[16.e.2] Gangs
Prohibition spawned speakeasies, bootleggers and organized crime in cities. So brazen were gang bosses that Al Capone rode around Chicago in an armed Cadillac.
[16.e.3] Shoot-out
The FBI cracked down. Livingston’s grandmother went on a California beach date with Samuel Cowley, one of two FBI agents killed in a 1934 shoot-out with gangsters near Chicago. But Cowley killed Baby Face Nelson with a burst from a Thompson sub-machine gun. The event ended a Midwest crime spree started by John Dillinger.
[16.e.1] Intellectuals Search for Meaning
The collapse of internationalism following WWI sent intellectuals in a search for the world that they thought the war would bring about. Literature was one endeavor. In fiction such as The Great Gatsby (1925), F. Scott Fitzgerals wrote of a young man who had all the material things of life but who was spiritually empty.
Intellectuals also travelled abroad to find the new world in the making. They returned from Russia and Mexcio with with positive reports of socialistic programming. However, both revolutionary governments would later disappoint them: The Soviet Union was a terrible dictatorship and Mexican leaders became more interested in maintaining themselves in power rather than carrying out national reforms.
[16.f.5] The Federal Reserve Responds
The Federal Reserve tightened credit and money in 1930-31 when it should have lowered interest rates and permitted member banks to invest in the bond market to inject liquidity into the economy.