LAST CALL:
PROHIBITION AND THE ALCOHOLIC REPUBLIC
Kevin P. Dincher
www.kevindincher.com
Barbara Stanwyck
(1907 – 1990)

Ruby Catherine
Stevens

1944: highestpaid woman in the
USA
1924: as a Ziegfeld girl (age 17)
Ruby Keeler
– 1990)

(1907
Ethel Hilda Keeler
George Raft
(1901 – 1980)
 George
Ranft
TEXAS GUINAN
Mary Louise Cecilia "Texas" Guinan
(1884 –1933)
 Vaudeville
 "Wild
 Silent
singer
West"-related patter
films
 First
movie cowgirl
 "The Queen of the West."
TEXAS GUINAN
Mary Louise Cecilia "Texas" Guinan
(1884 –1933)
 Vaudeville
 "Wild
 Silent
singer
West"-related patter
films
 First
movie cowgirl
 "The Queen of the West."
TEXAS GUINAN
1920: 300 Club
NYC Speakeasy
 First female emcee
 40 scantily-clad fan dancers


By 1926: $700,000/year

Depression

Too Hot for Paris
TEXAS GUINAN
Mae West as Texas
Guinan in Night After
Night (1932)
Texas Guinan,
1931
TEXAS GUINAN
Incendiary Blonde, a 1945 American
musical drama film biography of Texas
Guinan, starring Betty Hutton.
Phyllis Diller as Texas Guinan
Splendor in the Grass (1961)
Whoppi Goldberg as Guinan, the bartender
on The Enterprise in Star Trek: The Next
Generation was named after Texas Guinan.
TEXAS GUINAN

1925: Short-lived
enforcement
crackdown
 Emory
Buckner:
Prohibition enforcer in
NYC
ENFORCEMENT

Understaffed and underfunded

1250 poorly paid agents
 Population:
100 million people
 3.5 million square miles
 18,700 miles of coastline and borders

Lack of support from States

Pre-Prohibition: half NYC’s income
from liquor taxes
ENFORCEMENT

Corruption:
 Speakeasies
 $150
 Agents
million/year in bribes
Chicago: 20,000
speakeasies operating
openly
NYC: 32,000
speakeasies operating
openly
confiscate liquor
 Sold
back to original owners
 Confiscated liquor disappeared

1933: 2/3 of the 50 million gallons in government
warehouses was missing
 Doctors:
 Blank
$40 million/year
prescription slips
ENFORCEMENT

Raids
ENFORCEMENT

Emory Buckner
 Volstead
Act: shut down a speakeasy for one year
without going to court
 Announced
plans to shut down most famous/visible
speakeasies in NYC
 1925: 4700 speakeasies padlocked across America
 No
impact on speakeasies
 Ruined
many hotels
TEXAS GUINAN

Padlocks of 1927
 Broadway
Review
 Summer, 1927
 Shubert Theater
OPIUM
OPIUM

Opium Poppy
 Papaver
somniferum
 “sleep-bringing
poppy“
OPIUM

Opium Poppy
 Papaver
somniferum
 “sleep-bringing
 Narcotics
(Opiates)
 Morphine

Heroin
 Codeine
poppy“
OPIUM

Opium Poppy
 Papaver
somniferum
 “sleep-bringing
 Narcotics
 Poppy
poppy“
(Opiates)
Seeds
Poppy Seed Strudel (Mohnstrudel)
OPIUM
1800s

Medical Research



Safer alternatives
Reduced reliance
Chinese Diaspora



SF, NYC and London
Opium smoking and opium den
Stigmatized opium use
Typical apothecary vessel
for storage of opium as a
pharmaceutical in the
18th or 19th century
OPIUM

1875: San Francisco Opium Den Ordinance

Banned dens for public smoking of opium

1882: Federal legislation limited smoking to
opium dens

1883: Federal tax on importation of opium

1891: California


Required narcotics to carry warning labels
Sales recorded in a registry
OPIUM

1907: California’s Pharmacy and Poison Act


1909




Crime to sell opiates without a prescription
CA bans possession of opium or opium pipes
Federal Opium Exclusion Act prohibits importation
International Opium Commission
1912: International Opium Convention

First international drug control treaty
OPIUM

1914: Harrison Narcotics Tax Act

Placed taxes and restrictions on the
sale and prescription of opium

Criminalized use of opium-based
products

Initiated a “demon drug” campaign
Bayer heroin bottle
MARIJUANA
MARIJUANA
Cannabis Plant (Mexican Spanish: Marihuana)
 Hemp:
variety of the Cannabis plant
 One
of earliest domesticated plants (12,000 years ago)
 Produces fiber, oil, seed, wax, resin, rope, cloth, pulp,
paper, and fuel.
 Native
to south-central Asia
 1545:
Spanish – Western Hemisphere
 1607: Jamestown
 1619: Virginia export

