President F.D. Roosevelt ended National Prohibition of alcohol in 1932…and for the previous 13 years, the Federal government had built up a huge force of agents (ATF, FBI, etc.) to hunt down and destroy the importers, mfgs., and marketers of alcoholic drinks. Once the insane prohibition was ended, what did all of these people do? I would imagine that the repeal of (prohibition) was opposed by these people…especially the FBI. Think about it, the people who didn’t WANT prohibition to end:
-the Mob: they were making huge amounts of money (Al Capone was estimated to be making over $7 million/year in beer sales, in the 1920’s)
-local police officials: bribes and payola to local corrupt police officials must have been flowing freely in the 20’s-Boston had over 4000 “speakeasies” in 1927
-the local entrepreneurs who were small-scale mfgs. of “bathtub” gin in their basements…I’m sure many a family was making a good living by cooking alky in their backyards
-importers and bootleggers like Joseph kennedy (who made a fortune importing scotch whiskey, and whiskey from Canada.
Not to mention the people who owned speakeasies, after-hours joints, and other small-scale racketeers
Finally, I think that (even in the 1920’s), a small-scale illegal drug industry was getting started-drugs were easier to make and market to users (as opposed to bulky alcohol)
So, was there an evil alliance of criminals and soon-to-be unemployed ATF agents, who actually OPPOSED the end of national prohibition?
The Enforcement Industry switched its attentions to marijuana, which it had criminalised.
And for the record, FDR didn’t ‘end prohibition’, the amendment was repealed by the states. FDR didn’t have anything to do but watch. (And probably offer a toast.)
Slight nit…
Federal marijuana prohibition didn’t come along until 1937 with the Marijuana Tax Act. This act was worded as a revenue measure, not a prohibition measure, so in a sense you could say that even then it wasn’t prohibited. But the taxes were so steep that it effectively ended any legal trade in the stuff.
On the other hand, many states had already criminalized it by 1933. And cocaine and opiates were already being strictly regulated by the Feds, so with regard to them I’ll concede this point.
Prohibition wasn’t “insane.” It did a lot of what it was supposed to do. It cut back on drunken driving, on drink-induced assaults and spousal abuse, and on health issues connected to alcohol. There are many good books available today analyzing Prohibition from a sufficient distance to be objective about it.
There was an equivalent red state/blue state split to the country even back then, although the political expression of it differed. Prohibition was a grass-roots movement in the rural and more highly religious states for decades. It was also somewhat of a early women rights’ issue, as it was correctly seen as tying in to domestic abuse.
The political problem was that the country changed drastically from pre-WWI days to post WWI-days. The 1920s were the golden age of urbanism, with cities and their values becoming ascendant. And politically more powerful, since rural interests had disproportionate control of Congress in those pre-one man, one vote apportionment times.
WWI veterans, having gained a bit more sophistication by seeing combat and European mores, and the taste for liquor that’s endemic to those who need to combat combat, tended to say that Prohibition was put over on them while they were over there. Women, having gained both the right to vote and better abilities to get educated and hold jobs, had their first taste of equality in the cities and started drinking alongside of men.
As cities grew in power and sophistication, they also became more dangerous, because as the centers of flouting Prohibition they also were the centers of mob violence.
Any glamor the mob had was long gone by the end of the 1920s, when the IRS had Capone put away on tax evasion charges. Public opinion swung to wanting legal access to liquor to break whatever power the remaining mob had. The constituencies that favored illegal liquor were comparatively small, losing in power and status, and well able to switch over either to other forms of illegal operations or making money legally on what used to be illegal. The Depression itself meant that the money available in the 1920s to be squandered on booze just wasn’t there in the first place.
Prohibition ended not because it was an intrinsically bad idea, but because of bad timing and unintended effects. Had it been put into place a decade or two earlier, it might still be in effect.
And Roosevelt wasn’t even President when Prohibition ended. Herbert Hoover was.
The 21st Amendment wasn’t ratified until December 5, 1933 when FDR was in the White House.
However, it passed Congress on February 20, 1933 when Hoover was still President and proposed by the lame duck 72nd Congress.
Sorry, my eye went across to the date of adoption of Amendment XX, not XXI.
It sort of passed when Hoover was President. Hoover was officially ambivalent and evasive on the topic.
I doubt that if he had come out for repeal of Prohibition during the 1932 campaign, it would have helped him any.
Capone was convicted of tax evasion in 1932.
Women were drinking in the US for just about as long as liquor has been in the US.
It should be noted that Prohibition was a worldwide movement linked to Christian groups and women’s rights, and that several European nations attempted and repealed the same sort of laws a bit ahead of the US; it’s therefore fairly hard to argue that Doughboys picked up the drinking habit from sophistos in Europe. None of this stopped the Anti-Saloon League from villifying US brewers for - shock and horror - being German-Americans.
For every study from the period you can find stating that Prohibition “worked” in keeping people happier and healthier, you can find another stating that it didn’t make much difference. Certainly people weren’t getting gunned down in the street for selling it when the stuff was legal.
