Prohibition: Erie’s Rebellion

The ratification of the 18th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution — which banned the manufacture, transportation and sale of intoxicating liquors — ushered in a period in American history known as Prohibition. The result of a widespread temperance movement during the first decade of the 20th century, Prohibition was difficult to enforce, despite the passage of companion legislation known as the Volstead Act. The increase of the illegal production and sale of liquor (known as bootlegging), the proliferation of speakeasies (illegal drinking spots) and the accompanying rise in gang violence and other crimes led to waning support for Prohibition by the end of the 1920s. In early 1933, Congress adopted a resolution proposing a 21st Amendment to the Constitution that would repeal the 18th. It was ratified by the end of that year, bringing the Prohibition era to a close.

Erie's congressional representative Milton W. Shreve supported the Volstead Act and the Eighteenth Amendment. Miles Nason, another Erie Prohibitionist, headed the Dry Block in the Pennsylvania State Senate. As a result, Shreve fell from favor with Erie-area Republicans; who instead, promoted attorney Robert Firman as their candidate in the April 1920 primaries. Running for re-election as an Independent Republican, Shreve narrowly escaped removal from the United States Congress. State Senator Nason was also challenged by local Republicans in the primaries, and was defeated in the November 1920 elections.

Erie was primarily a wet city. Being a border town, Erie was an important transportation hub in the rum-running of illicit liquor across the lake from Canada during Prohibition in the United States. Many laid in a large supply of liquor before the law became effective. Cellars, book cases, and closets were packed. Speakeasies opened across the city, the more popular being the Pickwick Club, the Killarney Yacht Club, Laura's, and the 1008. The illicit liquor sales brought racketeering, violence, and houses of prostitution to the city, and the eventual intervention of the state police, which was not at all welcomed in Erie, or by Miles B. Kitts, the city’s Mayor, who had to go to Harrisburg and testified before well-publicized hearings that were being conducted by the state’s Republican Governor William C. Sproul. The efforts of local and state law enforcement and the governor's hearings offered only a brief respite from all the excitement.

Prohibition was well underway, along with the ensuing rebellion, in Erie, before Kitts, a Republican, took office, but when Kitts was elected the situation got out of hand. Reformists in the state’s Republican party did not approve of this. When the 1920 mayoral election came up, the reformers supported their own candidate, but Kitts was re-elected. The reformers became known as the Committee of Sixteen and demanded Erie's numerous vices be cleaned up. The State of Pennsylvania formed a grand jury and most of the city government came under investigation, with over a hundred witnesses called to testify, including 47 members of the Erie Police Department. Kitts would have been indicted, but the charges were dismissed because the women members of the grand jury were deemed to be lacking objectivity. Women played a strong role in the temperance movement, as alcohol was seen as a destructive force in families and marriages.

Before Prohibition became law, the modern Coast Guard was formed by a merger of the Revenue Cutter Service and the U.S. Life-Saving Service on 28 January 1915, under the U.S. Department of the Treasury. The first major task of the new service came in 1920 with the passage of the Volstead Act. For the next 13 years the U.S. Coast Guard would waged a war against the smugglers of illegal spirits. With Erie’s easy access to Canada, smugglers had a field day. Illegal activities on the Lake Erie reached its zenith during the fall of 1927 and the spring of 1928. To combat the rum runners, station crews were doubled, patrol boats were increased, and a 75 foot picket boat class was added to the U.S. Coast Guard's fleet. Although these measures helped, the flow of liquor was never completely stopped, only the repeal of Prohibition, brought the rum war to a close.

One of Erie’s most successful smugglers was Joe Semple Sr. Growing up dirt poor, Joe Semple, one of nine children, was born to Hungarian immigrants who settled on West Third Street, near the Cascade Docks. His father was a handyman, who worked odd jobs around the neighborhood. His mother was a homemaker who grew the family's food, beans and rhubarb, mostly in their backyard. While affluent children throughout the city took music lessons, Semple became a self-taught car and boat mechanic. In 1922, he graduated from Central High School and enrolled at the University of Detroit to study engineering. Semple had little money for clothes, food; and nothing extra for books. To solve this problem, he would spend his free time fixing boats along the Detroit River — boats that he later learned were used by the Purple Gang (Detroit's ruthless Jewish mob) for rum running. Semple’s affiliation with the gangsters gave him an insight to the inner-workings of the rum running business — a lesson that would prove far more lucrative than anything he would learned in college. After only one year, Semple quit school and left Detroit, returning home to Erie.

