Prohibition

I

Introduction

Prohibition, legal ban on the manufacture and sale of intoxicating drink; by extension, the term also denotes those periods in history when such bans have been in force (and specifically the United States between 1920 and 1933), as well as the political and social movements advocating them. Such movements (also called temperance movements) have occurred whenever significant numbers of people have believed that the consumption of alcoholic beverages presented a serious threat to the integrity of their most vital institutions, especially the institution of the family. Drunkenness is considered an evil in most of the world's major religious traditions, and Islam has for centuries forbidden even the moderate use of fermented drink. In the West, however, efforts to ban the consumption of alcohol have been a relatively recent phenomenon. Their origin can be traced to the apparently rapid spread of the technology of distillation and of alcohol abuse in 18th-century Europe, which alarmed those concerned with public health and morals.

II

The Early Prohibition Movement in the United States

In England and the American colonies, governments after 1750 made repeated and futile efforts to discourage the excessive use of distilled spirits. By the 1820s people in the United States were drinking, on the average, 27 litres (7 gallons) of pure alcohol per person each year, and many religious and political leaders were beginning to see drunkenness as a national curse. Abraham Lincoln said of this period that intoxicating liquor was “used by everybody, repudiated by nobody” and that it came forth in society “like the Egyptian angel of death, commissioned to slay if not the first, the fairest born in every family”.

Many people believed a close relationship existed between drunkenness and the rising incidence of crime, poverty, and violence, concluding that the only way to protect society from this threat was to abolish the “drunkard-making business”. The first state prohibition law, passed in Maine in 1851, prohibited the manufacture and sale of “spirituous or intoxicating liquors” not intended for medical or mechanical purposes, and 13 of the 31 states had such laws by 1855. By that time the annual per capita consumption of absolute alcohol had fallen to about 4 litres (about 1 gal).

The political crisis that preceded the American Civil War distracted attention from Prohibition. Many of the early state laws were modified, repealed, or ignored, and for years few restraints were placed on manufacturing or selling anything alcoholic. The population increased rapidly after the Civil War, and soon there were more than 100,000 saloons in the country (about 1 for every 400 men, women, and children in 1870); these saloons became increasingly competitive for the drinkers' wages. Thus, many of them permitted gambling, prostitution, sale to minors, public drunkenness, and violence.

III

The Anti-Saloon League

In reaction to this, the extraordinary “Women's War” broke out across the United States in 1873. Thousands of women marched from church meetings to saloons, where with prayer and song they demanded—with transitory results—that saloonkeepers give up their businesses. By 1900, millions of men and women were beginning to share this hostility towards the saloon and to regard it as the most dangerous social institution then threatening the family. The Anti-Saloon League of America (ASL), organized in Ohio, effectively marshalled such people into political action. State chapters of the ASL endorsed candidates for public office and demanded of their state governments that the people be allowed to vote yes or no on the question of continuing to license the saloons.

By 1916, no less than 23 of the 48 states had adopted antisaloon laws, which in those states closed the saloons and prohibited the manufacture of any alcoholic beverages. Even more significant, the national elections of that year returned a US Congress in which the ASL-supported dry members (those who supported Prohibition) outnumbered the wet members (those who were against Prohibition) by more than two to one. On December 22, 1917, with majorities well in excess of the two-thirds requirement, Congress submitted to the states the 18th Amendment to the Constitution, which prohibited “the manufacture, sale, or transport of intoxicating liquors”. By January 1919 ratification was complete, with 80 per cent of the members of 46 state legislatures recorded in approval. By this time, Canada was also dry in all provinces, and the predominantly Protestant nations of Northern Europe, including Great Britain, Finland, and Sweden, severely restricted the consumption of alcohol.

IV

National Prohibition in the United States

To enforce the 18th Amendment, Congress passed the National Prohibition Act, usually called the Volstead Act because Congressman Andrew Volstead of Minnesota introduced it in 1919. This law defined the prohibited “intoxicating liquors” as those with an alcoholic content of more than 0.5 per cent, although it made concessions for liquors sold for medicinal, sacramental, and industrial purposes, and for fruit or grape beverages prepared for personal use in homes. Because the Congress and the state legislatures, however, were reluctant to appropriate enough money for more than token enforcement—and because the opportunities for disregarding the law through smuggling, distilling, fermenting, and brewing were legion—Prohibition always represented more of an ideal than a reality. On this basis the Prohibition era began at midnight on January 16, 1920.