The Patriot Post® · Prohibition: The Noble Experiment

By Greg Martin

Just over a hundred years ago, the 18th Amendment was added to the U.S. Constitution. Nebraska was the 36th state to ratify the amendment on January 16, 1919. The 18th Amendment prohibited the manufacturing, transportation, and sale of intoxicating liquors in all 48 states of America. There had been several state prohibition laws enacted before 1919, but nothing on a scale encompassed by the 18th Amendment. It was a national Prohibition on intoxicating liquors.

How did our country get to a place where it decided to eliminate alcohol from its commerce and culture? For some, Prohibition seems as archaic as settling arguments in duels instead of courtrooms, having large orphanages instead of foster homes, or using leeches to drain blood out of the body.

The 18th Amendment is unique to the other 27 Amendments that have been adopted into the Constitution. It stands alone in history — uniquely alone.

First, it is the only amendment to limit the freedoms of private citizens and not the government. All other amendments limit government, like the 1st Amendment that says: “Congress shall make no laws respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the rights of the people to peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” The 18th Amendment limited an individual’s freedom to make, transport, and sell a product that had been legal since before the founding of the country.

Second, it is the only amendment to ever be repealed. The 18th Amendment had a life of only 13 years, 10 months, and 19 days. Utah became the 36th state to adopt the 21st Amendment on December 5, 1933. That amendment in effect nullified the 18th Amendment. No other amendment has ever been repealed.

Third, the 18th Amendment would never have been enacted without the 16th, 17th, and 19th Amendments being adopted in the same seven-year window as the 18th. They were all adopted from 1913 to 1920. Those seven years are a period when the most amendments were adopted outside of the original Bill of Rights.

Income tax is the 16th Amendment. Direct election of senators is the 17th. Prohibition is the 18th. Women’s suffrage is the 19th. It was the beginning of the progressive movement — the idea that government needs to address social issues like drunkenness.

How did our country get to a place where it was a crime to manufacture, transport, and sell alcohol? What events led up to this amendment? And what does this mean for other social issues that society might try to address through the federal government?

For a matter to become an amendment to the Constitution, there has to be a monumental effort at the legislative level of the federal and/or state governments. A matter has to appeal very broadly to the will of the American people. An amendment does not get put into the U.S. Constitution with just a few powerful people pushing it behind the scenes.

Some social issues are addressed through the courts and never supported with laws, much less an amendment. This might be one of the many reasons we still have arguments over abortion and the redefinition of marriage. These social shifts have simply been addressed in the courthouse and not through the legislative branch, much less through amending the Constitution. Maybe that’s the reason we continue to have social skirmishes.

We are not only going to answer how the country passed the 18th Amendment but what ramifications the story has for the legalization of marijuana and other issues. Will people look back on marijuana a hundred years from now the same way most Americans look at the 18th Amendment? Will Nancy Reagan’s “Just Say No” campaign against drugs be another odd part of our nation’s history like slavery or polygamy?

How Did We Get to the 18th Amendment?

The effort to eliminate the manufacturing, transportation, and sale of alcohol has been called The Noble Experiment. It has been named such because it was an effort to make people’s lives better by limiting their freedoms. The intent was to sober up America so that it could reach its full potential as the greatest country in the history of the world. Perhaps Alabama Rep. Richmond Hobson said it best on the floor of the U.S. House on December 22, 1914: “If a family or a nation is sober, nature in its normal course will cause them to rise to a higher civilization. If a family or nation, on the other hand, is debauched by liquor, it must decline and ultimately perish.” This was the prevailing thought among the masses in the early 20th century.

The best place to start a conversation about the problems of alcohol in America is 1830, when the average American over 15 years of age drank 88 bottles of whiskey a year. That is three times the amount of consumption today. Americans spent more money on their alcohol in 1830 than they did on their government. And the problem was not 2% beer or hard cider of the late 18th century. In 1830, distilled spirits were much more potent than the alcohol that General George Washington gave his troops every day at Valley Forge.

