PROHIBITION

Prohibition and the Churches

Even as the Depression that followed the stock-market crash of 1929 deepened to unprecedented lows, Americans were preoccupied with the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which prohibited the manufacture, sale, and transportation of alcoholic beverages. That amendment, which had been ratified in 1919, was the result of long, dedicated effort by reformers, many of them active in Protestant evangelical groups. The Women's Christian Temperance Union reflected the links between the effort to dry up America and the Protestant churches. The Anti-Saloon League, with strong ties to the Methodist Church, called itself the Protestant church in action.

ON AN AMENDMENT TO REPEAL PROHIBITION

In a 1933 article called "This Is Armageddon," the liberal Christian Century spoke out against the widespread call to repeal Prohibition. "It is perfectly true," the article said, "that no law can be enforced or ought to be enforced in a democracy unless it is supported by the sober and deliberate judgement of a majority of the people. Especially this is true of a law that touches so intimately the habits and behavior, the civil rights and moral welfare of all the people. But it does not follow that a majority vote may not sometimes be got for a law the people do not really want." It continued, "It has been claimed that the enactment of prohibition was the results of high pressure political salesmanship which made people vote for what they did not really want.… The question of the hour is whether high pressure political salesmanship is going to be the chief force in determining the ratification of the repealing amendment. For years the press of almost the whole country has been shipping the public into a furor on the subject of the evils of prohibition. It was easier to do this because the evils of the old regime are hidden by the dust of years. Now the star salesmen of repeal make great promises of revived private industry and increased public revenue. Such alluring but deceptive promises confuse the main issue." The article concluded with the claim that "we shall fight to the limit of our power" against repeal, but such fervor was not enough to stop the end of Prohibition.

Source:

"This Is Armageddon," Christian Century, 50 (1 March 1933): 279-281.

Taking Sides

National Prohibition was controversial from the beginning, with soldiers returning from World War I protesting that they had been kept from voting on the issue by failure of the states to provide adequate machinery for absentee voting. Within a short period the "wets," critics of the amendment and the Volstead Act, its enabling legislation, raised challenges about this constitutional effort to legislate morality and behavior. The "dry" forces found dubious allies, including corrupt politicians and bootleggers who profited from the traffic in homemade and imported liquor. Perhaps a more shady ally was the revived Ku Klux Klan, which supported small-town Protestant values in the face of changes brought about by industrialization, urbanization, and modernization. In addition to fighting bootleggers and rumrunners, however, the Klan also targeted blacks, Jews, and Roman Catholics and served as a leading nativist force in the nation during the first half of the 1920s.

Prohibition and Politics

Prohibition quickly moved back into politics. While the Republican Party, with its large Protestant support, remained in the dry camp, the Democratic Party, with its combination of dry Protestant southerners and wet urban Roman Catholics, split sharply over the issue. In 1924 the Democrats met in New York City, a center of illicit liquor, and split over the question of the Ku Klux Klan; they suffered a humiliating defeat in that year's presidential election.

A Divisive Issue

In 1928 the question of Prohibition was even more divisive, and the wet forces intensified their organizational efforts. Herbert Hoover, the Republican nominee, called Prohibition "an experiment noble in purpose" and promised a review of the government's support for it. The Democrats nominated a wet, Alfred E. Smith, the Roman Catholic governor of New York. The Republicans, favored by a decade of peace and prosperity, seemed invincible that year, but alcohol and religion both became election issues with the Smith nomination. The Anti-Saloon League, now dominated by Bishop James A. Cannon Jr., head of the Temperance and Social Service Commission of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, helped split the upper South from the Democratic lower South for the first time in the twentieth century. The link between liquor and the Roman Catholic Church was too strong for traditional white southern Protestants to maintain their old loyalty to the party of their fathers, The upper south voted for Prohibition and against Roman Catholicism in the 1928 election.

Enforcing Prohibition

The question of Prohibition would not go away. In 1929 President Herbert Hoover appointed a commission to review the enforcement and effectiveness of prohibition. The Wickersham Commission split sharply over the effectiveness of Prohibition but nevertheless gave general support for the idea, and President Hoover provided more money for enforcing the Volstead Act. Few proponents or opponents doubted that Prohibition was here to stay.

