farms to Rope's starving hordes. He's your Secretary of Commerce. 0:05:48.600 --> 0:05:51.160 Do you want a fertile farm in the new gold Rush? 0:05:51.240 --> 0:05:54.080 Hoops your man, Hoop Hoover in nineteen twenty eight to 0:05:54.120 --> 0:05:57.320 keep the fed fabulous and to keep America fabulous and fed. 0:06:00.600 --> 0:06:03.119 Leading up to the nineteen twenty eight election, Mabel Walker 0:06:03.160 --> 0:06:06.280 Willebrandt was one busy bee. 0:06:07.520 --> 0:06:11.760 She campaigned very hard for Herbert Hoover against Al Smith. 0:06:12.640 --> 0:06:16.160 As author Dan o'krant says, Mabel traveled the country, speaking 0:06:16.200 --> 0:06:19.279 at churches, town halls, and women's groups, all in the 0:06:19.320 --> 0:06:22.400 hopes of scaring the Bejesus out of people. As she 0:06:22.520 --> 0:06:27.400 described a frightening American future under a potential president Al Smith. 0:06:28.160 --> 0:06:31.120 There was a speech she gave in Ohio. Particularly though 0:06:31.160 --> 0:06:37.279 she doesn't specifically invoke Smith's Catholicism their hint, hint, wink 0:06:37.320 --> 0:06:38.360 wink about it. 0:06:38.680 --> 0:06:41.840 Mabel's speech also included one heck of a Zinger. 0:06:42.160 --> 0:06:45.599 Governor Smith's prohibition plan would put white aprons on the 0:06:45.680 --> 0:06:48.760 States and make them serve as bartenders. 0:06:49.400 --> 0:06:51.400 Don't threaten me with a good time, Mabel. 0:06:51.800 --> 0:06:55.640 That led to the Smith campaign really building an issue 0:06:55.680 --> 0:06:58.080 on the discrimination against him. 0:06:58.680 --> 0:07:02.200 Al fired back used Mabel of leading a bigoted, anti 0:07:02.279 --> 0:07:06.200 Catholic whisper campaign, which was actually a pretty fair characterization. 0:07:06.920 --> 0:07:11.360 Al even gave Mabel a nickname, Prohibition Porsche. Now, as 0:07:11.400 --> 0:07:13.960 you history geeks will know, that's a reference to the 0:07:14.160 --> 0:07:18.200 Porsche who apparently played a role in Julius Caesar getting 0:07:18.280 --> 0:07:22.760 knifed on the Senate floor. Unlike Mabel's limp dog whistle Zinger, 0:07:23.200 --> 0:07:29.720 Al landed a direct hit Prohibition Porsche stuck. Mabel absolutely 0:07:29.880 --> 0:07:32.600 hated it, which is part of what makes it such 0:07:32.600 --> 0:07:35.360 a good nickname, I guess, but also Mabel, come on, 0:07:35.680 --> 0:07:41.120 I mean, it's pretty badass. Suffice to say, Mabel was pissed. 0:07:41.720 --> 0:07:44.880 She was hell bent on exposing Al Smith's New York City, 0:07:45.240 --> 0:07:48.560 his hometown, as a den of vice, and she came 0:07:48.640 --> 0:07:51.400 up with a plan straight out of Carrie Nation's playbook 0:07:51.840 --> 0:07:56.640 to humiliate him. After whiffing in her countless legal attempts 0:07:56.680 --> 0:08:00.480 to enforce prohibition and then failing miserably with the freaking 0:08:00.720 --> 0:08:04.720 ku Klux Klan, this was Mabel's hail Mary to make 0:08:04.760 --> 0:08:09.360 her mark. Now she was going to bust heads. She 0:08:09.480 --> 0:08:11.600 was going to go into the speakeasies of New York City, 0:08:12.080 --> 0:08:17.040 smash him up and shut him down. Obviously, she wasn't 0:08:17.040 --> 0:08:19.880 going to do it herself. She needed an army. Now. 0:08:19.920 --> 0:08:23.120 Mabel knew the NYPD was useless to her. New York 0:08:23.120 --> 0:08:26.880 cops had long ago said forget about it to enforcing prohibition, 0:08:27.280 --> 0:08:29.760 So she picked up the phone and summoned agents from 0:08:29.760 --> 0:08:32.520 all over the country, from Denver to Fort Worth to 0:08:32.600 --> 0:08:36.480 Kansas City, and in June nineteen twenty eight, as Al 0:08:36.559 --> 0:08:40.160 Smith was feeling good and