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Herbert Hoover called it a "noble experiment. " Organized crime found it to be the opportunity of a lifetime. Millions of Americans denounced it as an infringement of their rights. For nearly 14 years - from Jan. 29, 1920, until Dec. 5, 1933 -- the manufacture, transportation, and sale of alcoholic beverages was illegal in the United States. The 18 th, or Prohibition, Amendment to the Constitution was passed by Congress and submitted to the states in 1917. By Jan. 29, 1919, it had been ratified.
Enforcement legislation entitled the National Prohibition Act (or more popularly, the Volstead act, after Representative Andrew J. Volstead of Minnesota) was passed on Oct. 28, 1919, over President Woodrow Wilson's veto. The 18 th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States not only prohibited the "manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors, " but their importation and exportation also. It was adopted after a nationwide crusade by temperance groups, notably the Women's Christian Temperance Union, or WCTU. The amendment was enforced and defined by Congress in the Volstead Act. One result of the amendment was that the production and sale of alcoholic beverages became the province of organized crime.
Americans did not stop drinking, and their demands for liquor were met by wide-scale smuggling and bootlegging, much of which was controlled by such gangs as that led by Al Capone in Chicago. The era of prohibition ended in 1933 when the 18 th Amendment was repealed by the twenty-first Amendment. The stage was set for more than a decade of combat between the "wets" and the "drys" - those determined to keep drinking and those determined to enforce the law. In retrospect, the period has been called the Roaring Twenties and the Jazz Age.
New music appeared along with new dances, a new feminism, and a general relaxation of standards after the rigorous years of World War I. The new mood was in complete contrast to the moral earnestness of many Americans who were determined to remain the ideal "Victorians. " Organized efforts to limit the use of alcoholic beverages began in the United States during the 1820 s. A by-product of the religious revivalism sweeping the nation, Prohibition soon became part of the whole social reform movement that preceded the Civil War. The earliest reformers called for moderation, not total abstinence, but as their movement gained strength it demanded a complete prohibition of all beer, wine, and liquor. The first temperance legislation was passed in Massachusetts in 1838.
Called the " 15 -gallon law, " it prohibited the sale of alcohol in amounts of less than 15 gallons (57 liters). This limited the sale of alcohol to the wealthy. In 1846 Maine passed the first state Prohibition law. By the mid- 1850 s 13 states had such laws, but by 1863 all except Maine had repealed them.
Two major temperance organizations emerged in the decade after the Civil War. The National Prohibition party was founded in 1869 and the Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) in 1874. Partly through their efforts six states adopted Prohibition by 1890. The strongest force behind the movement for national Prohibition, however, was the Anti-Saloon League, founded in 1893. Unlike the Prohibition party, it did not put up candidates for public office. Instead it worked for or against Democratic and Republican candidates, depending on their attitude toward drinking.
The league was successful in getting 33 states to pass restrictive legislation by 1920. Forces favoring Prohibition represented a reaction against changes that were taking place in the United States. Rural and small-town values were being challenged by rapidly industrializing cities. Millions of new immigrants - mostly Roman Catholics - from Eastern and Southern Europe were viewed as a threat by the Protestant majority. Prohibition was an attempt to reassert what were considered traditional American values and to force newer members of the population into a life-style that they were unwilling to accept. Prohibition was enacted because rural, small-town America held the balance of power in state legislatures and in Washington, D.
C. The start of Prohibition found most Americans prosperous and ready for a good time. Many of them had automobiles. Radio was being introduced, and motion pictures and vaudeville were popular. Being forced to stop drinking was completely out of tune with the times. As soon as alcohol became illegal, new sources of supply developed.
Millions of people made their own home brew of wine, beer, or the ever-popular bathtub gin - a concoction made from raw alcohol, water, and flavorings. Prohibition was unable to make alcohol vanish. For those unwilling to make their own, there were plenty of other sources. Illegal saloons called speakeasies soon flourished in every city. They obtained their liquor supplies from a newly emerging big business called organized crime. The old ethnic city gangs found a new and highly rewarding enterprise in smuggling liquor into the United States.
Bootlegging, the illegal manufacturing and selling of liquor, became so profitable that a whole new criminal empire emerged from it. The most famous name in crime was Al Capone, but each city had its own underworld leader, and some cities had several. While organized crime existed in the United States before the establishment of prohibition in 1920, it was narrow in scope, intimately associated with shabby local politics and corrupt police forces. The "noble experiment" of prohibition provided a new level of criminal opportunity that caused organized crime, especially violent forms, to blossom into an important force in American society. With the onset of the Great Depression (1929) and subsequent repeal (1933) of prohibition, the financial base of organized crime narrowed considerably. Many players dropped out; some went into legitimate enterprises or employment; others drifted into conventional criminality.
Bootleggers nevertheless still had wealth and nationwide contacts that had grown out of their bootlegging enterprises. They had substantial investments in restaurants, nightclubs, gambling, and other profitable businesses. In the 1930 s and 1940 s they used their national contacts, diverse interests, and available capita! l to cooperate in a variety of entrepreneurial activities, legal and illegal, such as casino hotels in Las Vegas and the takeover of major labor unions. During the 1920 s, as the conflict over Prohibition grew and lawlessness spread, new political alignments took place. Those opposed to Prohibition (including many of its former allies) began drifting to the Democratic party, while those favoring it voted Republican.
In 1928 the Democrats nominated Alfred E. Smith - a candidate strongly opposed to Prohibition - for the presidency. He lost, but in doing so he carried many of the major cities. A new Democratic coalition was emerging. In 1932 Franklin D. Roosevelt, the Democratic candidate, was elected president.
Even before he was inaugurated, Congress adopted a joint resolution proposing the 21 st Amendment. Upon its ratification in December 1933, the 18 th Amendment was repealed, and Prohibition came to an end. Prohibition did not achieve its goals. Instead, it added many problems to those that it intended to solve. It came along in a social period where it was just simply unrealistic to have any success. The only beneficiaries to that of Prohibition were bootleggers, crime bosses, and the forces of big government in all of its corrupt forms.
Though it failed to improve health, welfare, or America as a whole, the experiment with prohibition affords some valuable lessons. With this learning experience as part of the past, America should be able to confront its modern remnants in all of their assorted varieties. Bibliography Coffey, Thomas M. The Long Thirst: Prohibition in America, 1920 - 1933 New York: W. W. Norton & Co. , 1975.
Krout, J. A. The Origins of Prohibition, New York City: Russell & Russell, 1996. Lee, Henry.
How Dry We Were, Enlewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1963. Rorabaugh, W. J. The Alcoholic Republic- An American Tradition, New York Oxford University Press, 1979.
Turner, George Kibbe. "The City of Chicago, A Study of Great Immoralities, " McClure's Magazine, April 1927 (vol. 28). Warburton, Clark. "The Results of Prohibition, " Auburn Press, 1996.
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Research essay sample on Christian Temperance Union 18 Th Amendment
