Today, the Detroit River is one of the busiest waterways in the United States, transporting iron and other goods to and from Canada. Only 100 years ago, these waterways were used to transport moonshine from Canada to the United States ("Rum Flows in Windsor"). The men who collected it were called the Purple Gang. The Purple Gang was a well-established, primarily Jewish criminal group that, by the late 1920s, controlled the city's drug, alcohol, vice, and gambling trade ("The Purple Gang") ). The War of the Cleaners and Dyers In 1924, the laundry business was going very badly. Businesses kept prices too low to make a profit, and their tailors threatened to leave if they had to pay their cleaning bills. Business was bad because the Purple Gang, a laundry union, was causing chaos in Detroit. They threatened anyone who did not join the union by bombing or harassing them (Fitzpatrick, “Cleaners and Dyers War”). Seeing an opportunity for crime, Francis X. Martel asked Ben Abrams to create an organization, which could then be used as a cover-up for the...