1920s Alcohol Prohibition

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1920s Alcohol Prohibition

• The Noble Experiment

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Questions

• In a time of modernization, urbanization, and
  progress, why would the U.S. government start
  Prohibition?
• Who would support it? Who would oppose it?

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I. Development of Prohibition

• A. Influences
• 1. The Women's Christian Temperance Union
• 2. Womens suffrage movement
• 3. Progressive Movement reform (i.e. against
  alcohol used in voting fraud)
• 4. Big Business argued that alcohol consumption
  slowed production
• 5. Anti-immigration groups argued that immigrants
  were spreading the use of alcohol

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• B. Progression of Prohibition
• 1. In the 1880s, the Prohibition Party was
  created
• 2. By 1905, three American states had already
  outlawed alcohol by 1912, this was up to nine
  states and, by 1916, legal prohibition was
  already in effect in 26 of the 48 states.
• 3. Supported by the anti-German mood of World
  War I, the Anti-Saloon League was created in 1918
• 4. The 18th Amendment and Volstead Act took
  effect in 1920
• Prohibited the manufacture, sale, or
  transportation of intoxicating liquors within,
  the importation thereof into, or the exportation
  thereof from the United States and all territory
  subject to the jurisdiction thereof for beverage
  purposes is hereby prohibited.

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II. Effects of Prohibition

• A. Opposition to Prohibition
• 1. organized opposition was small, but grew as
  negative social effects became apparent
• 2. labor unions and civil liberties activists
  organized to repeal the 18th Amendment
• 3. As Prohibition became more unpopular,
  especially after the beginning of the Great
  Depression, people started voting in wet
  political candidates.

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• B. Black Market
• 1. Prohibition did not create organized crime,
  but it aided their growth in the 1920s
• 2. Crime levels in most urban area went up
• 3. Black market speakeasies drove small
  businesses out only half reopened after
  Prohibition was repealed

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• The St. Valentine's Day massacre was the shooting
  of seven people as part of a Prohibition Era
  conflict between two powerful criminal gangs in
  Chicago, Illinois in the winter of 1929 the
  South Side Italian gang led by Al "Scarface"
  Capone and the North Side Irish/German gang led
  by George 'Bugs' Moran.

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• C. Law and Order
• 1. Alcohol consumption did decline (dropped to an
  average of less then a gallon of alcohol per
  person per year, down from two and a half gallons
  in 1915)
• 2. The underground nature of the black market and
  racketeering (cooperation between police and
  organized crime) made enforcement difficult
• 3. The costs to enforce Prohibition combined
  with the loss in taxes made enforcement difficult

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• D. Prohibition Repealed
• 1. 21st Amendment ratified on Dec. 5, 1933
  repealed (canceled out) the 18th Amendment let
  states decide
• Note 18 states continued to enforce Prohibition
  at the state level

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Interesting Facts About Prohibition

• While the manufacture, sale, and transport of
  alcohol was illegal in the U.S., it was not
  illegal in surrounding countries. Distilleries
  and breweries in Canada, Mexico, and the
  Caribbean flourished as their products were
  either consumed by visiting Americans or
  illegally imported to the U.S.

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• The Klan's resurgence in the 1920s partially
  stemmed from their role as the extreme militant
  wing of the temperance movement. In Arkansas, as
  elsewhere, the newly formed Ku Klux Klan marked
  bootleggers as one of the groups that needed to
  be purged from a morally upright community. In
  1922, 200 Klansmen torched saloons that had
  sprung up in Union County in the wake of the oil
  discovery boom.

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• Mississippi, which went dry in 1907, was the last
  state to repeal prohibition, in 1966.

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• The first beer legally sold in the United States
  after Prohibition was Utica Club of the F.X.
  Matt's Brewery in Utica, New York.

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• Joseph Kennedy, father of John F. Kennedy,
  smuggled alcohol from Canada to the U.S. and
  built a sizable fortune both during and after
  Prohibition.

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http//www.pbs.org/kenburns/prohibition/photos/