Prohibition

Prohibition

1. Why was it introduced?

   • Women's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU)
     • Threat to family life due to expenses for drinking it and domestic violence
     • Responsible for acts of violence
     • Managed to force Kansas
     • Carrie Nation (1890s)
   • Anti-Saloon League
     • Leader Wayne Wheeler
     • By outbreak of WW1 many mid-western and western states were 'dry'
     • Founded in Ohio in 1893
   • WW1
     • Uses up valuable grain that needed to be used in the war effort
     • Drinking unpatriotic
       • Many brewers were German origin e.g. Budweiser
   • Immigration
     • Drinking had links to foreigners that the WASPs disliked
       • E.g. Irish and Italian
     • Seen as a victory for 'nativists' over immigrants
   • Volstead Act

2. Successes

   • Altered American drinking habits
   • Boom in the sale of firearms, motorboats and cars
     • For Organised Crime
   • Boost to American soft drink companies
     • Output increased from 113 million to 182 million

3. Failures

   • Ignored
     • Harding had drinks delivered to the White House
     • Thousands of illegal drinking places (speakeasies) appeared
   • Split the Democratic Party
     • Drys from Rural South and West
     • Wets from North and East
   • Association against the Prohibition Amendment claimed prohibition encouraged crime
   • Availability of Alcohol
     • Still available in Mexico and Canada
       • Hard to enforce with thousands of miles of land borders
         • Treasury department had 3,000 prohibition agents paid $2,500 a year
           • Easily bribed
     • Illegal distilleries meant the USA could still make its own alcohol
     • Chicago was the ideal centre for the distribution of booze
   • Organised Crime
   • Widened the division between the rich and poor
     • Poor relied on self help, brewing their own or distilling moonshine (homemade alcohol) secretly at home
     • Rich went to speakeasies or private clubs
   • Failed because it attempted to force one moral view on all Americans
   • Reduced respect for the law

4. Organised Crime

   • Prohibition handed criminals the opportunity to control a huge multi-million dollar industry
   • Bribed officers of the law
   • Chicago and Al Capone