Alcohol and Drinking History in America: A Chronology

Nation Welcomes Prohibition

1920-1933.

• National Prohibition in the U.S.went into effect January 16, 1920 and lasted until December 5, 1933.
• Labor leader Samuel “Gompers pointed out that the Eighteenth Amendment represented the first instance in American history when the United States Constitution actually denied rights, instead of granting them” and opposed it.¹
• “Reversing a historic pattern, hard liquor took the place of beer, contributing about two-thirds of total alcohol consumption by the end of the 1920s”² because of National Prohibition. Spirits are more compact and easier to conceal than beer and wine.³
• Hypocrisy was widespread during Prohibition. The director of Prohibition enforcement for northern California admitted in public “that he did drink occasionally because San Francisco is a wet community, and that he also served liquor to his guests because he was a gentleman and ‘not a prude.’”⁴ The U.S. Attorney General (the highest law enforcement official in the country) was implicated in alcohol corruption and the Prohibition director for the state of Pennsylvania conspired to illegally remove 700,000 gallons of alcohol from storage and presided over a $4,000,000 slush fund used to bribe Prohibition agents and officials.⁵ Andrew Volstead, after whom the Prohibition Enforcement Act of 1919 was named, drank alcohol. Congress has its own bootlegger. The Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives owned and operated an illegal still.⁶ Even President Warren Harding, who voted for Prohibition as senator, kept a stock of bootleg alcohol in the White House.⁷
• The federal government and the states shared responsibility for enforcing National Prohibition. Maryland was the only state in the union that never passed any legislation to enforce the unpopular law.⁸
• In one year alone, Nevada's approximately 90,000 residents obtained about 10,000 prescriptions for "medicinal alcohol."⁹
• Tennessee was typical of law enforcement problems. Sen. Frank Greene was wounded by a stray shot in a shoot-out between police and bootleggers. The police rather than the bootleggers turned out to have fired the stray bullet that paralyzed the senator. A 19-year-old man was while being chased on suspicion of rum running. Officers reported that he was killed when his car hit a tree. However, an autopsy revealed that he had been shot in the back of his head and in his shoulder blade.¹⁰
• Prohibitionists advocated increases in the federal income tax to replace revenue lost from taxes on alcoholic beverages.¹¹
• Most alcohol producers failed to survive National Prohibition. However, a few distilleries survived on producing whiskey for medicinal use and alcohol for industrial purposes; some wineries survived producing sacramental wine and grapes; and some breweries survived by producing “near beer” beer containing less than one half of one percent alcohol), ice cream, malted milk, porcelain goods and other products.¹²
• Near beer brands included Bevo by Anheuser-Busch, Vivo by Miller, Lux-O by Stroh, Famo by Schlitz, and Pablo by Pabst.¹³

1920s.

• “Unlike the saloons they replaced, speakeasies were patronized by both sexes.”¹⁵
• “Cocktails spread from the public [speakeasies] to the private [home] sphere during Prohibition” in the U.S.¹⁶
• "In ‘Bloody Williamson,' a county in far southern Illinois, battles between the operators of wide-open taverns and the ‘dry' Ku Klux Klan killed 14 people in 1924-25."¹⁷ The Ku Klux Klan strongly supported Prohibition and its very strict enforcement.
• California grape acreage uncreased about 700 percent during the first five years of National Prohibition and production increased dramatically to meet the booming demand for home-made wine.¹⁸
• The state militia occupied Marion, Illinois, after the Ku Klux Klan, frustrated with the indifference of the local police to enforcing Prohibition, engaged bootleggers in organized battles.¹⁹
• Some public libraries, “yielding to pressure from local temperance groups, withdrew all literature describing the manufactured alcohol.”²⁰

1920.

• On the day National Prohibition went into effect, January 16, the New York Daily News explained what people could and couldn’t do under the Volstead Act:

  You may drink intoxicating liquor in your own home or in the home of a friend when you are a bona fide guest.

  You may buy intoxicating liquor on a bona fide medical prescription of a doctor. A pint can be bought every ten days.

  You may consider any place you live permanently as your home. If you have more than one home, you may keep a stock of liquor in each.

  You may keep liquor in any storage room or club locker, provided the storage places for the exclusive use of yourself, family or bona fide friends.

  You may get a permit to make liquor when you change your residence.

  You may manufacture, sell or transport liquor for non-beverage sacramental purposes provided you obtain a Government permit.

  You cannot carry a pocket flask.

  You cannot give away or receive a bottle of liquor as a gift.

  You cannot take liquor to hotels or restaurants and drink it in the public dining rooms.

