Question Heyy, I’m and eighth grader doing a history report on the Prohibition in America. I was wondering, since you’re the expert, that you could answer a few question for me?
1 Why do you think that America would ban just alcohol and not any other substance to solve all their so-called problems?
2 Why do think that pro-Prohibition groups are still around even though the Prohibition is over?
3 I read that some government officials had and drank alcohol during the prohibition. Did anything really severe happen to them as a result?
4 What is something that you think young people should take away from Prohibition?
Thanks for taking the time to read over this.
-Erik Engstorm
Answer Hi Erik,
Prohibition The Noble Experiment. The results of the experiment are clear: innocent people suffered; organized crime grew into an empire; the police, courts, and politicians became increasingly corrupt; disrespect for the law grew; and the per capita consumption of the prohibited substance—alcohol—increased dramatically, year by year, for the thirteen years of this Noble Experiment, never to return to the pre-1920 levels.
You would think that an experiment with such clear results would not need to be repeated; but the experiment is being repeated; it's going on today. Only the prohibited substances have changed. The results remain the same. They are more devastating now than they were then.
Prohibition did not strike suddenly; zap—one day you could get a drink and the next day you could not. It settled on the country gradually, county by county, state by state, for the better part of a century. National Prohibition in 1920 was simply the final turn of the spigot.
Alcohol was consumed in all the colonial settlements in America. No one was particularly against drinking—even the Puritans enjoyed it. What they frowned on was drinking to excess: generally known as drunkenness. This was of practical concern in the smaller communities: there were crops to plant, fish to catch, animals to trap, and a wilderness to be tamed. If one's excessive drinking got in the way of these activities, the community as a whole might suffer; thus, drunkenness was frowned on and this frowning found its way into some early laws.
By 1820, complete abstinence from all alcoholic beverages was a basic rule of most evangelical churches. The intense revivalism of the 1820s and 1830s preached that alcohol was a tool of the devil and that Satan himself was in every drop. Moral campaigns to spread the truth about "demon rum" and other Lucifer Liquids raised huge amounts of money.
Never mind that Jesus' first miracle was turning water into wine at the wedding feast at Cana. Never mind that Jesus and his apostles drank wine at the Last Supper. Never mind that Jesus promised to drink wine again with his disciples in Paradise.
For anyone who had actually read the New Testament and question why wine (which was obviously not condemned by Jesus) should suddenly become such a wicked, evil thing, the preachers explained that the word for wine in the language Jesus spoke could also mean "grape juice" or "grape jelly." Jesus trafficked only in these, the preachers would say, not in wine. Those who doubted that Jesus turned water into grape juice at the wedding feast or that grape jelly was served at the Last Supper were condemned to the fires of the fiery furnace.
Saloons were seen as hotbeds of corruption, contagion, and vice. These male-only (except for "dance-hall girls") establishments were, to the pious, positive hell holes. Drinking, gambling, prostitution, tobacco smoking, tobacco chewing (and its natural by-product, spitting), dancing, card playing, and criminal activity of all kinds were all traced to the saloon. Saloons were irresistible temptations to the otherwise righteous and virtuous men of the community. Invited there for a social drink by the "recruiters of Satan," the young men of the community found themselves hopelessly caught in a spider's web of immorality, lust, and depravity. Alcohol (a.k.a. the devil) was the spider at its very center.
By the turn of the century, more than half the state legislatures—dominated by rural Protestants—had declared their states "dry." The wet people within the dry states did not complain too much, however—there were loopholes. The primary loophole was this: since interstate commerce was regulated by the federal government and not by the individual states, one could order liquor by mail. As state after state became dry, the parcel post wagon jingled, jangled, clinked, and sloshed with increasing wetness.
This infuriated the Drys and in 1913, the Interstate Liquor Act, prohibiting the shipment of alcohol into dry states, was passed over President Taft's veto. This was a major coup for the Drys. Still not content, they used the anti-German feelings surrounding World War I and the association of Germans with beer ("the Kaiser's mightiest ally") to press for all-out national prohibition. In 1917, the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution was proposed.
The Prohibitionists got an unexpected boost from a strange quarter: disease. The influenza epidemic of 1918 killed 20 million people worldwide. This was more than twice the number of people killed worldwide during the four years of World War I; 548,000 died of the flu in the United States, the equivalent today of 1,500,000 people dying in a single year. Guess what the preachers blamed for this disaster? Sin, of course. God was punishing a wicked nation for straying from the path of righteousness. Only a great moral crusade could save the nation. Alcohol, as usual, was high on the hit list.
