Prohibition features in my story “Blood and Sand” (see STORIES) as well as in a coming-of-age scene in my novel On the Shore (see NOVELS). The Eighteenth Amendment (Prohibition), banning the manufacture and sale of intoxicating liquor, became law in 1920, but many large cities and states were already dry by 1918. Bootlegging grew into a vast illegal empire. Corruption among enforcement agents (with bribes as high as $300,000 a month) was so prevalent that President Warren G. Harding complained about it in his 1922 State of the Union address. Yet Harding kept the White House well stocked with bootleg liquor. Read more about the days of Prohibition in BEHIND THE STORY.
