There have been a lot of talk about banning guns, soda, or the
consumption of animal products that one group of people see as a vice and wants
everyone to stop, stop doing or stop being. Ken Burn’s documentary, Prohibition (2011) is a look into the
great social experiment of the 1920s which failed miserably. The documentary
opens with a quote from Mark Twain, “Nothing so needs reforming as other
people’s habits. Fanatics will never learn that through it be written in
letters of gold across the sky. It is the prohibition that makes anything
precious.” The Prohibition movement began in the early days of our country.
Women were at the core of the passing and repealing of the 18th
Amendment. The Volstead Act was flawed from the very beginning and doomed to
fail. Prohibition, at the beginning, had the results that was hoped for, but it
quickly went south and left the country with unexpected consequences. It is a
lesson of why prohibition of anything just doesn’t work.
The origins of Prohibition began hundred years before the 18th
Amendment was passed and ratified. A temperance movement began to gain steam in
the 1820s with the Great Protestant Awakening when alcohol was an evil that
needed to be removed. The movement would demand total abstinence from everyone.
Many groups would form and help drive the temperance movement into the
headlines. The Washingtonian Societies were reformed alcoholic men. Susan B.
Anthony and the Women’s Temperance Society would take up the cause along with
women’s suffrage. In 1851, Neal Dow, the mayor of Portland, Maine petitioned to
ban alcohol and a law passed on June 2, 1851 which was the first to prohibit
the sale and manufacture of intoxicating beverages. All temperance bans were
halted with the outbreak of the Civil War (1861-1865). After the Great
Migration of 1865. The temperance movement began to stir again. Another group
was the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, a powerful force which drove the
idea of prohibition in the minds of Americans. A third group was the
Anti-Saloon League, with its leader Howard Hyde Russell, would turn the
attention of prohibition nationwide. The movement would again gain momentum as
America entered World War I, as alcohol and beer, specifically, would be used
as propaganda for Anti-German sentiment in the country. The 18th
Amendment was passed on August 1, 1917 and it was ratified by the states by
January 16, 1919. It would go into effect in January 1920.
Women were at the center of the Prohibition movement. They
were the force to help push it into law, the enforcement of the law and the
force to get it repealed. I want to highlight just a few of the important
women. First, Frances Elizabeth Caroline Willard aka “Saint Frances” was the
master strategist for the Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU). She would
serve as the organization’s president from 1879 until her death in 1898. She
would bring the temperance movement along with the women’s suffrage movement.
Second, Carrie Nation (1846-1911) is well known for her hatchet and breaking up
saloons in Kansas. While many women of the WCTU denounced her methods, her
method seemed to spread as she took her crusade outside of Kansas. Third, Mabel
Walker Willebrandt (1889-1963) was the most famous woman in the country who was
not an actress. She became the Assistant Attorney General of the United States
and she took her job very seriously. Although she personally opposed
Prohibition, she would aggressively work to uphold the Volstead Act and
prosecute any violators. Fourth, Pauline Sabin (1887-1955) was first a
supporter of Prohibition and worked for the passing of the 18th
Amendment. However, she would change her mind when she saw the hypocrites it
made of the country’s leaders. She disliked Ella Boole and the WCTU as they
claimed to speak for all American women. In disgust as President Hoover would do
nothing about Prohibition, she created the Women’s Organization for National
Prohibition Reform in 1929 with the sole goal of repeal.
The Volstead Act was named for Andrew Volstead, the
Minnesota congressman who introduced it. It was the enforcement law for the 18th
Amendment which prohibited the manufacture, sale and transport of intoxicating
liquors; however, it did not define what “intoxicating liquors’ were. The
Volstead Act was conceived and drafted by Wayne Wheeler, leader of the
Anti-Saloon League, and set out to define what would be considered intoxicating
liquors. While the 18th Amendment and the Volstead Act prohibited
the manufacture, sale and transport of intoxicating liquors, it did not
prohibit the consumption of liquors. The Act would define intoxicating liquors
as beverages with more than 0.5% alcohol by volume, which took many by
surprise, including many Prohibition supporters, because the understanding was
that beer and wine would still be allowed. However, Wheeler wanted total
prohibition and heavily influenced lawmakers to pass the Act with the strict
restriction. Patented medicines which contained alcohol was still allowed as
well as sacramental wines for churches and synagogues. The Volstead Act did not
restrict the consumption of alcohol and all alcohol purchased before the law
went into effect was allowed for home consumption. It also did not prohibit the
manufacture of alcoholic beverages for home consumption. People could make
their own beer, wine and other liquors if they did not sale it or transport it.
