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The temperance movement and the Eighteenth Amendment

Bootlegging and gangsterism.

What led to Prohibition?

How long did prohibition last, what were the effects of prohibition, how did people get around prohibition, how was prohibition enforced.

Prohibition

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• Table Of Contents

Nationwide Prohibition came about as a result of the temperance movement . The temperance movement advocated for moderation in—and in its most extreme form, complete abstinence from the consumption of—alcohol (although actual Prohibition only banned the manufacture, transportation, and trade of alcohol, rather than its consumption). The temperance movement began amassing a following in the 1820s and ’30s, bolstered by the religious revivalism that was sweeping the nation at that time. The religious establishment continued to be central to the movement, as indicated by the fact that the Anti-Saloon League —which spearheaded the early 20th-century push for Prohibition on the local, state, and federal levels—received much of their support from Protestant evangelical congregations. A number of other forces lent their support to the movement as well, such as woman suffragists, who were anxious about the deteriorative effects alcohol had on the family unit, and industrialists, who were keen on increasing the efficiency of their workers.

Nationwide Prohibition lasted from 1920 until 1933. The Eighteenth Amendment —which illegalized the manufacture, transportation, and sale of alcohol—was passed by the U.S. Congress in 1917. In 1919 the amendment was ratified by the three-quarters of the nation’s states required to make it constitutional. That same year the Volstead Act , which engineered the means by which the U.S. government would enforce Prohibition , was passed as well. The nationwide moratorium on alcohol would stay in place for the next 13 years, at which point a general disenchantment with the policy—affected by factors ranging from the rise of organized crime to the economic malaise brought on by the stock market crash of 1929 —led to its disbandment at the federal level by the Twenty-first Amendment . The prohibition of alcohol continued to exist at the state level in some places for the next two decades, as it had for over a half-century prior to the ratification of the Eighteenth Amendment in 1919.

The Eighteenth Amendment was ratified in the hopes of eliminating alcohol from American life. In that respect, it failed. To the contrary, people intent on drinking found loopholes in the newly passed anti-liquor laws that allowed them to slake their thirst, and, when that didn’t work, they turned to illegal avenues to do so. An entire black market—comprising bootleggers , speakeasies , and distilling operations—emerged as a result of Prohibition, as did organized crime syndicates which coordinated the complex chain of operations involved in the manufacture and distribution of alcohol. Corruption in law enforcement became widespread as criminal organizations used bribery to keep officials in their pockets. Prohibition was detrimental to the economy as well, by eliminating jobs supplied by what had formerly been the fifth largest industry in America. By the end of the 1920s, Prohibition had lost its luster for many who had formerly been the policy’s most ardent supporters, and it was done away with by the Twenty-first Amendment in 1933.

From Prohibition’s inception, people found ways to keep drinking. There were a number of loopholes to exploit: pharmacists could prescribe whiskey for medicinal purposes, such that many pharmacies became fronts for bootlegging operations; industry was permitted to use alcohol for production purposes, much of which was diverted for drinking instead; religious congregations were allowed to purchase alcohol, leading to an uptick in church enrollment; and many people learned to make moonshine in their own homes. Criminals invented new ways of supplying Americans with what they wanted, as well: bootleggers smuggled alcohol into the country or else distilled their own; speakeasies proliferated in the back rooms of seemingly upstanding establishments; and organized crime syndicates formed in order to coordinate the activities within the black-market alcohol industry. The only people who were really curtailed in their ability to drink were members of the working class who were unable to afford the price hike that followed illegalization.

The Volstead Act charged the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) in the Treasury Department with enforcing Prohibition. As a result, the Prohibition Unit was founded within the IRS. From its inception, the Prohibition Unit was plagued by issues of corruption, lack of training, and underfunding. Often, the level to which the law was enforced had to do with the sympathies of the citizens in the areas being policed. The Coast Guard also played a role in implementation, pursuing bootleggers attempting to smuggle liquor into America along its coastline. In 1929 the onus of enforcement shifted from the IRS to the Department of Justice , with the Prohibition Unit being redubbed the Bureau of Prohibition. With Eliot Ness at the helm, the Bureau of Prohibition mounted a massive offensive against organized crime in Chicago. It was Ness and his team of Untouchables—Prohibition agents whose name derived from the fact that they were “untouchable” to bribery—that toppled Chicago’s bootlegger kingpin Al Capone by exposing his tax evasion.

Prohibition , legal prevention of the manufacture, sale, and transportation of alcoholic beverages in the United States from 1920 to 1933 under the terms of the Eighteenth Amendment . Although the temperance movement , which was widely supported, had succeeded in bringing about this legislation, millions of Americans were willing to drink liquor ( distilled spirits ) illegally, which gave rise to bootlegging (the illegal production and sale of liquor) and speakeasies (illegal, secretive drinking establishments), both of which were capitalized upon by organized crime . As a result, the Prohibition era also is remembered as a period of gangsterism , characterized by competition and violent turf battles between criminal gangs.

In the United States an early wave of movements for state and local prohibition arose from the intensive religious revivalism of the 1820s and ’30s, which stimulated movements toward perfectionism in human beings, including temperance and abolitionism . Although an abstinence pledge had been introduced by churches as early as 1800, the earliest temperance organizations seem to have been those founded at Saratoga , New York , in 1808 and in Massachusetts in 1813. The movement spread rapidly under the influence of the churches; by 1833 there were 6,000 local societies in several U.S. states. The precedent for seeking temperance through law was set by a Massachusetts law, passed in 1838 and repealed two years later, which prohibited sales of spirits in less than 15-gallon (55-litre) quantities. The first state prohibition law was passed in Maine in 1846 and ushered in a wave of such state legislation before the American Civil War .

Conceived by Wayne Wheeler, the leader of the Anti-Saloon League , the Eighteenth Amendment passed in both chambers of the U.S. Congress in December 1917 and was ratified by the requisite three-fourths of the states in January 1919. Its language called for Congress to pass enforcement legislation, and that was championed by Andrew Volstead, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, who engineered passage of the National Prohibition Act (better known as the Volstead Act ) over the veto of Pres. Woodrow Wilson .

Neither the Volstead Act nor the Eighteenth Amendment was enforced with great success. Indeed, entire illegal economies (bootlegging, speakeasies, and distilling operations) flourished. The earliest bootleggers began smuggling foreign-made commercial liquor into the United States from across the Canadian and Mexican borders and along the seacoasts from ships under foreign registry. Their favourite sources of supply were the Bahamas , Cuba , and the French islands of Saint-Pierre and Miquelon , off the southern coast of Newfoundland . A favourite rendezvous of the rum-running ships was a point opposite Atlantic City , New Jersey , just outside the three-mile (five-km) limit beyond which the U.S. government lacked jurisdiction. The bootleggers anchored in that area and discharged their loads into high-powered craft that were built to outrace U.S. Coast Guard cutters.

That type of smuggling became riskier and more expensive when the U.S. Coast Guard began halting and searching ships at greater distances from the coast and using fast motor launches of its own. Bootleggers had other major sources of supply, however. Among those were millions of bottles of “medicinal” whiskey that were sold across drugstore counters on real or forged prescriptions. In addition, various American industries were permitted to use denatured alcohol, which had been mixed with noxious chemicals to render it unfit for drinking. Millions of gallons of that were illegally diverted, “washed” of noxious chemicals, mixed with tap water and perhaps a dash of real liquor for flavour, and sold to speakeasies or individual customers. Finally, bootleggers took to bottling their own concoctions of spurious liquor, and by the late 1920s stills making liquor from corn ( moonshine ) had become major suppliers.

Bootlegging helped lead to the establishment of American organized crime , which persisted long after the repeal of Prohibition. The distribution of liquor was necessarily more complex than other types of criminal activity, and organized gangs eventually arose that could control an entire local chain of bootlegging operations, from concealed distilleries and breweries through storage and transport channels to speakeasies , restaurants, nightclubs, and other retail outlets. Those gangs tried to secure and enlarge territories in which they had a monopoly of distribution. Gradually, the gangs in different cities began to cooperate with each other, and they extended their methods of organizing beyond bootlegging to the narcotics traffic, gambling rackets, prostitution , labour racketeering , loan-sharking, and extortion . The American Mafia crime syndicate arose out of the coordinated activities of Italian bootleggers and other gangsters in New York City in the late 1920s and early ’30s.

