The government did not plan how they were going to enforce Prohibition at all. There were never more than 2,500 agents in the entire country combined who were enforcing the law. This tragic number shows how poorly enforced Prohibition really was. In New York, only 7,000 arrests were made for possession of illegal liquor, even though there were about 100,000 speakeasies in the city. This evidence shows that arrests were very uncommon even though nearly half of everyone walking down a street had been involved in the bootlegging trade at some point. Therefore, the enforcement effort was very lethargic. However, the Coast Guard did begin doing random searches of ships at the harbor, which led to some arrests of alcohol transporters. Two very successful New York federal agents were Izzie Einstein and Mo Smith. They utilized disguises in order to conceal their true identities, which allowed them to come into contact with some of the most prominent bootleggers of this time. These two agents, however, could not arrest every bootlegger on their own, and needed assistance to make more arrests. This assistance never existed due to the government's lack of knowledge on enforcement of Prohibition. The lack of assistance form arrests meant the efforts of agents such as Izzie Einstein and Mo Smith were unfortunately in vain. The sheer amount of alcohol that was being illegally traded was impossible to track down with the small enforcement force that existed. The gangsters involved in the bootlegging business were ruthless, but also smart. They knew that if they kept flooding the streets with illegal alcohol, the government agents would back off, as they too would begin to have the mentality that eliminating the bootlegging would not be possible once it reached a certain point.