Challenges to Prohibition

The wet forces were strengthened by the creation in 1929 of the Women's Organization for Prohibition Reform, which challenged the assumption that all women supported prohibition. Perhaps equally telling was the defection from absolute Prohibition by drys such as the Rev. Dr. Clarence True Wilson of the Northern Methodist Church, who announced that he would not oppose light wines and beer as a way to control bootlegging as long as saloons were banned. In 1932 Rev. Charles Stezle of the Presbyterian Church, a longtime dry proponent, came out for repeal, arguing that Prohibition did not work and was worse than the alternative.

Problems with Prohibition

Prohibition collapsed because of the economic issues of the Depression of the 1930s, but other factors played a part. In the early years of the decade Bishop Cannon became embroiled in a series of scandals, ranging from the revelation that he had been gambling on the stock market to his sudden marriage to his secretary shortly after his wife's death to charges that he had misspent campaign money in the election of 1928. While he escaped conviction for his activities, he helped discredit both Prohibition and evangelical Protestantism in the eyes of many. When Billy Sunday returned to Detroit for a revival in 1932, he was no longer able to whip up the enthusiastic support for Prohibition that he had in his last revival there. The issue no longer attracted deep interest with the general public.

Repeal

Even so, when the political parties met in their presidential conventions in 1932 and capitalism in the United States seemed on its last legs, the key issue for both parties, as the famous journalist H. L. Mencken reported, was their stand on liquor. The Democrats, despite reservations from dry southern delegates, nominated Franklin D. Roosevelt and pledged to overturn the Eighteenth Amendment. When Herbert Hoover accepted his party's nomination, he too joined the chorus for repeal. Effectively, the "noble experiment," as President Hoover's remark was usually misquoted, was over. As soon as the election results were in, plans to repeal the Eighteenth Amendment were put into action. When the Congress met in special session in March 1933 to enact the first hundred days of New Deal legislation, one of its first acts was to revise the Volstead Act to allow the manufacture and sale of beer. The beer parades of 1933 echoed the funerals for John Barleycorn that signaled the ratification of the Prohibition amendment fourteen years earlier. The repeal amendment swept through state ratification, and in December 1933 the Twenty-first Amendment was declared ratified. Once again the states were able to decide the alcohol question for themselves.

Last Efforts

While they had lost the conflict, many Protestants and their organizations were unwilling to give up the struggle. They turned again to local communities to try to limit alcohol sales and consumption. In many states they formed umbrella groups, with names such as Christian Action or Christian Social Response, to coordinate their efforts, sometimes to great effect. Will Rogers, the cowboy humorist, remarked of his native Oklahoma that the people there would vote dry as long as they were sober enough to stagger to the polls. But the national war over alcohol was over for now.

DRINKING AND THE CLERGY

Rev . B. L. Shipman, who served as a minister in the Virginia Methodist Episcopal conference for eleven years, resigned in 1934, closing a case that had begun two years earlier when he was expelled from his position as pastor of Oak View Methodist Church for drinking two glasses of eggnog at a Christmas party. After his reinstatement by a Southern Methodist appellate court, Shipman declined reappointment and resigned from the clergy, instead entering the automobile business.

Source:

"Methodist Pastor Quits," New York Times, 30 October 1933, p. 36.

Sources:

"Baptists and Methodists Fight Repeal," Literary Digest, 115 (10 lime 1933); 15;

Sean Dennis Cashman, Prohibition: The Lie of the Land (New York: Free Press, 1981);

Larry Engelmann, Intemperance: The Lost War Against Liquor (New York: Free Press, 1979);

David E. Kyvig, Repeating National Prohibition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979).

