Prohibition

National Association Against the Prohibition Amendement

An organisation, set up in 1918, to push for the repeal of Prohibition.

Dry

Areas where alcohol consumption and sale was illegal became known as dry areas.

WWI

As Germans were seen as the enemy to too were German immigrants, many of the most successful breweries were run by German immigrants. Beer became known as 'Kaiser Brew' and was seen as being un-American. To prevent soldiers from drinking, uniformed men were not allowed into bars which added to the perception that drinking was wrong. When grain needed to be used for providing food to war-torn Europe, Congress banned the use of grain in making spirits like whisky.

Lack of Unity

Brewers (manufacturers of beer and other less potent alcohol) argued that beer was healthy and claimed that distillers of spirits (harder alcohol) were to blame for the ills caused by alcohol. This split between them prevented the two groups from forming a powerful lobby group to run a counter campaign against the temperance movement and made it easier to defeat them.

Henry Ford and industrialists

Businessmen like Ford supported and funded the campaign for prohibition as they felt that alcohol undermined the efficiency of the employees and if they spent money in alcohol they weren't buying goods from the industrialists like cars from Ford.

Corruption

Corruption was widespread and in cities like Chicago where organised crime controlled things they also controlled politics. On polling day Capone's men would be stationed on rooftops. Capone bribed Mayor Bill Thompson and bought a newspaper to stop it from criticising him. Members of President Harding's cabinet were known to have been bribed by whisky maker George Remus.

Women's Organisation for National Prohibition Reform

Founded in 1929, it had 100,000 members and made the repeal campaign appear more respectable. They were the counter-measure to the WCTU.

Speakeasies

Illegal bars, run usually by organised crime syndicates, where people consumed alcohol and enjoyed entertainment. They were glamourised by Hollywood, rarely were they as chic as they were portrayed.

Temperance Movement

Members of temperance groups (groups opposed to the consumption of alcohol, and hence its production and sale too) campaigned heavily for prohibition. Many of the groups, like the WCTU were linked to religious organisations.

Growth of organised crime

Most organised crime grew up around large bootlegging operations. There had already been organised crime syndicates but they had been much smaller. The Torri-Capone gang in Chicago was the first to capitalise on Prohibition. Widespread gang violence occurred when warring factions fought over turf or smuggling routes. The St Valentine's Day Massacre in 1920 was one of the most violent. By making bootlegging and speakeasies look glamourous it also introduced drinkers to the other avenues of crime revenue, prostitution, gambling and in some rare instances drugs. Prohibition is partially blamed by the sharp increase in the homicide rate during the 1920s.

Anti-Immigration Links

One of the many reasons Americans disapproved of immigrants was because of the the prevalent drinking culture of Irish, German and Jewish communities. Often the Italians were lumped in with this though they do not have a drinking culture. Because of the negative opinion many Americans had of immigrants they associated drinking with them and therefore alcohol was too bad. National German-American Alliance (NGAA) was accused of supporting the enemy. Congress was pressured by Wheeler into investigating links between the NGAA (who had raised money for war relief in Germany) and brewers.

Continued consumption

Only the production and sale of alcohol were illegal, not consumption, so many people kept on drinking. These included immigrant groups in working-class areas continued to drink but the middle-class went to speakeasies. Despite an initial drop in consumption the amount of alcohol drunk in the 1920s actually went up! There was a shift away from drinking beer and towards spirits, which were easier to conceal and stronger so people could get drunk easier. In New Jersey there were more speakeasies during prohibition than there were bars prior to it!

Volstead Act

Passed in January 1919, the Volstead Act prohibited the sale of alcohol in the United States. This was an expansion of earlier bans at state level and the 1913 Webb-Kenyon Act which forbade the transport of liquor from wet to dry states.

Problems with enforcement

Penalties for breaking the law were not harsh. Police and judges were often bribed to look the other way, the money came from organised crime. There were only 1500 federal agents employed to enforce Prohibition. Many of the bootleggers had better cars or boats than the police and the sheer size of America meant that there was no way the police (or federal agents) could fully ensure smuggling didn't happen. Although the budget for enforcement went from $4.4 million to $13.4 million in the 1920s alone, it was not enough to deal with the number of lawbreakers.

Changes in tax law

Prior to 1913, most of the tax the government made came from alcohol sales - sometimes up to 70% - but after 1913 and the introduction of income tax the government had no financial necessity to prevent prohibition from passing into law.

Unemployment

Rising unemployment in the end of the 1920s made people reconsider Prohibition as it had put a lot of people out of work; these included grain farmers and farm workers, brewers and brewery workers, transport workers and people who worked in the service end selling the alcohol.

Al Smith

The 1928 Democratic Party candidate for president, he stood as a wet candidate.

Anti-Saloon League

The ASL was established in 1893 by a Protestant businessman from Ohio. The organisation aimed to push for nationwide prohibition. Their legal adviser Wayne Wheeler used donations to support the campaigns of dry candidates, regardless of political party. So powerful was ASL in the state of Ohio that, in 1906, Wheeler was credited with preventing the governor from being re-elected.

Women's Christian Temperance Union

The WCTU was set up in 1874 and worked to raise awareness of the dangers of alcohol and its negative impact on society. They had successfully campaigned for local level prohibition in some states like Kansas but by the 1890s had made little impact nationally.

Wet

These were areas where the consumption and sale of alcohol was permitted.

Alcohol poisoning

Unregulated alcohol, specifically 'rot gut' liquor killed more than 4000 people in 1925, this was four times as many as had died just five years before.