Alcohol consumption in America has its roots in 1630 and the founding of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. John Winthrop and the Pilgrims brought 10,000 gallons of wine and three times as much beer as water on the ships that landed in Massachusetts. By 1763, there were 159 commercial distilleries in New England alone. Alcohol was simply a way of life. Beer was consumed at breakfast, lunch, and dinner. And it was not off limits to those under 21. Whiskey was often seen as a medicine prescribed by doctors for digestion, colds, or laryngitis. Pregnant women were sometimes prescribed a shot of whiskey to ease their discomfort.

James Oglethorpe founded the Colony of Georgia with four rules — no slaves, no Catholics, no lawyers, and no rum. But beer and wine were spared from the rules at the new Georgia colony.

The first great crisis our nation faced after the Constitution was ratified in 1787 was the Whiskey Rebellion in western Pennsylvania. The issue was a tax on wheat and barley that farmers used for whiskey.

Elijah Craig was a prominent Baptist preacher and bourbon maker in Virginia who went to jail for his faith at the founding of our country. He was a contemporary of James Madison and worked with him on the 1st Amendment concerning religious freedom. He helped sway the people of central Virginia to vote for Madison over James Monroe in the first congressional election. The Baptist preacher’s bourbon can be found in bars and liquor stores today. It was not until the late 19th century that Baptists began passing resolutions addressing the evil of alcohol.

President Washington and Madison each lost their first try for elective office by not providing rum and beer to those who met at the courthouse to cast their votes in early elections. Neither made that mistake again on their second and successive attempts at elective office. On Washington’s second attempt at elective office, he won with the aid of 144 gallons of rum punch and beer distributed at the courthouse on Election Day. Washington went on to become the great leader of our country, as we all know. What you may not know is that Washington produced 11,000 gallons of rye whiskey a year at Mount Vernon and was one of the leading manufacturers of distilled spirits in the new nation.

By 1820, liquor was so plentiful that it was less expensive than tea. In the 1830s, American adults were consuming three times the amount consumed today. By the time you get to the early 20th century, alcohol was the fifth-largest industry in the nation and generated 40% of the tax revenue for the federal government.

Attempts at Temperance and Prohibition

The first effort at temperance was the Washingtonian Society, founded by John Gough and five friends in Baltimore, Maryland, in the 1840s. The friends pledged to each other to abstain from alcohol and its damaging effect on their families. The Washingtonian Society grew to thousands of men who took a voluntary oath of abstinence.

The first state that attempted some type of prohibition was Tennessee in 1838. It made it a misdemeanor to sell liquor in taverns and stores. Beer, wine, and hard cider were permissible. The fines were to be at the discretion of the courts and all the fines went to support public schools.

Maine was the first state to put any teeth into the prohibition movement. The effort was led by Neal Dow, the mayor of Portland, Maine. He was a successful businessman who forbade the volunteer fire department to muster anymore while inebriated. He was elected mayor in 1851 and soon convinced the Maine legislature to outlaw the sale and manufacturing of liquor. Maine was the first state to do so, but 12 other states soon followed. All of those states, including Maine, repealed their laws eventually by the time of the Civil War. The influx of Irish immigrants who loved their whiskey was a contributing factor in Maine and other states.

This was the time the new Republican Party was formed. It did not want to wade into the morality and controversy of liquor since it already was tied to the issue of abolition.

During the Civil War, people were less interested in temperance, much less prohibition. There was pain that needed to be soothed and much-needed taxes to be collected for the war effort.