Johnny Torrio rose to become a rackets boss in Brooklyn , New York , and then relocated to Chicago , where in the early 1920s he expanded the crime empire founded by James (“Big Jim”) Colosimo into big-time bootlegging. Torrio turned over his rackets in 1925 to Al Capone , who became the Prohibition era’s most famous gangster, though other crime czars such as Dion O’Bannion (Capone’s rival in Chicago), Joe Masseria , Meyer Lansky , Lucky Luciano , and Bugsy Siegel were also legendarily infamous. Capone’s wealth in 1927 was estimated at close to $100 million.

In 1929—the year of the stock market crash , which seemingly increased the country’s desire for illegal liquor— Eliot Ness was hired as a special agent of the U.S. Department of Justice to head the Prohibition bureau in Chicago, with the express purpose of investigating and harassing Capone. Because the men whom Ness hired to help him were extremely dedicated and unbribable, they were nicknamed the Untouchables . The public learned of them when big raids on breweries, speakeasies, and other places of outlawry attracted newspaper headlines. The Untouchables’ infiltration of the underworld secured evidence that helped send Capone to prison for income-tax evasion in 1932.

Also in 1932 Warner Brothers released Howard Hawks ’s film Scarface: The Shame of Nation , which was based loosely on Capone’s rise as a crime boss. The previous year the studio had started a craze for gangster films with Mervyn LeRoy ’s Little Caesar (1931) and William Wellman ’s The Public Enemy (1931). The cultural influence of the era proved lasting, with gangster films remaining popular and Ness’s exploits giving rise to the television series The Untouchables (1959–63).

The History of Prohibition in the United States

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Prohibition was a period of nearly 14 years of U.S. history (1920 to 1933) in which the manufacture, sale, and transportation of intoxicating liquor were made illegal. It was a time characterized by speakeasies, glamor, and gangsters and a period of time in which even the average citizen broke the law. Interestingly, Prohibition (sometimes referred to as the "Noble Experiment") led to the first and only time an Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was repealed.

Temperance Movements

After the American Revolution , drinking was on the rise. To combat this, a number of societies were organized as part of a new Temperance movement, which attempted to dissuade people from becoming intoxicated. At first, these organizations pushed moderation, but after several decades, the movement's focus changed to complete prohibition of alcohol consumption.

The Temperance movement blamed alcohol for many of society's ills, especially crime and murder. Saloons, a social haven for men who lived in the still untamed West, were viewed by many, especially women, as a place of debauchery and evil.

Prohibition, members of the Temperance movement urged, would stop husbands from spending all the family income on alcohol and prevent accidents in the workplace caused by workers who drank during lunch.

The 18th Amendment Passes

At the beginning of the 20th century, there were Temperance organizations in nearly every state. By 1916, over half of the U.S. states already had statutes that prohibited alcohol. In 1919, the 18th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which prohibited the sale and manufacture of alcohol, was ratified. It went into effect on January 16, 1920—beginning the era known as Prohibition.

The Volstead Act

While it was the 18th Amendment that established Prohibition, it was the Volstead Act (passed on October 28, 1919) that clarified the law.

The Volstead Act stated that "beer, wine, or other intoxicating malt or vinous liquors" meant any beverage that was more than 0.5% alcohol by volume. The Act also stated that owning any item designed to manufacture alcohol was illegal and it set specific fines and jail sentences for violating Prohibition.

There were, however, several loopholes for people to legally drink during Prohibition. For instance, the 18th Amendment did not mention the actual drinking of liquor.

Also, since Prohibition went into effect a full year after the 18th Amendment's ratification, many people bought cases of then-legal alcohol and stored them for personal use.

The Volstead Act allowed alcohol consumption if it was prescribed by a doctor. Needless to say, large numbers of new prescriptions were written for alcohol.

Gangsters and Speakeasies

For people who didn't buy cases of alcohol in advance or know a "good" doctor, there were illegal ways to drink during Prohibition.

A new breed of gangster arose during this period. These people took notice of the amazingly high level of demand for alcohol within society and the extremely limited avenues of supply to the average citizen. Within this imbalance of supply and demand, gangsters saw a profit. Al Capone in Chicago is one of the most famous gangsters of this time period.

These gangsters would hire men to smuggle in rum from the Caribbean (rumrunners) or hijack whiskey from Canada and bring it into the U.S. Others would buy large quantities of liquor made in homemade stills. The gangsters would then open up secret bars (speakeasies) for people to come in, drink, and socialize.

During this period, newly hired Prohibition agents were responsible for raiding speakeasies, finding stills, and arresting gangsters, but many of these agents were underqualified and underpaid, leading to a high rate of bribery.

Attempts to Repeal the 18th Amendment

Almost immediately after the ratification of the 18th Amendment, organizations formed to repeal it. As the perfect world promised by the Temperance movement failed to materialize, more people joined the fight to bring back liquor.

The anti-Prohibition movement gained strength as the 1920s progressed, often stating that the question of alcohol consumption was a local issue and not something that should be in the Constitution.

Additionally, the Stock Market Crash in 1929 and the beginning of the Great Depression started changing people's opinion. People needed jobs. The government needed money. Making alcohol legal again would open up many new jobs for citizens and additional sales taxes for the government.

The 21st Amendment Is Ratified

On December 5, 1933, the 21st Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified. The 21st Amendment repealed the 18th Amendment, making alcohol once again legal. This was the first and only time in U.S. history that an Amendment has been repealed.

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Prohibition

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Tona Hangen, Prohibition, Journal of American History , Volume 99, Issue 1, June 2012, Pages 374–377, https://doi.org/10.1093/jahist/jas127

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With their three-part documentary on Prohibition, Ken Burns and Lynn Novick turn the rise and fall of the Eighteenth Amendment into a cautionary tale about metastasizing single-issue politics in America. Perhaps as expected, the films hit their stride when talking about the late 1920s, with tommy-gun wielding gangsters, bootleggers, and speakeasy patrons battling earnest federal enforcers for the soul of the nation. But the films brood far more than they sensationalize, ultimately making the story of Prohibition not only more expansive but also much more serious and less rollicking than it might be.

The “noble experiment” (a term attributed to Herbert Hoover) of Prohibition was enacted to protect American families and society from the pernicious and widely acknowledged effects of alcohol consumption. While saluting these laudable intentions, Burns and Novick cast Prohibition as not only a “notorious civic failure” but, even more damning, also as a violation of the American character itself. Although Prohibition was in effect only from 1920 to 1933, its roots tapped into the early years of antebellum reform and it had lasting effects on American culture, politics, and law. Prohibition takes in an ambitious sweep of more than a century, starting with the beginnings of the temperance movement in the 1820s.

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Why Prohibition?

Why did the United States have a prohibition movement, and enact prohibition? We offer some generalizations in answer to that question.

Prohibition in the United States was a measure designed to reduce drinking by eliminating the businesses that manufactured, distributed, and sold alcoholic beverages. The Eighteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution took away license to do business from the brewers, distillers, vintners, and the wholesale and retail sellers of alcoholic beverages. The leaders of the prohibition movement were alarmed at the drinking behavior of Americans, and they were concerned that there was a culture of drink among some sectors of the population that, with continuing immigration from Europe, was spreading.

The prohibition movement's strength grew, especially after the formation of the Anti-Saloon League in 1893. The League, and other organizations that supported prohibition such as the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, soon began to succeed in enacting local prohibition laws. Eventually the prohibition campaign was a national effort.

During this time, the brewing industry was the most prosperous of the beverage alcohol industries. Because of the competitive nature of brewing, the brewers entered the retail business. Americans called retail businesses selling beer and whiskey by the glass saloons. To expand the sale of beer, brewers expanded the number of saloons. Saloons proliferated . It was not uncommon to find one saloon for every 150 or 200 Americans, including those who did not drink. Hard-pressed to earn profits, saloonkeepers sometimes introduced vices such as gambling and prostitution into their establishments in an attempt to earn profits. Many Americans considered saloons offensive, noxious institutions.

