It's the dawn of the 20th century.
And America is changing in ways never thought possible.
Drink fuels a criminal underworld.
Millions across the nation to escape poverty.
Violence erupts.
American is about to become the richest nation on earth.
1900
The dawn of the greatest consumer boom the world has ever seen.
But none of it will happen without the discovery.
Of what lies beneath the Texas dirt.
Oil.
Oil will power the 20th century and build the modern world.
Some call it ... "Black Gold".
Texas: a wide-open and wild territory.
Closer to the old American west than modern-day.
The Hamill brothers, Al, 24, ex-cattleman.
Curt, 28, ex-salesman
A new breed of pioneer on the American frontier: oilman
Young, rugged, ambitious
Known as some of the best in the business,
"In the beginning of oil, It was hardship."
"Everything was hard to do"
"We didn't know anything"
"Only the surface of the ground"
Oil has just been discovered in Texas, but the wells are small.
Prospectors have a hunch that this low hill
East of the city Houston, signifies oil.
What they don't know,
Is that beneath their feet lie oil reserves
Worth more than 11 billion dollars today.
Nowhere in the world has anybody discovered this much oil before.
The first prospectors to tap into these reserves,
Will become rich beyond their wildest dreams.
The field the Hamill Brothers are hired to drill,
Will become the stuff of legend.
It is called Spindletop.
Until the late 1850s, oil had been,
Really an annoyance to most people.
And people would dig water wells,
And if they happened to strike oil by accident,
They'd curse their bad luck.
But with the development of railroads and with the industrial revolution
For the first time, people began seeking oil.
Until recently, whale oil cornered the market.
It was used in lamps to light homes and streets.
But the whales have been hunted to near-extinction.
One discovery has saved them.
Oil.
Made from the remains of tiny organisms in the world's oceans,
It's been down there for as long as 160 million years.
Native Americans have used it as medicine
Then, in 1854, scientists in Pennsylvania
Discover it can be used for lighting,
There's no turning back.
Coal still dominates industry, powering trains and factories
But it's dirty and less efficient.
A ton of coal has roughly half the energy of a ton of oil
For the right rig in the right place, there are fortunes to be made
Well, that is the American dream, is that this is a land of opportunity
Where anything is possible if you roll up your sleeves and get to it.
Prospectors have tried drilling at Spindletop before,
But all previous wells here came up empty
The land is great for farming,but terrible for drilling.
Earlier wells hit hundreds of meters of sand and collapsed.
The Hamills get 6.5 dollars for every meter they drill, top dollar.
And when investors pay top dollar, they expect results.
Their contract pays them to 366 meters.
If they don't hit oil by then, it's over.
And no one gets rich.
That's good, that's good.
Right now they are at 120 meters.
Drilling for oil is dangerous work
6,000 die in oil explosions every year
Most rigs are primitive tools, smashing through rock.
By pounding it with a heavy object on a cable.
But this is sand.
You can't smash your way through sand
The Hamills are gambling on revolutionary technology
A steam engine that drills a pipe through the ground.
So far it's been able to bore through
Over 150 meters of sand and bedrock with no collapses.
But at 180 meters.
Disaster strikes.
The drill hits a pocket of explosive gas and water.
The pressure forces gas back up through the pipe
Clear rig.
They're lucky to survive
I see a really strong parallel between the cultural prospecting.
And the culture of entrepreneurial endeavors.
You do all your surveys, you plan it out, you think it's really great
You dig down and there's there is nothing there.
It's really hard to predict.
Progress is slow.
They're fighting for every meter.
The sand is too fine even for their drill
The walls of the bore hole are starting to collapse.
Normally these kinds of rigs
Pump water into the bore hole to support its walls.
But the sand is too fine, the water too thin.
They need a thicker liquid.
They're forced to improvise, using only material they have on hand.
Water...
Dirt...
And cows.
"We brought in a small herd of cattle
and turned them loose in nearby water pit"
"The cattle stomped around and made a lot of mud for us"
The answer to all their problems is mud.