The real start of the temperance movement began in 1870 in Hillsboro, Ohio. Eliza Thompson was the daughter of the Ohio governor, wife of a local judge, mother of eight, and a devout Methodist. She led a group of women after a prayer meeting to go pray in front of the local saloons. She got pledges from barkeepers to no longer serve liquor. Of the 13 saloons in Hillsboro, nine proprietors were persuaded to close their doors. Mother Thompson and the praying women went all over Ohio prayerfully confronting saloon operators. By 1874, there was a $300,000 dip in federal revenues in just two districts in Ohio. Mother Thompson and the others were not well received in big cities like Dayton and Cincinnati, where they sometimes were assaulted and most assuredly heckled. The temperance movement is credited with closing 1,300 liquor sellers. But soon it wore down the women who had domestic responsibilities. No laws were ever changed. Soon even the small towns went back into the saloon business again.

The first person to offer any real staying power for the temperance movement was Frances Willard. In 1879, she was elevated from secretary of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union to president. She was a master strategist. She traveled extensively and spoke in every town in America with a population of over 10,000. During her 19 years with WCTU, it became the largest organization of women in the U.S. with over 250,000 members. The WCTU went on to advocate for suffrage, equal pay, eight-hour work days, world peace, and protection of women and children in the workplace. Its moral compass was always the issue of temperance. You can find Frances Willard’s statue in Statuary Hall in Congress — one of the two statues from the state of Illinois.

Another less subtle or gentle approach to temperance was Carrie Nation of Kansas. The state had produced the extreme abolitionist vigilante John Brown. Kansas was no more favorable to alcohol than slavery. In fact, the 1881 Kansas state constitution banned alcohol.

Carrie lost a husband to alcoholism. She was a large woman who did not pray in the bars or ask nicely for barkeeps to not sell liquor like Eliza Thompson. She often would go into saloons with a hatchet and tear them to pieces. It was called a Hatchation. Her reputation was known in saloons all over the country and often spiked tourism in places she just demolished. Signs could be found in saloons all over the country that stated, “ALL NATIONS ARE WELCOME BUT CARRIE NATION.” She applauded when President William McKinley was assassinated because she believed he was a closet drinker. She once broke into boxing heavyweight champion John Sullivan’s training room and tried to knock him out because he drank beer when he trained. Her movement, though entertaining, was short-lived with no lasting success.

The movement needed more than praying women like Eliza Thompson, organizers like Frances Willard, or vigilantes like Carrie Nation. It needed political muscle. The Prohibition Party came into being just after the Civil War. The Prohibition Party was the first political party to accept women in 1869 (51 years before the 19th Amendment). Women were given full delegate rights at its convention.

The Prohibition Party elected the first female mayor of a city, Susanna Salter of Aronia, Kansas, in 1887 (37 years before the 19th Amendment was ratified). Florida Gov. Sidney Catts was elected in 1917 on the Prohibition Party ticket. The party elected one member of the U.S. House of Representative from 1915-1921 named Charles Randall from the Los Angeles area. The last know Prohibition Party candidate to win was Tax Assessor James Hedges in Thompson Township, Pennsylvania (2002-2007).

In the Hamilton County (Tennessee) elections of 1886, the Prohibition Party offered a candidate for the offices of county court judge (who served like the county mayor), trustee, circuit court clerk, and county court clerk.

By 1882, temperance and the prohibition movement had begun to gain some political success. Vermont became the first state to pass a compulsory temperance education law for school children. By 1902, every state except Arizona had a similar law. Twenty-two million children learned three times a week about the dangers of alcohol in every public school in the country. The message was clear — alcohol was the moral, economic, and physical corrupter of society.

One example of how the temperance movement was gaining influence in the culture can be observed in the political correctness of the painting “Washington’s Farewell to His Officers.” In 1876, the wine in the original painting was replaced with the hat of the general.

Several states went dry before the 18th Amendment. Georgia enacted local option in 1855. By 1896, 100 of the 137 counties had voted themselves dry. The state temperance union pushed the politicians in Atlanta to make all of the Peach State dry by 1908. Several coastal counties like Chatham considered what it would take to succeed from Georgia and form the new State of Chatham because they wanted to keep their liquor flowing.