  You cannot buy or sell formulas for home-made liquor.

  You cannot ship liquor for beverage use.

  You cannot manufacture anything above one-half of one percent in your home.

  You cannot store liquor in any place except your own home.

  You cannot display liquor signs or advertisements on your premises.

  You cannot remove reserve stock from storage.²²

• Californians largely welcomed the establishment of National Prohibition. Temperance sentiment had long been strong in the state. It had elected the only Prohibition Party member of Congress and had given the Prohibition Party's presidential candidate the largest popular vote in history.²³
• Edward Donegan was an odd-job laborer in 1919, who, in 1920 became a millionaire within about four months through his bootlegging operation.²⁴
• With the implementation of National Prohibition in 1920, the WCTU expanded its campaign of Scientific Temperance Instruction for fear that not enough people were sufficiently convinced of alcohol’s evil. ²⁵

1921.

• Within the first six months of National Prohibition, more than 15,000 physicians and 57,000 druggists and drug manufacturers had applied for licenses to prescribe and sell liquor. Not surprisingly, the Council of the American Medical Association refused to confirm the Associations 1917 resolution that discouraged the therapeutic use of alcohol.²⁶
• William (Bill) McCoy pioneered “rum-running” by sailing a boat with 1,500 cases of liquor from the Bahamas to the U.S. It was not produced by moonshiners but was “the real McCoy.”²⁷
• Richmond Hobson organized the American Alcohol Education Association, a temperance organization.²⁸
• New York State’s Mullin-Gage Prohibition enforcement law was passed. It was repealed in 1923 because it had paralyzed the courts with so many liquor cases.²⁹
• Three hundred million gallons of "near beer" were produced.³⁰

1922.

• The Woman's National Committee for Law Enforcement (sometimes spelled Women's National Committee for Law Enforcement) was a federation of Protestant women's organizations established to promote more vigorous enforcement of Prohibition laws.³¹
• The Anti-Prohibition Congress was held in Brussels. Attending were politicians from Belgium, Britain, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Italy, Norway, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland. It was unsuccessful in its efforts to obtain “the active support of a hundred million European advocates” to repeal National Prohibition in the U.S.³²
• Voters in Massachusetts rejected by a vote of 75% an act for the state to enforce Prohibition.³³
• New Jersey ratified the Eighteenth Amendment on March 9, long after it was in effect.³⁴
• Two hundred KKK members burned down saloons in Union County, Arkansas, in the wake of an oil discovery boom there.³⁵

1923.

• Law enforcers frequently violated laws to enforce Prohibition. A U.S. Coast Guard boat off South Florida had orders to capture a rumrunner in international waters - in violation of international law - if necessary. It opened fire on the rumrunner beyond the three mile limit, where he was illegally captured.³⁶
• The four high-society bootlegging LaMontages brothers were arrested and convicted of violating Prohibition. Siblings Morgan, Rene, William, and Montaigu LaMontages had been increasing their fortunes by $2,000,000 per year during Prohibition.³⁷
• U.S. attorneys in Minneapolis logged over 60 percent of their time on Prohibition-violation cases.³⁸

1924.

• The National Distillers Products Corporation was formed and began buying the alcohol stock of defunct distillers. When prohibition ended, it owned over half of the aged whiskey in the U.S.³⁹
• Bootlegger Roy Olmstead was arrested. The former Seattle Police Department Sergeant had become one of Puget Sound's largest employers, utilizing office workers, bookkeepers, collectors, salesmen, dispatchers, warehousemen, mechanics, drivers, rum running crews, and legal counsel.⁴⁰
• In reaction to public outcry after police invaded a home in Portland, Oregon, with an illegal search warrant based only on an “anonymous tip,”the strongly Prohibitionist governor said that time has modified the old adage that every man’s home is his castle and sanctuary” and that Oregonians should keep their homes in such condition that “visiting” Prohibition agents would be welcome at any time.⁴¹
• Daisy Douglas Barr was Imperial Empress of the Women's Ku Klux Klan (WKKK) in Indiana and seven other states having a combined membership of about 250,000 members. She and the Grand Wizard of the Indiana KKK were considered responsible for electing a Klan-friendly governor in 1924. However, some Klan members charged that Rev. Barr "had amassed a fortune off the dues of Klansmen" and she was replaced in 1926.⁴²
• William H. Anderson, the “Dry Warrior,” was convicted of forgery in the financial records of the Anti-Saloon League and sentenced to two years imprisonment in New York State’s maximum security penitentiary at Sing Sing.⁴³
• In San Francisco alone, there were 2,500 Prohibition cases waiting to be heard. The courts finally offered “bargain days” on which those accused of violations could plead guilty in return for low fines or sentences.⁴⁴

1925.

