# Prohibition (US): how did the 18th amendment pass? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [January 5, 2015, 7:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/prohibition-us-how-did-the-18th-amendment-pass/709059 "2015-01-05T19:56:56Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 17\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Gatopescado](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gatopescado/32/5711_2.png) [@Gatopescado](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gatopescado)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2015, 8:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/prohibition-us-how-did-the-18th-amendment-pass/709059/41 "2015-01-06T20:37:51Z")
How did it pass? Hey, we all fuck up now and then. ---
**Author:** ![Freddy\_the\_Pig](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/a587f6/32.png) [@Freddy\_the\_Pig](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Freddy_the_Pig)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2015, 8:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/prohibition-us-how-did-the-18th-amendment-pass/709059/42 "2015-01-06T20:57:52Z")
> [@Nelson\_Pike](#): > > What do you mean? The ratification process for amendments passed by the US Houses of Congress has never changed. There is an alternate process- the constitutional convention, but that has never been employed historically and is not a issue for this thread. Nitpick–the national constitutional convention is an alternate process for _proposing_ constitutional amendments, not for ratifying them. There is also (and has always been) an alternative mechanism for ratification–state ratification conventions. This method **has** been used once, to ratify the Twenty-First Amendment which repealed Prohibition. The voters of Illinois (to take one example) thus had the delightful and unique experience, on June 5, 1933, of electing a statewide slate of 50 delegates either for or against the repeal of Prohibition. The 50 pro-repeal delegates won by a 4-to-1 margin. Their “convention” was the most anticlimactic of anticlimaxes, and voted 50 to 0 (surprise!) to ratify the Twenty-First Amendment after a session lasting only 55 minutes on July 10, 1933. Congress required this method in the belief that the people collectively were **more** anti-Prohibition than the entrenched politicians in state legislatures. There is no telling whether they were right, nor what the situation had been in 1917-19 when Prohibition was enacted. ---
**Author:** ![engineer\_comp\_geek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/engineer_comp_geek/32/504_2.png) [@engineer\_comp\_geek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/engineer_comp_geek)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2015, 9:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/prohibition-us-how-did-the-18th-amendment-pass/709059/43 "2015-01-06T21:26:32Z")
> [@TroutMan](#): > > Ugh. This is why I stay out of GD, to avoid these winner/loser threads. You seem more interested in scoring points than exchanging information, so I’ll leave you to it. Yeah, I chose not to comment on any of his posts either, for pretty much the same reason. ---
**Author:** ![Nelson\_Pike](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/c6cbf5/32.png) [@Nelson\_Pike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nelson_Pike)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2015, 9:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/prohibition-us-how-did-the-18th-amendment-pass/709059/44 "2015-01-06T21:26:34Z")
> [@Freddy\_the\_Pig](#): > > Nitpick–the national constitutional convention is an alternate process for _proposing_ constitutional amendments, not for ratifying them. Not a nitpick. TY for the necessary correction. > [@Freddy\_the\_Pig](#): > > There is also (and has always been) an alternative mechanism for ratification–state ratification conventions. This method **has** been used once, to ratify the Twenty-First Amendment which repealed Prohibition. > > The voters of Illinois (to take one example) thus had the delightful and unique experience, on June 5, 1933, of electing a statewide slate of 50 delegates either for or against the repeal of Prohibition. The 50 pro-repeal delegates won by a 4-to-1 margin. Their “convention” was the most anticlimactic of anticlimaxes, and voted 50 to 0 (surprise!) to ratify the Twenty-First Amendment after a session lasting only 55 minutes on July 10, 1933. > > Congress required this method in the belief that the people collectively were **more** anti-Prohibition than the entrenched politicians in state legislatures. There is no telling whether they were right, nor what the situation had been in 1917-19 when Prohibition was enacted. TY again, this time for the educational information. ---
**Author:** ![F.U.Shakespeare](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/aca169/32.png) [@F.U.Shakespeare](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/F.U.Shakespeare)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2015, 11:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/prohibition-us-how-did-the-18th-amendment-pass/709059/45 "2015-01-06T23:20:33Z")
“Last Call - The Rise and Fall of Prohibition” (the outstanding Daniel Okrent book Burns based his film on) gives an exhaustive account of the long political battle and occasional surprise realignments that resulted in passage. One of the more fascinating examples was how hard liquor was thrown under the bus by the brewers, who figured (at first) that the government was unlikely to ban _all_ booze, but if they did ban the hard stuff, beer sales would go up. The beer barons acted accordingly in the public debate, tut-tutting the evils of the demon rum. This ultimately helped the prohibitionists, sort of like bruising primaries help the other party. As mentioned above, there was nothing illegal about stocking a warehouse in advance with ten lifetimes’ supply of booze, so rich people didn’t care. The various stages of the laws were announced years before they were to take effect, so millionaires were able to fortify themselves to the hilt. (Incidentally, the book corrected me on something I’d believed all my life: it’s pretty certain that Joe Kennedy Sr. was never a bootlegger!) As also noted above, overall alcohol consumption did go down during prohibition. But the pattern of consumption changed incredibly. People were more likely to pound them down like they never had before. One account of a group of old friends meeting after repeal noted that their consumption of a mere three drinks each in three hours would never have happened during Prohibition - in a speakeasy, you put it away as fast as it was served. ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2015, 11:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/prohibition-us-how-did-the-18th-amendment-pass/709059/46 "2015-01-06T23:21:47Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > [Jamaica ginger - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamaica_ginger) > _Jamaica Ginger extract, known in the United States by the slang name “Jake,” was a late 19th-century patent medicine that provided a convenient way to bypass Prohibition laws, since it contained between 70-80% ethanol by weight._ > > About 40000 men were paralyzed due to adulterated “jake”. I was going to mention that. The story “Jake foot” is a horrifying one. And there were many prohibitionist who had no problem with people going blind or dying from methyl alcohol poisoning, since they expected it to scare people away from alcohol. OTOH, there was the grape syrup that had the warning “Do not add one cake of yeast and let ferment for four days or else it will turn into an illegal alcoholic beverage!” ---
**Author:** ![Jim\_s\_Son](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e19adc/32.png) [@Jim\_s\_Son](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jim_s_Son)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2015, 3:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/prohibition-us-how-did-the-18th-amendment-pass/709059/47 "2015-01-07T03:01:37Z")
There were some people who felt that having two million men in France for WW1 removed a source of potential opposition. Which group is a major consumer of alcohol and a large part of the military? Men in their 20s. Of course one problem with this theory is a lot of these men were home for the 1916 elections. ---
**Author:** ![Odesio](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/odesio/32/20003_2.png) [@Odesio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Odesio)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2015, 3:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/prohibition-us-how-did-the-18th-amendment-pass/709059/48 "2015-01-07T03:20:04Z")
A lot of people didn’t think that wine and beer would be banned. After all, the Amendment does not define what an intoxicating beverage is. ---
**Author:** ![Tom\_Tildrum](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/e95f7d/32.png) [@Tom\_Tildrum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tom_Tildrum)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2015, 12:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/prohibition-us-how-did-the-18th-amendment-pass/709059/49 "2015-01-07T12:43:51Z")
Prohibition was still broadly popular as late as 1928. Hoover expressed support while acknowledging a possible need to moderate the Volstead Act. Al Smith was openly opposed to Prohibition, and the pro-Prohibition Joseph Robinson was [selected](http://millercenter.org/president/hoover/essays/biography/3) as his running mate to try to allay fears that Smith would support repeal. [Repeal](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1470475/) appears to have been driven strongly by the changed economic climate of the Depression. Business interests had always opposed Prohibition, and anti-corporate public sentiment toward brewers and distillers had been one of the driving forces of its enactment. Once the Depression hit, repeal came to be seen as a source of tax revenue and a way to put people back to work. ---
**Author:** ![Nelson\_Pike](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/c6cbf5/32.png) [@Nelson\_Pike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nelson_Pike)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2015, 3:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/prohibition-us-how-did-the-18th-amendment-pass/709059/50 "2015-01-07T15:28:55Z")
> [@Odesio](#): > > A lot of people didn’t think that wine and beer would be banned. After all, the Amendment does not define what an intoxicating beverage is. This is unlikely. See reply 34 on page 1. ---
**Author:** ![Nelson\_Pike](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/c6cbf5/32.png) [@Nelson\_Pike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nelson_Pike)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2015, 3:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/prohibition-us-how-did-the-18th-amendment-pass/709059/51 "2015-01-07T15:33:14Z")
> [@Jim\_s\_Son](#): > > There were some people who felt that having two million men in France for WW1 removed a source of potential opposition. Which group is a major consumer of alcohol and a large part of the military? Men in their 20s. Of course one problem with this theory is a lot of these men were home for the 1916 elections. The US did not enter the war until 1917, so _all_ men in their 20s were home for the 1916 elections, and those elections returned a 2/3 Congressional majority in favor of Prohibition. ---
**Author:** ![Jim\_s\_Son](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e19adc/32.png) [@Jim\_s\_Son](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jim_s_Son)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2015, 7:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/prohibition-us-how-did-the-18th-amendment-pass/709059/52 "2015-01-07T19:28:39Z")
> [@Nelson\_Pike](#): > > The US did not enter the war until 1917, so _all_ men in their 20s were home for the 1916 elections, and those elections returned a 2/3 Congressional majority in favor of Prohibition. ``` I was describing what some people thought at the time. Yes, the 1916 elections happened when America was at peace and. But America went to war early in 1917 and once the politicians realized they had to send millions of men to France instead of a token force and the navy to aid in the blockade, these potential opponents to prohibition were removed. They may have voted for a candidate for other reasons than prohibition. In the 1920s, some people attributed the prosperity to having a more sober workforce. ``` Drinking probably went down. Speakeasies weren’t out in the open like saloons and they probably restricted their clientele to people they knew. I would think that since bootleg cds and albums were double the price of official releases (do physical bootlegs exist now in the era of downloading?), I imagine bootleg alcohol cost more. The drys also made a mistake in figuring enforcement wouldn’t be too hard ---