Tennessee’s road to prohibition included the murder of former U.S. Sen. Edward Carmack. You can find his statue in Nashville at the state capitol. He had recently lost the governor’s race to Malcolm Paterson. As a newspaper editor, Carmack criticized Paterson’s opposition to prohibition among other things. One of the governor’s friends and his son confronted Sen. Carmack on the street in Nashville and shots were fired. Carmack died. He was a martyr for the prohibition cause. Patterson pardoned his friend who killed Carmack. Paterson was never elected to office again.

When the Tennessee General Assembly was convened, bills were passed by the legislature that forbade the sale and manufacturing of intoxicating beverages. Gov. Paterson’s vetoes were overridden 28-2 in the Senate and 88-5 in the House. At that time only Memphis, Chattanooga, Nashville, and LaFollette were wet. Knoxville had voted itself dry two years earlier. Tennessee got so serious about state prohibition and enforcement that the mayors of Memphis and Nashville were removed from office in 1916 for refusing to enforce the state’s prohibition law adopted in 1909.

October 25, 1910, is the day Chattanooga went bone dry. The headline of the Chattanooga Times read, “Chattanooga Saloons All Out of Business.” Judge McReynolds gave the order and the sheriff served papers to all saloons to cease. It wasn’t until May 3, 1939, that the county voted in a referendum to repeal the ban. My community of Hixson was one of the precincts that voted against repeal.

It is worth noting that in 1886, the distillery business was the largest manufacturing industry in Tennessee. J.W. Kelly and Company was the first distillery in Chattanooga, founded just after the Civil War in 1866. Whiskey brands offered had names like Mountain City Corn Shuck, Deep Spring Whiskey, and Golden Age. Chattanooga eventually had 30 distilleries before state prohibition in 1909 shut them all down. The ban on distilleries in Chattanooga was not lifted until 2013.

The Chattanooga Brewing Company was founded in 1890 by George Rief, who, like many brewers across the nation, was a German immigrant. He and his family operated a six-story building on Broad Street that covered an entire block for over 25 years until state prohibition closed the company down. At its height, the Chattanooga Brewing Company was producing 150,000 barrels of beer a year. When beer started to be bottled, it developed a bottle plant. After Prohibition, it sold “near beer.” The first brewer to return to Chattanooga in 1993 was Big River Brewing.

To understand how prevalent alcohol consumption was around the turn of the century, when many state laws were enacted, and leading up to national Prohibition in 1919, you need to consider that in 1850, Americans drank 36 million gallons of beer. By 1870, at the end of the Civil War, that number had grown to 550 million of gallons of beer. By 1890, consumption grew to 855 million gallons. The population had only tripled but alcohol consumption had gone up 24-fold during those four decades.

One major factor was immigration from Europe. Eighty percent of licensed saloons were owned by first-generation Americans. Saloons went from 100,000 in 1870 to 300,000 in 1900. By 1909, some 70% of saloons in New York and 80% of saloons in Chicago were owned by or in debt to breweries with German names like Slitz, Busch, Miller, Pabst, and others. They often offered free lunches with salty additives to sell their beer to patrons. The Brewers Association communicated in the German language.

The most influential person on the road to the 18th Amendment was Wayne Wheeler. He was a lawyer from Oberlin College. The school provided the first coeducational opportunity in the nation. It was the first college to admit blacks. Wayne Wheeler came from the most progressive institution of its time.

Wheeler was so passionate about a ban on alcohol that he went from town to town on his bicycle pushing not just temperance but prohibition. Wheeler was described as a “locomotive in trousers.” He became the president of the Anti-Saloon League, which replaced the WCTU in influence.

I have often thought about the name of that organization. Who names an organization with such a negative first word — Anti? Today we have Mothers Against Drunk Driving. That is “anti” but softer in approach. There was nothing soft about the ASL. Its motto was: “The Church in Action against the Saloon.” It developed a national business model. The ASL printed 300 tons of propaganda every month against alcohol.

