Prohibition in the United States was a nationwide ban on the sale, production, importation, and transportation of alcoholic beverages that remained in place from 1920 to 1933. The dry movement, led by rural Protestants and social Progressives in the Democratic and Republican parties, was coordinated by the Anti-Saloon League. Prohibition was mandated under the Eighteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Enabling legislation, known as the Volstead Act, set down the rules for enforcing the ban and defined the types of alcoholic beverages that were prohibited. Private ownership and consumption of alcohol was not made illegal under federal law; however, in many areas local laws were more strict, with some states banning possession outright. Nationwide Prohibition ended with the ratification of the Twenty-first Amendment, which repealed the Eighteenth Amendment, on December 5, 1933.
In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the introduction of alcohol prohibition and its subsequent enforcement in law was a hotly-debated issue. Prohibition supporters, called drys, presented it as a victory for public morals and health. Anti-prohibitionists, known as wets, criticized the alcohol ban as an intrusion of mainly rural Protestant ideals on a central aspect of urban, immigrant, and Catholic life. When federal prohibition legislation was passed, effective enforcement of the ban during the Prohibition Era proved difficult and the law was widely flouted. Without a solid popular consensus for its enforcement, Prohibition led to some unintended consequences and its ultimate repeal in 1933: the growth of criminal organizations, including the modern American Mafia and various other criminal groups, disregard of federal law, and corruption among some politicians and within law enforcement. Despite these criticisms, overall consumption of alcohol halved during the 1920s and remained below pre-Prohibition levels until the 1940s.
History
The U.S. Senate proposed the Eighteenth Amendment on December 18, 1917. Upon being approved by a 36th state on January 16, 1919, the amendment was ratified as a part of the Constitution. By the terms of the amendment, the country went dry one year later, on Jan. 17, 1920.
On November 18, 1918, prior to ratification of the Eighteenth Amendment, the U.S. Congress passed the temporary Wartime Prohibition Act, which banned the sale of alcoholic beverages having an alcohol content of greater than 2.75 percent. (This act, which was intended to save grain for the war effort, was passed after the armistice ending World War I was signed on November 11, 1918.) The Wartime Prohibition Act took effect June 30, 1919, with July 1, 1919, becoming known as the "Thirsty-First".
On October 28, 1919, Congress passed the Volstead Act, the popular name for the National Prohibition Act, over President Woodrow Wilson's veto. The act established the legal definition of intoxicating liquors as well as penalties for producing them. Although the Volstead Act prohibited the sale of alcohol, the federal government lacked resources to enforce it. By 1925, in New York City alone, there were anywhere from 30,000 to 100,000 speakeasy clubs.
While Prohibition was successful in reducing the amount of liquor consumed, it stimulated the proliferation of rampant underground, organized and widespread criminal activity. Many were astonished and disenchanted with the rise of spectacular gangland crimes (such as Chicago's Saint Valentine's Day Massacre), when prohibition was supposed to reduce crime. Prohibition lost its advocates one by one, while the wet opposition talked of personal liberty, new tax revenues from legal beer and liquor, and the scourge of organized crime.
On March 22, 1933, President Franklin Roosevelt signed into law the Cullen–Harrison Act, legalizing beer with an alcohol content of 3.2 percent (by weight) and wine of a similarly low alcohol content. On December 5, 1933, ratification of the Twenty-first Amendment repealed the Eighteenth Amendment. However, United States federal law still prohibits the manufacture of distilled spirits without meeting numerous licensing requirements that make it impractical to produce spirits for personal beverage use.
As early as 1925, journalist H. L. Mencken believed that Prohibition was not working. As the prohibition years continued, more of the country’s populace came to see prohibition as illustrative of class distinctions, a law unfairly biased in its administration favoring social elites. "Prohibition worked best when directed at its primary target: the working-class poor."Historian Lizabeth Cohen writes: "A rich family could have a cellar-full of liquor and get by, it seemed, but if a poor family had one bottle of home-brew, there would be trouble.”Working-class people were inflamed by the fact that their employers could dip into a cache of private stock while they, the employees, were denied a similar indulgence.
Before the Eighteenth Amendment went into effect in January 1920, many of the upper classes stockpiled alcohol for legal home consumption after Prohibition began. They bought the inventories of liquor retailers and wholesalers, emptying out their warehouses, saloons, and club storerooms. American lawmakers followed these practices at the highest levels of government. President Woodrow Wilson moved his own supply of alcoholic beverages to his Washington residence after his term of office ended. His successor, Warren G. Harding, relocated his own large supply into the White House after inauguration.
In October 1930, just two weeks before the congressional midterm elections, bootlegger George Cassiday, "the man in the green hat," came forward and told how he had bootlegged for ten years for members of Congress. One of the few bootleggers ever to tell his story, Cassiday wrote five, front-page articles for The Washington Post. He estimated that eighty percent of congressmen and senators drank, even though they were the ones passing dry laws. This had a significant impact on the midterm election, which saw Congress shift from a dry Republican majority to a wet Democratic majority, who understood that Prohibition was unpopular and called for its repeal. As Prohibition became increasingly unpopular, especially in urban areas, its repeal was eagerly anticipated. Economic urgency played no small part in accelerating the advocacy for repeal. Prior to 1920 the implementation of the Volstead Act, approximately fourteen percent of federal, state, and local tax revenues were derived from alcohol commerce. The government needed this income and also felt that reinstating the manufacture and sale of alcohol would create desperately-needed jobs for the unemployed.
On March 22, 1933, President Franklin Roosevelt signed an amendment to the Volstead Act, known as the Cullen–Harrison Act, allowing the manufacture and sale of 3.2 beer (3.2 percent alcohol by weight, approximately 4 percent alcohol by volume) and light wines. The Volstead Act previously defined an intoxicating beverage as one with greater than 0.5 percent alcohol. Upon signing the Cullen–Harrison Act, Roosevelt made his famous remark: "I think this would be a good time for a beer." The Cullen-Harrison Act became law on April 7, 1933, and the following day Anheuser-Busch sent a team of Clydesdale horses to deliver a case of Budweiser beer to the White House.