The prohibition leaders believed that once license to do business was removed from the liquor traffic, the churches and reform organizations would enjoy an opportunity to persuade Americans to give up drink. This opportunity would occur unchallenged by the drink businesses ("the liquor traffic") in whose interests it was to urge more Americans to drink, and to drink more beverage alcohol. The blight of saloons would disappear from the landscape, and saloonkeepers no longer allowed to encourage people, including children, to drink beverage alcohol.

Some prohibition leaders looked forward to an educational campaign that would greatly expand once the drink businesses became illegal, and would eventually, in about thirty years, lead to a sober nation. Other prohibition leaders looked forward to vigorous enforcement of prohibition in order to eliminate supplies of beverage alcohol. After 1920, neither group of leaders was especially successful. The educators never received the support for the campaign that they dreamed about; and the law enforcers were never able to persuade government officials to mount a wholehearted enforcement campaign against illegal suppliers of beverage alcohol.

The best evidence available to historians shows that consumption of beverage alcohol declined dramatically under prohibition. In the early 1920s, consumption of beverage alcohol was about thirty per cent of the pre-prohibition level. Consumption grew somewhat in the last years of prohibition, as illegal supplies of liquor increased and as a new generation of Americans disregarded the law and rejected the attitude of self-sacrifice that was part of the bedrock of the prohibition movement. Nevertheless, it was a long time after repeal before consumption rates rose to their pre-prohibition levels. In that sense, prohibition "worked."

We have included a table of data about alcohol consumption . We also present some data in graphic form, including the consumption of beer in gallons, the consumption of distilled spirits in gallons, and the consumption of absolute alcohol in gallons for beer and spirits, and, in total, for all beverage alcohol. We also have some separate data for malt beverage production (beer).

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100 years later, do we think Prohibition was good for the nation?

January 17, 1920, was an important day in American history. Why? Because on that day the grand social experiment called Prohibition was first enforced. The Volstead Act, the law that put enforcement teeth into the Eighteenth Amendment, banning intoxicating beverages, went into effect. The transformation of the nation from an alcoholic republic to a dry state created a surprising list of winners and losers.

Let’s start with the obvious people who lost out: drinkers, especially working-class immigrants. Temperance advocates worried about immigrant men who gathered—and drank—in saloons. “Alien illiterates rule our cities today; the saloon is their palace,” proclaimed prominent Prohibitionist Frances Willard. Of course many temperance advocates had a double standard; a drink for themselves with dinner was good manners, but booze for others (especially working-class people) was dangerous.

The increasing number of immigrants, and their bars, was a source of race- and class-based fear for many white middle- and upper-class people born in the United States.  By 1900, there were 300,000 saloons across the nation (one for every three hundred citizens), and they were heavily concentrated in urban areas. The neighborhood drinking establishment was where working-class men aired grievances, organized politically, and found jobs. The patrons, speaking their native languages (such as German, Croatian, and Italian, among others), worried Temperance advocates who feared the saloon customers were socialists or communists and perhaps fomenting political upheaval. To save America, the saloon must go.

While Prohibition may have killed saloon culture, it didn’t end the consumption of alcohol. Working-class men moved their drinking from saloons into their homes, private halls, “athletic clubs,” and illicit bars. Affluent Americans also continued to drink. Famed Chicago mob boss Al Capone was reported to have said “When I sell liquor, it is bootlegging. . . . When my patrons serve it on a silver tray on Lake Shore Drive, it is hospitality.”

One unexpected downside of Prohibition was its impact on the health of the nation. While alcohol consumption initially decreased after implementation of the Volstead Act, working-class consumers soon turned to alternative forms of alcohol, not all of which were safe. Patent medicine and over-the-counter goods with a high percentage of alcohol (even hair tonic) were consumed for off-label purposes. 

Tainted alcohol was an even bigger problem—especially for poor people. Alcohol is an important industrial chemical, and large quantities are produced for use as solvents in paint, antifreeze, and other non-potable substances. Industrial alcohol is not taxed like drinking alcohol and is denatured (purposely adulterated) to make it unattractive for human consumption. During Prohibition, denatured ethyl alcohol and deadly methyl alcohol found their way into the U.S. beverage stream. Many people got sick and some died from unregulated and tainted alcohol.

Retailers and producers of alcohol also lost out during Prohibition. Closing saloons was not only a blow for men who frequented the drinking establishments, but meant a significant loss of business in immigrant communities. Of all licensed saloons, 80% were owned by first-generation Americans.

Some beer producers turned to legal nonalcoholic beverages, but with only limited success. Others made ice cream, cheese, ceramics, and even homebrewing supplies . Vintners and distillers had different options. Since the United States has a large religious population, the Volstead Act allowed for the production and shipment of sacramental wine . Sales went up with Prohibition, essentially making some priests and rabbis bootleggers. A 1925 report by the Department of Research and Education of the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ angrily reported that “there is no way of knowing what the legitimate consumption of fermented sacramental wine is, but it is clear that the legitimate demand does not increase 800,000 gallons in two years.”

Most distillers closed their operations during Prohibition, but another loophole in the Volstead Act allowed for the sale of medical whiskey. While medicinal whiskey had been sold by pharmacies for years, sales skyrocketed during Prohibition. Affluent customers could afford the three-dollar physician visit to get a prescription for legally purchasing their whiskey. In general, however, alcohol producers and retailers took a financial loss during Prohibition.

But, not all sellers of alcohol took a loss. The amount of money to be made in bootlegging was astronomical. Booze is big business. According to United States Attorney Emory Buckner, bootleg liquor sales in 1926 amounted to $3.6 billion. That was about the same as the U.S. federal budget at the time. Bootlegging was an opportunity for entrepreneurial criminals to become fast millionaires. But smuggling, transporting, and distributing large amounts of alcohol was complicated. Criminals organized national operations to manage and conduct their business. Where crime had once been local, the Volstead Act inadvertently promoted the development of organized crime. And competition between rival operations soon became violent.

Despite Prohibition, many Americans chose to flout the law and continue consuming alcohol at home or in illicit bars. Making matters worse, the poorly paid Prohibition officers hired to enforce the Volstead Act often found lucrative opportunities in criminal sales of alcohol. The resulting rise in government graft and corruption led to a lack of respect for authority that continued after Prohibition was repealed. 

Who were the winners during Prohibition? One was quick meals. As saloons closed during the first decade of Prohibition, the number of restaurants in the country tripled, and eating patterns changed with the rise of quick meals. Luncheonettes, cafeterias, and soda fountains sprang up in largely urban neighborhoods catering to middle-class and lower-middle-class workers.

Women helped win the argument for Prohibition. White protestant women were the principle advocates for Prohibition. Groups like the Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) and the Anti-Saloon League made a moral argument, claiming that men squandered money on drunkenness, putting their wives and children at risk. Women’s and family rights were recognized and protected to a degree by Prohibition. More importantly, these activist groups not only won their argument when Prohibition became law, they developed skills and expectations that applied to another cause: woman suffrage. In general, the 1920s was an era of increased rights for women (although to different degrees). 

The ultimate loser in the tale of Prohibition was the Eighteenth Amendment itself. Andrew Volstead, author of the Prohibition enforcement act, was defeated in 1922 in his bid for an 11th term in Congress. Widespread unemployment and the economic chaos of the Great Depression fueled political upheaval. The 1932 elections swept many “wets” (politicians opposed to Prohibition) into office. Widely considered unenforceable and a failure, the Volstead Act and the Eighteenth Amendment were repealed by passage and ratification of the Twenty-First Amendment in 1933. The effort for a government-led common good (Prohibition) was replaced by a public desire for a good time. Americans could legally drink again. 

Peter Liebhold is a co-curator of the American Enterprise exhibition in the Mars Hall of American Business.  