Wayne Wheeler stuck to one issue and sold it — Prohibition. He lost an uncle to alcohol. He was inquired as a boy by a drunken farm hand. Like others, he was a true believer in Prohibition.

In 1903, he targeted 70 state legislators in Ohio who opposed the Anti-Saloon League. He defeated every one of them. He once said, “I don’t care if a man drinks. I care how he votes.”

Gov. Myron T. Herrick was the popular Ohio Republican at the time. He got more votes than any candidate in the history of the state. In 1905, he got on the wrong side of Wayne Wheeler. Every Republican won in the state but the once popular Herrick. Wheeler helped get him defeated in a stunning upset.

Soon Wheeler was on the national stage and became the face and voice of Prohibition. Wayne Wheeler bragged that he and the ASL could unseat any representative or senator who was “an enemy of the Constitution.” He joked that he would have them “shot at sunrise on the next election day.”

When we think of single-issue pressure groups like the NRA or the NAR, you have to know that none did lobbying more effective that the first pressure group — the ASL, led by Wayne Wheeler. He was simply unstoppable in politics. The 18th Amendment doesn’t happen without Wheeler.

One of Wheeler’s contemporaries said: “Wayne B. Wheeler controlled six Congresses, dictated to two presidents of the United States, directed legislation in most of the States of the Union, picked the candidates for the more important elective state and federal offices, held the balance of power in both Republican and Democratic parties, distributed more patronage than any dozen other men, supervised a federal bureau from outside without official authority, and was recognized by friend and foe alike as the most masterful and powerful single individual in the United States.”

If Prohibition had survived, he would have been revered like Susan B. Anthony or Frances Willard are by those in the suffrage movement. He has only been mentioned briefly in history since his tragic death in 1927 at the age of 57. His wife was working near a large can of gas that caught fire. Her dad tried to put it out and died of a heart attack that day in the moment. Ella Wheeler succumbed to her painful injuries the next morning. Two weeks later, Wayne Wheeler died from his own heart attack.

Methodist Bishop James Cannon filled the leadership vacuum of Wayne Wheeler after his death. Cannon was accused of moral compromise. He was never convicted in court or by an ecclesiastical authority, but he was publicly humiliated. Two Georgia newspapers compared him to Al Capone.

The race for ASL and others to get the 18th Amendment passed before the 1920 election was very important. Forty-six percent of people lived in the cities, according to the census. The country was migrating to cities with the Industrial Revolution. In the cities the attitudes toward temperance were not as favorable as in the rural communities. Wheeler knew time was of the essence, since a new census would be taken in 1920 and political redistricting would take place. It was estimated that the Wets would pick up 40 seats. When the 65th Congress met in March 1917, the Wets outnumbered the Drys in the Democratic Party 140 to 64. In the Republican Party they outnumbered them 138 to 62. But all this could change quickly for the movement that was 80 years old.

Perhaps the dilemma of politicians can best be illustrated by the famous whiskey speech delivered in Mississippi by State Representative Noah Soggy Sweat of Alcorn County:

My friends, I had not intended to discuss this controversial subject at this particular time. However, I want you to know that I do not shun controversy. On the contrary, I will take a stand on any issue at any time, regardless of how fraught with controversy it might be. You have asked me how I feel about whiskey. All right, this is how I feel about whiskey:

If when you say whiskey you mean the devil’s brew, the poison scourge, the bloody monster, that defiles innocence, dethrones reason, destroys the home, creates misery and poverty, yea, literally takes the bread from the mouths of little children; if you mean the evil drink that topples the Christian man and woman from the pinnacle of righteous, gracious living into the bottomless pit of degradation, and despair, and shame and helplessness, and hopelessness, then certainly I am against it.

