We'll look at the impact of national alcohol prohibition in more detail in the next chapter,
but here we need to look at the forces and factors related to the government's attempt to
control drinhng, which was part of a more general effort to curtail untoward behavior of all
lunds. As we'll see in more detail in Chapter 7, eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century
Americans drank truly immense quantities of alcohol. In the year 1790, the year of the first
U.S. Census, Americans consumed a per-capita average of 5.8 gallons of pure alcohol (see
the box on the next page). By 1830, this had increased to an astonishing 7.1 gallons--or
two and a half drinks containing an ounce of pure alcohol per day, per person. Since this
includes the entire population (age 15 and older), including teetotalers, a substantial segment of the population clearly drank considerably more than the average.
Many observers recognized that uncontrolled drinlung carried a heavy price and set out
to control the consumption of alcohol in the United States. Dr. Benjamin Rush, prominent
Philadelphia physician and signer of the Declaration of Independence, wrote a pamphlet,
An Inquiry into the Effects of Ardent Spirits on the Human Mind and Body (1784), which
challenged the view that drinking was an unmixed blessing. Rush's targets were heavy
rather than moderate drinhng, and "ardent spirits" (distilled alcoholic beverages) rather
than wine and beer.
When I asked my students about the statement "Americans drank
considerably more alcohol during the 1700s than they do today,"
only a third (36%) believed it to be true, while two-thirds (64%)
said that it is false. In fact, the statement is true. In the 1700s,
Americans drank more than they do today, and by a considerable
margin. It is difficult to believe that the country drank three times
as much as it does today, on a per-person basis, but historical
records, including transactions of the sale of alcoholic beverages,
clearly indicate that this was the case.
While rejecting absolute prohibition, Rush nonetheless urged his fellow citizens to
"unite and beseech" their leaders to demand fewer taverns and heavier taxes on liquor
(Lender and Martin, 1987, p. 38). Regarding the pulpit as a promising source of reform, he
sent thousands of copies of his pamphlet to the general assembly of the Presbyterian Church
for distribution. As a result of Rush's arguments, the church fathers became aware that
" excessive drink stimulated un-Christian vices and took up the cause of temperance. Soon,
other Protestant denominations followed; within three years, hundreds of antiliquor organizations became active across the country. By the 1810s. temperance reform "constituted
a burgeoning national movement" (p. 68).
During the 1820s and 1830s, clergymen debated the question of whether temperance
was sufficient to control the sin of excessive alcohol consumption. Many began to argue
that total abstinence rather than moderation was necessary. In 1826, Lyman Beecher,
' prominent Presbyterian minister, published his Six Sermons on Intemperance, which
argued that total abstinence "was the only sure means of personal salvation and societal
stability." Any drinking, Beecher claimed, was one step along the path of "irreclaimable"
slavery to liquor. A Methodist report agreed. There is "no safe line of distinction between
the moderate and the immoderate use of alcohol," the report argued; moderate use was
"almost . . . certain" to lead to immoderate use. The report's conclusion questioned
"whether a man can indulge . . . at all and be considered temperate" (Lender and Martin,
1987, p. 69).
To judge by their results, these sermons and publications began to have an impact on
American drinking patterns. Employers stopped supplying their workers with liquor
breaks; increasingly, farnlers harvested their crops without bringing the communal jug to
the field; railroad employers began firing workers who drank on the job; rowdy, troublesome
taverns were closed down when local governments refused to renew their licenses; and
liquorrations were no longer distributed to army soldiers. By the 1840s, prohibition sentiment
a
was so strong that statewide alcohol bans became feasible. I_n 1846,-M
to outlaw the m a n u f a c t ~ a l of
e d i a l e d s p i b . By the mid-1850s, roughly
one-third of the population lived in a state in which the sale of alcohol was prohibited. But
the conflict over the abolition of slavery overshadowed the issue of prohibition, and a number
of states repealed their "dry" laws. Still, the Civil War (186 1-1 865) did not resolve the issue
of prohibition; but merely delayed it.
