In the process of research for this paper, I chronicled over 500 distinct events or instances of popular discourse on aerial smuggling reported in the popular press. These reveal four significant insights. The first is the notion expressed by Bilstein, Courtwright, and others that smuggling was simply an outgrowth of barnstormers simply looking for additional work as the novelty and thrill of flight on the part of the general public wore off is only partially true, and significantly minimizes the implications of aerial smuggling. If barnstorming had largely run its course by the late 1920s, aeronautical smuggling was already thriving by the early1920s. While some memoirists do draw a link to their participation in smuggling to barnstorming, popular

media accounts give clear evidence of a vibrant smuggling culture that was concurrent with the rise of barnstorming in the immediate aftermath of the First World War. Given that much of the smuggling was done in seaplanes that were wholly unsuited to barnstorming, the culture of American aerial criminality in the Prohibition era is only tangentially tied to the changing nature of barnstorming. A second is that alien and narcotics smuggling by airplane developed more slowly than aerial bootlegging, but not by much. If popular morality drew sharp distinctions between the ambivalence for bootlegging and the abhorrence for human and drug smuggling, many aviators appear to have moved between the activities, even if many memoirists echoed the popular view of aerial morality. The connection between aerial bootlegging and other forms of smuggling is particularly important as it established an enduring culture of aerial criminality in the United States that not only endured through the end of federal Prohibition, but that also continues to this day. Thirdly, the federal response to criminality and the other concerns inherent in the growth of civil aviation in the form of the 1926 Air Commerce Act did not yield significant changes in the long term resulting from the registration of aircraft and the licensing of pilots.