"Rigs, you have not looked at the Great Depression at all have you. Orginized Crime got it's real start & boost during the 20's & into the early 30's with the proabition era but the gambling that was not a big winner prior to the depression & probabition became the major side effect of the poverty when the depression hit."


                I think we need a correction of history here: The 1920's were known as "The Roaring Twenties," there was no depression.
Organized crime got it's start when the Volstead Act was passed, banning alcohol. When they discovered they couldn't control the use of the stuff, they legalized it. But they had a bunch of undercover buffoons on the payroll so they started passing laws against narcotics, even mild ones like marijuana. That gave the buffoons something to do, and it also kept organized crime in business.