Laura Donahue
Literary Review 1st Draft
The evolution of Prohibition literature over time is changing, because of American
society’s different views of Prohibition and the family throughout the 20th century. There is
primary literature that has a strong opinion advocating Prohibition and the positive effects it has
on the family. There is also literature throughout the 1950s and 1960s, the next generation after
Prohibition, showing that it was still clear in the scholar’s minds the effect of the 18th and 21st
amendment.1 The most recent literature from the 1980s to the present shows a different side of
prohibition, advocating the new idea that there are negative effects on the family from the 18th
amendment.
In D. Leigh Colvin’s Prohibition in the United States, he defends the argument that
alcohol is harmful to the youth. He does so by defending the amendment for Prohibition in
place, stating that before National Prohibition, “liquor traffic was handicapping the youth...
liquor influences, hereditary, environmental, economic, social, educational and moral, all were
tending to make successive generations more unfit.”2 Colvin also states that people dependent on
adults will become delinquents due to alcohol trafficking, which, in turn, will harm society.3 This
primary source is just one example of the literature produced during the Prohibition era of the
United States showing the negatives of pre-Prohibition. Irving Fisher’s Prohibition at its Worst,
published in 1926, is also an example of a primary source supporting Prohibition, including
1
White and David J. Pittman, eds., Society, Culture, and Drinking Patterns Reexamined, (New Brunswick, NJ:
Publications Division Rutgers Center of Alcohol Studies, 1991), xv.
2
Leigh D. Colvin, Prohibition in the United States: A History of the Prohibition Party and of the Prohibition
Movement, (New York: George H. Doran Company, 1926), 582.
3
Ibid., 578.
authors like Colvin and Peter Odegard.4 Fisher agrees that the “chief beneficiaries of the dry law
in American are the small children… twice as many children today would be victims of improper
bringing up because of liquor if the dry law were not effective.”5
There seems an inadequate amount data to defend the argument that prohibition was
harmful to the family dynamic during the Prohibition period, because these specific books were
published before 1930 and there was not a grasp on the total effect from 1919 to 1933. There
must be more primary sources to show the other side of the argument at a more developed stage,
during the early 1930s. The next generation of the 1950s and 1960s shows the type of literature
that is moved on passed the Prohibition age and forward in scientific studies of alcoholism in
social situations and family dynamics. In Society, Culture, and Drinking Patterns Reexamined,
Editor David J. Pittman suggests that the during the 1940s and 1950s there was an abundant
amount of social science pioneering research on alcohol studies.6
Joan K. Jackson’s Essay “Alcoholism and the Family” within Thorsten Sellin’s In
Understanding Alcohol, is a great example of the pioneering of social science during the 1950s.
Jackson suggests that the specific roles carried out by each individual in the family are still
carried out but with less interest and an increase in relationship tensions when there is an
alcoholic father.7 It also is a study of the different stages of alcoholism within the family and
what typically happens within each stage to lead to the next, such as acknowledgement, shame,
4
Peter H. Odegard, Pressure Politics: The Story of the Anti-Saloon League, (New York: Columbia University
Press, 1928).
5
Irving Fisher, Prohibition at its Worst, 5th ed. (New York: Alcohol Information Committee, 1927), 176.
Theodore a. Lothrop, General Secretary of the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children was
quoted in Fisher’s text.
6
White and David J. Pittman, eds., Society, Culture, and Drinking Patterns Reexamined, (New Brunswick, NJ:
Publications Division Rutgers Center of Alcohol Studies, 1991), xi.
7
Bacon, Lambert, and Thorsten Sellin, Understanding Alcoholism: American Academy of Political and Social
Science, (Philadelphia: The American Academy of Political and Social Science, 1958), 93.
and recovery, while showing the family group as a whole. It defines these stages through the
eyes of the mothers who deal with drunken fathers, as opposed to description of a drunken
parent. This shows that this research is still guided by the Prohibition mindset, that fathers were
the ones creating the discourse, not mothers staying at home.