Joe Semple, enlisting the help of his brothers, soon went into the bootlegging business. Three wooden boats, each unmarked, was painted gray. Each was fitted with a pair of 12-cylinder, 500-horsepower Liberty engines, which were specially designed to power warplanes. Able to reach speeds up to 50 mph, their boats could move three times faster than any boat that the Coast Guard had in their fleet. Armed with a three powerful boats, the Semple brothers would purchase large quantities of brand-name liquor in the Canadian village of Port Dover, load the crates onto their boats and quickly ship them across 40 miles of Lake Erie, and sell the alcohol at an enormous markup. To avoid any problems with customs and tax revenuers they made up a fake exporting company, paying the taxes and tariffs owed on what they illegally imported. Customs was oblivious, and the Canadian government saw it as a huge source of revenue. Joe Semple was the undisputed brains behind the operation, enlisting the help of his three brothers, Mike, John and Eddie, and about 35 men from his West Third Street neighborhood who work as delivery assistants, drivers and guards.

At first they would run the boats to the home of their associate, Tommy Cowell, along Six Mile Creek. Once they hit the beach, they would unload the crates and move the alcohol to a Cherry Street garage owned by another associate, Ed Kay. When the Coast Guard had discovered their drop-off points, Semple move the drop-off points to spots along Freeport Beach in North East, thwarting the agents at every turn. In the rare event of a brush with local law enforcement, Semple would simply buy them off. There were dozens of other rum running outfits throughout Erie during the 13 years of Prohibition, but all were small-time compared with the Semples brothers.

During the peak of their operations, on a good night, when the lake was calm, Semple and his crew would make three round trips to Port Dover, smuggling close to 1,000 cases of Seagram's and Canadian Club whiskey into Erie. The profit from such a haul was generally around $11,000. Living in the humble house he was raised in and driving a bland, gray Chrysler, Joe Semple strategically led a low-key life and stayed under the radar. While his brothers drove Cadillacs, and at times drank and gambled, Joe Semple was busy adding to a customer list that was a thousand names long — names that included the people who lived on  Millionaires Row on West Sixth Street, and the owners of the 100 or so speakeasies that operated clandestinely throughout the Erie region. Their business became so very profitable that the Magaddino crime family, out of Buffalo, New York, started to take notice.

In July of 1931, Eddie The Kid Semple — who at 19 was the youngest of the Semple brothers — was on a run heading for Port Dover. As he neared Ripley, New York, another boat closed in. Eddie gunned the Liberty engines. A shot rang out from the other boat. The bullet ricocheted off the armor-plated hull and struck Eddie in the face. He kept on course for Canada, holding an oily rag to his bloody, shattered jaw. When he got back to Erie, he sought no medical treatment, fearing there would be questions at the hospital. Joe Semple had seen enough. He was already weary of mob battles and turf wars with Westfield Jimmy Salamone, an Erie-area gangster who setup his kid brother to be hit by the Magaddino crime family. Joe Semple got the message. The construction of the Buffalo Peace Bridge, a few years earlier, made bootlegging with trucks a faster and more profitable option than smuggling with boats. So Semple and his family got out of the business.

By 1932, Part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt platform when he ran for president was to repeal Prohibition. He was elected and a full repeal of the 18th Amendment finally came on December 5, 1933. Finally, Prohibition had ended and the first State Store was opened in Erie on December 27, 1933. The store was located at 618 State Street, in the old Erie Trust company building. Earlier, the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board was established just prior to the repeal of Prohibition.

The Roaring Twenties, replete with gambling, prostitution, rum-running and bootlegging bath-tub gin, had enormous impact on Erie. Local author and historian John G. Carney in his, Highlights of Erie Politics, said that the "only dry thing in Erie was the inside of a light bulb."