They often went to great lengths to hide their stashes of liquor to avoid confiscation – or use as evidence at trial — by police or federal agents during raids. Another option was to enter private, unlicensed barrooms, nicknamed “speakeasies” for how low you had to speak the “password” to gain entry so as not to be overheard by law enforcement.The result of Prohibition was a major and permanent shift in American social life. You pull out the drawer, drop in your change, shove the drawer back, call for what you want and then pull out the drawer again and there it is, "Straight" or "Spiked" just as you'd have it. "The speakeasy spread all over New York with businesses such as the "Bath Club" and "O'Leary's on the Bowery".

The already-popular jazz music, and the dances it inspired in speakeasies and clubs, fit into the era’s raucous, party mood. Such establishments came into prominence in the United States during the Prohibition era (1920–1933, longer in some states). Prohibition was the result of generations of effort by temperance workers to close bars and taverns, which were the source of much drunkenness and misery in an age before social welfare existed. Find this Pin and more on the 1920s by Walter Ferguson. At the height of Prohibition in the late 1920s, there were 32,000 speakeasies in New York alone. This act was supposed to make alcohol illegal, but what it really did was cause the nation to go into a sort of rebellion.

They ranged from fancy clubs with jazz bands and ballroom dance floors to dingy backrooms, basements and rooms inside apartments. The most famous of them included former bootlegger Sherman Billingsley’s fashionable Stork Club on West 58 favored by celebrity writers such as Dorothy Parker and Robert Benchley, the Club Intime next to the famous Polly Adler brothel in Midtown, Chumley’s in the West Village and dives such as O’Leary’s in the Bowery. Italian-American speakeasy owners sparked widespread interest in Italian food by serving it with wine. Speakeasies largely disappeared after Prohibition ended in 1933, and the term is now often used to describe retro style bars.

As many of Canada ’s provinces were beginning to end prohibition the US had just started theirs, and many Americans were not ready to stop drinking. When Prohibition took effect on January 17, 1920, many thousands of formerly legal saloons across the country catering only to men closed down. A newspaper article from March 21, 1889, refers to "speak easy" as the name used in the Different names for speakeasies were created.

Smuggling liquor over the Canada-US border, or rum-running, was very common during the 1920’s. Speakeasies were generally ill-kept secrets, and owners exploited low-paid police officers with payoffs to look the other way, enjoy a regular drink or tip them off about planned raids by federal Prohibition agents. At the height of Prohibition in the late 1920s, there were 32,000 speakeasies in New York alone. For other uses, see

In fact, organized crime in America exploded because of bootlegging.

As bootlegging enriched criminals throughout America, New York became America’s center for organized crime, with bosses such as Salvatore Maranzano, Charles “Lucky” Luciano, Meyer Lansky and Frank Costello. Bootleggers who supplied the private bars would add water to good whiskey, gin and other liquors to sell larger quantities. The phrase "speak softly shop", meaning a "smuggler's house", appeared in a British slang dictionary published in 1823.In the United States, the word emerged in the 1880s. These bars, which were also called blind pigs or blind tigers, were often operated by organized crime members. People wanting to drink had to buy liquor from licensed druggists for “medicinal” purposes, clergymen for “religious” reasons or illegal sellers known as bootleggers.