The
prohibition movement in the United States began in the early 1800s
and by 1850 several states had passed laws that restricted or prevented
people drinking alcohol. Early campaigners for prohibition included
William Lloyd Garrison, Frances
E. Willard, Anna Howard Shaw, Carry
Nation, Mary Lease and Ida
Wise Smith.
Neal
Dow, a prosperous businessman in Portland, Maine, established
the Young Men's Abstinence Society. He also led the campaign that
resulted in Maine passing the nation's first prohibition
law in 1846.
During
the 19th century, two powerful pressure groups, the Anti-Saloon
League and the Women's Christian Temperance
Union were established in America. In 1869 members of the temperance
movement formed the Prohibition Party.
Three years later James Black of Pennsylvania
became the party's candidate for the presidency. However he won only
5,608 votes.
In
1879 John St. John was
elected governor of Kansas. Four years later he succeeded in making
Kansas the first state to outlaw alcohol by constitutional amendment.
This action made him the hero of the temperance movement and in 1884
the Prohibition Party chose
St. John as their presidential candidate.
St.
John won only 150,369 votes in the election but it was a great improvement
on previous candidates. He also took valuable votes from the Republican
Party candidate, James Blaine, and
helped Grover Cleveland of the Democratic
Party to win victory. Cleveland was the first Democrat to become
president since the Civil War. One
newspaper described him as a "Judas Iscariot" and Republicans
in over a hundred towns burned his effigy.
Other
presidential candidates included Clinton Bowen Fisk (1888 - 249,506),
John Bidwell (1892 - 264,133), Joshua Levering (1896 - 132,007), John
Granville Woolley (1900 - 208,914), Silas Comfort Swallow (1904 -258,536),
Eugene Wilder Chafin (1908 - 253,840 and 1912 - 206,275) and James
Franklin Hanly (1916 - 220,506).
During the First World War most people considered
it to be unpatriotic to use much needed grain to produce alcohol.
Also, several of the large brewers and distillers were of German origin.
Many business leaders believed their workers would be more productive
if alcohol could be withheld with them. John
D. Rockefeller, alone, donated over $350,000 into the Anti-Saloon
League.
Opinion on prohibition began to change and by January, 1919, 75% of
the states in America had approved the 18th Amendment which prohibited
the "sale or transportation of intoxicating liquors". This
became the law of the land when the Volstead
Act was passed in 1920.
One
of the consequences of the National Prohibition Act was the development
of gangsterism and crime. Enforcement
of prohibition was a difficult task and a growth in illegal drinking
places took place. People called moonshiners distilled alcohol illegally.
Bootleggers sold the alcohol and also imported it from abroad. The
increase in criminal behaviour caused public opinion to turn against
prohibition. In 1933 prohibition was repealed by the adoption of the
21st Amendment.
(1)
Ernest Moore, The Social Value of the
Saloon (July, 1897)
The saloonkeeper is the only man who keeps open house in the ward.
It is his business to entertain. It does not matter that he does not
select his guests; that convention is useless among them. In fact,
his democracy is one element of his strength. His face is the common
meeting ground of his neighbors - and he supplies the stimulus which
renders social life possible; there is an accretion of intelligence
that comes to him in his business. He hears the best stories. He is
the first to get accurate information as to the latest political deals
and social mysteries. The common talk of the day passes through his
ears and he is known to retain that which is the most interesting.
There is another primal need which the saloon supplies and in most
cases supplies well. It is a food-distributing centre - a place where
a hungry man can get as much as he wants to eat and drink for a small
price. As a rule the food is notoriously good and the price notoriously
cheap. That the saloon feeds thousands and feeds them well no one
will deny who has passed the middle of the day there.
It is hardly necessary to enlarge further upon the evils of the saloon.
They are many and grave, and cry out to society for proper consideration.
But proper consideration involves a whole and not a half truth, and
the whole truth involves its own power of proper action. In the absence
of higher forms of social stimulus and larger social life, the saloon
will continue to function in society, and for that great part of humanity
which does not possess a more adequate form of social expression.
(2)
Roy Haynes, speech
to the Women's Christian
Temperance Union (26th January, 1927)
We must remember that prohibition
is the greatest effort
for human advancement and betterment ever attempted in history, and
that while the nearest approach, perhaps, was the destruction of human
slavery, let us not forget that that revolutionary policy affected
only one section of the nation - whereas the national prohibition
policy called for changing the habits and customs of the people in
all sections of the nation.
Therefore, the most gratifying
and enheartening feature of the situation is that so large a majority
of our people respect the Constitution and observe this law, and this
in spite of the fact that there is a very considerable number of citizens
of influence and position who, by nonobservance, are embarrassing
the government in the promotion of its great task.
