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I may as well take one glass: Liquor and Law

Liquor and Law

DESPITE ratification of the 18th Amendment and Congressional passage of the Volstead Act to enforce it, the United States did not and never did become an utterly “dry” nation. Physicians could legally prescribe distilled spirits from government-controlled distilleries for various health conditions. The manufacture and sale of “sacramental wine” were permitted for religious use. And there was no ban on home-made wine and hard cider.

DESPITE Prohibition, many Americans continued to drink undaunted and their demand created an illicit underground economy. All over the country moonshine dripped from illegal stills. In response, the Internal Revenue Service established the Bureau of Prohibition to find them, confiscating over 690,000 stills between 1921 and 1925. Smugglers worked along the sea coasts and the southern and northern borders to supply foreign-made alcohol. As estimated by the federal government, this industry was worth about $3 billion a year (or around $41 billion in today’s dollars). And grocery stores like Kroger and A & P legally sold equipment and ingredients for do-it-yourself brewers and distillers, with the Prohibition Bureau estimating that home-made beer amounted to some 700 million gallons in 1929.

ALTHOUGH Prohibition’s proponents had advanced persuasive arguments for the 18th Amendment, its opponents had countered, even before January 17, 1920, that Prohibition would put people out of work, destroy businesses, damage the economy, and would represent a serious infringement of civil rights. As criminal enterprises and lawlessness flourished throughout the 1920s, another argument against Prohibition came into ever-sharper focus: it did not work.

 

front page of the tennesseean announcing dry law dropped from constitution 1933

 

Please click on the images to enlarge them.

image of moonshine still

AN 80 GALLON “MOONSHINE STILL” IN THE HEART OF THE MOUNTAINS
Unknown artist
Ashville Post Card Co., circa 1915-1930

Prohibition ended neither drinking nor the production of alcohol. Although we tend to think of “moonshine” as a southern and a specifically southern Appalachian phenomenon, illicit stills operated throughout the United States. In fact, contemporary law enforcement sources estimated that thousands of stills were likely producing alcohol in New York City. And in Los Angeles, the city newspapers carried ads for pot stills and other equipment.

cover of october dawn pictures of grapes

OCTOBER DAWN
Emma Tudor
Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1926

The Volstead Act enforcing Prohibition went into effect in January, 1920. Under its terms, production, transportation, importation, and sale of alcohol were illegal. However, the Act allowed home-made cider and wine. Tudor’s slender book comprised a “short and practical treatise on the manufacture of home made wines from the native grapes of New England.”

book cover of cartoon family in blue and red ink

A PROHIBITION PRIMER
Anonymous
New York, 1931

Tongue-in-cheek and, at times, sardonic arguments against Prohibition. Written in the style of a primer and ostensibly directed to children, the work aims to show why Prohibition is “silly,” “foolish,” and the work of busy-body “Meddlesome Matties.”

cover of the dry law debate

DRY-LAW DEBATE
Clarence Darrow (1857-1938)
Wayne B. Wheeler (1869-1927)
Girard, Kansas, 1927

Darrow, a leading member of the American Civil Liberties Union, and Wheeler, general counsel of the Anti-Saloon League, met at Carnegie Hall in New York City on the evening of April 23, 1927 to debate the worth of Prohibition. Famous for his role in the Leopold and Loeb trial, the Scopes’ “Monkey Trial,” and his defense of Ossian Sweet, Darrow called for repeal of the 18th Amendment. Massie argued that Prohibition was the law of the land and should be obeyed, and that those who opposed it should seek legal means of ending it.