I’d also argue that certain proponents of banning alcohol were likely insane or giving to insane bouts of religious and other fervor, such as Carrie Nation.
As far as the golden age of American urbanism: that may well be now. There was a slow, steady shift from 60% rural to 40% (we’re down around 20% currently) between about 1900 and 1960.
http://flfl.essortment.com/alcapone_rtub.htm
I interpolated dates from several sites. Capone’s power was on the wane from the late 20s.
Sure, but both by law and by custom, women had been barred from the majority of drinking establishments. Even in the 1920s, many speakeasies did not admit women. It was mainly in a few cities that public drinking (and smoking) moved from the lower classes to the upper, where it for the first time became something to be publicized and emulated.
I said that the veterans “tended to say” that Prohibition was put over on them when they were gone. They did, as a matter of historic fact. Whether this attitude was factually correct or not it existed and was an important factor in anti-Prohibition circles. If you want to try to argue that the doughboys didn’t find relaxed attitudes toward drinking in France during the war, be my guest. However, it was certainly the first experience of widespread drinking for the many who grew up in dry areas of the country.
No, they were just run down in the street in numbers several orders of magnitude greater.
Prohibition was a movement of literally millions. Any large movement will have a few insane people getting excess publicity. Carrie Nation, who died in 1911, BTW, was better known than influential.
I’d argue, strongly, that only the lack of money for automobiles during the Depression and the lack of automobiles entirely in WWII froze the urban power of the cities for as long as it did. It’s certainly true that after the war, when these factors vanished, suburbanization boomed. The powerful cities of the Northeast have been losing population and power steadily since 1950; the new cities of the southwest are conglomerations with no urban core of power. I can’t imagine any argument that would make these times a golden age for urbanism in the U.S. Again, be my guest.
I’ve heard it said that Prohibition was effective where people were in favor of it, and pretty much ineffective where people didn’t want it; another way of putting this would be to say it was a lot harder to get a drink in Wichita, KS than in NYC during the Prohibition era.
You are forgetting, or might be unaware, that some places did have local and statewide prohibition well before 1920. Kansas had had it since the 1880s. They continued to have it into the 1940s, but repealed it after the second World War. If Kansas gave it up, then it doesn’t make sense to conclude that the entire nation would not have done so, if only federal Prohibition had been ratified in 1909 instead of 1919. The movement toward the cities, and the resulting concentrations of mob violence would still have happened in the 1920s.
By saying it was not an intrinsically bad idea, you seem to be suggesting that only if they’d “done it right”, it would have been successful. Yes, if they had made possession illegal and put people away for years for doing so, or if they had booze sniffing dogs which could detect alcohol being stored or consumed in a private house, if we had all just sacrificed a bit more personal freedom for the common good, then anything would have been possible.
I used to be a tour guide at the prison where Capone was put away for the gun possession charge. In fact I have a key to the lock of what was his cell on my keychain.
It appears that Capone arranged to be arrested in Philadelphia after attending a sort of mobsters’ convention in Atlantic City… and we know lived a very cushy life in Eastern State Pen for almost the entirety of his sentence (he first spent a short period at Holmesburg Prison, and was suspiciously transferred to ESP, which shouldn’t have even been accepting a prisoner with that light a sentence). I won’t go into a lot of detail on that here (think private unlocked cell, gourmet meals delivered, use of warden’s phone, furniture from home etc etc) , but if anything that initial arrest - his first that led to jail time - was more an indication of his power than weakness. Capone appeared to be using ESP as a safe house of sorts while the mob war at home blew over. It was a state facility and that ‘sentence’ had nothing to do with any federal charges. (His primary bodyguard was charged with the same crime, given the same sentence, transferred with him and placed in a private cell next to Capone’s… at a time when 4 to a cell was common.)
Carrie Nation and her crowd spurred a lot of the state by state laws that preceded the national one. I don’t happen to think that someone who charges into bars with an ax to disrupt business and destroy stock while on a mission from God is all that sane, but that’s just me.
As far as urbanism goes: the rural population is half of what it was as a percentage now than in the 1920s, while the raw numbers of Americans are obviously much higher. Growing up in a rural area is a decidely minority experience today whereas it wasn’t in 1920; that’s what I meant.
This fellow has an interesting article arguing against Prohibition as having been effective. An excerpt:
He also has some interesting things to say in comparing the UK (a European country which didn’t go dry) alcohol experience to the American one.
Just a couple of quick comments, since I think we’ve beaten this into the ground.
Spectre of Pithecanthropus, I thought my comments about doughboys coming from dry states made obvious that I knew that local dry laws had been in place before the national law went into effect. Some states stayed dry after 1933; some counties stayed dry after their states allowed liquor. This was just pandering to local pressure groups; the ever-increasing ease of travel across borders made these laws so ineffectual that I believe they have all been repealed. Still, odd liquor laws can be found almost everywhere.