PROHIBITION

The Eighteenth Amendment

On 18 December 1917 Congress passed the Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, forbidding the "manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors." By January 1919, forty-six of the forty-eight states had ratified the amendment; only Rhode Island and Connecticut had not. Despite the rapid ratification of the amendment, however, many industrial states never adopted state Prohibition, including California, Connecticut, Illinois, Massachusetts, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. The opposition of new immigrants to the Prohibition measure proved its undoing in the large cities that rejected state or municipal liquor bans between 1917 and 1919: Boston, Chicago, Cincinnati, Cleveland, San Francisco, Saint Louis, and Saint Paul. In states where Prohibition was unpopular, the state governments assumed the position that the measure was a federal law, and left its enforcement to the federal government. Altogether, the cost to states for enforcing Prohibition was only a quarter of what they spent on administering their parks. Meanwhile, the Eighteenth Amendment produced a decline in federal revenues. The federal government had long benefited from domestic liquor sales: in 1914, one-third of its revenue was derived from liquor licenses and taxes.

The Anti-Saloon League

Founded in Oberlin, Ohio, in 1893, the Anti-Saloon League led the fight for Prohibition. In 1909 there was one saloon for every three hundred people in the United States; indeed, there were more saloons than there were schools, libraries, hospitals, theaters, or parks; and far more saloons than churches. These establishments were not distributed evenly across the United States: there were more bars in Chicago than there were in the entire South, for instance. Generally, Anti-Saloon League members shared a broad program of progressive reform: in addition to temperance, they favored votes for women, an end to monopolies, the improvement of working conditions, and aid to immigrants. They found strong support in Congress for their Prohibition goal. In February 1913 Congress passed the Webb-Kenyon Act, overriding President William Howard Taft's veto, in an effort to stop the transportation of liquor from so-called wet states, where the sale of liquor was legal, into dry states, where it was not. In November 1913, at its twenty-year anniversary jubilee in Columbus, Ohio, the Anti-Saloon League adopted the strategy of

YEARS IN WHICH THE STATES ADOPTED PROHIBITION

Source:

Scan Dennis Cashman, Prohibition: The Lie of the Land (New York: Free Press, 1981).

lobbying for an amendment to the Constitution, hoping to make the sale and use of alcohol illegal throughout the United States. Meanwhile, workmen's compensation laws in the early 1910s caused many industry leaders to embrace the league's goal. Because companies were required to pay when liquor-related accidents injured or incapacitated their workers, these businesses had gained a strong interest in keeping their workers sober.

Political Dilemma

The three towering political figures of the age, William Jennings Bryan, Theodore Roosevelt, and Woodrow Wilson, all waited a long time before declaring their positions on Prohibition. Bryan, whose political base was strongest in "dry" areas of the South and Midwest, did not believe that Prohibition was a solution to the complex problems of the cities; not until 1916, when he resigned as secretary of state because of President Wilson's war policies, did Bryan clearly and publicly support Prohibition. Theodore Roosevelt's position was even more ambiguous. Unpersuaded by the social arguments used to support Prohibition, he worried that the proposed law against liquor would infringe on personal liberties; as president from 1901 to 1909, he maintained that Prohibition was primarily a state rather than a federal matter. Indeed, in 1914 both sides in the debate claimed that Roosevelt supported their position. Woodrow Wilson also vacillated, leaving his position unclear in his 1912 campaign for the presidency; then, as president, he declared that supporting the Webb-Kenyon Act was as far as he could go in favoring national Prohibition. The political momentum generated by the outbreak of war, however, pushed President Wilson to strengthen his support for Prohibition.

Rationing Wins the Issue

To win the war in Europe, the United States government exercised unprecedented control over America's railroads, industries, shipping, fuel, and food supplies. It was the government's strict food-rationing program that directly defined Prohibition as a wartime issue. The large quantities of foodstuffs required by the brewing industries that were mainly owned by German Americans, and thus doubly suspect during the war, were needed by the government for the war effort. At the same time, to bolster their case, advocates of Prohibition convinced many politicians that consumption of liquor would undermine the morale and performance of the nation's men in uniform, and succeeded in getting liquor banned from the areas around military camps. Sen. William Kenyon of Iowa asked, "If liquor is a bad thing for the boys in the trenches, why is it a good thing for those at home? When they are willing to die for us, should we not be willing to go dry for them?" Few people were willing to oppose publicly a cause that was identified with the war effort. Like many other issues during the war, Prohibition was quickly reduced to a simple question of morality, of good and evil, and the Congress had little choice but to take the side of good. The Eighteenth Amendment passed. Not until the 1920s would the violence and crime associated with the illegal liquor trade force the Prohibition issue back into public focus.

