A day at the office
As bootlegging syndicates grew, many of their heads became wary of dealing with individuals, as it was difficult and time-consuming to verify their credentials. Smaller firms developed, covering assigned territories, with the heads of the smaller firms operated them as if they were a legitimate business, with salesmen, delivery drivers, security, bookkeepers, secretaries, switchboard operators, and public relations offices. One New York bootlegger opened an office on Wall Street, and created an organization which ran so smoothly that he found he had little to do during the course of the business day.
He opened a second office in Times Square, and devoted his time to grooming special customers among the city’s business elite and political operatives. He groomed these gentlemen by first ascertaining their tastes and then providing gifts of expensive French brandies or fine Scotch whisky (The Scots, ever thrifty, spell the name of their beverage without the letter e) and once the target was within his debt, began selling it to them. The target soon shared his good fortune with friends, also those of wealth and taste, and a new customer base developed for the bootlegger, though he provided counterfeit beverages to them, because in his own words, “…his friends couldn’t tell the difference.”
The businessman bootlegger spent his day at the office calling friends and business acquaintances, dropping names, monitoring the books, schmoozing legitimate businessmen, supporting charitable causes, and conducting all the other affairs of business. In New York, lunch with fellow businessmen was often at 21 Club, itself a restaurant containing a notable speakeasy. At the end of the day, the bootlegger went home, or to another restaurant, or the opera or theater, often in chauffeur-driven Pierce-Arrow’s, Packard’s, or Cadillac’s, just another successful businessman and a pillar of society.