said one night. “It was never gonna work, not ever. But what
it did was create the Mob. These dummies with their books and their investigations, they think the Mob was invented by a bunch
of Sicilians in some smoky room someplace. Probably in Palermo. Bullshit. The Mob was invented by all those self-righteous
bastards who gave us Prohibition. It was invented by ministers, by Southern politicians, by all the usual goddamned idiots
who think they can tell people how to live. I know what I’m talking about on
this
one. I was there.”
Yes, he was. From ages four to eighteen, Sinatra watched the story of Prohibition unfold all around him, most clearly within
his own family. In his own kitchen he heard the justifications and rationalizations for breaking what was perceived to be
an unjust law. It is no accident that he later became a fan of
The Great Gatsby,
which was driven by the romantic image of the bootlegger. In Hoboken (as in other immigrant communities), one of the specific
rationalizations was that the Eighteenth Amendment was a betrayal of the men who fought World War I. The timing of its passage
was all wrong. The Great War had succeeded in making many young Italians feel more like Americans. The draft took them out
of the ghettos and allowed them to meet young men from all over the country. Some were treated harshly by isolated bigots.
Most forged friendships that lasted a lifetime. There is nothing like fighting in a foreign war to erode parochialism. Italian
Americans had died for their country – the United States of America. They had been wounded. They had been gassed. They had
earned the right to be called Americans.
Back home, in all the Hobokens of America, those who did not become warriors succumbed to the immensely successful propaganda
campaign designed by the Wilson administration to convince immigrants and their children to fight in a European war. The nativist
cliché about divided loyalties made life miserable for German Americans but didn’t apply to the Italian kids. In that war,
Italy was an ally of the United States, and its armies fought bravely, even after the disastrous defeat at Caporetto in 1917
(one casualty on the Italian side in that fierce battle was a young American volunteer ambulance driver named Ernest Hemingway).
At home, there was a prolonged fever of flag-waving, drum-beating patriotism, and Sinatra remembered hearing Caruso’s recording
of “Over There.”
“In the parade, when the war ended, there were guys from the block, from the neighborhood,” Sinatra remembered later. “They
were wearing American uniforms, not Italian uniforms. When Caruso sang ‘Over There,’ he could have been them.”
The young men of Hoboken came home with all the other Americans to find that their country was less free than when they had
departed. Suspect immigrants were being rounded up and deported as the result of the Red Scare, the first of the recurrent
waves of hysteria over “foreign” ideologies. Worse, the Eighteenth Amendment had been passed while the soldiers were gone.
The temperance forces were triumphant, a strange alliance of Bible-whacking fundamentalists, addled nativists, women suffragists,
old line WASPs. Some, as always, had good intentions but did not see that their chosen path would lead to just another kind
of hell. On the street level, the Noble Experiment was widely perceived as an additional attempt to tame, or cage, the immigrants
and their children; most Prohibitionists also supported harsh new restrictions on immigration, some of them (against Asians)
plainly racist, the rest directed at the people of southern Europe. This was all part of a wide national reaction against
the teeming American cities, which were perceived as centers of vice and immorality, filling up with too many foreigners,
too many Catholics and Jews.
There were intelligent voices raised against Prohibition, saying that it was a
it did was create the Mob. These dummies with their books and their investigations, they think the Mob was invented by a bunch
of Sicilians in some smoky room someplace. Probably in Palermo. Bullshit. The Mob was invented by all those self-righteous
bastards who gave us Prohibition. It was invented by ministers, by Southern politicians, by all the usual goddamned idiots
who think they can tell people how to live. I know what I’m talking about on
this
one. I was there.”
Yes, he was. From ages four to eighteen, Sinatra watched the story of Prohibition unfold all around him, most clearly within
his own family. In his own kitchen he heard the justifications and rationalizations for breaking what was perceived to be
an unjust law. It is no accident that he later became a fan of
The Great Gatsby,
which was driven by the romantic image of the bootlegger. In Hoboken (as in other immigrant communities), one of the specific
rationalizations was that the Eighteenth Amendment was a betrayal of the men who fought World War I. The timing of its passage
was all wrong. The Great War had succeeded in making many young Italians feel more like Americans. The draft took them out
of the ghettos and allowed them to meet young men from all over the country. Some were treated harshly by isolated bigots.
Most forged friendships that lasted a lifetime. There is nothing like fighting in a foreign war to erode parochialism. Italian
Americans had died for their country – the United States of America. They had been wounded. They had been gassed. They had
earned the right to be called Americans.
Back home, in all the Hobokens of America, those who did not become warriors succumbed to the immensely successful propaganda
campaign designed by the Wilson administration to convince immigrants and their children to fight in a European war. The nativist
cliché about divided loyalties made life miserable for German Americans but didn’t apply to the Italian kids. In that war,
Italy was an ally of the United States, and its armies fought bravely, even after the disastrous defeat at Caporetto in 1917
(one casualty on the Italian side in that fierce battle was a young American volunteer ambulance driver named Ernest Hemingway).
At home, there was a prolonged fever of flag-waving, drum-beating patriotism, and Sinatra remembered hearing Caruso’s recording
of “Over There.”
“In the parade, when the war ended, there were guys from the block, from the neighborhood,” Sinatra remembered later. “They
were wearing American uniforms, not Italian uniforms. When Caruso sang ‘Over There,’ he could have been them.”
The young men of Hoboken came home with all the other Americans to find that their country was less free than when they had
departed. Suspect immigrants were being rounded up and deported as the result of the Red Scare, the first of the recurrent
waves of hysteria over “foreign” ideologies. Worse, the Eighteenth Amendment had been passed while the soldiers were gone.
The temperance forces were triumphant, a strange alliance of Bible-whacking fundamentalists, addled nativists, women suffragists,
old line WASPs. Some, as always, had good intentions but did not see that their chosen path would lead to just another kind
of hell. On the street level, the Noble Experiment was widely perceived as an additional attempt to tame, or cage, the immigrants
and their children; most Prohibitionists also supported harsh new restrictions on immigration, some of them (against Asians)
plainly racist, the rest directed at the people of southern Europe. This was all part of a wide national reaction against
the teeming American cities, which were perceived as centers of vice and immorality, filling up with too many foreigners,
too many Catholics and Jews.
There were intelligent voices raised against Prohibition, saying that it was a
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