Sources:

Sean Dennis Cashman, Prohibition: The Lie of the Land (New York: Free Press, 1981);

K. Austin Kerr, Organized for Prohibition: A New History of the Anti-Saloon League (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985).

PROHIBITION

The popular name for the period in U.S. history from 1920 to 1933 when the manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages—except for medicinal or religious purposes—were illegal.

From 1920 to 1933 the manufacture and sale of intoxicating liquors were illegal in the United States. The eighteenth amendment to the U.S. Constitution authorized Congress to prohibit alcoholic beverages, but the twenty-firstamendment repealed this prohibition. The era of Prohibition was marked by large-scale smuggling and illegal sales of liquor, the growth of organized crime, and increased restriction on personal freedom.

The prohibition movement began in the 1820s in the wake of a revival of Protestantism that viewed the consumption of alcohol as sinful and a destructive force in society. Maine passed the first state prohibition law in 1846, and other states followed in the years before the u.s. civil war.

The prohibition party was founded in 1869, with a ban on the manufacture and sale of intoxicating liquor as its only campaign goal. This party, like most temperance groups, derived its support from rural and small-town voters associated with Protestant evangelical churches. The Prohibition Party reached it zenith in 1892 when its candidate for president polled 2.2 percent of the popular vote. The party soon went into decline, and though it still exists, it works mainly at the local level.

The impetus for the Eighteenth Amendment can be traced to the Anti-Saloon League, which was established in 1893. The league worked to enact state prohibition laws and had great success between 1906 and 1913. By the time national prohibition took effect in January 1920, thirty-three states (63 percent of the total population) had prohibited intoxicating liquors.

The league and other prohibition groups were opposed to the consumption of alcohol for a variety of reasons. Some associated alcohol with

the rising number of aliens entering the country, many of whom were Roman Catholic. This anti-alien, anti-Catholic prejudice was coupled with a fear of increasingly larger urban areas by the rural-dominated prohibition supporters. Saloons and other public drinking establishments were also associated with prostitution and gambling. Finally, some employers endorsed prohibition as a means of reducing industrial accidents and increasing the efficiency of workers.

When the United States entered world war i in 1917, Congress prohibited the manufacture and importation of distilled liquor in order to aid the war effort. It also authorized the president to lower the alcoholic content of beer and wine and to restrict or forbid their manufacture.

A movement began to support elimination of intoxicating liquors by constitutional amendment. In 1917 Congress passed the Prohibition amendment and submitted it to the states for ratification. The rural-dominated state legislatures made ratification a foregone conclusion, and the Eighteenth Amendment was ratified on January 29, 1919. Congress enacted the volstead act, officially known as the National Prohibition Act (41 Stat. 305 [1919]) to enforce the amendment, which became effective on January 29, 1920.

Prohibition proved most effective in small towns and rural areas. Compliance was much more difficult in urban areas, where illegal suppliers quickly found a large demand for alcohol. Cities had large immigrant populations that did not see anything morally wrong with consuming alcohol. The rise of "bootlegging" (the illegal manufacture, distribution, and sale of intoxicating liquor) by organized crime proved to be one of the unintended consequences of Prohibition.

Besides the illegal importation, manufacture, distribution, and sale of intoxicating liquors by organized crime, millions of persons evaded Prohibition by consuming "medicinal" whiskey that was sold in drugstores on real or forged prescriptions. Many U.S. industries used denatured alcohol, which was treated with noxious chemicals to make it unfit for human consumption. Nevertheless, methods were found to remove these chemicals, add water and a small amount of liquor for flavor, and sell the mixture to illegal bars, called speakeasies, or to individual customers. Finally, many persons resorted to making their own liquor from corn. This type of product could be dangerously impure and cause blindness, paralysis, and death.

The prohibition movement lost political strength in the 1920s. The stock market crash of 1929 and the resulting Great Depression of the 1930s further changed the political climate. Critics of Prohibition argued that the rise of criminal production and sale of alcohol made the legal ban ineffective. In addition, the general public's patronage of speakeasies bred disrespect for law and government. Finally, critics argued that legalizing the manufacture and sale of alcohol would stimulate the economy and provide desperately needed jobs.

