Book Review: King of the Bootleggers

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Book Review: King of the Bootleggers

Unread postby bourbonv » Sun Oct 11, 2009 4:46 pm

King of the Bootleggers: A Biography of George Remus by William A. Cook. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Compnay, Inc., 2008, Contents,Chapter Notes, Bibliography, Index, Illustrated, pp.217.

George Remus was crowned the "King of the Bootleggers" by the prohibition agents that busted his operation and finally sent him to the penetentiary in 1924. Remus was a self made man, the son of a German emigrant who went to work in a drug store at 16, earned a pharmacuetical license and bought the store - and then another. Not happy with that he earned his law degree and practiced law in Chicago until 1919. He then decided he could make more money selling booze and moved to Cincinatti. He created a couple of pharmecuetical companies and started purchasing interests in distilleries such as the Squibb distillery in Lawrenceburg, Ind., Burk Spring Distillery in Lorretto (Now Maker's Mark), Fleischmann's Distillery in Cincinatti, Hill and Hill in Owensboro and Jack Daniels in St. Louis, Mo. He would have booze shipped to his pharmecuetical companies to get it across state lines and divert it to warehouse to be sold bootleg. He had a multi-million dollar business and it said that he was worth 8 million dollars when he went to prison.

This book tells of Remus' bootlegging business, his arrest, trial, prison term, release and the murder of his second wife and the trial that followed. The book does a very good job of conveying the corrupt state of the government during the Harding Administration and how prohibition was doomed to fail because of the corruption. The author paints a vivid picture of the corruption and places the key corrupt figures, Jess Smith and Harry Daugherty of the Justice Department, in the lime light with Remus. Remus was given the title of the "King of the Bootleggers" by the prohibition agents that busted him to make the press think they were really getting things done. Remus ran a large operation, but he was out of business almost as soon as he started. He was not a violent man and did not have any gang wars or other corrupt businesses like the mobs in Chicago or New York. He did make some money but while in prison hos second wife started to have an affair with the prohibition agent that helped bust him and they started to steal everything he owned. This eventually led to Remus killing Imogene Remus in front of witnesses and his trial for her murder. He claims insanity at the time of the murder and the prosecutor, Charles Taft II, son of the former President and Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, William Howard Taft, works to prove a conspiracy and premeditation. It makes for an interesting story and was covered by all of the tabloids of the time. In fact a fictional account of the trial was written a few years ago titled "The Jazz Bird".

The book has many footnotes so the reader can trace the author's sources. It has many photographs of the key players and a bibliography of sources. The one problem for the book is that the author sometimes gets side-tracked by some other figure such as Al Capone, that really does not have a large part in the story. Still this is an easy read and it could be said that Remus showed the government the weakness of the system and led to reforms such as consolidation warehouses. The book is worth adding to a bourbon library because it helps the reader to really understand the corruption of the prohibition era.
Mike Veach
"Our people live almost exclusively on whiskey" - E H Taylor, Jr. 25 April 1873
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Re: Book Review: King of the Bootleggers

Unread postby bourbonv » Mon Oct 12, 2009 10:16 am

I should have added that the day before he checked into prison in Atlanta, he was trying to move barrels out of the Pouge distillery in Maysville. Remus was a gutsy character!
Mike Veach
"Our people live almost exclusively on whiskey" - E H Taylor, Jr. 25 April 1873
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Re: Book Review: King of the Bootleggers

Unread postby James_Bond » Tue Jun 18, 2013 7:45 am

bourbonv wrote:I should have added that the day before he checked into prison in Atlanta, he was trying to move barrels out of the Pouge distillery in Maysville. Remus was a gutsy character!


Yes ...!
You are right...!
I've also heared about this...!
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