officially accepting the Democratic nomination 0:08:40.320 --> 0:08:47.360 in Houston, Mabel's agents converged on the Big Apple. Eight 0:08:47.440 --> 0:08:51.000 years into prohibition, savvy New Yorkers could spot a prohibition 0:08:51.080 --> 0:08:54.400 agent a mile away. The most shabbily dressed man in 0:08:54.440 --> 0:08:58.000 any nightclub was always a secret agent. But Mabel had 0:08:58.040 --> 0:09:01.480 prepped her crew months in advance. She had them dressed 0:09:01.480 --> 0:09:04.040 to the nines so they could blend into the city 0:09:04.080 --> 0:09:08.240 crowd and glide into the swanky watering holes and maybe 0:09:08.520 --> 0:09:13.640 even throw back a few. And then these impeccably groomed 0:09:13.640 --> 0:09:17.480 agents stepped out to the center of speakeasy dance floors 0:09:17.520 --> 0:09:21.400 and got down to business. And I don't mean dance moves. 0:09:21.880 --> 0:09:23.320 We are enforcement agents. 0:09:24.320 --> 0:09:27.400 This establishment is now the hands of the federal government. 0:09:27.640 --> 0:09:30.080 Our guests must leave at once more. 0:09:31.080 --> 0:09:33.679 They made their arrests, and they shut down the bars. 0:09:34.679 --> 0:09:37.120 The raids would lead to a handsome hall for Mabel, 0:09:37.400 --> 0:09:41.320 over one hundred indictments of speakeasy owners. As the raids 0:09:41.320 --> 0:09:44.600 were going down, Mabel sat behind her mahogany desk at 0:09:44.600 --> 0:09:49.480 the DOJ, pretty damn pleased with herself. These massive sweeps 0:09:49.480 --> 0:09:52.600 did exactly what they were intended to do. They became 0:09:52.679 --> 0:09:56.679 known as the June Raids, and they became a huge 0:09:56.760 --> 0:10:01.120 national story. And as Mabel was unleashing hell from the DOJ, 0:10:01.760 --> 0:10:05.079 a few blocks away, other plans were bubbling away at 0:10:05.080 --> 0:10:08.320 the Department of Treasury, where the Prohibition Bureau had a 0:10:08.360 --> 0:10:13.439 new commissioner, James Duran. Duran had presided over the implementation 0:10:13.520 --> 0:10:17.880 of the government's alcohol poisoning scheme. Remember, Formula six was 0:10:17.960 --> 0:10:21.160 just one of dozens of formulas the government cooked up 0:10:21.240 --> 0:10:24.280 to make drinks undrinkable, and just like they did for 0:10:24.320 --> 0:10:29.560 all the other government formulas, the bootleggers responded instills and 0:10:29.600 --> 0:10:34.680 makeshift labs. Outside the nation's capital. Those bootlegger chemists were 0:10:34.720 --> 0:10:37.880 burning the midnight oil, coming up with a recipe to 0:10:38.080 --> 0:10:44.040 counter Formula six. They redistilled the tainted alcohol and extracted 0:10:44.080 --> 0:10:49.679 the poisons. When word reached James Duran that yet another 0:10:49.760 --> 0:10:54.160 formula had been defeated, he ordered his chemists to keep going. 0:10:55.040 --> 0:10:57.319 An anonymous source told one reporter. 0:10:57.360 --> 0:11:01.240 KMISOD, the Bureau of Internal Revenues seek to make impossible 0:11:01.280 --> 0:11:05.040 the untangling of poisons in the denatured formulas. In one case, 0:11:05.040 --> 0:11:07.240 a dash of gasoline will be added, and another some 0:11:07.400 --> 0:11:10.000 substance will be included to keep the metal and the 0:11:10.040 --> 0:11:11.719 grain alcohol from separating. 