In 1932 the democratic party adopted a platform plank at its national convention calling for repeal. The landslide Democratic victory of 1932 signaled the end of Prohibition. The February 1933 resolution proposing the Twenty-first Amendment contained a provision requiring ratification by state conventions rather than state legislatures. This provision was included to prevent rural-dominated legislatures, which still supported Prohibition, from defeating the amendment.

The state ratification conventions quickly endorsed the amendment, with ratification of the Twenty-first Amendment coming on December 5, 1933. The amendment did allow prohibition by the states. A few states continued statewide prohibition, but by 1966 all states had repealed these provisions. Liquor in the United States is now controlled at the local level. Counties that prohibit the sale of alcohol are known as dry counties, and counties that allow the sale of alcohol are known as wet counties.

further readings

Kyvig, David E. 2000. Repealing National Prohibition. 2d ed. Kent, Ohio: Kent State Univ. Press.

Van de Water, Frederic F. 2003. The Real McCoy. Mystic, Conn.: Flat Hammock Press.

Whitebread. Charles H. 2000. "Freeing Ourselves from the Prohibition Idea in the Twenty-First Century." Suffolk University Law Review 33 (fall).

cross-references

Capone, Alphonse; Temperance Movement.

PROHIBITION

PROHIBITION was a tool to which temperance reformers repeatedly turned during more than a century's efforts to change American drinking habits. The first attempts to ban alcohol consumption through government action appeared on the local and state levels during the 1830s. Local prohibition has flourished on and off ever since.

During the early 1850s, twelve states and territories followed the example of Maine by enacting statewide prohibition laws. Most of these, however, were struck down by the courts or repealed. After the Civil War, new organizations were formed to advance the prohibition cause: the Prohibition Party (1869), the Woman's Christian Temperance Union (1874), and the Anti-Saloon League (1893). During the early years of the twentieth century, many localities and states adopted prohibition. During the same period, per capita alcohol consumption rose, buoyed by the rising popularity of beer, which increasingly replaced distilled liquor in American drinking preferences. Rising consumption had two results. On one hand, it motivated prohibitionists to focus their efforts toward a national solution to a problem they perceived as intensifying. On the other hand, it persuaded brewers, who had previously cooperated politically with distillers, that their beverage enjoyed enough popular support to be spared by a federal prohibition law, and thus disrupted the liquor-industry coalition. The Anti-Saloon League's nonpartisan lobbying and balance-of-power approach was rewarded in 1916 by the election of a dry Congress, which approved a proposed prohibition constitutional amendment in December 1917. Three-quarters of state legislatures ratified within the next thirteen months, and national Prohibition came into force one year later, on 16 January 1920. World War I contributed to Prohibition's triumph by eliciting a spirit of sacrifice, restricting liquor production and sales, and discrediting German American antiprohibitionists, but most states ratified after the war's end.

The Eighteenth Amendment prohibited the manufacture, sale, transportation, importation, and exportation of intoxicating beverages and called for concurrent enforcement by the state and federal governments. The amendment's federal enforcement legislation, the Volstead Act, defined "intoxicating" as one-half of 1 percent alcohol by volume. Personal possession and consumption were therefore not proscribed, but Prohibition encompassed a wider range of alcoholic beverages than most Americans had expected. At the same time, the mechanics of concurrent state and federal enforcement were left vague. Prohibition's impact varied among beverage types and social classes. Beer, predominantly the drink of the urban working class, suffered most, and the more easily transported distilled liquors regained a larger place in American drinking patterns. Nevertheless, per capita alcohol consumption declined from its pre-Prohibition peak. Enforcement created political problems, both when it worked, by flooding courts and jails, and when it did not, as speakeasies replaced urban saloons. Federal support for enforcement was inadequate, and federal-state cooperation was consistently problematic. Nevertheless, Prohibition retained considerable popular support until the onset of the Great Depression in 1929.

