Prohibition and the Temperance Movement

PROHIBITION AND THE TEMPERANCE MOVEMENT

Prohibition in Kansas

At the end of the nineteenth century six states (Iowa, Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Kansas, and Rhode Island) were officially "dry," which meant it was illegal to manufacture or sell alcohol in them. In 1888 the Supreme Court ruled that states could not prohibit the sale of alcohol that came into a state in its original package: this, said the Court, would interfere with Congress's power to regulate interstate commerce. Though a state banned alcohol, hotels and clubs could sell alcohol by the bottle. A state that wanted to prevent alcohol abuse, then, could not completely control drinking. After the Court made this ruling, the liquor interest pushed to have all state laws limiting alcohol sales repealed. This move by the liquor interest, seemingly supported by the U.S. Supreme Court, came at a time when many Americans felt powerless to control the new economic forces that governed their society.

Alcohol as a Social Problem

By 1909 there were more saloons in the United States than there were schools, libraries, or churches. There was one saloon for every three hundred Americans, and these saloons were concentrated in cities. Medical evidence that alcohol was seriously harmful underscored a perception of its ill effects. Adding to the social problem was a political one: most taverns were controlled by brewers or the liquor trust. Many in the era came to consider those two as an interest group, like the railroads, insurance companies, or other manufacturers, more concerned with profit than with public welfare. The Anheuser-Busch company controlled 65 percent of Saint Louis's taverns, and 90 percent of the saloons in Minneapolis were controlled by that city's liquor interest.

Opposition to Alcohol

In opposition to the liquor interest were different temperance organizations, each with its own methods and agenda. The Methodist Church was active in agitating against alcohol. The Prohibition Party, formed in 1872, received at least a quarter of a million votes in every election from 1888 to 1908. The Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), founded in 1874, and the Anti-Saloon League, founded in 1895, sought legal limits to alcohol sales and worked to convince individuals to give up drinking. The WCTU was a women's organization, and women were thought to have a special interest in restricting alcohol consumption. In fact, one argument against giving women the right to vote was that they would use it to enact Prohibition laws. Though the Methodists, the Anti-Saloon League, and the WCTU operated through education and lobbying, one Kansas woman, whose first husband had died of alcoholism, decided to take direct action against the liquor interests. Since saloons were illegal under Kansas law, Carry Nation in 1900 decided it would be legal to destroy them. A tall, muscular woman (about six feet tall and weighing 175 pounds), Carry Nation dressed in a black and white church deaconess uniform and carried an ax into local saloons and hotels, destroying the decor, furnishings, and most important, the hated bottles and kegs. Confinement to jail (on a charge of destroying property) only confirmed her views on the rightness of her cause. After her release she continued her campaign through Kansas and then through the rest of the United States, paying her fines with fees collected from public lectures and the sale of hatchets. For ten years she campaigned against alcohol with persistence and drama until, worn out from touring and smashing, she died in 1911. Her epitaph at Belton, Missouri, reads, "She hath done what she could."

The Temperance Movement Grows

Carry Nation was one colorful figure in the temperance movement, but to many advocates of Prohibition she was something of an embarrassment. Other advocates of temperance worked less dramatically, but perhaps more effectively, in convincing voters to ban alcohol. Eighteen Massachusetts cities, including Worcester, the state's second largest, and 249 towns went dry in 1908. Temperance and Prohibition were among the most important reforms of the Progressive Era, and after the 1912 election, in a stunning victory for progressive ideals (Wilson and Roosevelt, both running as progressives, received nearly two-thirds of the vote), Congress overturned the Supreme Court ruling of 1888 and allowed dry states to forbid the sale of alcohol, even in its original containers. Within three years nineteen states were officially dry. The United States adopted Prohibition as a wartime measure in 1917, as a way to save grain, but after the war national Prohibition was quickly established by a constitutional amendment.

Sources:

Ruth Bordin, Frances Willard: A Biography (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1986);

Bordin, Women and Temperance: The Quest for Power and Liberty, 1873-1900 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1981);

Nell Irvin Painter, Standing at Armageddon; The United States 1877-1919 (New York: Norton, 1987).