But what has the experience
of these seven years taught us? We have learned: (1) size of the task;
(2) power of propaganda; (3) inadequacy of our legislation; (4) not
enough emphasis on observance; (5) who are the friends and who are
the foes, and the real plans of the latter; (6) in spite of all, real
progress is being achieved; (7) how to measure progress.
That is, in brief, my
summary of the outstanding lessons learned in these seven years. That
is the retrospect. What of the
prospect for the future?
Our campaign for the immediate
future must be based upon the acknowledgment of but one statement
of the whole issue, namely - Is the nation able to enforce its own
laws - its own charter - in the face of an unsympathetic and actively
hostile minority?
(3)
Felix von Luckner, a German visitor to the United States, wrote about
his thoughts on Prohibition in 1927.
My first experience with the ways of Prohibition came while we were
being entertained by friends in New York. It was bitterly cold. My
wife and I rode in the rumble seat of the car, while the American
and his wife, bundled in furs, sat in front. Having wrapped my companion
in pillows and blankets so thoroughly that only her nose showed, I
came across another cushion that seemed to hang uselessly on the side.
"Well," I thought, "this is a fine pillow; since everyone
else is so warm and cozy, I might as well do something for my own
comfort. This certainly does no one any good hanging on the wall."
Sitting on it, I gradually noticed a dampness in the neighborhood,
that soon mounted to a veritable flood. The odor of fine brandy told
me I had burst my host's peculiar liquor flask.
In time, I learned that
not everything in America was what it seemed to be. I discovered,
for instance, that a spare tire could be filled with substances other
than air, that one must not look too deeply into certain binoculars,
and that the Teddy Bears that suddenly acquired tremendous popularity
among the ladies very often had hollow metal stomachs.
"But," it might
be asked, "where do all these people get the liquor?" Very
simple. Prohibition has created a new, a universally respected, a
well-beloved, and a very profitable occupation, that of the bootlegger
who takes care of the importation of the forbid- den liquor. Everyone
knows this, even the powers of government. But this profession is
beloved because it is essential, and it is respected because its pursuit
is clothed with an element of danger and with a sporting risk. Now
and then one is caught, that must happen pro forma, and then he must
do time or, if he is wealthy enough, get someone to do time for him.
Yet it is undeniable that
Prohibition has in some respects been signally successful. The filthy
saloons, the gin mills which formerly flourished on every corner and
in which the laborer once drank off half his wages, have disappeared.
Now, he can instead buy his own car and ride off for a weekend or
a few days with his wife and children in the country or at the sea.
But, on the other hand, a great deal of poison and methyl alcohol
has taken the place of the good old pure whiskey.
The number of crimes and
misdemeanors that originated in drunkenness has declined. But, by
contrast, a large part of the population has become accustomed to
disregard and to violate the law without thinking. The worst is, that
precisely as a consequence of the law, the taste for alcohol has spread
ever more widely among the youth. The
sporting attraction of the forbidden and the dangerous leads to violations.
My observations have convinced me that many fewer would drink were
it not illegal.
And how, it will be asked,
did this law get onto the statute books? Through the war. In America
there was long a well-
developed temperance movement and many individual states already had
Prohibition laws. During the war it was not difficult to extend the
force of those laws to the whole of the United States. Prohibition
was at first introduced only for the period of the war. For the mass
of the people it was very surprising when Congress in 1920 adopted
the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which made it a crime
to manufacture, transport, or sell intoxicating liquor. The dry states
had imposed their will on the whole Union.
(4)
Jack London, John Barleycorn (1913)
I achieved a condition in which my body was never free from alcohol.
Nor did I permit myself to be away from alcohol. If I travelled to
out-of-the-way places, I declined to run the risk of finding them
dry. I took a quart, or several quarts, along in my grip. I was carrying
a beautiful alcoholic conflagration around with me. The thing fed
on its own heat and flamed the fiercer. There was no time in all my
waking time, that I didn't want a drink.
(5)
The autobiographical novel about alcoholism, John Barleycorn,
was used by the Women's Christian Temperance
Union, to promote their campaign. Upton Sinclair
later remarked on the irony of the situation.
That the work (John Barleycorn) of a drinker (Jack London) who had
no intention of stopping drinking should become a major propaganda
piece in the campaign for Prohibition is surely one of the ironies
in the history of alcohol.
(6)
Art McGinley, talking about Eugene
O'Neill in the 1920s.
Gene was a periodic drinker, and once
started wouldn't stop - I guess he couldn't stop - until he was really
sick. He was the most trying morning-after drinker I've ever known.
He would gloom up and not say a word, or else talk of suicide, he
was so disgusted with himself. But when he stopped drinking, he would
work around the clock. I never knew anyone who had so much self-discipline.
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