With mud holding up the walls of the bore hole they're back on track
"From then on, we operated the rig 24 hours a day"
Curt's innovation is still in use today
Only now rigs use synthetic compounds.
But drilling fluids like this are still called "Mud."
It's January 10, 1901.
The Hamills have been drilling for over two months
They're past 330 meters still no break through.
Another 30 and they'll have to quit.
Then...
"I walked over and looked down the hole there."
"I heard--sort of something kind of bubbling"
"Just a little bit, and looked down there"
"And hear, this frothy oil was starting up"
"Which is breathing like, you know, coming up sinking back"
"With the gas pressure and kept coming up and over the rotary table"
"And each flow a little higher
And a little higher..And a little higher.
This is a day that changes America forever
"Clear the rig, clear the rig!"
"Finally it came up with such momentum"
"That it just shot up clear through the top of the derrick"
A geyser of crude oil shoots almost 61 meters into the air
The Hamills were hoping for 50 barrels a day.
The well would soon be pumping out over 80,000,
Making America the largest oil producer in the world.
Overnight, the backers funding the rig are nearly 40 Million dollars richer.
The Hamill brothers become legends.
The oil just burst out of the ground,
And it spewed for days and days before they could bring it under control.
It really marked the beginning of the petroleum age in the United States,
And one could argue, in the world as well.
Spindletop changes everything.
Oil production in America instantly increases 50%.
Within a year 500 oil companies are born, including Texaco and Gulf.
The price of oil plummets from 2 dollars a barrel to 3 cents
It's cheaper than water
Cheap enough to turn into petrol.
Around the turn of the century,
Millions of Americans live their entire lives within 30 km of their home.
Petrol makes the US mobile in ways never thought possible.
Today the average American drives the equivalent
Of 2 and a half round-trips to the moon
One man will seize the opportunity in cheap oil.
And change the face of the nation.
Detroit, 1908.
Henry Ford: maverick, visionary, obsessive
A man with a bad reputation
Recently let go by the company that will soon become Cadillac,
He launches his third attempt to build cars.
But these will be different.
There are only 8,000 cars in America.
Expensive toys for the wealthy, like owning a private jet today
There were dozens and dozens of small companies building cars.
That were essentially play things for the rich.
They were notoriously unreliable, they were not standardized
They were hand-built, essentially.
And if you were to own a car, you practically had to have your own mechanic
on staff as well to keep the thing running.
Nobody's figured out how to make a car.
That costs efficient to produce and affordable to buy.
Henry Ford is about to change that
It won't just change how cars are made
It will change how everything is made.
Detroit 1913.
Henry Ford isn't just making a revolutionary car.
He's making it in a revolutionary way.
The production line.
High volume, low cost.
Products identical.
"The man who places the part doesn't fasten it."
"The man who puts in a bolt doesn't put on the nut,"
"And the man who puts the nut doesn't tighten it."
Work is standardized. Simplified.
It's a more efficient way to make
Everything.
Mass production sweeps the nation
And it changes the world.
To be an assembly-line worker, you did not have to have a high degree of skill,
You didn't have to be a card-carrying machinist or whatever it might be.
All you had to do was to learn how to turn the same wrench on the same nut
5,000 times a day and that was your job
Prices plummet.
In 1913, a Model T cost two years' wages
By 1924, it's just three months.
The Model T, without question,
Is one of the single objects in the history
Of America that changed America
What Henry Ford developed was the car for the common man.
The impact of this little car is massive
300,000 sold in 1913.
By 1924, there's a new Model T every 24 seconds.
Suddenly, this form of transportation, which was entirely new,
Was something that people could actually engage in.
They could afford it.
It was like a spaceship where there are only several of them,
And they're millions and millions of dollars.
It's 1915.
And the Model T success is creating a nation of learner drivers.
In Washington state on America's west cost,
Roscoe Sheller is about to start a new job.
Car salesman.
The pay is fantastic
The only problem is... he can't drive.