0:11:12.480 --> 0:11:17.400 Wow, gasoline, tell me you're out of ideas. Without telling 0:11:17.440 --> 0:11:22.480 me you're out of ideas. After Formula six was successfully defeated, 0:11:22.679 --> 0:11:25.760 formulas three and four were beaten and tossed out later 0:11:25.840 --> 0:11:29.479 that year. But there was one formula that was still effective, 0:11:30.080 --> 0:11:33.360 and it was barely a formula at all. It was 0:11:33.400 --> 0:11:37.400 a simple recipe. To your vat of fine industrial alcohol, 0:11:37.640 --> 0:11:40.400 add wood alcohol straight up. 0:11:40.920 --> 0:11:41.240 Yep. 0:11:41.600 --> 0:11:44.840 Remember that original byproduct of home distilling that Norris and 0:11:44.840 --> 0:11:47.880 Getler were warning New Yorkers about way back in nineteen 0:11:47.920 --> 0:11:52.000 eighteen at the start of Prohibition. Well, Duran's chemists had 0:11:52.120 --> 0:11:55.240 used traces of wood alcohol and their formulas before, but 0:11:55.320 --> 0:11:58.280 it was always part of a complex cocktail. Now they 0:11:58.280 --> 0:12:01.800 were just dispensing with everything else and just adding a 0:12:01.840 --> 0:12:05.160 shit ton of wood alcohol, like twice as much as 0:12:05.160 --> 0:12:09.800 ever before. But that's not all. As historian Deborah Blum 0:12:09.840 --> 0:12:13.120 tells us, the government chemists now had their hands on 0:12:13.160 --> 0:12:16.240 the purest, deadliest wood alcohol they could find. 0:12:17.160 --> 0:12:20.080 Germans figured out how to synthesize it. It was a 0:12:20.280 --> 0:12:24.400 super pure version of methyl alcohol, so pure there was 0:12:24.480 --> 0:12:28.320 actually a little more poisonous. They have this amazing supply 0:12:28.600 --> 0:12:32.160 of really pure methanol that they were able to use. 0:12:32.880 --> 0:12:36.160 And of course, right away bootleggers began siphoning it out 0:12:36.160 --> 0:12:39.600 of industrial warehouses and dishing it out on the streets. 0:12:43.640 --> 0:12:48.839 In October nineteen twenty eight, Bellevue Hospital is utter mayhem. Everywhere. 0:12:48.880 --> 0:12:53.240 People are vomiting, hallucinating, dying in the emergency room. Gettler 0:12:53.280 --> 0:12:57.040 and Norris are overwhelmed. Over just three days in October, 0:12:57.120 --> 0:13:01.120 they see thirty three deaths from poisoned liquor by Getler's count, 0:13:01.360 --> 0:13:05.680 twenty five from wood alcohol, and just in time for 0:13:05.720 --> 0:13:10.240 election day. Now, as Getler examines the dead in his lab, 0:13:10.520 --> 0:13:13.360 you can imagine him listening to Election Night returns. 0:13:13.600 --> 0:13:17.199 November six, nineteen twenty eight, the presidential election between Herbert 0:13:17.240 --> 0:13:20.080 Hoover and Al Smith ends in a landslide. 0:13:21.160 --> 0:13:25.000 A landslide, of course, it was Americans were tired of 0:13:25.000 --> 0:13:27.440 the violence. They were tired of the status quo eight 0:13:27.559 --> 0:13:32.200 years in and Prohibition was massively unpopular. Prohibition was on 0:13:32.240 --> 0:13:35.640 the ballot, and no wonder the election wasn't close. But 0:13:35.880 --> 0:13:37.600 hang on a second, I did pretty well in fifth 0:13:37.600 --> 0:13:40.040 grade history, and I don't ever remember there being a 0:13:40.160 --> 0:13:44.520 president Al Smith, which must mean and. 0:13:44.480 --> 0:13:47.280 Hoover sets a record for electoral votes and. 0:13:47.360 --> 0:13:54.800 Crushes Smith Hoover one. Yeah, he sure did, in a knockout. 0:13:55.480 --> 0:13:59.560 In fact, Hoover won on economic promises, but Smith also 0:13:59.600 --> 0:14:04.080 couldn't overcome anti Catholic prejudice and ginned up rumors that 0:14:04.160 --> 0:14:07.520 he was even taking orders from the Vatican and from 0:14:07.559 --> 0:14:12.240 the country's biggest bootleggers. Smith's crushing defeat was a win 0:14:12.360 --> 0:14:16.840 for prohibition and also a win for Hoover San Mabel 0:14:16.880 --> 0:14:20.960 Walker Willebrandt, who saw the victory as voters practically putting 0:14:21.000 --> 0:14:25.120 their stamp of approval on her June raids. Mabel and 0:14:25.200 --> 0:14:28.560 Duran had