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The Truth About Prohibition

The temperance movement wasn’t an example of American exceptionalism; it was a globe-spanning network of activists and politicians who tilted not against sin but against economic exploitation.

The Prohibition era, which for most Americans conjures images of “untouchable” lawmen, tommy-gun-toting gangsters, and jazz-filled speakeasies, is easily one of the most romanticized periods in U.S. history. It’s also one of the most misunderstood. We now vilify the temperance activists who promoted public welfare and excuse corrupt and murderous gangsters such as Al Capone as “legitimate businessmen” who only wanted to slake the thirst of paying customers. The whole concept is topsy-turvy.

How did that all happen? What caused Prohibition? The real answer might surprise you.

In pop-culture portrayals and serious academic histories, the usual explanation boils down to what one author called “ a political crazy quilt ”: Bible-thumping American conservatives legislating morality , temperance and women’s-rights busybodies meddling in the world of male leisure, the Ku Klux Klan “disciplining” Black people and immigrants, and all of them whipped into an irrational anti-German, anti-beer frenzy by World War I.

Read: Relative values in prohibition

But the temperance movement wasn’t an example of American exceptionalism ; it was a globe-spanning network of activists and politicians who tilted not against sin but against the economic exploitation of trafficking in highly addictive substances. In the early 20th century, scores of countries restricted the liquor trade in the interest of public well-being. Outside the United States, a dozen countries, including the Russian empire, Norway, and Turkey, as well as expansive swaths of colonial Africa and India, adopted prohibition.

With so many global experiences to examine, it’d be foolish to extrapolate the causes of prohibitionism from just any single case study, even the well-known American one.

In Russia (the first country to introduce a version of prohibition), critics of the imperial autocracy—which included the great writer Leo Tolstoy and the revolutionaries Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky—condemned the czar’s vodka monopoly, which funded royal splendor on the drunken misery of the masses. Social Democrats in Sweden pushed for a government monopoly on the liquor traffic so that profits would benefit the whole society, not just the ultra-wealthy. Belgian Social Democrats drew parallels between the liquor subjugation of the working classes and the brutalized Africans in Belgium’s Congo colony. In the autocratic German and Austro-Hungarian empires, social democrats were joined by liberals—such as the Czechoslovak founding father Tomáš Masaryk—who saw a sober and uplifted population as a precondition for political independence and democratic self-government.

Throughout the far-flung British empire—which was partly built by peddling opium to China and liquor everywhere else—temperance was also linked to national liberation. “Ireland sober, Ireland free” was the rallying cry of generations of nationalists, from the United Irishmen to Daniel O’Connell to Sinn Fein, who understood that it was the English who profited from selling liquor, leaving the downtrodden Irish in drunken poverty. In Bechuanaland—present-day Botswana—the dry King Khama III stood against the alcoholic incursions of Cecil Rhodes and his British South Africa Company, who saw only profit in exploiting Khama’s native land and people. Mahatma Gandhi was a prohibitionist in India for the same reason: He understood that liquor revenues were vital to the British Raj, and abstinence would starve the British occupiers of that money. And when the British and European powers carved up the former Ottoman empire after World War I, even the heavy-drinking Kemal Atatürk turned to prohibition to prevent the Europeans from capitalizing on his people.

This broader global context makes clear that prohibitionism was not conservative; it was progressive. It was not a culture clash of the propertied classes trying to “discipline” the have-nots. Just the opposite: Temperance was a weapon of the weak against imperialism, against predatory capitalism, and against an autocratic state that promoted and profited from ordinary people’s subordination to an addictive substance. Prohibitionism wasn’t reactionary; it was revolutionary.

Bringing this understanding back to the United States lays bare uncomfortable truths about American history. Namely, it shows that American temperance history—from Lyman Beecher’s pioneering Six Sermons on Intemperance (1826) to the Twenty-First (repeal) Amendment—is usually taught as white people’s history. African Americans, Native Americans, and immigrant groups have been mostly excluded from our temperance history. At most they are portrayed as disempowered communities with no agency of their own. This is surprising because—as it turns out—the most vocal proponents of American prohibitionism have always been its minority populations.

America’s first prohibitionists were actually its first people. From their initial contact with European settlers, Native Americans were decimated by mind-bending industrial liquors to which they’d had no prior exposure. Native American leaders such as Little Turtle, Red Jacket, Tecumseh, and Black Hawk fought strenuously against the depredations of “the white man’s wicked water” decades before white activists took up the cause.

Robert M. La Follette, Jr.: Never prohibition again

When white reformers finally embraced the temperance cause, in the early 19th century, it was inexorably tied to abolitionism. William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, Martin Delany, and Abraham Lincoln were all temperance men. Perhaps the most famous temperance orator of the day was Frederick Douglass, who vowed “to go the whole length of prohibition” to ensure that Black Americans “support by voice, vote, and co-operation, the grand Prohibition movement.” Generations of civil-rights activists—such as Ida Wells, Booker T. Washington, and W.E.B. Du Bois—took up the temperance banner for the betterment of both Black communities and white.

The movement for women’s rights also originated in temperance. Women bore the brunt of men’s drunken addiction but were economically, legally, and politically powerless. Securing equal political rights was the only way to confront the entrenched political power of the corrupt liquor machine. The equal-rights stalwarts Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Frances Willard all began their political work as temperance activists. Suffragism, abolition, and temperance together proclaimed that no individual has the right to exploit another for their own profit.

The outmoded culture-clash explanation of Prohibition always struggled to account for how the Eighteenth Amendment—the crowning achievement of this supposedly “reactionary” movement—came at the height of the Progressive era, or how it was supported by legislative supermajorities in Congress and ratified nationwide. It shouldn’t be a head-scratcher. Prohibitionism was a fundamentally progressive movement aimed at reining in the excesses of capitalism and corruption. Democrats like William Jennings Bryan and Republicans like Teddy Roosevelt all agreed that good governance meant breaking up powerful monopolies and corrupt political machines, and that by spreading misery and poverty, the so-called liquor trust was by far the worst offender.

The history of American prohibitionism that we’ve been told for generations is not only flat-out wrong but overlaid with all sorts of latent historical biases. The conventional wisdom fundamentally misportrays both the aims and scope of the temperance movement as being about “sin” rather than predatory capitalism, disingenuously vilifies generations of benevolent reformers, and dismisses or obscures the importance of nonwhite political actors throughout American history.

Overly narrow historical accounts are like blinders on a horse. Taking them off by situating the American experience in a global, comparative context shows us the richness of the broader world around us, and lays bare our biases, shortcomings, and blind spots. A true people’s history of prohibitionism reveals not some moral crusade of fringe crackpots but a vital reform movement that is fundamentally consistent with America’s founding principles, and reflective of the amazing diversity of the American people. Even today, as we engage in a reckoning with our nation’s history, taking a second look at prohibitionism can highlight that our popular understanding of the past is often wrong.

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The Vodka Wars

The Darker Side of Prohibition

During Prohibition, industrial-grade alcohol cost hundreds of American lives. The Coolidge administration encouraged its circulation.

When we think of Prohibition, the cultural touchstones of the Jazz Age come to mind: gangsters and molls, feather boas, glittering headpieces, and of course, bathtub gin. Sourced by shadowy bootleggers, noxious homemade moonshine killed or blinded hundreds of Americans. But that’s only half the story. What we once considered criminality run amok, was in fact inextricably tied to a willingness at the highest levels of American government to sacrifice the lives of those considered worthless degenerates.

Throughout the Prohibition period from 1920 to 1933, some forms of alcohol were still available for purchase. Prescription alcohol—to treat bronchitis and other conditions—was one. Industrial-grade alcohol—designed for use in paints and floor thinners—was another. Although it was undrinkable, industrial-grade alcohol was often stolen and resold by criminal syndicates to be used in cheap liquor. The Coolidge administration effectively encouraged the practice as a way of discouraging illegal consumption, by giving tax breaks to industrial-alcohol manufacturers who “denatured,” or poisoned, their supply.