You're not riding a horse, just take it easy
His boss offers to teach him the morning of his first day at work.
It's not long before Roscoe has his first customers
Luckily, there's a manual called "How to drive an Automobile."
"Cranking is an art that is essential"
"For the new motorists to become proficient in"
"It is always a good plan."
"Undoubtedly a good ideas to lean to steer first"
"Steering is a very simple manipulation"
"An excellent plan for the beginning is to find"
"A long, straight and slightly downhill road free of other traffic... "
Roscoe takes his customers for a test drive.
Most are used to a horse and cart.
"The majority of first-time drivers completely ignored corners"
"Instead of using a brake, they shouted "Whoa" at the top of their lung power"
"Often, they demand I teach his wife"
"And every kind old enough to reach the pedals "
America's love affair with the car begun.
The American has a great sense of freedom and not being tied to one place
If I don't like it here, I'm gonna pack everything in the car
They don't require anybody's permission,
They don't have to sign out, and the automobile really enables that
When I came to America, the first thing I want to think about,
"How can I get hold of a car?"
I had a love affair with cars from the very beginning
Because this method of movement that can enable you to see vast, expensive space
Is something I never experienced in China.
Never.
This is a something I wanted to do almost more than anything else, is to buy a car.
Roscoe Sheller is one of America's pioneer car dealers
Today Americans drive 4.3 trillion km a year.
In vehicles that are descendants of Henry Ford's Model T.
Cars
By 1920s
Are transforming the lives of millions.
Now you don't have to live near work
Cars create giant suburbs.
Brand-new roads are built.
And shopping centers with giant car parks
The biggest urban sprawl of all, Los Angeles
The center of a massive entertainment industry
800 films produced a year in the 1920s, double the amount today.
A feverish land grab is in full swing
High in the hills, a real-estate syndicate buys 200 hectares.
They hire stonemasons from Italy
To build luxury mansions overlooking the city.
Dream homes fit for oil tycoons and film stars
To kick off their investment, the biggest advertising sign on the planet
4000 light bulbs announce the name of this luxury development
"Hollywood land."
Movie director Busby Berkeley buys the first house on the plot.
It is supposed to be a temporary sign
But by 1949, the end is removed
It becomes just...
"Hollywood."
Built on oil fueled by cars and cinema
LA is the fastest-growing city in the world
But none of this incredible growth has been possible
Without one other vital ingredient
Water.
William Mulholland: A tenacious and ruthless Irish immigrant,
Superintendent of the LA City Water Company
It's 1904.
And LA is running out of water.
Its headline news
It's up to Mulholland to find it.
His reputation is on the line
The story of the West is the story of water
Because you can't turn this region that has a fertile soil
And sites for city development
Without that incredibly scarce resource in the West.
Southern California.
Rainfall as low as 5 cm a year
Temperatures as high as 57 celsius.
The surrounding mountains get plenty of rainfall
The problem is, it stays there
Los Angeles has only one small river
It provides just a fraction of the water the growing city will need.
California is at the edge of the great western desert,
And in order for large numbers of people to live in cities of California,
Means had to be provided to get the water
From where it was in California, mountains,
To where the people were, in the cities.
Mulholland must find water
The fate of Southern California hangs in the balance.
His research begins just outside the city.
Nothing
He moves 320 km northeast.
Still nothing
Finally, he reaches an area called Owens Valley.
It's perfect.
Water flowing out of the mountains has formed a massive
280 square km lake.
And the result is an oasis of lush farmland
Locals call it the Switzerland of California.
Aided only by gravity, this water could flow all the way to Los Angeles.
all you need is an aqueduct.
It sounds simple, but the engineering feat will be phenomenal.
It's going to take 359 km of steel pipe and concrete waterway.
193 km of railway line.
351 km of power lines
805 km of road.
If Mulholland can pull it off,
He'll completely transform not just Los Angeles, but the entire state.
The Los Angeles Aqueduct
5 years, 5,000 men
Hundreds of km of steel and concrete that changed the face of the American West.
