 Reformers wanted addressed
several problems in society:
 Workplace safety
 Women and children
 Large corporations and
controlling over American
society
 Government not being more
responsive to the people
 MORALITY (improving
people’s lives)
Lyman Beecher was a famous social
activist of the day who was particularly
concerned about the negative impact of
alcohol on society.
  Prohibition (banning of
alcoholic beverages)
 Led to tensions with
immigrant groups, whose
customs often included the
consumption of alcohol
In the 1850 engraving,
"The Drunkard's
Home," a cowering
family in a squalid
home is subjected to
the whims of a brutal
patriarch.
By contrast, the 1850
engraving, "The
Temperance Home,"
depicts a scene of
domestic harmony,
order, affection, and
material comfort.
 Billy Sunday
 Reformer/Preacher
 Worked at Chicago YMCA
 Gave him first-hand experience
with the destructive potential of
alcohol
 Famous “Booze” Sermon:
 I am the sworn, eternal and uncompromising enemy of
the liquor traffic. I have been, and will go on, fighting
that damnable, dirty, rotten business with all the power
at my command
 I challenge you to show me where the saloon has
ever helped business, education, church morals or
anything we hold dear
 The WCTU fought for
prohibition reform.
 GOAL WAS ENDING
PRODUCTION, SALE,
AND CONSUMPTION OF
ALCOHOL (SIN)
 Frances Willard was the
national president of the
union from 1879 to 1898.
 Composed of mostly
women angered by men
who abused their wives
and children
 Member of the Women's
Christian Temperance Union.
 Known for bursting into
barrooms, wielding a hatchet
or hammer, and smashing
the saloon.
 Between 1900 and 1910,
Nation was arrested some
thirty times for her aggressive
tactics
 Also beaten by saloon owners
wives and threatened by mobs.
 Targeted? SALOONS
 The Anti-Saloon
Members of the Anti-Saloon
League meet in Chicago.
League focused only on
the legal prohibition of
alcoholic beverages.
 Printed anti-drinking
brochures, appealed to
church members for
support, and lobbied
both lawmakers and
businessmen.
 Wayne Wheeler
A glass of wine
is not a sin
Take a little for
your stomach’s
sake…
LOOKWhat is
the
message
of this
cartoon?
LOOKIs this Cartoon
For or Against
The Banning
of Alcohol ?
Why?
 Filled several roles in
many immigrant
communities
 Served inexpensive meals
 Cashed paychecks
 Mail
 Provided rooms for any
purpose from weddings to
wakes, political meetings
to union headquarters
 Vote
 Find out who’s hiring
 End drunkenness
 Eliminate alcohol-related
deaths (accidents at work)
 Stop domestic abuse
 Decrease crime
 Abolish the saloon
 Safer roads
 Different uses for money
 Decrease taxes
 End moral grandeur (feared alcohol was
undermining American culture and values)
Reality:

End drunkenness

Eliminate alcohol
related deaths

Decrease crime

Abolish the saloon

Safer roads

Different uses for
money

Decrease taxes

End moral
grandeur (feared
alcohol was
undermining
American culture
and values)
 AT FIRST, saloons closed doors and arrests
for drunkenness DECLINED
 BUT in the aftermath of WW1, Americans
were tired of make sacrifices – want to
ENJOY LIFE (and didn’t consider drinking
to be a sin BUT A NATURAL PART OF
SOCIALIZING)
Claimed:
 Did not stop Americans drinking
 Turned law abiding citizens into criminals
 Created illegal networks (ex: Organized Crime)
 Violence
 Corruption of officials
BUT at midnight of January 16,
1920 IT HAPPENED
In reality…
Prohibition simply made
The 18th Amendment was put
the consumption of
alcohol more of a
into effect and all:
challenge and more
• Importing
expensive
• Exporting
• Transporting
• Selling
• Manufacturing
of intoxicating liquor
put to an end
What’s missing?
The rich had liquor
delivered to their homes
and the poor drank beer
which was close to water,
was
or spirits which were
close to poison.
 Established a Prohibition
Bureau in the Treasury
Dept. (enforce the 18th
Amendment)
 President Wilson vetoed
the Volstead Act on
constitutional grounds.
 His veto was overridden by
Congress.
Special stamps were required for medicinal
liquors under the Volstead Act.