-
For the prohibitionist, the urban saloon remained a symbol of the degeneracy brought
on by drink. Its patrons were frequently immigrants, usually from Catholic regions of Europe,
who did not share the Anglo-Saxon Protestant temperance virtues of abstinence from sensuous
pleasures. Prostitution, gambling, and violence were frequently accompaniments of local
barroom activity. Moreover, corrupt political bosses made the neighborhood tavern a meeting
place and recruiting locale, which both encouraged their constituency to drink and involved
them in undemocratic practices, such as stuffing ballot boxes and intimidating and assaulting
political opponents (Lender and Martin, 1987, p. 104). The local saloon became the most
important target of prohibitionist reformers, representing, as it did, the perfect example of
what they were fighting against. The Anti-Saloon League was organized in 1893, and
by 1910, it was a major political force to be reckoned with; its single purpose: national
alcohol prohibition.
From today's vantage point, it is simple-but misleading-to regard the nineteenthcentury prohibitionist as a hide-bound conservative trying to stamp out a harmless vice and
eliminate one of the working man's few worldly pleasures, a "meddling busybody, interested
in forcing his [or her] own morals on others" (Becker, 1963, p. 148j. But the fact is, prohibitionist factions represented a most decidedly mixed bag. Motives that today we would
recognize as both backward and progressive together formed the prohibitionist impulse.
For one thing, _most "drysn-who were supporters of prohibition-harhored and
. .
px~ressedns-m
l.
Opposition to the manufacture and sale of alcohol often
went hand in hand with opposition to immigration because most immigrants came from
"wet" cultures and strongly opposed prohibition. And anti-immigrant sentiment easily
translated into hostility to Catholics and the Irish, the Italians, and, during World War I, the
Germans. Many prohibitionists harbored "nativist" (strongly pro-American) and xenophobic
(antiforeign) sentiments that seem racist today-and they did not hesitate to express them.
men's Temperance Christian Union (WTCTJ). W e d in
At the same time,
..
, y (
supported
women's rights, women's suffrage (the right to vote), world peace, and laws against statutory
and forcible rape. The WTCU may very well have represented the entry of American
women into the organized political process. The very fact that wives were called upon to
control the drinking of their husbands reconfigured power relations between men and
women, and may very well have been a first step in asserting women's rights and establishing
women's liberation. In the short run, women were instrumental in establishing national
alcohol prohibition; in the long run, it was women's interactions with men that eventually
"domesticated" drinking to its current, more moderate form (Murdock, 1998).
During the first decade of the twentieth century, big business became involved in a big
way in the prohibitionist cause. An antidrinking stance was consistent with a disciplined
and cooperative workforce. Between 1911 and 1920,41 states passed workmen's compensation laws, which meant that employers had to compensate workers for industrial accidents.
In 1914. the National Safety Council cited alcohol consumption as a cause of industrial
accidents; "safety through sobriety" became the employer's watchword, adding to the chorus
of prohibitionist voices (Caskman, 1981, p. 6; Rumbarger, 1989).
In January 1919, Nebraska became the thirty-sixth state to ratify the Eighteenth
Amendment to the Constitution, which called for the prohibition of the manufacture, sale,
transportation, importation, and exportation of "intoxicating liquors" for "beverage purposes"
within, into, and from the United States and its territories. A year later. the amendment went
into effect. Over a veto by President Woodrow Wilson, Congress passed the National
Prohibition Act. Referred to as the Yolstea&&& it legally banned the distribution of all
beverages containing more than 0.5 percent alcohol. The act also empowered the federal
government to enforce the law.
The passage of the Volstead Act represented the triumph of Protestants over Catholics,
native-born Americans over immigrants, rural and small-town dwellers over urban residents,
the South over the North, Anglo-Saxons over ethnics from southern and eastern Europe,
farmers and the middle class over the working class, and Republicans over (nonsouthern)
Democrats. In effect, -marked
the dying gasp of a traditional way of Life that
was to be forever cast to the winds by the Great Depression (1929-1939) and beyond.
. ..
As we'll see in more detail in the next chapter, although Proh~bitinnwac w t d d + g w d
art-oh01
consumption did decline between 1920 and 1933. Nonetheless,
enforcement created more problems than it solved; the decline in drinking was bought at
a very high price. For one h n g , comparing the pre-Prohibition era to the 1920-1933 period,
the national murder rate increased from 6.8 to 9.7 per 100,000 in the population. For another,
the opportunity to sell alcohol was enormously profitable to organized crime-in effect,
Prohibition subsidized the criminal organizations that eventually developed into the organized
drug gangs that were so successful until the breakup of the French Connection in the 1970s.
All in all, Prohibition proved to be a disastrous experiment in legislative reform.