At the time, the largest water project in the world.
It cost the lives of 43 men.
Finally, in 1913... It's finished
This is yours!
It is your own fidelity and unfaltering courage that made this work possible.
The aqueduct is completed, and it is good.
The aqueduct saves Los Angeles
The city grows from 250,000 in 1900
To 2 million in 1930.
The federal government's investment in projects that move water in the west
Is more deeply formative of the character of the Western region
than all the cowboys and sodbusters.
And wagon trains and pioneers there ever were
But for Owens Valley, the source of water, it's a disaster.
The lake is sucked dry, creating a giant wasteland
Local farmers attempt to blow the aqueduct up,
Over 10 times.
But it's an unwinnable contest
This was controversial stuff
Uh... there was a lot of backroom politicking, a lot of buying people off
This made a lot of people unhappy
It devastated a region of California, the source of that water
But it was enormously beneficial, and in fact, one could argue
Los Angeles could not have grown in the way it did,
Without Mulholland architecting,
That aqueduct of water being brought to that area
Owens Valley farmland remains barren for decades
But in the 1990s, the Los Angeles authorities.
Begin the long process of restoring it
It's always been true that if you want something great,
You may have to give up something great to get there
We've sacrificed our blood and treasure
For just about every great thing in America.
The Los Angeles Aqueduct remains one of America's
Most ambitious engineering efforts
When they built the aqueduct to bring water down across an entire state,
What a feat that was
And how it also fundamentally changed a whole part, of the state of California
And when you fly over California now
I always look out the window and I look down
You can see that glittering silver ribbon that runs the entire length of the state
It was always just magical to me
1914.
The aqueduct is a year old
America is booming
World War I creates massive demand for weapons, cars, and oil
In just 4 years the economy doubles in size.
America is poised to become the richest nation on Earth
Three generations from the end of slavery,
Black Southerners are on the move in search of a better life
Between 1915 and 1930, 1.5 million head north -
1 in 7 of the entire African American population of the US
It is called the Great Migration.
The North represented the Promised Land to blacks in the South
If you can go north, you can work
If you can go north, you're not going to have step off the curb
When whites walk down the block
If you can go north, you can live in better neighborhoods
And your children get a better education
Many head for the Ford plant in Detroit.
Ford is unique in paying black and white workers the same
A staggering 5 dollars a day
5 times more than a tenant farmer's wage in Georgia.
But equal pay doesn't mean equal treatment
Frank Hadas is an engineer at the plant.
"You can have them on some dirty, rough job"
"Where there wouldn't be many whites to complain against them"
"But if you try to mix them in the assembly lines"
"Or any place elsewhere whites predominated"
"And hung their coats touching those whites, you know, you couldn't do that."
Many white workers fear losing jobs to the new black workforce
Resentment is at the boiling point.
The denial of white privilege clashing with the ambition of blacks
Looking for the Promised Land inevitably led to an explosion
The fuse will be lit in the summer of 1919.
Chicago.
There's no official segregation, but it's everywhere
Even on the beaches of Lake Michigan.
White refuse to sell their houses to blacks.
Chicago homeowners hold a meeting.
"The negro invasion of the district is the worst calamity that has struck the city"
"Property owners should be notified"
"To stand together block by block to prevent such invasion"
Sunday July 27,
17-year-old Eugene Williams
Skips church with some friends to go for a swim
John Harris is with them
"We could swim under water and dive and come up."
"Swim, kick, dive and play around"
A group of black men wander over to the white beach
They are not welcome.
Don't you come near me like that!
Eugene's raft is also drifting in that direction
It can only spell trouble
July 1919.
On a beach in Chicago tensions are rising
A white bather throws rocks
John Harris thinks it's a game.
"He'd take a rook and throw it, and we'd duck"
"One fellow would say, 'look out!' and we would duck it"
But it's no game.
This is racial tension transplanted to city life
Help! Somebody help!
By the time they get Eugene Williams back to the beach
He's dead
The police officer on duty is Daniel Callahan.
