Eighteenth Amendment. The Eighteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, instituting national prohibition, was born out of temperance reformers' efforts to remove the blight of alcoholic drinks from society, as they maneuvered within the intricacies of American federalism.In the 1880s and 1890s, prohibitionists in dry states struggled against the operations of a federal system that frustrated their efforts. Interstate commerce laws permitted liquor sellers from wet states to sell their products in dry territory. Also, the federal excise tax on liquor fostered a benign view of the liquor business as an economically vital industry. Drys (as prohibition advocates were called) responded by formulating a policy of concurrent state and federal action against liquor. In the twentieth century, the Anti‐Saloon League (founded in 1895) carried this strategy to new heights. Through league pressure, prohibition spread to half the population of the United States by 1912, and Congress adopted laws, most notably the 1913 Webb‐Kenyon Act, designed to aid prohibition states.

In 1913, the league called for a national constitutional amendment. Exploiting division in their opponents' ranks, drys drafted the bill and pressured Congress to pass it. Capitalizing on concerns associated with World War I, including German‐American dominance of the brewing industry and fears of diminished efficiency through alcohol consumption, the prohibitionists succeeded. Congress passed the amendment in December 1917 and sent it to the states for ratification, which occurred in January 1919. In January 1920 national prohibition went into effect. The amendment banned the manufacture, sale, transportation, and importation of intoxicating liquors within the United States. It granted Congress and the states “concurrent power” of enforcement. The Volstead Act of 1919 set up a specific federal enforcement apparatus.

The Eighteenth Amendment lasted only thirteen years before being repealed in 1933, the only time a constitutional amendment has ever been rescinded. Repeal was brought about by a number of factors, including the failure of enforcement. The concurrent‐power provision let the states abdicate their enforcement responsibility to the federal government, which—though it expanded its efforts—could not fully curtail the illegal liquor trade. Although prohibition significantly reduced the amount of liquor being consumed and improved the health of Americans, it also stimulated the growth of organized crime and corruption. A federal study, the Wickersham Report of 1930, documented the breakdown of enforcement, especially in the larger cities. Changes in cultural attitudes toward liquor consumption further eroded support for the policy. Antiprohibition editorial writers, newspaper cartoonists, and journalists like H.L. Mencken heaped ridicule on the Eighteenth Amendment and its supporters. Moreover, the strongest organization behind the amendment, the Anti‐Saloon League, lost much of its influence, just as lobbying organizations favoring repeal gained strength. Finally, the Great Depression, by destroying the claim that prohibition would assure national prosperity and by carrying predominantly “wet” Democrats into national office, assured the speedy demise of national prohibition.

The Eighteenth Amendment produced long‐lasting consequences for American law and constitutionalism. National prohibition stimulated growth in the federal law‐enforcement establishment, a process that did not disappear after repeal. The Eighteenth Amendment directly shaped the constitutional system by specifying a seven‐year time limit for ratification. Such limits subsequently became customary, allowing amendment opponents to translate delay into defeat.
See also Alcohol and Alcohol Abuse; Brewing and Distilling; Depressions, Economic; Progressive Era; Temperance and Prohibition; Woman's Christian Temperance Union.

Bibliography

Charles Merz , Dry Decade, 1931.
Norman H. Clark , Deliver Us from Evil, 1976.
Richard F. Hamm , Shaping the Eighteenth Amendment, 1995.

Richard F. Hamm

Eighteenth Amendment The only amendment to the Constitution to be repealed subsequently, the Eighteenth Amendment prohibited “the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors within, the importation thereof into, or the exportation thereof from the United States and all territory subject to the jurisdiction thereof for beverage purposes.” Commonly referred to as national prohibition, the Eighteenth Amendment was adopted by bipartisan majorities in excess of two‐thirds in each house of Congress in December 1917, ratified by three‐fourths of the states as of 16 January 1919, put into effect on 17 January 1920, and, after more than a decade of controversy, overturned by equally lopsided margins when the Twenty‐first Amendment was ratified on 5 December 1933.

National prohibition was the product of a century‐long, broad‐based temperance crusade. After voluntary abstinence campaigns sharply reduced American alcohol consumption, antebellum temperance advocates sought legal bans on liquor to extend the benefits of abstinence. During the 1850s, a dozen states briefly adopted prohibition laws. From the 1880s to World War I, local option laws and statewide prohibition spread. Encouraged by this success, a coalition of church groups, feminists, social and political reformers, and businessmen, all of whom believed in the benefits of a dry society, began calling for a total, seemingly permanent national solution, constitutional prohibition.

Senators, reluctant to vote for the prohibition amendment but afraid to vote against it, required ratification within seven years. They calculated that this innovation would thwart ratification but were proved mistaken: forty‐four state legislatures ratified within thirteen months. By 1922 every state but Rhode Island had ratified. A 1919 Ohio referendum overturning ratification was invalidated by the Supreme Court in Hawke v. Smith (1920) but fostered an impression that the amendment lacked popular support.

Opponents also bore responsibility for another distinctive feature of the amendment: a one‐year delay in its taking effect to cushion the blow to the liquor industry. Nevertheless, prohibition devastated the previously legal manufacturing, distribution, and retail liquor business, the seventh largest industry in the country. In two centuries of constitutional development only the Thirteenth Amendment, ending slavery, had a greater impact on property rights.

The Eighteenth Amendment specified that state and federal governments would have concurrent power to enforce prohibition. In 1919 Congress, overriding Woodrow Wilson's veto, adopted the Volstead Act to provide for federal enforcement and define as intoxicating any beverage containing more than .5 percent alcohol. The ban on beer and wine was unexpected and controversial. In the National Prohibition Cases (1920), the Supreme Court quickly rejected a variety of challenges to the constitutionality of the amendment. Thereafter the Court sought to aid its implementation by treating concurrent power expansively in United States v. Lanza (1922), upholding warrantless automobile searches in Carroll v. United States (1925), restricting medicinal liquor prescriptions in Lambert v. Yellowley (1926), and permitting telephone surveillance by means of off‐premises wiretapping in Olmstead v. United States (1928). Nevertheless, popular resistance and organized opposition to national prohibition grew until, in 1933, the Twenty‐first Amendment repealed what Herbert Hoover once called “an experiment noble in motive.”

See also Constitutional Amendments.

Bibliography

Jack S. Blocker, Jr. , American Temperance Movements: Cycles of Reform (1989).

David E. Kyvig

EIGHTEENTH AMENDMENT

The Eighteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution reads:

Section 1. After one year from the ratification of this article the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors within, the importation thereof into, or the exportation thereof from the United States and all territory subject to the jurisdiction thereof for beverage purposes is hereby prohibited.

Section 2. The Congress and the several States shall have concurrent power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

Section 3. This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by the legislatures of the several States as provided in the Constitution, within seven years from the date of the submission hereof to the States by the Congress.

The Eighteenth Amendment was passed in 1919 and subsequently repealed in 1933.

The volstead act (41 Stat. 305 [1919]) was enacted pursuant to the Eighteenth Amendment to provide for enforcement of its prohibition. The 1933 ratification of the twenty-first

amendment in 1933 resulted in the repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment and the Volstead Act.

cross-references

Alcohol.