Alcohol and Drinking History in America: A Chronology

Nation Welcomes Repeal

1928.

• The American Bar Association called for repeal in 1928. It had been urged to do so by, among others, the Voluntary Committee of Lawyers.¹
• Physicians made an estimated $40,000,000 annually by writing prescriptions for medicinal spirits.²

1929.

• The New York City “police commissioner estimated it was home to thirty-two thousand drinking places -- double the number of saloons and illegal joints it had contained in the pre-Prohibition era.”⁴
• The mayor of Berlin paid a week-long official visit to New York City, at the end of which he asked “When does the Prohibition law go into effect?”⁵ It was late in the year and Prohibition had been in effect for nearly a decade.
• About one gallon in ten of denatured industrial alcohol was diverted into bootleg liquor.⁶
• The Women’s Organization for National Prohibition Reform (WOMPR) was founded by Pauline Morton Sabin after the president of the Women's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) asserted to Congress that "I represent the women of the United States!" Sabin had earlier been a staunch supporter of National Prohibition. However, over time she came to believe strongly that it was not only ineffective but actually counterproductive and causing very serious problems.⁷
• The National Commission on Law Observance and Enforcement (better known as the Wickersham Commission, after its chairman, George W. Wickersham) was formed. Much of its report was critical of National Prohibition in the U.S.8
• The Crusaders was an influential repeal organization founded by business executive Fred G. Clark who was appalled at the St. Valentine's Day Massacre in Chicago which resulted from rivalry among bootleggers. Rather than working at the national political level, the Crusaders chose to devote their efforts at the local level across the country.⁹
• The Increased Penalties Act (commonly known as the Jones Law) turned most violations of the Volstead act, which had ben misdemeanors, into felonies. Even seeing a violation of the law and failing to report it became a felony punishable by a three year prison term. The Jones Law has been described as “a vehicle built for punishment, and so severe it seemed powered by vengeance.”¹⁰
• “Elliot Ness begins in earnest to tackle violators of prohibition and Al Capone’s gang in Chicago.”¹¹
• A nation-wide contest was held for the best solution to the problems of enforcing Prohibition. One entrant suggested that the federal government add poison to alcohol sold through bootleggers and, although acknowledging that several hundred thousand Americans would die as a result, believed this sacrifice was justified in enforcing Prohibition. Others suggested that people who drank alcohol should be:
  • tattooed
  • excluded from any and all churches
  • forbidden to marry
  • sterilized
  • placed in bottle-shaped cages in public squares
  • branded
  • whipped
  • exiled to concentration camps in the Aleutian Islands
  • tortured
  • hung by the tongue beneath an airplane and flown over the country
  • executed, as well as their progeny to the fourth generation.¹²

1930s. “Starting in the 1930s, cocktail parties became popular forms of entertainment This is also when the social practice of having a drink (or two or three) before dinner became widespread.”¹⁴

1930.

• The Board of Temperance Strategy was established by the Anti-Saloon League as a "last ditch" effort to coordinate resistance to the growing public demand for the repeal of National Prohibition. It consisted of representatives from an impressive list of 33 major anti-alcohol temperance organizations.¹⁵
• Voters in Massachusetts voted to stop the state from enforcing Prohibition.¹⁶
• The 34 organizations comprising the National Temperance Council re-organized to form the National Conference of Organizations Supporting the 18th Amendment to deal with the groundswell of opposition to National Prohibition. Therefore, it strongly opposed any type of referendum on Prohibition and it opposed supporting any third party (i.e., the Prohibition Party) in the 1932 election.¹⁷

1931.

