Cultural Report: Prohibition

The Prohibition Era of the 1920’s was an infamous time for the United States. However, despite the roar and boom or the twenties, prohibition did little to benefit Americans or the country itself. The ban of the make, transportation, and sale of alcohol only caused an increase in crime and decrease in public health and safety with practically no economic benefit.

Prohibition was undertaken to reduce crime, reduce corruption, and solve social problems in America but it failed on all accounts. Prohibition had the exact opposite effect on people than its original purpose was. Instead of removing alcohol from society, Prohibition actually instigated a national drinking spree that held constant until Prohibition was repealed. Felix Von Luckner said, “My observations have convinced me that many fewer would drink were it not illegal” (Von Luckner, 2). He believed that the law against alcohol manufacturing just instigated more drinking. The people during this period in time were so rebellious that they would do the opposite of anything that they were told to do. This had a huge contribution to the failure of Prohibition. Due to the failure of Prohibition, America’s society had fallen spiral to a drinking spree (Batchelor, 1). Many believed that the main cause of the failure of Prohibition was the breakdown of the enforcement agencies. In Hearings before the Subcommittee of the Committee on the Judiciary, Mayor Fiorello La Guardia said, “The Prohibition Enforcement Unit has entirely broken down. It is discredited; it has become a joke…” (La Guardia, 2). The Roaring Twenties’ prosperity was lost due to the failure of the Prohibition Enforcement Unit. If the law was stronger and better enforced, Prohibition could have succeeded. This was very detrimental to society because it showed the

When World War I ended in 1918, the generation of young Americans who had fought the war became intensely disillusioned, as the brutal carnage that they had just faced made the Victorian social morality of early-twentieth-century America seem like stuffy, empty hypocrisy. The dizzying rise of the stock market in the aftermath of the war led to a sudden, sustained increase in the national wealth and a newfound materialism, as people began to spend and consume at unprecedented levels. A person from any social background could, potentially, make a fortune, but the American aristocracy—families with old wealth—scorned the newly rich industrialists and speculators. Additionally, the passage of the Eighteenth Amendment in 1919, which banned the sale of alcohol, created a thriving underworld designed to satisfy the massive demand for bootleg liquor among rich and poor alike.

Although the temperance movement was concerned with the habitual drunk, its primary goal was total abstinence and the elimination of liquor. With the ratification of the 18th Amendment to the Constitution, the well-organized and powerful political organizations, utilizing no holds barred political tactics, successfully accomplished their goal. Prohibition became the law of the land on January 16, 1920; the manufacturing, importation, and sale of alcohol was no longer legal in the United States. Through prohibition, America embarked on what became labeled “the Nobel Experiment.” However, instead of having social redeeming values as ordained, prohibition had the opposite effect of its intended purpose, becoming a catastrophic failure.

The years leading into the 1920's and the prohibition movement were marked with saloons, drunkenness, and a society of increasing alcohol consumption. America's changing social habits brought on the passage of the Eighteenth amendment in 1919, placing a nation-wide ban on intoxicating liquors. This amendment was to prevent the production, sale, and use of alcoholic beverages. As the new law was established, the problem of enforcing Americans to obey the law was a great task as bootleggers illegally continued to traffic alcohol. Throughout the temperance movement, numerous leaders came forth on both sides of the war against and for prohibition. The fight for prohibition and the reasoning behind it was not worth the

Prohibition was an icon of the Roaring Twenties. Proponents of temperance had, for centuries prior, advocated for a federal law against alcohol, and, with the passing of the 18th amendment in 1920, they reached their goal. What advocates saw as a foolproof way to clean up society ended up backfiring and turning the nation towards more than a decade of illegal and immoral behavior that should have been foreseeable. Prohibition was an immense failure because of the unpredicted disobedience that arose and the detrimental effects of this disobedience on society.

The Prohibition during the 1920s has been widely scrutinized and is often used as an example today to show how banning a specific substance after it has been in wide circulation is a wasted effort. Many historians, economists, and Americans have analyzed the complications during the Prohibition and have culminated their thoughts to provide an accurate and in depth analysis of what caused the Prohibition to fail. Similarly, experts have presented data that shows just how drastically each year differed from one another during the Prohibition. However, there are many factors that affected each individual year that ultimately culminated to not only a universal distaste for the Prohibition, but for a complete repeal of the ban on alcohol nearly ten years later. Although the Prohibition is widely considered a failure in the sense that it did not properly moderate the selling and drinking of alcohol, the basic idea upon which the Prohibition was founded can be used to moderate drinking in a different manner that may better society as a whole.

