The Prohibition Era
On January 16th of 1919 the Eighteenth Amendment was ratified by the United States, this would be the first amendment to have a time limit to be taken into effect. It was stated that the amendment would begin to be enforced one day and one year from the ratification date; the amendment was thus taken into effect on January 17th of 1920 (Staff, 2011). The United States had turned into a dry county. The prohibition act was advocated by several influential parties, most notably the Women's Christian Temperance Union and the Anti-Saloon League. The two parties believed that alcohol threatened families as well as morals; causing crime, corruption and other social problems. Thus a measure designed to decrease the amount of drinking, manufacturing and distribution of alcoholic beverages. The graph below shows the amount of ethanol from beers, spirits and wine per capita (graph provided by Ohio State University).
The original prohibitionists believed that the ban of alcohol in the United States would decrease the amount of crime throughout the country, "So convinced were they that alcohol was the cause of virtually all crime that, on the eve of Prohibition, some towns actually sold their jails," (Mulford, 1965). Ironically there was an evident increase in crime as crime syndicates such as Al Capone began to run bootlegging rackets; gang warfare also increased as gangs would fight for their turf, the University of Albany stated the following, "Not only did the number of serious crimes increase, but crime became organized." Al Capone famously said, "Prohibition has made nothing but trouble." The prohibition act also lead to the creation of tens of thousands of speakeasy clubs or illicit liquor shop/drinking club. After more than a decade of crime and public outcry an Amendment proposal to repeal the Eighteenth Amendment was brought to Congress. In less than a year the Amendment was passed and signed by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Previous to Roosevelt, Hoover's "great social and economic experiment" met an abrupt ending (Staff, 2011). |