Prohibition << `proh` uh BIHSH uhn >> refers to laws that ban the drinking of alcoholic beverages. The laws forbid the manufacture, sale, or transportation of such beverages. Alcoholic beverages include beer, gin, rum, vodka, whiskey, and wine.
In the United States, prohibition became popular in the early 1900’s. In 1920, a prohibition amendment was added to the Constitution of the United States. This amendment, the 18th Amendment, caused the use of alcoholic beverages to decline sharply. However, many people ignored the national ban. They drank illegal beverages supplied by bootleggers. The 18th Amendment was abolished in 1933. It is the only amendment to the U.S. Constitution that has ever been repealed. Canada, Finland, and Norway also outlawed intoxicating beverages during the early 1900’s.
Prohibition in the United States
The movement toward Prohibition.
In the 1600’s and 1700’s, the American colonists drank large quantities of beer, rum, wine, and hard cider. Such alcoholic beverages were safer to drink than impure water or unpasteurized milk. They were less expensive than coffee or tea. By the 1820’s, people in the United States were drinking, on the average, the equivalent of 7 gallons (26 liters) of pure alcohol per person each year. This amount of alcohol is in about 70 gallons (260 liters) of beer or 39 gallons (148 liters) of wine.
Some people, including physicians and ministers, became concerned about the extent of alcohol use. They believed that drinking alcohol damaged people’s health and moral behavior. They also thought it promoted poverty. People concerned about alcohol use urged temperance. Temperance is the reduction or elimination of the use of alcoholic beverages.
At first, supporters of temperance urged drinkers to drink only moderate amounts. But the supporters later became convinced that all alcoholic beverages were addictive. As a result, they tried to end the use of alcohol. In the 1820’s and 1830’s, the first temperance crusade reduced the average annual intake of pure alcohol per person to about 3 gallons (11 liters). During the 1850’s, about a dozen states passed prohibition laws, led by Maine in 1851.
Support for prohibition declined after the Civil War began in 1861. To revive support, people who favored prohibition formed a number of organizations to promote liquor reform. Supporters of prohibition were often called drys or prohibitionists. In 1869, for example, drys founded the Prohibition Party, which presented prohibitionist candidates for political office. In 1874, a group of Protestant women established the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU). Drys organized the Anti-Saloon League in 1895.
From about 1900 to 1920, numerous economic, political, and social reforms were carried out in the United States. During this period, many reformers supported national prohibition. They did so for a variety of reasons. Social reformers blamed alcohol for poverty, health problems, and the neglect by husbands of their wives and children. Political reformers saw saloons as the backbone of corrupt urban political organizations. Employers felt that drunkenness reduced their workers’ safety and productivity.
During the early 1900’s, some people felt that the large numbers of recent immigrants to the United States would become more “American” if their drinking habits changed. Many religious denominations taught that drinking alcohol was immoral.
Between 1880 and the beginning of World War I in 1914, many states adopted either statewide prohibition or local-option laws. Local-option laws gave individual communities the right to ban the sale of alcohol. In 1913, Congress passed the Webb-Kenyon Act. The act forbade the mailing or shipping of liquor into any state that banned such shipments. That same year, drys began calling for a prohibition amendment to the Constitution.
When the United States entered World War I in 1917, most Americans considered prohibition an appropriate patriotic sacrifice. In December 1917, the U.S. Congress approved the 18th Amendment to the Constitution. This amendment prohibited the manufacture, sale, transportation, import, and export of “intoxicating liquors.” It was ratified by the states in January 1919. In October 1919, Congress adopted the Volstead Act. This law provided for the enforcement of the 18th Amendment. It defined intoxicating liquors as those containing at least 0.5 percent alcohol. The 18th Amendment went into effect in 1920 with widespread support.
Life during Prohibition.
National Prohibition did not eliminate the drinking of alcoholic beverages. But it did sharply reduce their use. Purchasing liquor was not only against the law, but it was also expensive. However, a large minority of Americans continued to drink alcohol. Drinking wine, beer, and other alcoholic beverages had been a traditional part of the cultures of many immigrants to the United States, including Irish, Italians, Jews, and Poles. In addition, numerous urban middle- and upper-class Americans considered drinking sophisticated and sociable.
During Prohibition, many people made their own beer, wine, or distilled liquor at home illegally. Also, numerous people bought alcoholic drinks in illegal bars called speakeasies. Many physicians gave their patients prescriptions for legal “medicinal” wine or liquor.
Bootleggers met much of the demand for illegal alcoholic beverages. Most bootleggers were young immigrant men. The liquor trade was highly profitable. Bootleggers battled each other for control of liquor supplies and markets. Violent gang wars erupted in many large cities. Gang members killed one another at a furious pace. Al Capone of Chicago was probably the era’s most famous bootlegger.
During the late 1920’s, more than 1 million gallons (3.8 million liters) of liquor was smuggled into the United States each year from Canada. Liquor also was smuggled into the country from ships just beyond U.S. waters in the Atlantic or Pacific oceans or in the Caribbean Sea. In addition, alcoholic beverages were made from alcohol that was legally produced in the United States for use in manufacturing. Neither federal agents nor state and local officials could stop the widespread violation of national Prohibition.
The decline of the prohibition movement.
Antiprohibitionists opposed Prohibition for a number of reasons. They argued that the ban on alcohol encouraged crime and disrespect for the law. They also claimed that Prohibition gave the government too much power over people’s personal lives. Recent immigrants to the United States saw Prohibition as an attack on their cultural traditions. After the Great Depression began in 1929, many people argued that Prohibition took away jobs and deprived the government of badly needed revenues from taxes on liquor.
In the 1932 presidential campaign, the Democratic Party endorsed the repeal of Prohibition. The Democratic presidential candidate, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, won the election by a large margin. In February 1933, Congress proposed the 21st Amendment to the Constitution to repeal the 18th Amendment. The states quickly ratified the 21st Amendment. National Prohibition ended on Dec. 5, 1933.
A few states, mainly ones in the South, retained prohibition until the 1950’s or 1960’s. In 1966, Mississippi became the last state to repeal statewide prohibition. Since then, most efforts to forbid the use of alcohol by adults have been abandoned. Attention has shifted instead to the treatment of alcoholism and to the solution of other alcohol related problems.
Prohibition in Canada
A strong temperance movement arose in Canada during the 1840’s and 1850’s. Many communities adopted local-option laws after the Canada Temperance Act permitted such laws in 1878. In 1898, a national referendum (direct vote) showed that a majority of voters outside Quebec favored national prohibition.
After World War I began in 1914, support for prohibition increased in Canada. In 1918, the Canadian government passed a law that banned the manufacture and importation of all alcoholic beverages until a year after the war ended. By 1918, every Canadian province except Quebec had adopted a permanent prohibition law. After World War I ended in 1918, opposition to prohibition increased in Canada. This rising opposition was due in part to a desire to profit from the smuggling of alcoholic beverages to people living under Prohibition in the United States. Between 1921 and 1948, all of the Canadian provinces repealed their prohibition laws.