But, if when you say whiskey you mean the oil of conversation, the philosophic wine, the ale that is consumed when good fellows get together, that puts a song in their hearts and laughter on their lips, and the warm glow of contentment in their eyes; if you mean Christmas cheer; if you mean the stimulating drink that puts the spring in the old gentleman’s step on a frosty, crispy morning; if you mean the drink which enables a man to magnify his joy, and his happiness, and to forget, if only for a little while, life’s great tragedies, and heartaches, and sorrows; if you mean that drink, the sale of which pours into our treasuries untold millions of dollars, which are used to provide tender care for our little crippled children, our blind, our deaf, our dumb, our pitiful aged and infirm; to build highways and hospitals and schools, then certainly I am for it.

This is my stand. I will not retreat from it. I will not compromise.

The amendment passed both houses of Congress in December 1917. It was ratified by the states in January 1919. It was implemented in January 1920. Only Rhode Island and Connecticut did not ratify the 18th Amendment.

The 18th Amendment had to overcome three major political hurdles. The amendment states simply:

Section 1.
After one year from the ratification of this article the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors within, the importation thereof into, or the exportation thereof from the United States and all territory subject to the jurisdiction thereof for beverage purposes is hereby prohibited.

Section 2.
The Congress and the several States shall have concurrent power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

Section 3.
This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by the legislatures of the several States, as provided in the Constitution, within seven years from the date of the submission hereof to the States by the Congress.

The first hurdle to gaining support was replacing the language that made consumption illegal with language that made selling intoxicating liquors the crime. I would offer the effort went from something morally inspired to something punitive when they made the issue sales and not consumption.

The second issue was a bone thrown to the “states’ rights” crowd with the language of “concurrent enforcement.” Many in the Southern states objected to the federal government having the right to enforce such a law. Concurrent enforcement was the key compromise.

Finally, the debate was secured with the language that gave it one year to be enforced from ratification — January 17, 1920. This was to help brewers and distillers with the closing of their businesses. Some likened it to the $4 billion lost in “property” with the passage of the 13th Amendment that freed the Southern slaves. Herbert Hoover called it an “insult to private property” to not give the brewers and distillers some time to adjust to the amendment after ratification.

On that note, it is worth mentioning that it took Mississippi, the first state to pass the amendment, 15 minutes to deliberate. It passed 28-5 in the Senate and 93-3 in the House. Yet it took the state until 1995 under the administration of Gov. Kirk Fordice, the first Republican governor since Reconstruction, to adopt the 13th Amendment.

There was a mixed reaction across the country. Saloons were selling bottles for pennies on the dollar. The rich were stocking up for a stash they hoped would never run out. (Amazingly, the stash never did run out for some.) Brewers, wineries, and distillers were turning to products like malt syrup, near beer, and grape juice.

The Drys were ecstatic. They thought with alcohol being banned that you could now have the perfect marriage, the perfect home, and the perfect husband. Billy Sunday had a funeral for “John Barleycorn” in Norfolk, Virginia, that was attended by 10,000 celebrants. Years earlier the evangelist had convinced thousands at the University of Michigan to take a temperance pledge. He stated at the Norfolk celebration that “The reign of tears is over. The slums will soon be only a memory. We will turn our prisons into factories and our jails into storehouses and corn cribs. Men will walk upright now, women will smile and the children will laugh. Hell will be forever for rent.” On January 16, another service was held at the First Congregational Church in Washington, DC, where the end of slavery was celebrated by Fredrick Douglas and others in 1865. Speakers included Sunday, Methodist Bishop James Cannon, Sen. Andrew Volstead, Wheeler, and Secretary of the Navy Joseph Daniel, who had eliminated alcohol from 99% of U.S. Navy ships. William Jennings Bryan was the last one to speak as the clock struck midnight, and all rejoiced that society had been freed from alcohol. As secretary of state, Bryan was known to only serve grape juice in the wine glasses of his state dinners.

Six Issues That Helped Pass Prohibition

There were a number of issues that got the 18th Amendment passed. They are issues that we sometimes see in our present political atmosphere.

