Andrew
Volstead, a leading Republican
member of the House of Representatives, was the author of the National
Prohibition Act (also known as the Volstead Act) that was passed by
Congress in 1919. The law prohibited the manufacture, transportation
and sale of beverages containing more than 0.5 per cent alcohol. The
act was condemned by a large number of the American population who
considered it a violation of their constitutional rights.
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 In 1933 prohibition was repealed by the adoption of the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)
Pauline Sabin, Outlook Magazine (8th
June, 1928)
I was one of the women who favoured
prohibition when I heard it discussed in the abstract, but I am now
convinced it has proved a failure. It is true we now longer see the
corner saloon: but in many cases has it not merely moved to the back
of a store, or up or down one flight (of stairs) under the name of
a speakeasy? It is not true that they are making their own gin and
drinking it furtively in their own rooms?
(2)
Frederick Lewis Allen,
Only Yesterday (1931)
The Government provided a force of prohibition agents which in 1920
numbered only 1,520 men and as late as 1930 numbered over 2,836. The
agents' salaries in 1920 mostly ranged between $1,200 and $2,000;
by 1930 they had been munificently raised to range between $2,300
and $2,800. Anybody who believed that men employable at 35 to 40 or
50 dollars a week would surely have the expert technical knowledge
and the diligence to supervise successfully the complicated chemical
operations of industrial-alcohol plants or to outwit the craftiest
devices of smugglers to resist corruption by men whose pockets were
bulging with money, would be ready to believe also in Santa Claus,
perpetual motion and pixies.
(3)
Alec Wilder, songwriter from New York, interviewed in 1970.
I loved speak-easies. If you knew the right ones, you never worried
about being poisoned by bad whisky. I'd kept hearing about a friend
of a friend who had been blinded by bad gin. I guess I was lucky.
The speaks were so romantic. It had that marvellous movie-like quality,
unreality. And the food was great. Although some pretty dreadful things
did occur in them.
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