pulled out all the stops. Al Smith had lost, 0:14:28.960 --> 0:14:32.880 and Prohibition was here to stay and by the way, 0:14:32.920 --> 0:14:36.640 deadlier than ever. On the other side, Charles Norris and 0:14:36.720 --> 0:14:40.160 Alexander Getler didn't have a minute to waste. It was 0:14:40.200 --> 0:14:43.400 time for their big swing to put an end to 0:14:43.520 --> 0:14:57.400 a national emergency at Bellevue Hospital. It's not just the 0:14:57.440 --> 0:15:00.880 bodies that have been stacking up. Alexander gar Hitler's notebooks 0:15:00.920 --> 0:15:04.520 are piled high everywhere, meticulous records of all the data 0:15:04.560 --> 0:15:09.240 he's compiled since the start of Prohibition, documented night after 0:15:09.400 --> 0:15:14.640 painstaking night, and the numbers as nineteen twenty eight winds 0:15:14.680 --> 0:15:19.320 down are disturbing as hell. The body count from drinking 0:15:19.360 --> 0:15:22.920 related deaths in New York City this year alone is 0:15:23.120 --> 0:15:27.520 ten thousand. Ten years ago. When they issued their first 0:15:27.560 --> 0:15:30.680 warning on the eve of prohibition, Gettler and Norris knew 0:15:30.720 --> 0:15:34.920 things were going to be bad, but this bad. At 0:15:34.920 --> 0:15:38.720 that nineteen twenty six press conference, the Prohibition Bureau issued 0:15:38.760 --> 0:15:45.119 a reminder to America, drink and you die, and Americans 0:15:45.120 --> 0:15:48.400 more or less responded with cool, so yeah, make it 0:15:48.440 --> 0:15:51.800 a double. The grand irony here is that people are 0:15:51.880 --> 0:15:55.920 drinking now more than ever before. In New York, cases 0:15:55.920 --> 0:15:58.800 of alcoholism had been going down in the years leading 0:15:58.800 --> 0:16:03.160 into prohibition, but since nineteen twenty alcoholism was reaching all 0:16:03.240 --> 0:16:07.880 time highs Insurance companies reported that deaths from alcoholism were 0:16:07.960 --> 0:16:11.480 six hundred percent higher in nineteen twenty eight than in 0:16:11.600 --> 0:16:15.360 nineteen twenty. For those addicted to drinking, it was a 0:16:15.480 --> 0:16:19.360 dangerous time. Even if they heard government warnings. It wasn't 0:16:19.400 --> 0:16:22.680 realistic to think that they could just stop drinking cold turkey. 0:16:23.200 --> 0:16:26.440 For the rest of the population, well, the government messaging 0:16:26.480 --> 0:16:30.080 about the dangers of drinking just wasn't making an impact, 0:16:30.280 --> 0:16:32.440 which kind of makes sense. I mean, remember that commercial 0:16:32.440 --> 0:16:35.160 from the eighties, this is your Brain on drugs. We 0:16:35.200 --> 0:16:38.240 all saw that egg frying in the pan, But isn't 0:16:38.240 --> 0:16:41.760 frying your brain kind of the point? And I do 0:16:41.840 --> 0:16:44.760 wonder who across the country, beyond avid readers of the 0:16:44.800 --> 0:16:48.680 New York papers, was actually getting the warnings from the government. 0:16:49.440 --> 0:16:52.160 News certainly didn't travel then the way it does now. 0:16:52.640 --> 0:16:55.320 Sure they had coast to coast radio, but we're still 0:16:55.320 --> 0:17:00.680 a ways off from the days of push notifications. Now, 0:17:00.960 --> 0:17:03.800 Norris and Gettler were determined to tell the entire country 0:17:03.880 --> 0:17:06.919 just how fucked up things had gotten. So on a 0:17:06.920 --> 0:17:10.120 fall afternoon, Norris sits down in front of a typewriter 0:17:10.240 --> 0:17:15.240 at his desk alongside his man Gettler, and Gettler's stack 0:17:15.280 --> 0:17:19.480 of notebooks. Through the years, our duo had issued periodic 0:17:19.480 --> 0:17:22.600 messages to the public through medical journals and in press 0:17:22.600 --> 0:17:26.480 conferences for the local New York media, but it wasn't penetrating. 