• Indiana enacted the Wright Bone Dry Bill, which dramatically increased the penalties for those found with illegal alcohol. Described as "one of the most repressive" laws ever passed in the state, enforcing the controversial law was very difficult.⁴⁵
• The popular journalist H. L. Mencken wrote that "Five years of prohibition have had, at least, this one benign effect: they have completely disposed of all the favorite arguments of the Prohibitionists. None of the great boons and usufructs that were to follow the passage of the Eighteenth Amendment has come to pass. There is not less drunkenness in the Republic but more. There is not less crime, but more. There is not less insanity, but more. The cost of government is not smaller, but vastly greater. Respect for law has not increased, but diminished."⁴⁶ The sheriff in one county in Arizona reported that he has seized 152 stills, arrested 183 people for violating federal alcohol violations and 80 for violating state violations, all within a three-month period.⁴⁷
• Al Capone said “I make my money by supplying a public demand. If I break the law, my customers, who number hundreds of the best people in Chicago, are as guilty as I am. Everybody calls me a racketeer. I call myself a businessman.”⁴⁸
• Over five million children had signed the total abstinence pledge cards promoted by the Lincoln-Lee Legion. ⁴⁹
• A study of legislative control of curricula reported that temperance education "is our nearest approach to a national subject of instruction; it might be called our one minimum essential."⁵⁰
• Isidor Einstein (Izzy Einstein) and his fellow Prohibition agent, Moe Smith, were the best known Prohibition agents in the country. Izzy and Moe Smith made 4,932 arrests of bartenders, bootleggers and speakeasy owners with an amazing 95 percent conviction rate. On a particularly busy day, they raided 48 speakeasies. They were called to Washington and told "You get your name in the papers all the time, and in the headlines, too, whereas mine is hardly ever mentioned. I need to ask you to remember that you are merely a subordinate, not the whole show.” After their names appeared again they were dismissed "for the good of the service."⁵¹

1926.

• Dr. Raymond Pearl published Alcohol and Longevity, in which he reported finding that moderate drinkers outlived both abstainers and alcoholics. Dr. Pearl's ground breaking research occurred during the middle of National Prohibition and, therefore, received little attention. Nevertheless, over time, an increasing volume of research has found that consumption of alcohol is associated with health and longevity. ⁵²
• The de facto head of the Anti-Saloon League, Wayne Wheeler, was being criticized by members of Congress who were questioning legality of the League's spending in congressional races. He then soon retired from the League.⁵³ Under his direction, the league had developed the technique of pressure politics, which is sometime called “Wheelerism.”
• Montana residents voted to discontinue enforcing Prohibition.⁵⁴
• Voters in California, Colorado and Missouri rejected repealing state Prohibition enforcement laws.⁵⁵
• Nevadans approved by seventy-five percent a request that Congress call a convention to either repeal or modify the Eighteenth Amendment.⁵⁶

1927.

• After the death of powerful Anti-Saloon League leader Wayne Wheeler in 1927, Bishop James Cannon, Jr., chairman of the Methodist Board of Temperance, Prohibition, and Public Morals, emerged as the most powerful leader of the temperance movement in the United States. Journalist H. L. Mencken said of Cannon that "Congress was his troop of Boy Scouts and Presidents trembled whenever his name was mentioned."⁵⁸
• The Voluntary Committee of Lawyers was established by a group of highly influential attorneys to promote the repeal of National Prohibition.⁵⁹
• Catholic moral theologian Father John A. Ryan rejected his earlier position that people had to obey laws passed in good faith for good social purposes. He concluded that Prohibition lacked public acceptance, excessively restricted personal freedom, was actually harmful, and therefore lacked moral validity and was not binding.⁶⁰
• To prevent industrial alcohol from being diverted to beverage use, the government had long required it to be denatured or made unpalatable by the addition of soap and other substances. However, bootleggers devised ways of “re-naturing” it. In reaction, “By mid-1927, the new denaturing formulas included some notable poisons—kerosene and brucine (a plant alkaloid closely related to strychnine), gasoline, benzene, cadmium, iodine, zinc, mercury salts, nicotine, ether, formaldehyde, chloroform, camphor, carbolic acid, quinine, and acetone. The Treasury Department also demanded more methyl alcohol be added—up to 10 percent of total product. It was the last that proved most deadly.” During that year alone, 700 people died from the poisoning in New York City.⁶¹