Everyone’s aware of the Mob and the bootleggers, but I’m guessing their illegal operations would have taken a while to set up.
What happened in the first few weeks of prohibition? Did the bars all shut on the same day? Were people stockpiling? What did habitual drinkers/alcoholics do before they could get hold of illicit hooch?
This is just a WAG, but it must have taken quite some time for law enforcement to gear up for prohibition as well as for the gangsters to see the demand for booze and fill it. The amendment had a one year period put forth to allow everyone to slowly shut down the industry. Plus you will note that it wasn’t illegal to DRINK alcohol, you just couldn’t sell it or manufacture alcohol. And the term “manufacture” implies making alcohol on an industrial level. It was not illegal based on this amendment to make your own hootch as long as it was for your own consumption. So, yes a lot of people would have been hording as much alcohol as they could since they had every right to drink it. But when these stocks began to get depleted there was always someone ready to sell something on the sly that they made illegally, smuggled in from Mexico or Canada, or were using for purposes other what was intented (as in many companies that made altar wine for the church made more than religious use could account for).
The amendment in question:
Amendment XVIII
Section 1. After one year from the ratification of this article the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors within, the importation thereof into, or the exportation thereof from the United States and all territory subject to the jurisdiction thereof for beverage purposes is hereby prohibited.
Section 2. The Congress and the several states shall have concurrent power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
Section 3. This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by the legislatures of the several states, as provided in the Constitution, within seven years from the date of the submission hereof to the states by the Congress.
Are you sure about some of this? I thought it was illegal to make grain alcohol? Why did so many people get sick on “bath tub” gin if it was legal, wouldn’t someone have come out with a good home brewing kit?
Maybe the amendment itself didn’t make home brew illegal, but I think federal and state laws already had. We had a chapter on prohibition in school last year. I wish I could remember some on the details, but i think I was drunk.
I don’t think it was illegal to home brew, the key point being as long as you didn’t try to sell it! It’s still not illegal to make your own beer & wine. I believe there are specific limits to the quantity you can legally make as well as not trying to sell it.
Along with smuggling there was a loophole in the prohibition laws which allowed churches to continue to produce sacramental wines which was abused considerably.
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*Originally posted by Hail Ants *
**I don’t think it was illegal to home brew, the key point being as long as you didn’t try to sell it! It’s still not illegal to make your own beer & wine. I believe there are specific limits to the quantity you can legally make as well as not trying to sell it.
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Both my dad and my uncle home home brew (the General makes some slop he calls beer, and unc makes a pretty mean bottle of rhubarb wine) I know that the limit is 100 gallons per year per adult, up to 200 gallons per household. I also know that home brewing didn’t become legal nation wide until 1978 or 1979. which means it probably was illegal in most places during prohibition.
[Simpsons]
SPRINGFIELD GOES DRY TOMORROW
Bums Extend Deadline
[/Simpsons]
The Volstead Act made it illegal to sell liquor. But if you bought the liquor before the act went into effect, you could keep it (the Yale Alumni Club, IIRC, sold drinks all throughout prohibition from a stockpile the set up before the act went into effect).
There was a run on liquor stores, so most just sold out their stock (probably with a nice markup). Bars were shut down by the police if the dared remain open. I’m sure cops went around to check
According to my mother, my great-grandfather used to make bathtub gin during the Depression. I don’t know if you’d call him a full-fledged alcoholic, but he definitely had a drinking problem.
(Although, according to my mother, he was still a good and loving person).