Following the passage of the 18th Amendment in 1919, which outlawed the manufacturing, distribution, and sale of alcohol, the United States entered a period of time now known as Prohibition (U.S. Const. amend. XVIII). Immediately following the passage of the 18th Amendment, consumption of alcohol, alcohol related injuries, and crime decreased (Schaeffer, 2011, p. 402). However, it did not take long for the government to realize that Prohibition came with many unintended consequences. According to Schaeffer (2011), state and local governments were ill-prepared to handle the vast responsibilities of enforcing the law, which led to increased organized crime, corruption, and the failure of the law as a whole. 73% of Americans favored the repeal of the 18th Amendment “in its entirety” by the time the 21st Amendment was passed (Schaeffer, 2011, p. 408). The 21st Amendment was finally ratified in 1933 effectively ending prohibition. Aside from repealing the 18th Amendment, it also granted the states the right to regulate alcohol within their own borders and set a time limit for ratification of the law (U.S. Const. amend. XXI). Overall, this amendment decreased the powers of the federal government by delegating the authority over alcohol to the states.

In January 1920 the 18th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of American took effect in the beginning of Prohibition. That is, that laws preventing the sale, shipment, and distribution of alcohol beverages in the United States. It was no sudden impulse of Congress and or the states, this came after eighty years of agitation, political posturing and being sick of crime rates being outrageous. Daniel Okrent seeks to explain the build up to the era passage of the Amendments, the public’s activities in the age of Prohibition, the ultimate repeal of the law by the 21st Amendment, and the final outcomes of how this affected everything.

“On January 16, 1920, the manufacture, transportation, and sale of alcohol were prohibited (“Prohibition”).” Anywhere handling alcohol was required to shut down (“Prohibition”). Many people believed that alcohol was the root of many problems, so that with the elimination of it our nation’s problems might decrease. The ‘noble experiment’, as many called it, was supposed to relieve the nation of issues like, crime, social problems, tax burden, and health issues (Thornton). With Prohibition being set into motion we actually saw the opposite of what we had hoped. The new amendment was ineffective because the crime rates increased, the work force changed, and health problems skyrocketed.

The 18th amendment was ratified by congress on January 16, 1919 in which the selling and distribution of “intoxicating liquors” was banned. That was the start of what many called the dry decade in the United States. Norman H. Clark’s Deliver Us from Evil: An Interpretation of American Prohibition illustrates the struggles to make the dry decade possible and the consequences that followed it. The 235 page text describes how the Anti-Saloon League was determined to make prohibition possible and the struggles they had to overcome. As well as what directly followed once it was a reality.

Predicaments with Prohibition The social commentator and American cowboy Will Rogers once stated, “Prohibition is better than no liquor at all.” In the early 1900’s, alcohol abuse tore families apart and was, and still is the leading abused drug. The introduction and repeal of Prohibition failed to eliminate the domestic and social problems caused by alcohol in the United States in the early 1900’s. The introduction and enforcement of the quickly became corrupt, and eventually became evident that the ban on alcohol could not be achievable for the United States, and its alcoholically accustomed citizens.

The United States Congress proposed the 18th Amendment, which banned the sale, manufacture, and consumption of alcoholic beverages due to mass consumption of alcohol, alcohol related health problems, husbands drinking away their family wealth, and many divorces from alcohol related problems. From its ratification in 1920, Prohibition irreparably damaged the United States. By almost bringing the country into complete corruption, launching a skyrocket in organized crime, and decreased revenue from lost taxes, it caused the government to almost go bankrupt, and in a desperate attempt to make money the government repealed the Prohibition Act in the simple need for cash flow.

“Prohibition did not achieve its goals. Instead, it added to the problems it was intended to solve.” On 16th January 1920, one of the most common personal habits and customs of American society came to a halt. The eighteenth amendment was implemented, making all importing, exporting, transporting, selling and manufacturing of intoxicating liquors absolutely prohibited. This law was created in the hope of achieving the reduction of alcohol consumption, which in turn would reduce: crime, poverty,

During the 1920s, due to the rise in temperance movements and religious drive to outlaw the consumption of alcohol, Prohibition was officially instated. Unprepared for by the government, a new illegal business opportunity resulted because many Americans were defiant towards the new amendment and were determined to drink as they saw fit. This was the illegal importation and distribution of liquor in the United States. Due to the enactment of Prohibition, the unlawful smuggling of alcohol provided economic opportunities for few but affected the majority with its health, legal, and safety risks.