The week of Christmas, 1926, almost a hundred people died from the effects of drinking industrial alcohol. Hundreds more died in subsequent years. They were drinking a substance that, thanks to government intervention, had been intentionally but unnecessarily rendered fatal.

For many in Coolidge’s administration, this was hardly a problem; in fact, in some cases it was seen as beneficial. It did, after all, get drunks off the streets expediently.

But for Charles Norris, New York’s medical examiner, it was just another example of the dark side of Prohibition’s would-be moral certainty. Writing for The North American Review in Christmas of 1928, Norris condemns America’s “essay in extermination” wrought by Prohibition.

“In a word,” Norris says, “wood alcohol is not ‘poison liquor’. It is simply poison. If it gets into liquor, the liquor is poisoned. So these Americans died not of poison liquor but of poisoned liquor. Who poisoned it?” He denies that it is “The Government.” Nevertheless, he sees the ubiquity of wood alcohol poisonings as “a serious indictment of Prohibition before the court of public opinion.” Addicts’ access to unsafe alcohol accelerates an existing danger: “Death by alcoholism means death by excess drinking of alcohol, encouraged and accelerated more or less by sundry poisons put into active service by our benevolent Government.”

Norris is something of a moderate when it comes to his views on Prohibition. He’s at once keen to stress that “these denaturants were originally added to the alcohol under Government control and connivance.” But (perhaps due to his governmental position) he is tactful in his assignation of blame. “But let us not blame the Government too harshly. Something must be added to grain alcohol to prevent its being all drunk away and thereby denied to legitimate industry and business.” Rather, Norris blames the system itself: a moral philosophy of prohibition that drives the drunk and the desperate toward noxious materials the government is perfectly willing to let them consume.

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Norris reveals how New York of the 1920’s viewed certain populations as disposable. By entering the sphere of immorality, alcoholics, in the eyes of the Coolidge administration, forfeited their right to life. It’s telling that, even in death, there are two rules: one related to “respectable drunks” and one for the degenerates.  As Norris writes, “Private physicians will rarely make such a report and expose their deceased customers to the indignity of a post-mortem examination, [but] will prefer to ascribe death to other “natural causes” when they can, in the case of clients in good standing or society.”

Norris’s essay reminds us that moral outrage over perceived danger—and a concern for the reality of human life—don’t necessarily go hand in hand. Especially when those lives lost are not “in good standing” in the society in which they live.

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10 Things You Should Know About Prohibition

By: Evan Andrews

Updated: February 22, 2019 | Original: January 16, 2015

1. Prohibition had been tried before.

In the early 19th century, religious revivalists and early teetotaler groups like the American Temperance Society campaigned relentlessly against what they viewed as a nationwide scourge of drunkenness. The activists scored a major victory in 1851 when the Maine legislature passed a statewide prohibition on selling alcohol.

A dozen other states soon instituted “Maine Laws” of their own, only to repeal them a few years later after widespread opposition and riots from grog-loving citizens (Kansas later instituted a separate ban in 1881). Calls for a “dry” America continued into the 1910s when deep-pocketed and politically connected groups such as the Anti-Saloon League and the Women’s Christian Temperance Union gained widespread support for anti-alcohol legislation on Capitol Hill.

2. World War I helped turn the nation in favor of Prohibition.

Prohibition was all but sealed by the time the United States entered World War I in 1917, but the conflict served as one of the last nails in the coffin of legalized alcohol. Dry advocates argued that the barley used in brewing beer could be made into bread to feed American soldiers and war-ravaged Europeans, and they succeeded in winning wartime bans on strong drinks.

Anti-alcohol crusaders were often fueled by xenophobia, and the war allowed them to paint America’s largely German brewing industry as a threat. “We have German enemies in this country, too,” one temperance politician argued. “And the worst of all our German enemies, the most treacherous, the most menacing, are Pabst, Schlitz, Blatz and Miller.”

3. It wasn’t illegal to drink alcohol during Prohibition.

The 18th Amendment only forbade the “manufacture, sale and transportation of intoxicating liquors”—not their consumption. By law, any wine, beer or spirits Americans had stashed away in January 1920 were theirs to keep and enjoy in the privacy of their homes. For most, this amounted to only a few bottles, but some affluent drinkers built cavernous wine cellars and even bought out whole liquor store inventories to ensure they had healthy stockpiles of legal hooch.

4. Some states refused to enforce Prohibition.

Along with creating an army of federal agents, the 18th Amendment and the Volstead Act stipulated that individual states should enforce Prohibition within their own borders. Governors resented the added strain on their public coffers, however, and many neglected to appropriate any money toward policing the alcohol ban. Maryland never even enacted an enforcement code, and eventually earned a reputation as one of the most stubbornly anti-Prohibition states in the Union.

New York followed suit and repealed its measures in 1923, and other states grew increasingly lackadaisical as the decade wore on. “National prohibition went into legal effect upward of six years ago,” Maryland Senator William Cabell Bruce told Congress in the mid-1920s, “but it can be truly said that, except to a highly qualified extent, it has never gone into practical effect at all.”

Why Ice Cream Soared in Popularity During Prohibition

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The 13‑year ban on beer production during Prohibition forced America’s biggest brewers to find creative ways to remain in business.

See All The Crafty Ways Americans Hid Alcohol During Prohibition

During the 13 dry years of Prohibition, sneaky Americans went to great lengths to conceal their alcohol consumption from law enforcement.

5. Drug stores continued selling alcohol as “medicine.”

The Volstead Act included a few interesting exceptions to the ban on distributing alcohol. Sacramental wine was still permitted for religious purposes (the number of questionable rabbis and priests soon skyrocketed), and drug stores were allowed to sell “medicinal whiskey” to treat everything from toothaches to the flu. With a physician’s prescription, “patients” could legally buy a pint of hard liquor every ten days. This pharmaceutical booze often came with seemingly laughable doctor’s orders such as “Take three ounces every hour for stimulant until stimulated.” Many speakeasies eventually operated under the guise of being pharmacies, and legitimate chains flourished. According to Prohibition historian Daniel Okrent, windfalls from legal alcohol sales helped the drug store chain Walgreens grow from around 20 locations to more than 500 during the 1920s.

6. Winemakers and brewers found creative ways to stay afloat.

While many small distilleries and breweries continued to operate in secret during Prohibition, the rest had to either shut their doors or find new uses for their factories. Yuengling and Anheuser Busch both refitted their breweries to make ice cream, while Coors doubled down on the production of pottery and ceramics. Others produced “near beer”—a legal brew that contained less than 0.5 percent alcohol. The lion’s share of brewers kept the lights on by peddling malt syrup, a legally dubious extract that could be easily made into beer by adding water and yeast and allowing time for fermentation. Winemakers followed a similar route by selling chunks of grape concentrate called “wine bricks.”

7. Thousands died from drinking tainted liquor.

Enterprising bootleggers produced millions of gallons of “bathtub gin” and rotgut moonshine during Prohibition. This illicit hooch had a famously foul taste, and those desperate enough to drink it also ran the risk of being struck blind or even poisoned. The most deadly tinctures contained industrial alcohol originally made for use in fuels and medical supplies.

The federal government required companies to denature industrial alcohol to make it undrinkable as early as 1906, but during Prohibition, it ordered them to add quinine, methyl alcohol and other toxic chemicals as a further deterrent. Coupled with the other low-quality products on offer from bootleggers, this tainted booze may have killed more than 10,000 people before the repeal of the 18th Amendment.

8. The Great Depression helped fuel calls for repeal.

By the late 1920s, Americans were spending more money than ever on black-market booze. New York City boasted more than 30,000 speakeasies, and Detroit’s alcohol trade was second only to the auto industry in its contribution to the economy. With the country bogged down by the Great Depression, anti-Prohibition activists argued that potential savings and tax revenue from alcohol were too precious to ignore. The public agreed.

After Franklin D. Roosevelt called for a repeal during the 1932 presidential campaign, he won the election in a landslide. Prohibition was dead a year later when a majority of states ratified the 21st Amendment repealing the 18th. In New Orleans, the decision was honored with 20 minutes of celebratory cannon fire. Roosevelt supposedly marked the occasion by downing a dirty martini.