0:17:26.840 --> 0:17:30.640 It was just small potatoes. So, refusing to be ignored, 0:17:31.080 --> 0:17:34.520 Getler and Norris decide they need to step things up. 0:17:35.200 --> 0:17:37.919 As Getler flips through his notes and busts out his data, 0:17:38.440 --> 0:17:42.640 Norris starts typing and begins to paint a picture first 0:17:42.880 --> 0:17:45.679 of what's been going down in their backyard, beginning with 0:17:45.720 --> 0:17:48.679 those horrific three days that had just passed In October. 0:17:49.359 --> 0:17:53.320 Between October sixth and eighth, nineteen twenty eight, twenty five 0:17:53.400 --> 0:17:56.200 men and women died in the city of New York 0:17:56.200 --> 0:17:58.879 from wood alcohol poisoning. There is no doubt as to 0:17:58.920 --> 0:18:02.320 the cause of their death on not statistics, but the 0:18:02.359 --> 0:18:05.359 bare record of a tragedy as shocking and in a 0:18:05.440 --> 0:18:09.560 sense dramatic, as a fearful crash on the subway. 0:18:09.760 --> 0:18:12.359 Yep, New York City subways in the nineteen twenties were 0:18:12.480 --> 0:18:15.199 also scary, and this was before the days of pizza 0:18:15.280 --> 0:18:16.879 rat AnyWho. 0:18:16.880 --> 0:18:20.160 In a word, the wood alcohol is not poison liquor, 0:18:20.480 --> 0:18:22.840 It is simply poison. 0:18:23.160 --> 0:18:26.080 And how did the poison get into the liquor well? 0:18:26.119 --> 0:18:29.360 That brings Norris and Getler to the government and their 0:18:29.400 --> 0:18:34.240 official poisoning program. Now Noris acknowledges that alcohol made for 0:18:34.280 --> 0:18:40.000 industrial purposes should be protected and differentiated in some meaningful way. Sure, 0:18:40.040 --> 0:18:42.119 you have supplies of alcohol that are supposed to be 0:18:42.200 --> 0:18:45.159 used in perfumes and after shaves. It makes sense that 0:18:45.200 --> 0:18:48.879 you'd try to deter people from drinking this stuff. But 0:18:49.000 --> 0:18:54.480 then along came prohibition. Legal liquor disappeared, and the aftershave 0:18:55.040 --> 0:18:58.280 is all that was left. People weren't stealing it to 0:18:58.359 --> 0:19:03.760 drink before this, Suddenly they were, so whose fault is that? 0:19:05.160 --> 0:19:07.720 The difficulty is that no one has devised a practical 0:19:07.760 --> 0:19:09.720 way to make alcohol fit for business and at the 0:19:09.720 --> 0:19:13.320 same time unfit for drinking without making it poisonous. 0:19:13.880 --> 0:19:18.080 Yeah, pretty unfortunate, right for any American who just wanted 0:19:18.080 --> 0:19:18.840 to drink. 0:19:19.280 --> 0:19:23.040 Poison everywhere, and increasing thousands are drinking it. Shall we 0:19:23.119 --> 0:19:24.800 simply shrug our shoulders. 0:19:26.640 --> 0:19:29.160 It's a great point, Norris. Thousands of people are dying 0:19:29.200 --> 0:19:33.240 from alcohol poisoned by our own government, and we're just like, okay, 0:19:33.760 --> 0:19:36.640 I mean, that's messed up. And what's even more messed 0:19:36.720 --> 0:19:39.560 up is that the government's response to all these people 0:19:39.720 --> 0:19:43.800 dropping dead was, Hey, it's your fault, you drank it 0:19:43.960 --> 0:19:48.280 tough cookies. Needless to say, Norris doesn't see it that way. 0:19:48.720 --> 0:19:51.840 He throws down a challenge for his readers. These deaths, 0:19:52.119 --> 0:19:56.880 these government poisonings, they were caused by prohibition. To him, 0:19:56.960 --> 0:19:59.159 they were the fault of the people who pushed for 0:19:59.240 --> 0:20:02.439 prohibition in the first place, and then they were the 0:20:02.480 --> 0:20:06.199 fault of the people adding poison to alcohol knowing that 0:20:06.320 --> 0:20:10.359 people were going to drink it. Norris and Getler wanted 0:20:10.359 --> 0:20:13.679 to boil it down for readers so people understood just 0:20:13.800 --> 0:20:17.600 how many people around the country were dropping dead from prohibition. 