Leadership for the antiprohibitionist cause was provided during the 1920s by the Association Against the Prohibition Amendment, an upper-class lobby formed in 1918, but its ideological arguments, based upon opposition to centralized federal power, held little popular appeal. Mass support came late in the decade, primarily from the Women's Organization for National Prohibition Reform, led by upper-class women. The needs of the depression produced powerful new arguments for repeal, to generate liquor-industry jobs and government tax revenue. The Democratic Party became repeal's political instrument. After the Democrats' overwhelming victory in 1932, Congress submitted to the states a new constitutional amendment repealing the Eighteenth, and within ten months elected state conventions had ratified the Twenty-first Amendment. The states resumed primary responsibility for liquor control. A few states retained their prohibition laws after federal repeal; the last, Mississippi, abandoned its law in 1966. Per capita alcohol consumption did not regain the level of the pre-Prohibition years until the 1960s.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Blocker, Jack S., Jr. American Temperance Movements: Cycles of Reform. Boston: Twayne, 1989.

Kerr, K. Austin. Organized for Prohibition: A New History of the Anti-Saloon League. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1985.

Kyvig, David E.. Repealing National Prohibition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979.

Pegram, Thomas R. Battling Demon Rum: The Struggle for a Dry America, 1800–1933. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1998.

Jack S.BlockerJr.

See alsoAlcohol, Regulation of ; Speakeasy ; Temperance Movement ; Volstead Act .

PROHIBITION

The term prohibition has been borrowed by psychoanalysis from everyday language, where it is used either as an adjective to describe something we are not allowed to do, say, see, think, or be; or substantively to refer to the law, social constraint, moral education, and so on, on which this prohibition is based.

Psychoanalytic language gives a more precise meaning to the term, however. Prohibition can present itself to the subject as external, and be internalized as a result of its associated dynamic of conflict; it can also result from structural requirements inherent in the mind. In every case the formulation of the prohibition and its operation can be partially or totally unconscious, even when the resulting conduct and its justification are explicit.

The concept appears early in Freud's work and can be found in the Studies on Hysteria (1895d), where the subject, driven by desires prohibited by morality, consciously forms "representations that are irreconcilable" with that morality, and then refuses them satisfaction, doing away with them by making them unconscious through repression. Those desires are always, in the final analysis, sexual in nature, especially in the case of the "neuro-psychoses of defense." "The etiology of hysteria almost inevitably can be traced to a psychic conflict, an irreconcilable representation, which prompts into action the defense of the ego and provokes repression" (Freud, 1896b). From the very outset, then, the notion of prohibition is inseparable from the drive-defense conflict, which will constitute the core of psychoanalytic theory.

Initially, that is to say, within the framework of the first topography and the first theory of drives, Freud studied the libidinal origins of the conflict and its treatment through repression (these are the texts on metapsychology from 1915) as well as its educational ("Little Hans," 1915), sociological and ethnological (Totem and Taboo, 1912-1913a) origins. The formulation of the Oedipus complex then focused attention on the prohibition of incest.

Subsequently, the formulation of the second topography led to a redefinition of prohibition. Here, the ego appears as prey to conflicts where it is torn between "three masters": the id and its libidinal demands, reality and adaptive requirements, and a superego that is essentially defined as an agent of prohibition. (However, to this must be added the more positive functions of the ego ideal, which condenses all the moral values the subject claims to hold.)

Although throughout his work Freud presents the incest prohibition as the heart of the conflictual dynamic, he also discusses prohibitions that affect other manifestations of sexuality, primarily masturbation and the satisfaction of the partial drives or compound instincts (voyeurism, exhibitionism, anal pleasure). Generalization of the limitations created by these prohibitions can lead to serious inhibitions of thought. Moreover, it has been shown how the repression of the drives can lead to serious reaction formations, especially when aggression is poorly integrated.

Roger Perron

See also: Censorship; Conflict; Deprivation; Ethics; Incest; Law of the father; Oedipus complex; Taboo; Transgression.

Bibliography

Freud, Sigmund. (1896b). Further remarks on the neuro-psychoses of defence. SE, 3: 157-185.

Freud Sigmund, and Breuer, Josef. (1895d). Studies on hysteria. SE, 2: 48-106.

Mijolla-Mellor, Sophie de. (1993). Le "bon droit" du criminel. Topique, 52, 141-161.