9. Drinking decreased during Prohibition.

The “Roaring Twenties” and the Prohibition era are often associated with unchecked use and abuse of alcohol, yet the statistics tell a different tale. According to a study conducted by M.I.T. and Boston University economists in the early 1990s, alcohol consumption actually fell by as much as 70 percent during the early years of the “noble experiment.” The levels jumped significantly in the late-1920s as support for the law waned, but they remained 30 percent lower than their pre-Prohibition levels for several years after the passage of the 21st Amendment.

10. It continues in some parts of the country to this day.

Even after the repeal of Prohibition, some states maintained a ban on alcohol within their own borders. Kansas and Oklahoma remained dry until 1948 and 1959, respectively, and Mississippi remained alcohol-free until 1966—a full 33 years after the passage of the 21st Amendment. To this day, 10 states still contain counties where alcohol sales are prohibited outright.

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Home — Essay Samples — History — Prohibition — Argumentative Essay About Prohibition

Argumentative Essay About Prohibition

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This Month in Business History

Prohibition begins.

• Introduction
• The Year 2000 : Y2K
• Salmon P. Chase, Lincoln's Secretary of the Treasury Born
• Alexander Hamilton, First Secretary of the Treasury Born
• Albert Gallatin, the 4th Secretary of the Treasury Born
• Standard Oil Established
• Labor Leader Samuel Gompers Born
• Woolworth's Five and Dime
• The Flint, Michigan, Sit-Down Strike
• First Bank of the United States Chartered
• Department of Commerce Founded
• Patent for the Air Conditioner Issued to Willis H. Carrier
• Frances Perkins became the First Female Cabinet Member
• Production on the Sholes and Glidden Type-Writer Began
• The Triangle Shirtwaist Fire
• Debut of the Standard & Poors 500 Index
• Founding of the Department of Labor
• Cesar Chavez: Labor Leader Born
• 1933 Bank Holiday
• Income Tax Day
• Banker J. P. Morgan Born
• The Founding of Apple Computer, Inc.
• United States Mint Founded
• Dolores Huerta, Labor Activist Born
• A. Philip Randolph, Labor & Civil Rights Activist Born
• Completion of the Transcontinental Railroad
• Dow Jones Industrial Average First Published
• First Fortune 500 List Published
• Nannie Helen Burroughs Born
• World’s First Coca-Cola was Served
• CNN Launched 6/1/1980
• Black Wall Street in Tulsa, OK Destroyed on 6/1/1921
• Fair Labor Standards Act Signed
• Signing of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934
• Founding of the Bureau of Labor Statistics
• Alonzo Herndon, Founder of Atlanta Life Born
• Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) Established
• Founding of The International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union (ILGWU)
• National System of Interstate and Defense Highways Act Signed into Law
• Fireworks: Beyond the Fourth of July
• Dun & Bradstreet Founded
• ZIP Code Introduced
• Bretton Woods Conference & the Birth of the IMF and World Bank
• Renewal of the Second Bank of the United States Vetoed
• Sherman Anti-Trust Act Signed into Law
• The Lanham Act Lays the Foundation for Modern Trademark Law
• Butterfield Overland Mail Awarded Contract for Western Mail Delivery
• The Whiskey Rebellion
• Opening of the Panama Canal
• The Bell System
• Founding of the National Labor Union and the 1st National Call for a 8-Hour Work Day
• United Farm Workers Organizing Committee Recognized by AFL-CIO
• Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters Union Formed
• Homeowners Insurance
• The Panic of 1873
• Patent for the XEROX Machine Issued
• John Merrick, Entrepreneur and Community Leader, Born
• Patent for the Cash Register Issued
• New York City's Independent Subway System Opened
• Walter P. Reuther, Labor Leader, Born
• Opening of the Erie Canal
• The Black Monday Stock Market Crash
• Clayton Antitrust Act Enacted
• Birth of Ybor City, the Cigar Capital of the World
• Maggie L. Walker, First Black Woman to Charter a Bank
• Macy's Thanksgving Parade
• Industrialist Andrew Carnegie Born
• The Day of Two Noons
• Hetty Green, the “Witch of Wall Street” was Born
• Labor Activist Mother Jones Dies
• Ida Tarbell, Author of "History of the Standard Oil Company" was Born
• The Man Who Saved Christmas
• The Game of Monopoly is Patented
• Federal Reserve Act Signed
• Cosmetic Entrepreneur Elizabeth Arden Born
• Formation of the American Federation of Labor

Business Reference : Ask a Librarian

Have a question? Need assistance? Use our online form to ask a librarian for help.

Authors: Ellen Terrell, Business Librarian, Science & Business Reading Room

Note: This was originally published as a blog post on Inside Adams blog but has been modified for this entry.

Created: February 12, 2014

Last Updated:   December 2023

The U.S. has always had an uneasy relationship with alcohol and attempts to curb alcohol started long before the 18th Amendment. In 1826 the first of the temperance societies, American Temperance Society (ATS), formed. While it had some success, it wasn’t until the proliferation of saloons after the Civil War that the temperance movement gained more traction. In 1873 the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) was founded and the temperance movement got its most forceful voice. The histories of the temperance movement and the women’s movement were often linked, which explains why the WCTU originally proposed the ban of alcohol as a method for preventing abuse from alcoholic husbands. The WCTU spent many years building the movement though education and local and state laws, and in 1881 had a big success – Kansas included a ban on alcohol in their state constitution. It is at this time that Carrie Nation came to prominence by attacking saloons with a hatchet. However, saloons still maintained their popularity though that popularity was on the decline during the Progressive Era (1890–1920) when the hostility toward saloons became widespread. The push for prohibition gained momentum, often with women and Protestant congregations leading the way.

World War I came and with it, a temporary prohibition on alcohol production. There was also a pronounced anti-German sentiment pushed by the Anti-Saloon League and since many brewers were German and often the loudest opponents of prohibition, this temporary situation dealt a serious blow to the anti-Prohibition forces. The support for a ban on alcohol grew. On December 18, 1917 a constitutional amendment to prohibit alcohol was proposed in the Senate, and in October 1919 Congress passed the Volstead Act (National Prohibition Act), which was the enabling legislation that set down the rules for enforcing the ban on alcohol and defined the types of alcoholic beverages to be prohibited. The 18th Amendment was ratified on January 16, 1919 and the country went dry at midnight on January 17, 1920.

Prior to Prohibition various types of alcohol were produced all over the country. The chart above, which originally ran in my A Chart is Worth a Thousand Words post , shows how widespread production of alcohol was in the U.S., as well as the variety that was produced. (You can see vestiges of the way things were – California was and is, the biggest wine area in the U.S. and Kentucky and Tennessee are where to go for bourbon and whiskey.) Of course alcohol didn’t entirely go away with Prohibition. The wealthy, including many politicians, bought out the inventories of the retailers and wholesalers, and of course there were the bootleggers who also helped keep the supply flowing.

Eventually Prohibition – and the violence surrounding it – wore out its welcome. By 1930 the anti-Prohibition forces had strengthened their hand in Congress and the need for tax revenues at the federal level during the Depression hastened Prohibition’s demise. President Franklin Roosevelt signed the Cullen–Harrison Act, an amendment to the Volstead Act, on March 22, 1933, allowing for the production of some beer and wine and on December 5, 1933 the 21st Amendment, which repealed the 18th Amendment, was ratified. Since many places still retained enough knowledge and people that worked in the industry prior to Prohibition, they were able to pick up production relatively easily in 1934, although that was not the case everywhere. New federal rules and regulations were a big barrier to re-entry as were the still simmering anti-alcohol sentiments evidenced in various restrictions that were in place in many communities. The years after Prohibition saw production become less geographically diverse than it had been prior to prohibition.

Trade literature and publications like Mida’s Criterion , Bonfort’s Wine & Spirit Circular , Biles’ Whiskey Price List , Brewers’ Almanac , Modern Brewery Age , and the Year Book of the United States Brewers’ Association would be interesting resources to look at Prohibition as events unfolded.