• The American Federation of Labor's National Committee for the Modification of the Volstead Act was created.¹⁸
• The American Legion called for a national referendum on Prohibition.
• The Republican Citizens Committee Against National Prohibition was established in December of 1931 by prominent Republican supporters of Repeal.¹⁹
• Established to lobby for Repeal planks at both the Republican and Democratic national conventions, the United Repeal Council was an advisory group consisting of leaders of the Women's Organization for National Prohibition Reform, the American Hotel Association, the Association Against the Prohibition Amendment, the Voluntary Committee of Lawyers, and the Crusaders.²⁰
• Al Capone was found guilty of income tax evasion and sentenced to a fine and ten years in federal prison.²¹

1932.

• On December 6, 1932, Sen. John J. Blaine of Wisconsin drafted a Twenty-first Amendment to be submitted to the states for possible ratification in order to repeal the Eighteenth Amendment that created National Prohibition in the US. It quickly passed both houses of Congress and was ratified by the necessary 36 states on December 5, 1933, thus ending National Prohibition.²² However, a number of states maintained state-wide prohibition. The last to drop prohibition was Mississippi in 1966. However, it and many other states continue to permit local option regarding the legal sale of alcoholic beverages.²³
• Franklin D. Roosevelt won election to the presidency of the U.S. running on a pledge to end National Prohibition.²⁴

1933.

• Anticipating that ratification of the Twenty-first Amendment would be a very long process, Congress modified the Volstead Act by means of the Cullen Bill, permitting the sale of beer with a maximum ABV of 3.2 percent in those states without prohibition laws, which became effective on April 7, 1933.²⁵
• Almost 80 percent of New Mexicans voted to repeal Prohibition. Santa Fe residents voted 2,768 to 201 for Repeal.²⁶
• Over 80 percent of Kentucky voters called for Repeal, although the state had been one of the first three to ratify the Eighteenth Amendment establishing National Prohibition.²⁷
• Residents of the state of New York voted almost eight to one in favor of Repeal.²⁸
• When the states were empowered to create constitutional conventions to consider ratifying the Twenty-First Amendment to repeal National Prohibition, North Carolinians voted against calling such a convention by a landslide vote of 293,484 to 120,190. North Carolina never ratified Repeal.²⁹
• In addition to North Carolina, eight other states did not ratify the Twenty-First Amendment. They were Georgia, Kansas, Louisiana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina (which specifically rejected the Amendment), and South Dakota. Montana ratified it a year after it had already gone into effect.³⁰
• Congress proposed the Twenty-first Amendment on February 20.³¹
• The specific dates, arranged chronologically, on which different states ratified the Twenty-First Amendment during the year were:
  • April 10, Michigan,
  • April 25, Wisconsin
  • May 8, Rhode Island,
  • May 25, Wyoming,
  • June 1, New Jersey
  • June 24, Delaware
  • June 26, Indiana
  • June 26, Massachusetts
  • June 27, New York,
  • July 10, Illinois
  • July 10, Iowa
  • July 11, Connecticut
  • July 11, New Hampshire
  • July 24, California
  • July 25, West Virginia
  • August 1, Arkansas
  • August 7, Oregon
  • August 8, Alabama
  • August 11, Tennessee,
  • August 29, Missouri
  • September 5, Arizona,
  • September 5, Nevada,
  • September 23, Vermont
  • September 26, Colorado
  • October 3, Washington
  • October 10, Minnesota

  During National Prohibition in the U.S., some temperance leaders hired a scholar to rewrite the Bible by removing all references to alcohol beverage.³⁴

  • October 17, Idaho
  • October 18, Maryland
  • October 25, Virginia
  • November 2, New Mexico
  • November 14, Florida
  • November 24, Texas
  • November 27, Kentucky
  • December 5, Ohio
  • December 5, Pennsylvania
  • December 5, Utah
• Ratification was completed on December 5. The amendment was subsequently ratified by the following states:
  • Maine (December 6, 1933)
  • Montana (August 6, 1934)
• The Twenty-First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution went into effect at 4:31 p.m. on December 5, 1933, ending 13 years, 10 months, 19 days, 17 hours and 32.5 minutes of Prohibition.³²
• Prohibition was not repealed on Native American territory or reservations.³³