0:20:18.200 --> 0:20:22.480 It seems pretty clear the only sensible path forward is 0:20:22.520 --> 0:20:26.000 to do one of two things, either end the denaturing 0:20:26.040 --> 0:20:31.040 program or end prohibition itself. Things had gotten so bad. 0:20:31.200 --> 0:20:34.080 Getler and Norris drew a chilling comparison. 0:20:35.080 --> 0:20:37.920 Our national casualty list for the year from this one 0:20:37.960 --> 0:20:41.119 cause will outstrip the toll of the war. These are 0:20:41.119 --> 0:20:44.600 the first fruits of prohibition in terms of life and death. 0:20:45.440 --> 0:20:48.280 This is the price of the great experiment, which has 0:20:48.320 --> 0:20:50.600 cost the nation already one hundred and seventy eight million 0:20:50.680 --> 0:20:54.120 dollars to enforce. This is the net dividend of Ournknoble 0:20:54.240 --> 0:20:56.320 experiment in extermination. 0:20:58.280 --> 0:21:03.000 Finally, Norris slaps a title on this baby, our Essay 0:21:03.200 --> 0:21:07.640 in Extermination. Read between the lines. The title of Norris's 0:21:07.680 --> 0:21:11.480 piece was not our Essay in tragedy. It was our 0:21:11.640 --> 0:21:18.080 essay in extermination. And who are those poor souls subject 0:21:18.160 --> 0:21:21.920 to said extermination from the failed experiment of prohibition? 0:21:22.840 --> 0:21:25.480 Because these Charles Noro sees making the point that we're 0:21:25.520 --> 0:21:30.680 really talking about this going directly to the middle class, 0:21:30.680 --> 0:21:34.560 lower class poor people in this community and by extension, 0:21:34.640 --> 0:21:36.480 the rest of the world, and they're the ones that 0:21:36.880 --> 0:21:37.720 are suffering. 0:21:39.720 --> 0:21:42.199 For the past decade, Norris and Getler have watched the 0:21:42.240 --> 0:21:46.080 city's working class watering holes shudder, only to be replaced 0:21:46.119 --> 0:21:50.480 with back room joints where the liquor was deadly. Most 0:21:50.520 --> 0:21:53.000 of the poisoned liquor that Getler was testing came from 0:21:53.000 --> 0:21:57.280 these dives where bootleggers pushed low grade, albeit affordable alcohol. 0:21:57.960 --> 0:22:01.080 The quality of motor oil booze couldn't hold a candle 0:22:01.119 --> 0:22:03.080 to the stuff rich New Yorkers were able to get 0:22:03.080 --> 0:22:06.560 their hands on, or what certain dry politicians were sipping 0:22:06.560 --> 0:22:10.240 on in the Capitol thanks to our man, George Cassidy. 0:22:10.280 --> 0:22:14.199 It was insane that America found itself here. But was 0:22:14.240 --> 0:22:17.399 anything going to change? Was Norris and Gettler's work going 0:22:17.480 --> 0:22:25.480 to make any difference at all? In late nineteen twenty eight, 0:22:25.920 --> 0:22:29.520 our essay and Extermination first appears in a literary magazine 0:22:29.560 --> 0:22:33.280 called The North American Review. But it's not just the 0:22:33.280 --> 0:22:36.280 devoted readers of The North American Review who will read 0:22:36.359 --> 0:22:40.600 Norris's words. Nope, this time, Norris and Gettler get the 0:22:40.600 --> 0:22:42.760 attention of the whole country. 0:22:43.400 --> 0:22:46.800 So you have the chief medical examiner of one of 0:22:46.880 --> 0:22:51.879 the most important American cities accusing the federal government of 0:22:51.920 --> 0:22:54.080 a planned program of extermination. 