crime figures in association with the American Mafia. By his 20s, Blumenfeld and his brothers held considerable power over criminal activities in Minneapolis and oversaw bootlegging, illegal gambling, prostitution, extortion, and labor racketeering. Neil Karlen has described their organization as, "led by the Kid on machine gun and Harry and Yiddy Bloom on brains." Their ties to the Chicago Outfit and New York City's Genovese crime family date back to the Prohibition period. According to a later trial, they would legally import industrial grade alcohol from Samuel Bronfmans distillery in Montreal, which was shipped across the Great Lakes to Duluth, and then driven on souped up Ford automobiles to the La Pompoudor "perfume factory" in the Twin Cities. The brothers also ran illegal distilleries in the forests near Fort Snelling. According to historian Elaine Davis, Kid Cann and his brothers, like many other organized crime figures from the Twin Cities, Chicago, and Kansas City, made frequent trips to Stearns and Morrison Counties to purchase Minnesota 13; a very high quality moonshine distilled locally by Polish- and German-American farmers with the collusion of local politicians and law enforcement. Davis writes that the main go-between connecting local moonshiners with organized crime was Melrose resident "Chick" Molitor, who lived with his family on a dairy farm near Big Birch Lake. The Blumenfelds, with whom Molitor had a very close business relationship, visited the area so often that they allegedly owned property south of the Rock Tavern in Melrose. According to Twin Cities crime reporter Paul Maccabee, Kid Cann's rivalry with Minneapolis's Irish Mob ended after he and Irish Mob bosses Big Ed Morgan and Tommy Banks divided the city with a handshake. A number of deaths are attributed to Blumenfeld and his gang, including journalists who were killed after writing articles exposing the inner workings of his organization as well as his ties to corrupt politicians from several parties. A Jewish restaurant owner who recalls this era once said that the Blumenfelds were worshipped by several generations of neighborhood boys. There was a high degree of political and civil corruption in the region in the 1920s and 1930s. The mainstream newspapers hardly mentioned what was going on, as any outlet that published articles critical of the status quo was threatened. Some small tabloid newspapers attempted to report what was going on, but reporters and editors quickly became targets. Howard Guilford of the Twin