Mandated by House of Burgesses
 1645:
Puritans – New England
MARIJUANA
 George
Washington
 James Madison
 James Monroe
 Andrew Jackson
 Zachary Taylor
 Franklin Pierce
MARIJUANA
Powder (Kief)
Solid
(Hashish)
Tincture
Oil
MARIJUANA
Cannabis Plant (Mexican Spanish: Marihuana)
 1840-1860:
 1853:
 1880s:
Increasingly prescribed by doctors
personal use: “fashionable narcotic”
Common ingredient in medical products
 Sold
openly in pharmacies
 Recreational use: hashish parlors – East Coast cities
500 in NYC
 1883: Harper’s Magazine: “the better classes”

MARIJUANA

1906: Pure Food and Drug Act
 Required
accurate labeling of contents (including
cannabis)
 Aimed
at “patent medicines”
 Cities/States:
 Move
regulate pharmaceutical industry
towards “prescription only”
 Wave of state “anti-poison” legislation
MARIJUANA

1910: Mexican Revolution
 1920:
Flood of immigrants –
“Marijuana Menace”
 Exposed
more Americans
 Associated marijuana use with
immigrants
 Crime attributed to marijuana
and the Mexicans who used it
MARIJUANA

1930s: Great Depression
 Unemployment:
increased resentment/fear of
Mexican immigrants
 Escalated
concern about marijuana
 Flurry of research:
Linked marijuana with violence, crime
 “Racially inferior”

 1931:
29 of the 48 states outlawed marijuana
MARIJUANA

1930: Creation of the FBN
 Federal

Bureau of Narcotics
1932: Uniform State Narcotic Act

Encouraged states to take responsibility by
creating and adopting uniform legislation
MARIJUANA

1937: Marijuana Tax Act
 Restricts
to individuals who pay an excise tax for
medical and industrial use
 Effectively
outlaws and criminalizes marijuana
MARIJUANA
1930s and 1940s:
“Cautionary Films”




“Lurid subject matter”
Evaded the strict
censorship by claiming to
be educational

Children of Loneliness
(1937)

Sex Madness (1938)

Mom and Dad (1945)

She Shoulda Said No!
(1949)
Marihuana (1936)
Reefer Madness (1938)
COCAINE


Stimulant
Obtained from the
leaves of the coca plant
COCAINE

1890 – 1903
 Non-medical
use increased 5X
 Middle-aged,
white, professional class
 Associated with laborers, youths, African-Americans and
the urban underworld
 Employers
From “God’s Good Creature” to “Demon Rum”
WOMEN
WOMEN
From “God’s Good Creature” to “Demon Rum
 Wild
West
 Lawlessness,
violence
 Immigration
 Poverty,
crime, violence
 “Un-American”
WOMEN
1.
American Boycott of British Goods (1769)
 Changed
the nature of “women’s work”
 Politicized
the “domestic sphere”
 Reinforced
 “Domestic
sphere” of women
 “Public sphere” of men
WOMEN
1.
2.
American Boycott of British Goods (1769)
The Enlightenment (1600 – 1800)

Cultural/intellectual movement: The Age of Reason
 Reform
society using reason
 Advance knowledge through the scientific method.
 Challenge ideas grounded in tradition and faith

Importance of the individual and natural rights

Question the status of women in society/marriage
WOMEN
1.
2.
3.
American Boycott of British Goods (1769)
The Enlightenment (1600 – 1800)
18th Century Women





Mercy Otis Warren (1728 – 1814)
Catherine Macaulay (1731 – 1791)
Abigail Smith Adams (1744 – 1818)
Judith Sargent Murray (1751–1820)
Mary Wollstonecraft (1759 – 1797)
WOMEN
1.
2.
3.
4.
American Boycott of British Goods (1769)
The Enlightenment (1600 – 1800)
18th Century Women
Republican Motherhood
WOMEN
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
American Boycott of British Goods (1769)
The Enlightenment (1600 – 1800)
18th Century Women
Republican Motherhood
Education for Women
EDUCATION

1780 New England

Women’s literacy was half
that of men’s

Farmers functioned well
enough with little/no ability
to read/write

Women’s education
Ridiculed as a waste of time
 Unfair
 Dangerous

EDUCATION

1850 New England

Both men and women’s
literacy rates increased

Little difference between
men and women’s
literacy rate
EDUCATION
Colonial Era

Very limited educational opportunity for anyone
Virtually no public education
 Generally taught at home by mothers/tutors


Exceptions
Larger towns/cities – expensive/elite
 Quakers (1.3% of population)
 Descendants of Dutch


Thomas Paine
1676: school teacher in England
 Earliest proponents of universal, free public education

EDUCATION

Colonial Girls/Women

Education provided at home (if at all)