Milner, Marion. (1991). On est prié de fermer les yeux. Le regard interdit. Paris: Gallimard.

prohibition legal prevention of the manufacture, transportation, and sale of alcoholic beverages, the extreme of the regulatory liquor laws . The modern movement for prohibition had its main growth in the United States and developed largely as a result of the agitation of 19th-century temperance movements . Historians have pointed out that alcohol consumption rose dramatically in the 19th cent., particularly as waves of immigrants moved to America's cities, many opening saloons in their new homes. To some degree the movement to ban alcohol was the result of a social backlash by America's small-town white Protestant population against the urban immigrants and the changes attendant to their new culture. A number of states passed temperance laws in the early part of the century, but most of them were soon repealed. A new wave of state prohibition legislation followed the creation (1846–51) of a law in Maine, the first in the United States. Thus, emphasis shifted from advocacy of temperance to outright demand for government prohibition. Chief of the forces in this new and effective approach was the Anti-Saloon League . Prohibition had become a national political issue, with a growing Prohibition party and support from a number of rural, religious, and business groups.

The drive was given impetus in World War I, when conservation policies limited liquor output. After the war national prohibition became the law, the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution forbidding the manufacture, sale, import, or export of intoxicating liquors. In spite of the strict Volstead Act (1919) (see under Volstead, A. J. ), law enforcement proved to be very difficult. Smuggling on a large scale (see bootlegging ) could not be prevented, and the illicit manufacture of liquor sprang up with such rapidity that authorities were unable to suppress it. There followed a period of unparalleled illegal drinking (often of inferior and dangerous beverages) and lawbreaking on a large and organized scale. Meanwhile, speakeasies flourished and provided a new venue for sexually integrated social interaction. In 1933 the Twenty-first Amendment, repealing prohibition, was ratified. A number of states, counties, and other divisions maintained full or partial prohibition under the right of local option. By 1966 no statewide prohibition laws existed. Prohibition laws were passed in Finland, the Scandinavian countries, and most of Canada after World War I, but were repealed, partly because of serious consequences to the countries' commerce with wine-exporting nations.

Bibliography: See Report on the Enforcement of the Prohibition Laws (1931) by the National Commission on Law Observance and Enforcement (Wickersham Commission); C. Warburton, The Economic Results of Prohibition (1932, repr. 1969); H. Asbury, The Great Illusion (1950, repr. 1968); A. Sinclair, Prohibition, the Era of Excess (1962); J. H. Timberlake, Jr., Prohibition and the Progressive Movement (1963); J. Gusfield, Symbolic Crusade (1963); H. Waters, Smugglers of Spirits (1971); J. Kobler, Ardent Spirits (1973); D. Okrent, Last Call (2010).

Prohibition party in U.S. history, minor political party formed (1869) for the legislative prohibition of the manufacture, transportation, and sale of alcoholic beverages. The temperance movement was in existence as early as 1800, but it was not until 1867 that its leaders marshaled their forces to establish a separate political party to campaign for prohibition. The result was the organization (Sept., 1869) of the Prohibition party at a convention in Chicago attended by delegates from 20 states. The failure of the temperance cause to gain active support from the major political parties, the failure of public officials to enforce existing local prohibition laws in several states, and the nationwide founding of the United States Brewers' Association were factors contributing to the creation of the Prohibition party. Before entering a presidential race, the Prohibition party entered elections in nine states during the period from 1869 to 1871. The first three presidential candidates—James Black (1872), Green C. Smith (1876), and Neal Dow (1880)—each polled a very small number of votes. Although the central issue of the party was prohibition, typical party platforms included woman suffrage , free public education, prohibition of gambling, and prison reform. In 1882 the party made sizable gains in state elections, and in 1884 a vigorous presidential campaign by John P. St. John resulted in the party's first large popular vote (150,626). Of these votes, 25,000 came from New York state, which the Democratic candidate Grover Cleveland carried by fewer than 1,200 votes. As most of St. John's support came from Republicans angered at the comtemptuous treatment accorded a temperance petition at their national convention, the Prohibitionists helped swing a key state to Cleveland. Four years later the temperance leader Clinton B. Fisk received almost 250,000 votes. But the peak of popular support was reached in 1892, when John Bidwell won almost 265,000 votes. The popularity of the temperance cause had been greatly furthered by the Woman's Christian Temperance Union (1874), and later by the Anti-Saloon League (1893), despite the latter's nonpartisan political position. Although the Prohibition party never received a large percentage of the national vote, its influence on public policy far outweighed its electoral strength. This can be seen in state platform declarations of the major parties at this time and in the institution of prohibition by the Eighteenth Amendment. Although the Prohibition party continues to run presidential candidates, the repeal of prohibition by the Twenty-first Amendment had a decidedly weakening effect on the party.