He refuses to arrest the white man who threw the fatal rock
But arrest a black man instead
This is how the Chicago Race Riot of 1919 begins.
Eight bloody days
500 wounded
38 died
23 of them black.
But the violence is just beginning
Riots erupt in 24 more cities across America
It's called the "The Red Summer".
Many found that the Promised Land was not the promise they thought
The North was better than the South
But there was not the land of milk and honey.
The divides separating black and white widens
ghettos districts expand.
Harlem in New York.
Paradise Valley in Detroit.
The Hill District in Pittsburgh.
In Chicago, the South Side.
Separate but not equal.
Black Americans are on the outside looking in
But black neighborhoods also means black majorities
And in America, majority means power.
In 1928, voters on Chicago's South Side elect Oscar De Priest,
The first black congressman in a Northern city.
80 years later, another Chicago resident
Becomes the nation's first black president
It's 1920.
The country is at a turning point
For the first time more Americans live in urban areas than rural.
Cities become a symbol for decadence and danger
Jazz, cabaret, alcohol.
It will take the shirt off your black!
It should be whipped out the land of America with a whip of scorpions!
Billy Sunday, retired baseball player.
Reformed drinker.
The most famous preacher in the country
I go to a young man up on the scaffold.
America has a drink problem.
Drinks
You will affect only those...
At its peak, there is a "saloon" for every 300 people,
20 times more than in America today.
In 50% of all crime, involves alcohol
When you come staggering home cussing right and left.
Billy Sunday isn't the only one who thinks alcohol is ruining America
Religious group rally
Industrialists say it affects productivity.
Women campaign against drunken men beating up their wives
For many, a total ban is the only solution
On January 16, 1919,
The 18th Amendment to the Constitution is ratified
The prohibition makes the manufacture and sale of alcohol illegal
This period in the early 20th century
just captured a whole swirl of desire to kind of rein in what's happening,
Shape it, come up with new policies that will ensure that people would get along,
They will live virtuous lives.
So Prohibition is this grand experiment
But Prohibition also creates a nation of criminals
This is one of them.
Willie Carter Sharpe, 26
Thrill seeker
Outlaw.
They call her "The Run-Running Queen".
Its 1928, Prohibition is in its 8th year.
"It was the excitement that got me"
"We were mostly kids who liked the excitement"
"Cars scattering, dashing along the streets."
Behind her is a convoy of illegal alcohol.
Moonshine.
Franklin County, Virginia,
Is one of the biggest moonshine producers in the country
Making outlawed alcohol that is heading across the county line
Sharpe's job is to distract the Federal government agent.
In Franklin County,
99 residents out of 100 are thought to be involved in this illicit trade.
secret stills are everywhere.
Moonshine is flooding across the country
379 million liters a year
Even the President has a private wine cellar
It seems so ridiculous
Anyone would ever tell you, you cannot legislate morality,
You certainly can't stop people from drinking
People need a drink at the end of day.
Outrunning the law is the new extreme sport.
Locals witness Carter Sharpe in action.
"I saw her go right through our town"
"There was a federal car after her."
"They were trying to shoot down her tires"
"She was driving at 75 miles an hour"
"She got away."
She gets away because of this:
An ordinary car modified for more horsepower
A supercharger forces additional air into the cylinders.
The result, America's first "Muscle cars"
They're so popular, they kick-start a new national pastime,
Stock-car racing.
Even today, there's a driving maneuver called "The bootleg turn"
But there's a darker side to bootlegging
The illegal alcohol trade is worth tens of billions of dollars in today's money,
And it's not Willie Carter Sharpe who's in charge.
Its gangsters.
Organized crime has a stranglehold on America.
Mafia bosses like,
Lucky Luciano in New York, Frank "Chee-Chee" in DeMayo, Kansas City.
Joseph "Iron Man" Ardizzone in LA
The Licavoli family, Detroit.
Harry Rosen, Philadelphia.
Charles "King" Solomon, Boston.