That would soon change as more and more restrictions were added to the law. The
“5 and 10” law would increase penalties for a first-time violation of the
Volstead Act, and it made it a crime to not report violators, including your
neighbors.
Prohibition was an experiment that failed. It had such unexpected
consequences that many people would claim that the country was worse than it
was before. Prohibition would turn millions of law-abiding citizens into law
breakers. It would redefine the role of government and individual rights and
responsibilities. Prohibition turned the countryside against the cities. It
turned the natives against the immigrants and the question who is and who is
not a real American. A question that is still being asked today. The
prohibition movement became an anti-immigrant movement. The Anti-Saloon League
claimed that true Americans didn’t need alcohol, only the immigrants did. It
turned Protestants against Catholics. Alcohol became the scapegoat for all the
failures in society. From the very beginning of Prohibition, the people fought
to keep their alcohol just as fiercely as those who fought to prohibit it.
Inconsistencies in the law would be exploited by many and make others most
successful. Roy Olmstead was known as the King of the Puget Sound Bootleggers
as he began smuggling alcohol from Canada. George Remus of Cincinnati was a
successful lawyer until bootlegging made him an even bigger success. He would
also memorize Prohibition regulations and devised ways around them as soon as
they were issued. William McCoy was a Florida skipper who ran a very successful
rum smuggling operation. Statistics have shown that Americans were actually
drinking more during and after Prohibition than they ever were before the 18th
Amendment. Demand was so high for alcohol, bootleggers were starting to cut
corners with deadly results. Some bootleggers were making Jamaica Ginger and
wood alcohol that caused many illnesses and even deaths.
Why it doesn’t work? Bottom line is that you cannot legislate
reform, that must come from within. A sentiment repeated by many throughout the
program. Edwin Hunt Jr, the son of a bootlegger, said “Prohibition was the
noble experiment. I think it created more problems than it solved. It brought
into the country, it brought a disregard for laws. I think it turned us into a
nation of scofflaws in many ways.” When you banned something, you create a
demand for it. People want it simply because you told them they can’t have it. Since
the 18th Amendment was repealed by the 21st Amendment on December 5,
1933, other groups have come to Congress to impose their ideas of morality and
all have been defeated, in part to the memory of Prohibition and the problems
it caused. The closing words of the documentary sum it up best, “If we ever
become a country in which we tell the government “Tell us how to live,” then we
are doomed.” America has been a country of rebels since the colonial days. It
is the American spirit to stand up and say “hey, you can’t tell me what to do!”
But when we allow the government to say, “We know better for your life, health
and family than you do,” we are truly doomed. What is the solution to other
social problems? Education and allow people to have an informed choice, hoping
they chose the healthiest option but needing to accept when they don’t. A great
example is soda. Yes, soda is bad for you in large quantities; but telling
people they can’t have it, only drives their desire for it and they will drink
more of it not knowing if it will be available in the future. By teaching
moderation, people can still enjoy soda and be healthy.
In conclusion, Ken Burns has made a name for himself with
amazing documentaries which dig deeper in historical events than ever before.
His documentary, Prohibition, is not
only a lesson in history but a lesson of current events. It is a lesson we need
to understand before we go down this path again. It is a reminder that we
cannot legislate morality. One group cannot dictate their version of right or
wrong. If prohibition worked, then there would be no murders or any crime. The
prisons would be empty, and law enforcement would be twiddling their thumbs. Prohibition
was the law of unintended consequences. We need to be realistic when discussing
any kind of ban, will people say, “oh well, it’s against the law now” and obey
the law? Think about how many times a day you break the law. You might say, “I
don’t break the law!” If you drive, I bet you do! Sometimes without realizing
it and sometimes because you know you won’t get caught. I highly recommend Ken
Burn’s documentary and see the similarities in today’s issues.
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