Thread #18371427
Prohibition was one of the last great throws of the progressive era, loudly backed by crusading churches and women, and made the law of the land with the 18th Amendment. The abolition of alcohol was most popular in the heartland states of the Midwest and especially the South, where it was presumed that keeping blacks sober would also discourage them from criminal activities. The immigrant-filled cities were strongly against it since many were recent immigrants who came from cultures with a lenient view of alcohol. Yet most Americans at the time assumed Prohibition would be the law of the land in 50 and 100 years instead of a mere 13.
Prohibitionists far underestimated Americans' willingness to drink by any means necessary, traditional American hostility to government overreach, or the idea that people would object to making a crime out of something that by common consent had never been regarded as a crime before. Many came to believe the answer to repealing Prohibition was convincing the authorities that it was hopeless and they were fighting a losing battle by trying to impose sobriety on the nation. Many hypocritical legislators publicly supported Prohibition while getting sloshed in private. Hypocrisy was the order of the day. Irate World War I veterans complained that the 18th Amendment had been passed while they were overseas and completely without their knowledge. Working class Americans correctly argued that there was a double standard when it came to alcohol access for the well-heeled versus the poorer classes.
6 RepliesView Thread
Showing all 6 replies.>>
Law enforcement was singularly ineffective. State and Federal agencies were underfunded, undermanned, and easily bribed. Trigger-happy Prohibition agents ended up shooting many innocent people. Speakeasies filled up cities and while the corner saloon of the old days was a men's only establishment where women other than prostitutes did not venture into, the new speakeasies were fully gender-integrated. Alcohol was transported from the West Indies and Canada; the actions of over-zealous Prohibition agents sometimes caused diplomatic rows with the latter. While the wealthy could obtain high quality spirits, poorer people often had to make do with questionable concoctions made in bathtubs and basement stills. At worst it might contain poisonous methyl alcohol which resulted in blindness.
It was not without a few positive effects. Public drunkenness decreased and there was less absenteeism from industrial jobs. Bank savings increased.
>>
Prohibition also caused an explosion in crime, the nation's first great crime wave as gangsters battled for control of the alcohol trade. In Chicago during the 1920s some 500 members of the criminal underworld were murdered, most famously in the 1929 St. Valentine's Day Massacre when seven gangsters were gunned down with machine guns in a downtown garage. Few were ever brought to justice as criminals were seldom willing to snitch, nor were the authorities especially interested in investigating.
The Windy City had the most dramatic examples of lawlessness in the country. Al Capone in 1925 began six years of bloody turf wars that left many rivals dead and himself with a fortune of several million dollars as he sped through the streets in a custom Cadillac limo with bulletproof glass and armored plates. Capone, who once quipped "They say I'm a racketeer. I say I'm a businessman. When they serve drinks on a silver tray on Lake Shore Drive, they call it hospitality." He was finally convicted in 1931 of Federal tax evasion; there was little else the authorities could get him on as RICO statutes were some decades away and he couldn't be linked to the St. Valentine's Day Massacre. Gravely ill with syphilis, Capone was released from prison after serving most of his sentence and succumbed to the disease in 1947, not yet 50 years old.
>>
>>18371431
>Prohibition also caused an explosion in crime, the nation's first great crime wave as gangsters battled for control of the alcohol trade. In Chicago during the 1920s some 500 members of the criminal underworld were murdered, most famously in the 1929 St. Valentine's Day Massacre when seven gangsters were gunned down with machine guns in a downtown garage. Few were ever brought to justice as criminals were seldom willing to snitch, nor were the authorities especially interested in investigating.
>The Windy City had the most dramatic examples of lawlessness in the country. Al Capone in 1925 began six years of bloody turf wars that left many rivals dead
And almost 100 years later absolutely nothing has changed.
>>
>>
>>18371428
>>18371427
enforcing Prohibition was like trying to drain a lake with a spoon