0:22:55.320 --> 0:22:58.480 Yep, that was big news. All right, pour it all out, 0:22:58.520 --> 0:22:59.520 Deborah Blum. 0:22:59.400 --> 0:23:02.280 What is the responsibility of a public servant? What is 0:23:02.320 --> 0:23:04.919 the responsibility of the government in the way that it 0:23:05.080 --> 0:23:10.080 represents the people? Our responsibility is to protect people, and 0:23:10.119 --> 0:23:13.320 we are failing. That's one of the points of that essay. 0:23:13.600 --> 0:23:16.119 We're doing the opposite. In fact, we're killing people. 0:23:19.720 --> 0:23:23.520 News of Norris's essays splashed all over the New York papers. 0:23:24.160 --> 0:23:26.840 There's one doubter of the nobility of the experiment. Doctor 0:23:26.920 --> 0:23:30.600 Charles Norris, chief medical Examiner of New York, makes protest 0:23:30.680 --> 0:23:33.720 in the North American Review, calling it a noble experiment 0:23:33.880 --> 0:23:35.160 in suicide by. 0:23:34.960 --> 0:23:38.960 Poison, and the stories land well beyond the Big Apple. 0:23:39.960 --> 0:23:41.400 It was news in Florida. 0:23:41.600 --> 0:23:44.600 New York's chief medical examiner declares that the mortality rate 0:23:44.640 --> 0:23:47.400 from drink, instead of declining with the advance of prohibition, 0:23:47.720 --> 0:23:48.880 is actually gaining. 0:23:49.600 --> 0:23:52.800 To Missouri, Charles Norris writes, at the end of eight 0:23:52.880 --> 0:23:55.760 years without good liquor and increasing proportion of our nation 0:23:55.880 --> 0:24:01.480 is drinking itself to death on bad liquor. To Arizona, Charles. 0:24:01.160 --> 0:24:04.440 Norris says our national casualty list from strong drink. 0:24:04.240 --> 0:24:07.440 Will outstrip World War One with one hundred. 0:24:07.200 --> 0:24:09.760 And twenty six thousand deaths. 0:24:09.800 --> 0:24:14.119 And California doctor Norris attributes a large number of deaths 0:24:14.119 --> 0:24:18.159 in motor accidents, homicides, and accidental deaths from fouls to 0:24:18.320 --> 0:24:19.199 poison liquor. 0:24:19.560 --> 0:24:23.480 Norris says most of these are directly traceable to poison alcohol. 0:24:24.560 --> 0:24:27.960 And with that tsunami of media coverage, Norris and Geler 0:24:28.160 --> 0:24:31.720 finally get people to take note. And you know what, 0:24:32.640 --> 0:24:37.920 Americans across the country were up in arms. One priest 0:24:38.040 --> 0:24:41.439 in a working class Chicago parish nailed it when he said, quote, 0:24:41.520 --> 0:24:44.119 they give the good stuff to the sewers and the 0:24:44.160 --> 0:24:48.600 bad stuff to the people. The outrage reached the capital too. 0:24:48.880 --> 0:24:52.359 The wet legislators, long outnumbered by the dries in Congress, 0:24:52.600 --> 0:24:55.560 had been howling against prohibition from the start. And I 0:24:55.600 --> 0:24:57.320 do want to be clear about this, A small group 0:24:57.320 --> 0:25:00.640 in Congress had been directly calling out the government poisoning 0:25:00.680 --> 0:25:03.680 practices for a few years now. In the aftermath of 0:25:03.680 --> 0:25:06.880 the nineteen twenty six Christmas deaths in New York. Senator 0:25:06.960 --> 0:25:08.720 James Reed of Missouri cried. 0:25:08.960 --> 0:25:12.040 Only when possessing the instincts of a wild beast would 0:25:12.080 --> 0:25:15.080 desire to kill or make blind the man who takes 0:25:15.119 --> 0:25:16.080 a drink of liquor. 0:25:17.280 --> 0:25:19.280 A New Jersey senator went as far as to say 0:25:19.320 --> 0:25:23.080 the federal government was guilty of quote legalized murder for 0:25:23.160 --> 0:25:26.960 adding deadly poisons to the industrial alcohol supply. He even 0:25:26.960 --> 0:25:29.200 introduced a measure on the floor of Congress to look 0:25:29.240 --> 0:25:33.120 into the program, But the Drys had steamrolled those efforts. 0:25:33.840 --> 0:25:36.760