In a little more than a decade, the holy war called Prohibition was lost. In 1920, John F. Kramer, the first commissioner charged with enforcing Prohibition, somberly stated, "The law says that liquor to be used as a beverage must not be manufactured. We shall see it is not manufactured, nor sold, nor given away, nor hauled in anything on the surface of the earth or under the earth or in the air."
By 1931, it was all but over. A presidential committee reported the obvious: Prohibition was not working. By 1932, both presidential candidates, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Herbert Hoover, favored repeal.
It may have been history, but the effects of Prohibition lived on; some of them are still with us today. Here are the results of our country's "great social and economic experiment":
1. It created disrespect for the law. Never before had so many otherwise law-abiding citizens broken the law—and had so much fun doing it. Who said I shouldn't drive when I'm drunk? I think I drive better after a few drinks. And who set these repressive speed limits anyway?" That was the sort of dangerous thinking fostered by Prohibition.
2. It eroded respect for religion. God and the Bible were used to justify Prohibition and, as Prohibition failed, it seemed to some as though the failure was God's. Did the evangelicals who caused the suffering and chaos admit they had made a mistake? No.
3. It created organized crime. Prior to Prohibition, organized crime was nothing to speak of. Prohibition made the gangster not just well paid, but well liked. These aren't real bandits, the public thought, these are Robin Hood–like characters—blockade runners—who sidestep the law to bring us what we want. They were given cute nicknames like "Pretty Boy," "Legs," and "Scar Face." By 1927, Al Capone controlled not only all illicit commerce in Illinois—from alcohol to gambling to prostitution—but also the majority of the politicians, including most police commissioners, the mayor of Chicago, and the governor.
4. Prohibition permanently corrupted law enforcement, the court system, and politics. During Prohibition, organized crime had on its payroll police, judges, prosecutors, and politicians. If mobsters couldn't buy or successfully threaten someone in a powerful position, they either "wiped him out" or, following more democratic principles, ran a candidate against the incumbent in the next election. They put money behind their candidate, stuffed the ballot box, or leaked some scandal about the incumbent just before the election (or all three). The important thing was winning, and more often than not, someone beholden to organized crime rose to the position of power.
In some cities, corruption went from top to bottom, and it was the citizenry who suffered. There were plenty of corrupt politicians before Prohibition, just as there were criminals, but the sheer volume of money (and, consequently, corruption) that Prohibition brought with it created what might be called organized corruption on local and state levels. The new police, judges, prosecutors, and politicians were told to look the other way as the graft passed by, and some succumbed to the easy money they saw being made all around them. Some popular beliefs (and, in some cases, truths) about law enforcement, politics, and government in general ("You can't fight City Hall." "The rich get away with murder." "You can't change the system.") were not necessarily created by Prohibition's political corruption, but it certainly supported them in people's minds.
5. Prohibition overburdened the police, the courts, and the penal system. Even with only token enforcement, Prohibition violations overburdened the police, clogged the court system, and filled the jails. The honest police, judges, and prosecutors found it impossible to do their jobs; there wasn't enough time, personnel, or money. On March 3, 1923, Time reported that "44% of the work of the United States District Attorneys is confined to Prohibition cases." By 1928, there were more than 75,000 arrests per year. In 1932, there were 80,000 Prohibition convictions (not just arrests, but convictions).
6. People were harmed financially, emotionally, and morally. The basic inequity of Prohibition was astounding. Prohibition caused a direct hardship on hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of people. First, there were those who, in 1919, were legitimately involved in the production, distribution, and sale of alcohol. They either lost their jobs or were forced to become criminals. (If what you've been doing your entire professional life becomes illegal and you keep doing it, you become a criminal.) Brewing, distilling, and wine making are arts—professions that have been practiced and refined over thousands of years. What are people to do when their profession, honored and respectable, suddenly becomes a crime? With few options, some turned from brewmaster to bootlegger overnight. Others couldn't stand the idea of being a criminal and took far lower paying and less fulfilling jobs. And what about the people who owned the breweries, distilleries, and wineries? Many had invested their lives and savings in equipment, research, and good will. Overnight, through no fault of their own, their businesses were destroyed and investments wiped out. If it was a publicly held company, the stockholders, (many of whom were small investors) found their stock suddenly worthless.