And in Chicago, the most notorious gangster of all, Al Capone.
He earns over a hundred dollars a minute from illegal alcohol.
That's 1,500 dollars today.
But his luck is about to change.
2122 North Clark Street,
Chicago headquarters of Capone's bitter rival, George "Bugs" Moran.
February 14, 1929.
Two men in police uniform arrive.
Normally the police leave without arrests after a quick payoff
But this isn't a normal day,
These aren't regular policemen,
What happens on Valentine's Day 1929
Will change the course of Prohibition in America.
Chicago, 1929.
More than half the city's police are corrupt.
In the Chicago garage, seven gangsters are lined up
They think it's routine.
But today is different..
Behind them a group of men arrive,
Two carrying Thompson sub machine guns.
It's the most notorious slaying in Mob history.
The question is, who's behind the shooting?
The police or Al Capone?
Detectives and photographers flood the scene.
This shocking picture will appear in newspapers around America.
This is what Prohibition has come to.
America has had enough.
The federal government is forced to act.
Major Calvin Goddard, methodical, clinical, weapons expert.
He is the pioneer of a brand-new science, ballistic forensics
For the first time, vital clues like bullet casings
At a murder scene can be analyzed.
Goddard's work leads to one of the first forensic crime labs in America.
It will revolutionize the work of the FBI.
His job, to find out who is behind the Saint Valentine's Day massacre.
When a gun fires, it leaves mark on bullet casings
As unique as a fingerprint.
By analyzing casings at the murder scene,
Goddard establishes that just two guns were fired
Neither is a police weapon.
Everything points to Capone.
But convicting Capone of murder won't be easy
He has an alibi.
He was in Florida at that time.
They'll have to get him on a different charge
Frank Wilson, accountant.
A very different kind of crime buster.
He's an agent of the Bureau of Inland Revenue in Washington DC.
He's going after Capone on tax evasion.
In 1913, the 16th, Amendment gives the Federal Government
The right to tax personal income.
Even criminals have to pay taxes.
Capone is one of the richest men in the country
You should be paying 25% tax.
Between 1925 and 1929, he pays nothing.
"The defendant himself had no bank accounts,"
"Kept no book records of activities, bought no properties in his own name."
"He conducted all his financial dealings with currency."
To secure a conviction, Wilson needs to prove
Capone has an income on which he is paying no tax.
He uncovers a ledger,
Confiscated from a business called Hawthorne Smoke Shop,
Thought to be a Capone front.
It's a detailed record of a gambling business,
But no taxes have been paid on the income from this business.
If Wilson can establish a direct link with Capone,
He may be able to prosecute the nation's most notorious criminal
For taxes evasion.
Wilson studies the ledger,
But can't connect it to Capone.
Then, a breakthrough.
The handwriting.
"A careful comparison of the hand wringing in the ledger"
"With specimens from various employees of Capone organization"
"Established that the handwriting belonged to"
"The managers and cashier of the Hawthorne Smoke Shop."
The handwriting proves Capone's connection to the business.
It's the vital evidence.
On October 18, 1931,
Al Capone is found guilty of tax evasion.
And sentenced to 11 years in prison.
Frank Wilson found out that he was not paying his taxes.
So I think this man who had done all these other things
Ordered the execution of lots of people
Was responsible for the murder of people
And they get him on tax evasion
Tax, is no small matter
Prohibition has been a disaster
It has massively increased the stranglehold of organized crime.
It's cost the government billions in lost tax revenue.
Gangsters like Al Capone have become rich at America's expense.
But now more than ever, the government needs cash.
The American stock-market crash in 1929
Has brought the economy to its knees.
The government is broke.
A levy on alcohol is a solution.
On December 5th, 1933 Prohibition is abolished,
Killed by the need for cold, hard cash.
It's an extraordinary U-turn.
The only time in history an amendment to the Constitution is repealed.
The 3 decades of economic boom,
Fueled by oil, cars
And the rapid growths of cities are now over.
America has hard times ahead.