Print Resources

The following materials link to fuller bibliographic information in the Library of Congress Online Catalog . Links to digital content are provided when available.

Library of Congress Digital Resources

The following resources created or digitized by the Library of Congress  can be used to find out more about the people and events of the day.

Internet Resources

These freely available online resources provide additional information on the topic. Many states and universities have developed content that looks at Prohibition in the states and local communities, so looking on the wider internet can be helpful for understanding the impact of Prohibition on the local level.

• American Archive of Public Broadcasting External This is a project between the Library of Congress and GBH in Boston to preserve for posterity the most significant public television and radio programs of the past 60 years. It includes: Constitutional Minutes; Prohibition; 111 A Second Look; Remembering Prohibition (2013) William Kennedy's Prohibition Story

At the end of each session of Congress, all of the daily editions are collected, re-paginated, and re-indexed into a permanent, bound edition. This permanent edition, referred to as the Congressional Record (Bound Edition), is made up of one volume per session of Congress, with each volume published in multiple parts, each part containing approximately 10 to 20 days of Congressional proceedings. The primary ways in which the bound edition differs from the daily edition are continuous pagination somewhat edited, revised, and rearranged text and the dropping of the prefixes H, S, and E before page numbers.

When searching over the Congressional Record (Bound Edition) on govinfo, you will be searching over the official business for each day's proceedings of Congress. This includes the House, Senate, and Extensions of remarks sections.

Searches in govinfo over Congressional Record (Bound Edition) from 1999 forward will not search over other sections which are part of the official printed edition. These include the History of Bills, the compilation of Daily Digests, the resume of all business transacted during the entire Congress, and the subject index to the Bound Edition.

Volumes 144 (1998) and prior are made available as digitized versions of the Congressional Record (Bound Edition) created as a result of a partnership between GPO and the Library of Congress. These volumes include all parts of the official printed edition.

• Digitized newspapers (from Veridian) External This source has links to digital repositories of newspapers (formerly Elephind).

• Prohibition External This is the PBS webpage for the Ken Burns documentary about Prohibition.
• The Volstead Act (National Archives) This is a short essay from the National Archives and includes links to teaching resources related to the Amendments and other related activities.
• The Eighteenth Amendment and National Prohibition This series from the Congressional Research Service and as companion to the series The Twenty-First Amendment and the End of Prohibition. Part 1: Introduction (LSB10985) Part 2: The Colonial Era (LSB10986) Part 3: Temperance Movements (LSB10987) Part 4: Early Prohibition Laws (LSB10988). Part 5: Proposal and Ratification (LSB10989) Part 6: Supreme Court Cases (LSB10990) Part 7: Repeal (LSB10991)
• The Twenty-First Amendment and the End of Prohibition This is a 2023 series from the Congressional Research Service and is a companion to The Eighteenth Amendment and National Prohibition. Part 1: Introduction (LSB11065) Part 2: The Wickersham Commission and the Repeal Movement (LSB11066) Part 3: Drafting and State Ratification (LSB11067) Part 4: State Power over Alcohol and the Commerce Clause (LSB11068) Part 5: State Power over Alcohol and Individual Rights (LSB11069) Part 6: State and Federal Regulation of Alcohol Sales (LSB11070)

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Collection Woodrow Wilson Papers

“we must get busy and strike at the root of the evil—and strike hard:” the debate over prohibition in letters to wilson.

File 144 in Series 4 of the Woodrow Wilson Papers chronicles the debate surrounding the passage of the Eighteenth Amendment, which banned the manufacture, transportation, and sale of intoxicating liquors. The amendment was proposed in Congress in 1917 and was ratified in January 1919. File 144 contains 825 images in two sections: May 1914 to June 1918 and July 1918 to 1920 and undated . Letters and telegrams came from individuals as well as organizations such as the Anti-Saloon League of America , National Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, and United States Brewers Association . Many letter writers attached documents, including a reprint titled “Must There Be Liquor in the Trenches?” by Nolan R. Best . There are several petitions and form-letter campaigns in the file, including one from anti-Prohibition labor organizations . Also included is a series of pro-Prohibition petitions from women in Kansas and surrounding states. As part of that campaign, the women of the Chanute Methodist Episcopal Church urged Wilson to remove all liquor from the White House. Wilson responded to several letters, though he often directed his secretary to refuse requests for visits or statements. As Wilson stated, “it is literally impossible for me to see these people.”

Prohibition activists wrote Wilson of the evils of liquor, often sharing their personal stories. Katie Low Hall passionately described how liquor robbed her brother of his life: “O! if we had only been under National Prohibition when Ernest was growing up, what a noble citizen he would have been.” P. J. Maveely and I. Garland Penn of the Freedmen’s Aid Society Methodist Episcopal Church declared in their telegram that the “saloon business [is] in [a] class by itself because it is destructive to the individual, the family, and nation.”

Opponents of the “Bone Dry Amendment” pointed to its violation of property rights and the economic hardship of job losses. E. Bick , who presided over the United Liquor Dealers’ Association, argued that “such legislation confiscates property rights without compensation.”  William F. Gude , chair of the District of Columbia Referendum Association, agreed, declaring that Prohibitionists are fighting for property “to be condemned without compensation, where the individual liberty is to be invaded and all without an opportunity for consideration.” Confiscation of property was brought up as well by George W. Folsom , a mail order printer, who appealed to Wilson “man to man to temper your justice with mercy and heedless of clamor” and give people time to save money and get a different job. Folsom’s letter, as well as one from the Amalgamated Lithographers of America , represent the large number of related businesses and industries that lobbied against the amendment. For others, the economic impact of Prohibition was deeply personal. Mrs. Perch of Washington, D.C., wrote a stirring letter about its threat to her family: “I’m a hard working respectable Women [sic] . . . I would loose my Life Savings wich [sic] my Husband put in Saloon Business.”

When World War I began in 1917, the debate shifted. Samuel Gompers declared that Prohibition would be the “greatest cause of dissension and discontent among our people,” especially in times of war “when it most essential that there shall be unity of spirit and action among the people of our country.” Wilson told his secretary to “please acknowledge and say I appreciate the very great weight of the argument he uses.” This sentiment is repeated by F. C. Finkle who stated that “we can readily see how such a thing will be used by the enemies of this country to refute and belittle the splendid utterances in your own messages in behalf of American Liberty and universal Democracy.”  Texas governor James E. Ferguson agreed.

Loyalty was itself in question as both sides hurled accusations against each other of being pro-German. Adrien Blanchard Herzog called Prohibitionists “incorrigible fanatics” who pushed “their very latest pro-German scheme to disgust and discourage the American people with the war and its further prosecution.” By contrast, W. G. Beasley , superintendent of the Missouri Anti-Saloon League, declared that “the German American Alliance has been nothing but the National Brewer association under another name and the most of the men who run the Brewers are Germans who are not citizens of this country.” Anti-German sentiment was rife, but a broader nativism entered some arguments as well. E. J. Larsen spoke of foreign labor that drinks to excess and which is “troublesome enough in a sober condition.” However, Arthur Brisbane asserted that “workers here as in other countries should be allowed to use in their discretion the stimulants which please them, which they think beneficial and to which they have the right as free men—regardless of the opinions of well meaning meddlers.”

After the war, Wilson debated with his cabinet on what to do now that the “problem therefore becomes purely one of temperance.” After hearing the arguments against, Wilson stated that “it may be that we are doing the brewers an injustice, but I must say I cannot see it . . . I do not believe that they have a convincing case.” James J. Fitzgerald pleaded that “there is a great difference between temperance and hysterical prohibition” as “doctors from all over Boston and greater Boston are prescribing liquors of all kinds to head off the terrible Influenza epidemic.” Ferdinand W. Peck blamed women’s suffrage for the popularity of Prohibition. Möerlbach Brewing Company treasurer M. S. McMahon accused the “paid prohibitionist or the dry Senators and Congressmen in Washington, who are very wet at home.” He called out the amendment for its censure of the working class stating that “the laboring man denied the personal privilege of a drink of liquor while the rich man has all he wants.” Joseph Proebstle , general financial secretary of the International Union of United Brewery, Flour, Cereal, and Soft Drink Workers of America, agreed, declaring that “under the provisions of the bill a rich man may hold in his cellar hundred thousand dollars’ worth of whiskey, brandy, and wine, for himself and his friends for the balance of his natural life; and a working man may not secure a glass of beer after his hard and arduous day’s labor.”