Taking Crandolph’s cite as face value - no references are given in it - the anti-liquor mood of the country had massive effects for several years before countervailing forces moved the country the other direction. There is no way to know what the outcome might have been if national Prohibition had gone into effect earlier. Could it have worked? Certainly. The market for other illicit drugs remained extremely low until the 1960s, and the increase in that market hasn’t resulted in any of them becoming licit.
Should it have worked? I’ve looked at the balance between criminalizing and legalization. In fact, I’ve written a whole book on drugs. My considered opinion is that criminalization makes things worse in localized areas and better when the nation as a whole is looked at. That kind of balance is impossible to quantify, and it’s much easier to spot the obvious damages over the invisible health improvements. My guess is that the status quo will remain, although medical uses will be allowed. I don’t know how I would handle it if I were King. It’s a tough issue.
Crandolph, where do I deny that Carrie Nation was insane? I don’t know if she was or not, to be honest, but I will continue to insist that you can’t use one extremist to tar an entire movement.
Capone’s privileged treatment in jail is a matter of record. My reading of history is that he could have sat on a golden throne in downtown Chicago and it wouldn’t have mattered. He was the most visible symbol of the mob and he was never going to be let back into power.
Thanks for the info. I heard once that the state of Maine went dry before national prohibition took effect…anybody know about that? I also believe that Norway had prohibition, for a few years in the 1920’s-and dropped it.
I would guess that prohibition came up against a very big problem: the american farmer for years had produced surplus crops of grain. Fermenting the grain and distilling it into whiskey was a way to use the surplus grain up.Pobably a lot of rural farm families depended upon whiskey production to make ends meet. Likewise, the Federal government had quite a bit of excise tax revenue from liquor sales, so prohibition must have really hurt, once the depression rolled in in 1929.
I can just imagine the enormous boost that organized crime was given by prohibition-which iswhy the beer business in places like Chicago was so profitable. The wars between the capone gangs and the Moran gangs is proof that this business was highly profitable.
Meanwhle, as the acceptance of breaking the law grew, I’m sur that people got pretty cynical about the government’s efforts to “protect” them against booze.
http://college.hmco.com/history/readerscomp/rcah/html/ah_071600_prohibitiona.htm
This doesn’t mean that all the states remained dry. Most in fact repealed their dry laws at least temporarily before the next big campaign stopped liquor sales in various ways in the early 20th century.
Just out of curiosity, did you read this thread you started at all? You don’t sound like you have.
Mobsters didn’t sit around wringing their hands at the thought that Prohibition might be repealed. Anticipating the possibility, they diversified during the 1920’s into related fields such as gambling, racketeering, loan-sharking, prostitution, and narcotics. I’m sure that most gangsters would have been happy to see Prohibition last forever, but many survived its demise quite comfortably.
As for law enforcement, the FBI had little to do with Prohibition. The Treasury Department’s Bureau of Prohibition (a precursor of the BATF) did, and employed about 4,000 people at its peak. I doubt that many of them lost their jobs with repeal, since other government agencies were expanding during the New Deal and Treasury still taxed and regulated alcohol. After repeal, for example, Eliot Ness was assigned to bust moonshiners in Ohio who were still making home brew to avoid paying taxes.
No less an authority than Cecil himself is skeptical about Kennedy’s alleged bootlegging “fortune”.
Apparent per capita annual consumption of ethanol in the United States.
1871–1880: 1.72 gallons
1881–1890: 1.99 gallons
1891–1895: 2.23 gallons
1896–1900: 2.06 gallons
1901–1905: 2.39 gallons
1906–1910: 2.60 gallons
(State prohibition laws gather momentum)
1911–1915: 2.56 gallons
1916–1919: 1.96 gallons
(National prohibition, 1920-1933)
1934: 0.97 gallons
1935: 1.20 gallons
1936: 1.50 gallons
1937: 1.59 gallons
1938: 1.47 gallons
1939: 1.51 gallons
1940: 1.56 gallons
1941: 1.70 gallons
1942: 1.97 gallons
1943: 1.83 gallons
1944: 2.07 gallons
1945: 2.25 gallons
1946: 2.30 gallons
1947: 2.03 gallons
Note that alcohol consumption levels in 1934 were at half their pre-prohibition level.
Sources: Williams, G.D.; Stinson, F.S.; Sanchez, L.L.; and Dufour, M.C. Surveillance Report #47: Apparent Per Capita Consumption: National, State, and Regional Trends, 1977–96. Rockville, MD: National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, Division of Biometry and Epidemiology, Alcohol Epidemiologic Data System, December 1998.
In his novel Unintended Consequences, John Ross hypothesized that the real reason behind the National Firearms Act (NFA) of 1934 was to give idled prohibition agents something to do.
I’d expect alcohol (and pretty much all other) consumption to be down during the height of the Great Depression.
There were other changes in the country in that time period, such as immigration influxes and internal migrations that may have affected the consumption levels.
Actually, alcohol consumption pretty routinely goes up during times of economic depression, not down (ask Russians about that). And immigration laws pretty much cut immigration to the U.S. down to a trickle after 1924.
Try again.