Pittman’s Society, Culture, and Drinking Patterns published in 1962, and Pittman’s
Society, Culture, and Drinking Patterns Reexamined published in 1991 are great examples of
transitional texts from the1960s to the late 20th century. The fact that the book was republished
with a different name is in itself significant to the change of research on drinking patterns over
time. Although the 30-year difference shows there is time to test previous hypothesis and build
upon the old theories, the most interesting difference is that there is more of an interest of
women, minorities, and the elderly in drinking pattern studies in the Reexamined edition.8 This
was previously absent from the 1960s literature because they still had thoughts of Prohibition
and the typical drunken father. This transition may be caused because of ‘The War on Drugs’
during the 1980s showed an increase awareness of drugs and alcohol from the American people.
This awareness contributes to the new literature that reexamines the Prohibition period of the
United States and why it was unsuccessful. Which is why literature from the 1980s to the present
help defend the argument that Prohibition negatively effected family dynamics.
Andrew Barr’s Drink: A Social History of America, published in 1999, gives support that
Prohibition did in fact harm the family dynamic. He gives an example of Pauline Sabin, the
founder of the Women’s Organization for National Prohibition Reform and how she was all for
Prohibition, and then retracted her opinion, “mother’s believed that prohibition would eliminate
8
White and David J. Pittman, eds., Society, Culture, and Drinking Patterns Reexamined, (New Brunswick, NJ:
Publications Division Rutgers Center of Alcohol Studies, 1991), xii.
the temptation of drinking from there children’s lives but found instead that children were
growing up disrespecting the Constitution and law.”9 Barr also mentions that women were taking
up alcoholic drinks during the prohibition, which was completely ignored by the primary
Prohibition literature and the writing of the 1950s and 1960s.10 Kenneth D. Roses’ American
Women and the Repeal of Prohibition, published in 1996 exemplifies the thesis argument. Rose
explains, “WONPR were stressed that prohibition represented a moral wrong that threatened the
American home.”11 The reformers were also in shock to find that violence against children
increased during the Prohibition.12 Examples of texts from Rose, Linda Gordon’s Hero’s of Their
Own Lives: The Politics and History of Family Violence—Boston, 1880-1960, and Mark Edward
Lender’s Drinking in America: A History show that family dysfunction rose, emphasizing on
violence of children and will be great resources for the argument.
Although the literature of the Prohibition period is continuously evolving, it helps
show the many different aspects and viewpoints of the family during Prohibition that maybe are
not pronounced in other literature of a different time period. From the primary sources
defending the 18th Amendment, to the 1960s were the scientific studies of alcoholism flourished,
and finally to the ‘reexamined’ Prohibition in recent texts, show the basic evolution of the
literature of the Prohibition era. The most helpful resources are the more recent texts from the
1980s to the present, because of their representation of what really went on during the
Prohibition of how the family dynamic worsened.
9
Andrew Barr, Drink: A Social History of America, (New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, Inc., 1999),
152. The Women’s Organization for National Prohibition Reform had half a million members and most were
previous advocates for the enactment of national Prohibition.
10
Ibid., 153.
11
Kenneth D. Rose, American Women and the Repeal of Prohibition, (New York: University Press, 1996), 2.
Women’s Organization for National Prohibition Reform (WONPR).
12
Ibid., 43.
Bibliography
Barr, Andrew. Drink: A Social History of America. New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, Inc.,
1999.
Colvin, Leigh D. Prohibition in the United States: A History of the Prohibition Party and of the
Prohibition Movement. New York: George H. Doran Company, 1926.
Fisher, Irving. Prohibition at its Worst. 5th ed. New York: Alcohol Information Committee,
1927.
Gordon, Linda. Heroes of Their Own Lives: The Politics and History of Family Violence-Boston, 1880-1960. University of Illinois Press, 2002.
Lender, Mark Edward, and James Kirby Martin. Drinking in America: A History. New York:
The Free Press, 1982.
Odegard, Peter H. Pressure Politics: The Story of the Anti-Saloon League. New York: Columbia
University Press, 1928.
Pittman, David J., and Helene Raskin White, eds. Society, Culture, and Drinking Patterns
Reexamined. New Brunswick, NJ: Publications Division Rutgers Center of Alcohol
Studies, 1991.
Pittman, David J., and Charles R. Snyder, eds. Society, Culture, and Drinking Patterns. New
York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1962.
Rose, Kenneth D. American Women and the Repeal of Prohibition. New York: University Press,
1996.
Sellin, Thorsten, Richard D. Lambert, and Selden D. Bacon, eds. Understanding Alcoholism:
American Academy of Political and Social Science. Philadelphia: The American Academy
of Political and Social Science, 1958.