Check out the Records of the Bureau of Prohibition at the National Archives and the Library of Congress research guide on the Eighteenth Amendment. For educators, the National Archives has a resource guide on the Volstead Act and the Library of Congress provides Prohibition: A Case Study of Progressive Reform .

Title quotation from W. R. Calverley to Woodrow Wilson, June 7, 1918 .

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Judge Denies Trump’s Recusal Bid, Rebuking Him for Claiming Harris Ties

Justice Juan M. Merchan, who oversaw the trial that led to Donald J. Trump’s conviction, declined for a third time to step aside from the case, dismissing claims from defense lawyers that he had a conflict of interest.

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By Kate Christobek and Ben Protess

• Aug. 14, 2024

The judge who oversaw Donald J. Trump’s Manhattan criminal trial declined for a third time to step aside from the case, rebuking the former president’s lawyers for claiming that the judge had a distant yet problematic connection to Vice President Kamala Harris.

In a three-page decision dated Tuesday, the judge, Justice Juan M. Merchan, slammed Mr. Trump’s filing seeking his recusal as “rife with inaccuracies” and repetitive, and dismissed the idea that he had any conflict of interest.

Mr. Trump’s lawyers had argued that the judge’s daughter “has a longstanding relationship with Harris” — a claim her colleagues have disputed — and cited her “work for political campaigns” as a Democratic consultant. But prosecutors with the Manhattan district attorney’s office, which secured Mr. Trump’s conviction in May on felony charges of falsifying business records , called his request “a vexatious and frivolous attempt to relitigate” an issue that Justice Merchan had already twice dismissed.

Justice Merchan, a moderate Democrat who was once a registered Republican, rejected Mr. Trump’s initial bid to oust him last year and did so again in April , on the first day of trial. The judge, who has no direct ties to Ms. Harris, cited a state advisory committee on judicial ethics, which determined that his impartiality could not reasonably be questioned based on his daughter’s interests.

Mr. Trump, who has stoked right-wing furor against the judge’s daughter, Loren Merchan, renewed the recusal request once President Biden abandoned his presidential campaign and Ms. Harris became the presumptive Democratic nominee. She is now locked in a tight race with Mr. Trump, who has falsely portrayed his conviction as a Democratic plot to foil his campaign.

“Stated plainly, defendant’s arguments are nothing more than a repetition of stale and unsubstantiated claims,” Justice Merchan wrote in his latest ruling. Underscoring his frustration with the defense’s repetitive filings, he added, “this court now reiterates for the third time, that which should already be clear — innuendo and mischaracterizations do not a conflict create. Recusal is therefore not necessary, much less required.”

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Supreme Court rejects Biden administration’s request to enforce new civil rights protections for LGBTQ+ students

August 16, 2024, 5:46 PM

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(CNN) — The Supreme Court on Friday turned down a request from the Biden administration to enforce parts of a new federal rule meant to protect LGBTQ+ and pregnant students from discrimination in 10 states where the rule was put on hold by federal judges.

The court announced its decision in an unsigned order that drew a partial dissent from the court’s three liberals and conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch.

The Supreme Court’s order is the latest blow to the Biden administration on the issue, which has suffered a series of setbacks with federal courts blocking a rule that was intended to protect transgender students. Much of the rule remains blocked in about half of the nation.

The sweeping rule issued in April clarified that Title IX’s ban on “sex” discrimination in schools covers discrimination based on gender identity, sexual orientation and “pregnancy or related conditions.” Other provisions address protections for pregnant and postpartum students, including access to lactation spaces and prohibitions on retaliation. Compliance with Title IX, which was enacted in 1972, is required for schools that receive federal aid.

All nine justices agreed to block the Biden administration’s clarification of sex discrimination. But those who dissented would have allowed other, less contested provisions of the new rule to take effect in the 10 states at issue.

Blocking enforcement of the “entire rule appears to go beyond what was necessary,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in dissent.

Pointing to provisions of the rule that deal with pregnancy discrimination or preemployment inquiries about a candidate’s marital status, Sotomayor said that the states “offer nothing to justify preventing the government from enforcing those parts of the rule.”

But the court’s brief per curiam opinion said that it was the government’s burden to demonstrate that those provisions could be separated from the ones that were challenged and “on this limited record … the Government has not provided this Court a sufficient basis to disturb the lower courts’ interim conclusions.”

Gorsuch’s decision to join Sotomayor’s partial dissent was notable, in part because he wrote a landmark majority opinion in 2020 that said gay and transgender Americans in the workplace should be protected from discrimination based on their “sex.”

The Supreme Court’s order means that the entire new rule will remain on hold for now in Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana, Virginia, West Virginia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana and Idaho. The rule is also blocked in 16 states as part of other lawsuits.

Technical legal fight could have widespread impact

Two separate lawsuits brought by the Republican attorneys general of the 10 states claimed that three specific provisions of the new rule are unlawful: the provision that expands the scope of “sex;” a provision that would bar schools from disallowing transgender students from using bathrooms or locker rooms consistent with their gender identity; and a provision clarifying that the law’s prohibition on “hostile-environment harassment” could implicate anti-trans conduct.

But in siding with the Republicans, two federal judges blocked enforcement in the 10 states of not just those three provisions but the entire new rule while the lawsuits moved forward. Federal appeals courts in New Orleans and Cincinnati turned down the Biden administration’s requests to scale back those injunctions so that the new rule could be partially enforced in the states, leading the federal government to ask the high court to intervene.

Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar, who oversees appeals on behalf of the federal government, wrote in court papers last month that the injunctions were overbroad and should have been limited to the provisions that the states said would cause them “irreparable harm.” She described the rule as being an “omnibus rule” with various parts that could be severed by federal judges examining the rule’s legality.

She asked the high court to allow the Department of Education to enforce provisions that prohibit discrimination based on pregnancy or pregnancy-related conditions like childbirth, termination of pregnancy or recovery from pregnancy. The states challenging the changes, Prelogar told the court, “do not contend – and the lower courts did not purport to hold – that those provisions conflict with Title IX, the Constitution, or any other federal law.”

She also pointed to an order issued by the Supreme Court earlier this year in a case concerning Idaho’s ban on gender-affirming care for trans youth. In that matter, the court allowed the state to partially enforce the ban, scaling back a sweeping order issued by a federal judge that would have blocked its enforcement.

A concurrence from Gorsuch criticizing the broad injunction in that case buttresses the federal government’s request in the Title IX matter, the solicitor general argued. In other words, in a case that worked against transgender students, the Supreme Court just recently limited lower courts from stepping in with far-reaching orders intended to block enforcement.

“Like the district court in (the Idaho case),” Prelogar wrote, the lower courts in the Title IX cases “‘clearly strayed from equity’s traditional bounds’ … by enjoining provisions that respondents had not challenged and that the court had not held to be likely unlawful.”

The legal fight is technical but has the potential for widespread impact. In a major win for LGBTQ rights, the Supreme Court’s 2020 ruling that a federal law barring workplace discrimination on the basis of “sex” necessarily offered protection for gay and transgender workers, too. That ruling was limited to the workplace, but other federal anti-discrimination laws – including Title IX – use nearly identical language. The big-picture question that will ultimately reach the Supreme Court is whether its logic in the workplace ruling should apply more broadly.

But in the current cases pending before the high court related to the new Title IX rules, Prelogar argued the states never even claimed they would be harmed by the change in definition. Instead, she said, they were focused on other provisions that implicated bathroom and pronoun policies. The states, she wrote, “have never suggested that they wish to violate the first provision … by punishing or excluding transgender students ‘simply for being … transgender.’”

This story has been updated with additional details.

The-CNN-Wire ™ & © 2024 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.

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