Under Prohibition Bureau
(underfunded and
understaffed – 1,550 federal
agents) had to:
 Patrol 18,700 miles of
coastline and inland
borders
 Track down illegal stills
(equipment for distilling
liquor)
 Monitor highways for
truckloads of illegal
alcohol
 Oversee all industries
that legally used alcohol
The black market for
alcohol was a boon
(benefit) for organized
crime
Detroit police discover a clandestine still
(medicinal and religious).
 Within the first hours of the Volstead Act taking effect
there were already liquor robberies and hijackings.
 And within the following month the first federal
agents were arrested for liquor law corruption.
 Thousands of phony prescriptions for liquor were issued
by physicians who tried to make profit of this new law
 Pharmacists were allowed to dispense
whiskey by prescription for any number
of ailments, ranging from anxiety to influenza.
 Bootleggers quickly discovered that running a
pharmacy was a perfect front for their trade.
So what is going to happen to the
number of Pharmacists?
As a result, the number of
registered pharmacists in
New York State tripled
during the Prohibition era.
 Because Americans were also allowed to obtain wine
for religious purposes, enrollments ROSE at
churches and synagogues, and cities saw a large
increase in the number of self-professed rabbis who
could obtain wine for their congregations
Bert Williams 1919
Songs of Prohibition
 Moonshiner
 Prohibition is a failure
 Goodbye Old Booze
 The Old Home Brew
 Others…
None of it
came to
pass
 Prohibitionists expected sales of
clothing and household goods to
skyrocket.
 Real estate developers and
landlords expected rents to rise as
saloons closed and neighborhoods
improved.
 Chewing gum, grape juice, and soft
drink companies all expected
growth.
 Theater producers expected new
crowds as Americans looked for
new ways to entertain themselves
without alcohol.
.
 Restaurants failed, as they could no longer make a
profit without legal liquor sales.
 Theater revenues declined rather than increase, and
few of the other economic benefits that had been
predicted came to pass.
The closing of breweries,
distilleries and saloons led to the
elimination of thousands of jobs,
and in turn thousands more jobs
were eliminated for barrel
makers, truckers, waiters, and
other related trades.
 Drinkers went underground to hidden saloons and
Before Prohibition there
were 15,000 bars in New
York.
nightclubs known as SPEAKEASIES (liquor sold illegally)
 Found EVERYWHERE
 To be admitted, you needed PASSWORD (ex: Joe sent me
or Green Mill), special knock, or special card
By 1926 there were 30,000
speakeasies!
 As time went on, people grew bolder in getting around
the law
 Ex:
 Hardware Stores – sold cheap mills and books and
magazines explaining how to distill liquor from apples,
watermelon, and even potato peelings
Also had the
emergence of the
BOOTLEGGER
(named for smuggler’s
practice of carrying
liquor in the legs of
their boots
 Spirit made secretly
in home made stills
 Several hundred
people a year died
from this during the
1920s
 In 1929 it is estimated
that 700 million
gallons of beer were
produced in
American homes
Famous Smuggler: William McCoy Made fortune
by bringing alcohol from West Indies & Canada
 The enormous profits to
be made attracted
gangsters who started to
take control of many cities.
 They bribed the police,
judges and politicians.
 They controlled the
speakeasies and the
distilleries, and ruthlessly
exterminated their rivals.
Hijacking
 Locations of the warehouses with the liquor stock and
equipment were kept very secretly
 How to solve this problem(of the goods of getting stolen
during the transportation)?
Gunmen were hired
As a side effect of prohibition, also
the illegal gun-market arose to be
a profitable business.
.
Arthur Flegenheimer
 Former sheriff that
became a freelance
gunman for a number of
Midwest bootleggers and
racketeers.
 Also a bootlegger himself
and bank robber
Why would the politicians get involved with the
gangsters?
Relationship between the
UNDERWORLD and UPPERWORLD
•Business
interests promoted
•
corruption and graft ( bribery)
Business and political figures
took money and personal services
from underworld figures.
• Plus underworld helped them to
get re-elected
•In return, political figures
offered little interference to
underworld criminal
activity.
*Bribery of police
officials was common.
• Patterns of corruptionreform-corruption-reform
mixed sham investigations
with public hearings (public
perception).
The most famous of the gangsters of the 1920s
was Al Capone (Southsiders of Chicago)
- By 1927 he was earning
some $60 million a year
from bootlegging.
- He had 700 men under
his control.
- He was responsible for
over 500 murders.
ex: Killed Dion
O’Banion and Hymie Weiss
(Northsiders)
“Bugs” Moran swore
vengeance against Capone –
But since Gangsters ran bootlegging
industries and were turning huge profits…
On 14th February 1929,
Capone’s men dressed as
police officers murdered 7
members of a rival
Northsiders gang (thought
“Bugs” Moran was there)
This became known as the
‘Valentine’s Day Massacre’
Americans were shocked
they became rivals with other gangs,
especially in big cities, leading to more
violent crime.
 Prohibition was




Thus,
in 1933, the noble
experiment of Prohibition came
to a close with the ratification of
the 21st Amendment
unenforceable.
Many deaths occurred
from bootleg liquor.
Political corruption
increased.
Smuggling grew out of
control.
During the Depression
the potential jobs and
tax revenue from the
legalization of liquor
increasingly attractive to
struggling Americans.