Prohibition’s Short and Long Term Effects on America
“The Feds are comin’, hide the liquor!” yelled Leona’s husband, Butch, into the window of their room for brewing moonshine. Leona panicked, but she had done this before. She gathered up all the alcohol, put it behind her bed, and grabbed her most recent baby, Emily. The policemen burst into the house and scoured everything, until only one door was left shut. They threw it open, only to find Leona breast-feeding Emily on her bed. They quickly and apologetically left the house, leaving Leona and her family to continue their illegal activities. This was the life of thousands of people who wanted to get rich quick during Prohibition, the 13 year long period in America where the production of alcohol was outlawed. Stories like that one, the story of how my Great-Great Grandparents got enough money to buy their butcher shop, are often used as proof that Prohibition was a failure that hurt the country in every way. Prohibition was a significant fight in the U.S. for many groups of people, and while the effects of this fight were mostly negative at first, looking deeper reveals that Prohibition was necessary and in many ways beneficial to America.
Several key groups emerged in the fight to enact Prohibition. The major group involved in making Prohibition happen was women. Women were seen as victims of alcohol, and a huge argument for the existence of Prohibition was that drunk men hurt women physically and emotionally, and weakened the family as a whole (Howes, 98). Women were seen as helpless, so when they banded together many men supported them because they saw it as their job to protect women at the time. This was also a huge moment in U.S history because this happened just before women got the right to vote. This was the first time in our history that women showed how much power they really had and how much they could change the country. This combination also greatly influenced politicians. “Prohibition had great usefulness for politicians who, in their endless quest to curry favor and votes from the public, lost nothing by supporting it…” (Streissguth, 28). Even though women were not granted the right to vote in the Constitution until August 1920, 15 states already allowed women to vote. This made politicians very likely to comply with women’s requests as they gained more and more power. And by helping women they would gain far more support than they lost.
The groups of people against Prohibition, namely city-dwellers, immigrants, and Democrats, were not quite as passionate about Prohibition, and in the end lost the battle. “Though “wets” and “drys” debated whether or not it was possible to legalize morality, the drinking public was apathetic” (Prohibition). Two groups worked very hard to defend their right to drink. Immigrants were outraged that this amazing new country they moved to was going to ban one of their most long-standing traditions (Howes, 100). Another outraged group were Catholics, because they require wine for Mass (Coffey). Catholicism actually was an outlier among religions, because Protestants were, along with women and the rest of Christianity, the biggest supporters of Prohibition. Even with these groups fighting hard to keep their right to drink, the Volstead act, which prohibited production of alcohol but without penalty, was passed into law. Two months later, on January 17, 1920 the 18th amendment was ratified, causing Prohibition to begin.
When the government bans something that people are very determined to get people will always find a way around it, and this heavily encourages illegal behavior. People’s first reaction to Prohibition was to buy as much alcohol as possible before it started, because it was only was a ban on making alcohol. Their second reaction was to make their own alcohol. Easy, right? “During the 1920 New Year’s celebration, over one hundred people were killed from drinking wood alcohol, a highly toxic alcohol made for industrial purposes” (Prohibition). That’s not even counting everyone that died from homemade alcohol, and anyone that suffered from other common side effects like blindness. As Prohibition went on people got better at making alcohol, and because of this more people bought alcohol. All this buying of illegal alcohol made people more likely to disobey the law, because they were already doing it anyways. “Long before the Eighteenth Amendment and the Volstead Act, gangsters had been running houses of prostitution and gambling joints, as well as dabbling in the narcotics trade in many of America’s larger urban areas. Yet spurred on by the staggering profits to be made in black-market liquor, the scale and scope of organized crime grew at an unprecedented rate after 1920” (Slavicek). The people selling the alcohol were making so much money that even the most moral people such as George Remus, an attorney who prosecuted bootleggers, but then became a bootlegger, turned to organized crime (Coffey). This became a huge problem in urban areas, like Chicago, where people were opposed to Prohibition in the first place.
Eventually the cost of enforcing Prohibition and the lack of willingness to obey the law resulted in the repeal of it. After 13 years of Prohibition being counter productive and it making the government far more intrusive and powerful, the largest supporter of Prohibition gave up on their “Noble Experiment.” “Women, who had been pivotal in bringing about national Prohibition because of moral interests- protecting the family, women, and children from the effects of alcohol abuse- proved to be equally pivotal in repealing Prohibition” (Temperance). This loss of support from women caused all the things that women did for enacting Prohibition to be reversed. The politicians who once voted for Prohibition in order to protect women now voted to repeal it at the demand of women. Several key people and organizations appeared during this time. Pauline Sabin was one of the first women to organize women against Prohibition, and William Strayon founded the AAPA (Association Against the Prohibition Amendment), who argued that Prohibition was not only unconstitutional, but also not helpful in any way. After 13 years, the central government relinquished control over alcohol for each state to decide whether they would enforce it or not.
Effects of Prohibition on the country while it was active were almost exclusively negative; however, when it was repealed many positive things emerged. First, the Great Depression had not yet started when Prohibition started, but it was in full swing when Prohibition ended. “Economic hard times focused attention on the costs of alcohol prohibition, which the AAPA claimed had totaled more that $300 millions in enforcement expenses and $11 billion in lost tax revenue by 1931” (Kyvig). At first glance this is a very negative effect, but think of all that money flowing back into the economy and to the government when it was need most, the Great Depression. Secondly, Prohibition was solid proof that women truly held power in society and could exert this power to influence the country. Without even having the right to vote they managed to get a constitutional amendment passed, which is very difficult to do. Lastly, Prohibition changed the way the country as a whole enjoys alcohol. “Post Prohibition bars and nightclubs, like the speakeasies of the Volstead era, emphasized social contact between the sexes and catered to younger middle- and upper-class women and men” (Slavicek). With the rise of cocktails, originally made to make the terrible liquor of the time taste good, women began going to speakeasies. This made the typical customer seem like a high-class socialite instead of a rowdy and out of control man.
Even though Prohibition is viewed as national mistake, it ended up promoting equality and helping the country get through the Great Depression. Similarly to Prohibition, many things throughout history get a bad rap, and while they may have been, we need to look beyond the data presented to us. Only when we do this can we have a true understanding of what occurred, and it may not always be what you think.