Bibliography: See W. B. Hesseltine, The Rise and Fall of Third Parties (1948); H. P. Nash, Third Parties in American Politics (1959); J. Kobler, Ardent Spirits (1973).

Prohibition (USA) This was a culmination of the US temperance movement, whose Anti-Saloon League had been founded in 1893. The movement had enjoyed growing popular support at the end of the nineteenth century, as it enjoyed popular support from many Protestant and other Churches, as well as the Progressive movement (Progressive Party). Most states adopted restrictions on the sale of liquor, and in January 1919 Prohibition was adopted through the Eighteenth Amendment to the US Constitution. The Volstead Act, passed by Congress in 1919 over President Wilson's veto, enacted that federal law enforcement was to prevent the manufacture, distribution, or sale (but not consumption) of liquor, wines, and beer. Moderates had only sought the banning of liquor sale and had expected each state to act unilaterally. The Amendment came into force in January 1920 and, despite the securing of some 300,000 court convictions, drinking continued. Speakeasies (illegal bars) and bootlegging (illegal distilling of alcohol) flourished. The success of gangsters like Al Capone, who controlled the supply of alcohol, led to corruption of police and government. The issue had a large role to play in politics and some candidates forcefully represented anti-Prohibition, e.g. Al Smith. After the Wickersham Commission reported in 1931 that the prohibition laws were unenforceable and encouraged public disrespect for the law, the Eighteenth Amendment was repealed by the Twenty-first Amendment. A number of states and counties retained partial prohibition, but by 1966 no state-wide prohibition laws existed.

Mafia

prohibition Prohibitions are powerful, (theoretically) enforceable, and sanctionable social and/or legal restrictions on certain behaviours, events, or other activities—including, for example, sexual ‘deviations’, drug-taking or trafficking, and trade in endangered species. The term is often applied to the period (1919–33) during which alcohol production was outlawed in the United States. Sponsored by various religious and political moral entrepreneurs and economic interest groups, and described at the time as a ‘noble experiment’, the social consequences of prohibition were highly damaging and the experiment ultimately proved to be insupportable. Prohibitions frequently produce innovative, illegal counter-responses, and in this case criminal entrepreneurs maintained the illegal supply of alcohol. High profits and competition led to violence. Otherwise non-criminal individuals were caught up in the criminalization of a previously normal social activity. The rapid expansion of organized crime was also a legacy of the American experiment.

pro·hi·bi·tion / ˌprō(h)əˈbishən/ • n. 1. the action of forbidding something, esp. by law: they argue that prohibition of drugs will always fail. ∎  a law or regulation forbidding something: those who favor prohibitions on insider trading. 2. (Prohibition) the prevention by law of the manufacture and sale of alcohol, esp. in the U.S. between 1920 and 1933. DERIVATIVES: pro·hi·bi·tion·ar·y / -ˌnerē/ adj. Pro·hi·bi·tion·ist / -nist/ n.

Prohibition (1919–33) Period in US history when the government prohibited the manufacture, sale, and transport of alcoholic drinks. The 18th Amendment to the US Constitution, confirmed by the Volstead Act (1919), brought in Prohibition. Smuggling, illicit manufacture, corruption of government officials and police, and the growth of organized crime financed by bootlegging made it a failure. The 21st Amendment (1933) repealed Prohibition.

Prohibition the prevention by law of the manufacture and sale of alcohol, especially in the US between 1920 and 1933. In the US, it was forbidden by the 18th Amendment to the Constitution, but led to widespread bootlegging of illicit liquor by organized gangs, and was repealed by the 21st Amendment.

Prohibition. See Eighteenth Amendment; Temperance and Prohibition.