Some academies
 Equivalent
of secondary school
 Generally operated by an individual woman
 Did not outlive founder

Exceptions:
 Bethlehem
Female Seminary (Moravian College)
 Little Girls' School (Salem College)
EDUCATION FOR WOMEN

New Republic: Teaching Seminaries
 Normal
Schools (Ecole Normale)
 Secular
Schools
 Often
started as academies
 Educated women to be teachers
 Not “charted colleges”
 Only socially acceptable occupation: teaching.
 Only unmarried women could be teachers
EDUCATION FOR WOMEN

New Republic: Advanced Education for Women

Between 1780 and 1830
 13

Between 1830 and 1840
 12

schools opened
schools opened
Between 1840 and 1850
 20
schools opened
EMMA WILLARD (1787 – 1870)
“We too are primary existences... not
the satellites of men."

American women's rights activist who
dedicated her life to education

Founded the first school for women’s
higher education, the Troy Female
Seminary (Troy, New York)

1895: renamed the Emma Willard School
in 1895 in her honor.
EMMA WILLARD (1787 – 1870)
Education of women (Address to NYS Legislature,
1818):

"has been too exclusively directed to fit them for
displaying to advantage the charms of youth and
beauty“

"the taste of men, whatever it might happen to be,
has been made into a standard for the formation of
the female character"

Reason and religion teach us that "we too are
primary existences... not the satellites of men."
Success of
women in
the “Public
Sphere”
Politicization
of the
“Domestic
Sphere”
Success of
women in the
“Public
Sphere”
Politicization
of the
“Domestic
Sphere”
Increased
educational
opportunities
for women
Success of
women in the
“Public
Sphere”
Politicization
of the
“Domestic
Sphere”
Increased
educational
opportunities
for women
All this talk
about
“equality”
and “liberty”
Success of
women in the
“Public
Sphere”
Politicization
of the
“Domestic
Sphere”
Increased
educational
opportunities
for women
All this talk
about
“equality”
and “liberty”
First Wave of
Feminism
FIRST WAVE OF FEMINISM

19th and early 20th Centuries

Original focus
Property Rights
 Suffrage





Lucretia Mott
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
Lucy Stone
Susan B. Anthony
LUCY STONE (1818 –1893)
 1847:
first woman from
Massachusetts to earn a
college degree
 1850:
Helped organize
the first National
Woman’s Right’s
Convention
NATIONAL WOMEN'S RIGHTS CONVENTION

1850 to 1860
Annual series of meetings
 Both men and women
 Speeches on:

 Abolition
 Women’s
suffrage
 Temperance
 Birth control
Paulina Kellogg Wright Davis
 Marriage Reform
Helped organize the first 2
 Women's Property rights
conventions
 Equal wages
 Expanded education and career opportunities
SENECA FALLS CONVENTION (1848)

1848: Seneca Falls
Convention
 300
people (40 men)
 The Declaration of
Sentiments
 Modeled
on the Declaration of
Independence
 Signed by 100 participants (68
women, 32 men)
 Charlotte Woodward was the
only signer still alive in 1920
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
and Susan B. Anthony
SENECA FALLS CONVENTION (1848)

Local News Reports

The National Reformer
 The
convention "forms an era in the progress of the age; it
being the first convention of the kind ever held, and one
whose influence shall not cease until woman is guaranteed all
the rights now enjoyed by the other half of creation—Social,
Civil and POLITICAL.”

The Oneida Whig
 This
bolt is the most shocking and unnatural incident ever
recorded in the history of womanity. If our ladies will insist on
voting and legislating, where, gentleman, will be our dinners
and our elbows? Where our domestic firesides and the holes
in our stockings?"
SENECA FALLS CONVENTION (1848)

National News

Lowell Courier:


The St. Louis Daily Reveille


With women's equality, "the lords must wash the dishes, scour up,
be put to the tub, handle the broom, darn stockings.“
The flag of independence has been hoisted for the second time on
this side of the Atlantic.
Horace Greeley in the New York Tribune:

When a sincere republican is asked to say in sober earnest what
adequate reason he can give, for refusing the demand of women to
an equal participation with men in political rights, he must answer,
None at all. However unwise and mistaken the demand, it is but the
assertion of a natural right, and such must be conceded."[
SENECA FALLS CONVENTION (1848)

Religious Reaction

Some of the ministers heading congregations in the
area attended the Seneca Falls Convention

None spoke out during the sessions, not even when
comments from the floor were invited.

Following the conventions they attacked the
Convention, the Declaration of Sentiments, and the
resolutions.
WOMEN
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
American Boycott of British Goods (1769)
The Enlightenment (1600 – 1800)
18th Century Women
Republican Motherhood
Education for Women
Suffrage Movement and Temperance
"Woman's Holy War"
Widows to Alcohol
The Effects of Drunkenness