Download The Prohibition Movement

The Prohibition Movement
Historical Significance in the United
States
Controlling Alcoholic Beverages:
Two Approaches
The Drinker
Marketing of Alcohol
Drinking in the American Past
• The Alcoholic Republic: Early Nineteenth
Century
• Temperance and Abstinence Pledges
• Gradual growth of ideas of the personal and
social harms caused by drinking
What Was Prohibition?
1) The Prohibition Movement began before the
Civil War
2) Prohibition was part of a broad regulatory
movement in the Progressive Era of the early
Twentieth Century
3) National Prohibition was control over the
marketing of alcoholic beverages
What Was Prohibition?
The Eighteenth Amendment:
“ 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”
Prohibition and Drinking
• The Volstead Act (1919) provided for
enforcement and defined liquor narrowly,
forbidding brewing of beer, for example
• The Volstead Act did not outlaw the
consumption or possession of alcoholic
beverages
• Some states outlawed drinking
Control “The Liquor Traffic”
What Was “The Liquor Traffic?”
• Distilled Spirits
– Production in distilleries
– Sales to Wholesalers and Rectifiers
– Bottling for Retail Distribution
– Saloons as Retailer
Before 1890 most alcohol was consumed as spirits.
What Was “The Liquor Traffic?”
• German immigration and the rise of the Lager
Brewing Industry
• The technologies of Lager Beer Distribution
– Refrigeration
– Barrels on Tap in Saloons
– Bottled and Pasteurized Beer Sales Grew in the
Decade before National Prohibition
– Before Prohibition Retail Sales Occurred mostly in
Saloons
Competition Among Brewers
• Local Brewing and German-American
Communities
• Rise of Shipping Breweries after 1870
• Growth of Regional Breweries
The Saloon
• The Tied House System
• Competition Among Saloons
• The Ubiquitous Saloon
The 19th Century Approach
• The Prohibition Party
• The Woman’s Crusade
and the Woman’s
Christian Temperance
Union
Women and The Liquor Traffic
Women’s Crusade of 1873-74
The Woman’s Christian Temperance
Union
• Organized in Cleveland in 1874
• Controlled by Women
• Sought referenda on behalf of state
prohibition laws and local option laws
• International
Frances Willard
Worked on Behalf of
Many Social and
Feminist Reforms
Died in 1898 as the
Second Best-Known
Woman in the EnglishSpeaking World
1893: Birth of the Anti-Saloon
League
• The non-partisan strategy
• Incremental Approach
– Local Option by Precinct and Ward
– County Option
– State Prohibition
The Campaign for National
Prohibition
• 1913: decision for
national amendment
• The financial and
organizational resources
• The mushrooming of
public opinion
• 1916: Winning Congress
• 1917: Associating
Liquor with German
enemies
Passage of the 18th Amendment
• Wartime fervor helped speed the passage, but
votes in Congress were there before the U.S.
declared war
• Opponents put a time frame of 7 years for
passage
• Passage occurred very quickly—wartime
fervor probably helped
Prohibition Was Popular
• Large Congressional Majorities
• 1928: Hoover elected as the first “dry”
President
• Drinking dropped dramatically under
prohibition
• Many leaders observed a reduction in social
problems associated with drinking