**Author:** ![Nelson\_Pike](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/c6cbf5/32.png) [@Nelson\_Pike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nelson_Pike)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2015, 8:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/prohibition-us-how-did-the-18th-amendment-pass/709059/53 "2015-01-07T20:01:35Z")
> [@Jim\_s\_Son](#): > > I was describing what some people thought at the time. Yes, the 1916 elections happened when America was at peace and. But America went to war early in 1917 and once the politicians realized they had to send millions of men to France instead of a token force and the navy to aid in the blockade, these potential opponents to prohibition were removed. They may have voted for a candidate for other reasons than prohibition… IMO it is more reasonable to consider that the Dry faction was sitting so pretty, with its historically increasing majorities now having reached the 2/3 level, that it was confident of the support of enough 20-year olds to push its agenda full throttle, war or no war. ---
**Author:** ![Nelson\_Pike](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/c6cbf5/32.png) [@Nelson\_Pike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nelson_Pike)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2015, 8:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/prohibition-us-how-did-the-18th-amendment-pass/709059/54 "2015-01-07T20:09:58Z")
> [@Nelson\_Pike](#): > > You are right about the state-wide Wet v Dry population difference. > > See the Wiki article for “Dry States” and the map near the page bottom of this cite highlighting nationwide Dry v Wet jurisdictions. > > NB all wet states appear to have had extensive local dry jurisdictions. There are probably maps with better resolution somewhere on the net. If I find one I will post it. The citation link is broken. Here is another link which includes the same graphic of wet and dry areas of the US in 1915: [https://repository.library.brown.edu/studio/item/bdr:34916/](https://repository.library.brown.edu/studio/item/bdr:34916/) ---
**Author:** ![madmonk28](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/madmonk28/32/20811_2.png) [@madmonk28](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/madmonk28)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2015, 8:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/prohibition-us-how-did-the-18th-amendment-pass/709059/55 "2015-01-07T20:47:53Z")
> [@F.U.Shakespeare](#): > > “Last Call - The Rise and Fall of Prohibition” (the outstanding Daniel Okrent book Burns based his film on) gives an exhaustive account of the long political battle and occasional surprise realignments that resulted in passage. > > One of the more fascinating examples was how hard liquor was thrown under the bus by the brewers, who figured (at first) that the government was unlikely to ban _all_ booze, but if they did ban the hard stuff, beer sales would go up. The beer barons acted accordingly in the public debate, tut-tutting the evils of the demon rum. This ultimately helped the prohibitionists, sort of like bruising primaries help the other party. > > As mentioned above, there was nothing illegal about stocking a warehouse in advance with ten lifetimes’ supply of booze, so rich people didn’t care. The various stages of the laws were announced years before they were to take effect, so millionaires were able to fortify themselves to the hilt. (Incidentally, the book corrected me on something I’d believed all my life: it’s pretty certain that Joe Kennedy Sr. was never a bootlegger!) > > As also noted above, overall alcohol consumption did go down during prohibition. But the pattern of consumption changed incredibly. People were more likely to pound them down like they never had before. One account of a group of old friends meeting after repeal noted that their consumption of a mere three drinks each in three hours would never have happened during Prohibition - in a speakeasy, you put it away as fast as it was served. I came in to this thread to mention this book. As you note, prohibition didn’t increase consumption for the nation as a whole, but it did change _how_ Americans drank. Prior to prohibition, saloons were pretty much for men only, but once drinking became illegal, man and women started going out together. ---
**Author:** ![F.U.Shakespeare](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/aca169/32.png) [@F.U.Shakespeare](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/F.U.Shakespeare)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2015, 10:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/prohibition-us-how-did-the-18th-amendment-pass/709059/56 "2015-01-07T22:07:41Z")
> [@Tom\_Tildrum](#): > > [Repeal](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1470475/) appears to have been driven strongly by the changed economic climate of the Depression. Business interests had always opposed Prohibition, and anti-corporate public sentiment toward brewers and distillers had been one of the driving forces of its enactment. Once the Depression hit, repeal came to be seen as a source of tax revenue and a way to put people back to work. The changed economic climate also dealt pretty much a death blow to enforcement, by gutting tax revenues. ---
**Author:** ![Hari\_Seldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hari_seldon/32/5173_2.png) [@Hari\_Seldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hari_Seldon)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2015, 2:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/prohibition-us-how-did-the-18th-amendment-pass/709059/57 "2015-01-08T02:00:28Z")
> [@Freddy\_the\_Pig](#): > > Nitpick–the national constitutional convention is an alternate process for _proposing_ constitutional amendments, not for ratifying them. > > There is also (and has always been) an alternative mechanism for ratification–state ratification conventions. This method **has** been used once, to ratify the Twenty-First Amendment which repealed Prohibition. This is correct and the amending clause of the constitution explicitly says it is up to congress to choose which method of ratification is to be used. I have been curious what happens if 3/4 of the states petition for an amendment, as provided, and congress refuses to act. Suppose, say, 38 states ask to abolish the senate and the senate won’t vote on it. This does not deprive any state of its equal representation in the senate. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/prohibition-us-how-did-the-18th-amendment-pass/709059.md?page=2)