This is a reply to the inquiry about Jewish bootlegging during
Prohibition.  In the late 1970s, I spent several months trying to establish
the ethnicity of major bootleggers in American cities by identifying the
leading bootleggers in a number of American cities in various parts of the
country.  My conclusion was that 50 percent of the leading American bootleggers
were of Jewish (chiefly Eastern European Jewish) background; some 25 percent
were of Italian background, and the rest were miscellaneous (chiefly Polish
and Irish). I have published these results in a number of articles, perhaps
most relevantly in Haller, "Bootleggers as Business Men: From City Slums to
City Builders," chap. 9 of David E. Kyvig, ed., LAW, ALCOHOL, AND ORDER:
PERSPECTIVES ON NATIONAL PROHIBITION (Greenwood Press, 1985).
    With regard to Canadian bootlegging, the Bronfman brothers built the most
important Canadian organization exporting booze to American importers.  Their
operation had subsidiary headquarters in such varied places as Belize and
Tahiti and were in radio contact with their ships off both the Atlantic and
and Pacific coasts of the U.S.  An interesting journalistic study is Peter C.
Newman, KING OF THE CASTLE: THE MAKING A A DYNASTY: SEAGRAMS AND THE BRONFMAN
EMPIRE (Atheneum, 1979).  During the 1920s, the Bronfmans bought a prestigious
distillery named Seagrams and gave this name to their entire operation.  After
repeal, Seagrams negotiated the payment of a $1.5 million fine for their
violations of law during prohibition and moved into their U.S. headquarters
in the Seagram building in New York City.  The company rapidly became the
largest liquor distributor in the world.
     Some of the day-to-day activities of the Bronfman group can be followed
in the Coast Guard Intelligence files of the 1920s, now located in the
National Archives in Washington, D.C.
 
     Mark H. Haller
     Departments of History and Criminal Justice
     Temple University, Philadelphia 19122
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