7. Prohibition caused physical harm. When "safe" alcoholic beverages were no longer available (that is, beverages in which the purity and alcoholic content were regulated by law), people began assembling all sorts of concoctions, either for their own use or for sale. Some worked; some didn't. Some killed. Alcohol made from fruits, vegetables, or grains—either fermented or distilled—tends to be safe. Alcohol distilled from wood products ("wood alcohol") is not. Wood alcohol, nonetheless, smells like alcohol, tastes like alcohol, and gets you high.
8. Prohibition changed the drinking habits of a country—for the worse. Prior to Prohibition, almost all drinking took place outside the home. Some—mostly recent immigrants—had beer or wine with meals; some of the rich had a little brandy or port after dinner; but, for the most part, alcohol consumption in the home was "for medicinal purposes only." Because the public drinking places closed, people (especially the poor: speakeasies tended to be expensive) began drinking at home more and more. With liquor now conveniently stored at home, people could drink more often.
Another phenomenon was drinking to get drunk. Prior to Prohibition, alcohol consumption was secondary to eating or socializing. With Prohibition, people gathered with the primary intention of getting drunk. ("I got a new bottle, just off the boat. Come over tonight and we'll drink it.") Although some speakeasies served food, people didn't go to the speakeasies to eat; they went to drink.
9. Prohibition made cigarette smoking a national habit. High on the evangelicals' hit list, second only to alcohol as a substance that had to be prohibited, was tobacco. In 1921, cigarettes were illegal in fourteen states, and anti-cigarette bills were pending in twenty-eight others. The prohibition of cigarettes, promoted by the very people who gave us the prohibition of alcohol, made cigarette smoking almost irresistible. As the experiment of Prohibition failed, the anti-cigarette laws fell.
10. Prohibition prevented the treatment of drinking problems. It was stylish, fashionable, trendy, and daring to be drunk. No one had a drinking problem. ("I drink; I get drunk; I fall down. Where's the problem?") With alcohol illegal, there were no social norms for reasonable, moderate alcohol consumption against which to compare one's own drinking. The official social sanction (enforced by law) was complete sobriety. Anything less—from one drink per month to ten per day—made one a Wet. Anyone who suggested to a friend, "You may have a little problem here," sounded like one of the preachy blue noses whose moralizing started all the trouble in the first place.
11. Prohibition caused "immorality." Far from Prohibition leading to Great Moments in Morality, as the evangelicals had promised, it led directly to an unparalleled explosion of immorality—as immorality was defined by them. As speakeasies were unregulated, outlawed, underground, and co-educational, they tended to breed unregulated, outlawed, underground, and co-educational activities. A great deal of the increase in unmarried sexual activity during the 1920s can be directly linked to the potent combination of alcohol and an atmosphere of illicit activity and abandon. Drugs other than alcohol were used by people who never would have come into contact with them were it not for the permissive atmosphere of the speakeasies.
12. Prohibition was phenomenally expensive. The exact cost of this thirteen-year experiment is difficult to estimate. Between law enforcement, courts, the operation of jails, and all the rest, some estimates top a billion dollars (and this is a billion dollars when a Ford factory worker—among the highest paid unskilled laborers—made only $5 a day(*FN)). In addition to this cost, let's not forget the taxes on alcohol the government lost because of Prohibition, and the profit denied honest business people and diverted into the pockets of organized crime. The artificially increased price of alcohol hit the poor and working classes hardest of all. It was a very expensive experiment.
The effects were, however, mostly negative. For good or for ill, there's hardly an American alive today whose life was not touched by Prohibition.
George Santayana warned, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." If only we would remember the past as often as we remember to quote Santayana.
Alas, we have forgotten our recent past and are repeating it even now.
Perhaps Samuel D. Mobley of Winnsboro, South Carolina said it best in his interview during the Great Depression.
"I have noticed that every attempt to legislate morals into the people has resulted in disaster. I will call your attention to the fact that you and I remember when we had the old barroom system, the State dispensary system prohibition, and the present retail liquor shops. No system is perfect, but the worst of all was the prohibition law. Whiskey caused some trouble in Papa Noah's family and resulted in some confusion in Uncle Lot's household. But religion and morals should be taught and inculcated in the church and home, and self-control and temperance should be read and studied from the Bible rather than the Statutory Code."
Hope this answers your questions and helps you understand a part of our history of Prohibition. :-)
Catie