IMMIGRATION: Most immigrants settled in the cities during the Industrial Revolution. They came with their own cultures and a different religion than the vast majority of people in the heartland.

Between 1900 and 1915, 6.2 million migrants from southern and eastern Europe arrived in America. To address the immigration issue, Congress passed the Immigration Restriction Act in 1924 that said only 2% could come in a year from an ethnic group. So if 100,000 Spanish people were in America, only 2,000 more could come in. The problem was they rolled the clock back to the 1890 Census, in which immigration was more favorable to the British than the eastern Jew or Russians or Italians. But the Jews and Italians came in droves anyway. When Prohibition took effect in 1920, half the bootleggers were Jews from eastern Europe, and 25% were Italian.

World War I was raging in Europe during the political debate about Prohibition in America. Americans were skeptical of Europeans in general and the Germans in particular. The Red Cross accused the Germans of putting glass shards in their bandages. Wisconsin banned books written in German. A German immigrant named Robert Prager was hung in April 1918 as a “patriotic murder” near St. Louis for no other reason than he spoke German. Beethoven was banned in Boston. The Iowa governor made it illegal to speak German. Sauerkraut became known as “liberty cabbage.” Before WWI, there were 1,000 breweries. Half were gone in the months after the start of the war. The wheat used in German beer was seen as something that deprived bread from American troops.

RELIGION: Most of Prohibition was propelled by evangelicals in general and Baptists and Methodists in particular. It was the Catholics and Jews from southeastern Europe who resented the Protestant American culture of temperance. Alcohol was a part of their culture and religion.

Evangelist Billy Sunday said in a sermon that people considering Prohibition should look to Kansas to see its good effects. In 1912, there was “not one Idiot” in 85 of the 105 counties. In 38 counties, there was not a single pauper in the poorhouse. There were only 600 statewide. In 65 counties, there was not a single person in jail, and in some cases the grand jury had not been called to try a case in 10 years.

In 1914, Rabbi Gotthard Deutsch of Cincinnati quoted Psalm 104 to his congregants: “Wine is made to gladden the hearts of men.” He went on to say, “In Rabbinical teachings it is a sin to reject the gifts of God.” In 1926, Rabbi Louis Wolsey of Philadelphia wrote: “Prohibition is an Anglo-Saxon-Protestant issue that we Jews ought to keep out of.”

RACE: Prohibition was adopted at the height of Jim Crow. The thought was that there was nothing more scary than a black man with a ballot, except a black man with a ballot in one hand and a bottle in the other. People were told that Prohibition would end lynchings because black men wouldn’t commit horrible crimes if they were sober.

The KKK, which was at its height when the 18th Amendment was ratified, was all in on Prohibition. In 1920, the KKK enrolled more members in Connecticut than in Mississippi; more in Oregon than in Louisiana; and more in New Jersey than in Alabama. They had over half a million members in the three states of Ohio, Illinois, and Indiana. Candidates won in Oregon, Colorado, and Kansas. Detroit elected a klansman for mayor who was not even on the ballot. He was a write-in candidate. It’s estimated that 15% of eligible men in the country in the early 1920s were members of the Klan. Many Southern Democrats in Congress and state houses were members of the Klan. In 1924, Democrats voted to support the Klan at its national convention. The Klan hated blacks, Jews, and Catholics. It was quick to remind people that the assassins who killed Lincoln, Garfield, and McKinley were all liquor-loving Catholics.

INCOME TAX — 16th AMENDMENT: When the income tax was proposed, it was sold to the American people as a way to redistribute wealth. That was not a hard pill to swallow for Southerners who were still recovering from Reconstruction. It was projected that 44% of the new income taxes would come from the state of New York. With that in mind, does it surprise anyone that eight of the first nine states to vote for the 16th Amendment were Southern states? Alabama was the first state to ratify the 16th Amendment. The vote was unanimous in both houses. The income tax was a way of getting back economically and politically at the imperialists of the North.

But it was more than revenge. Alcohol was the fifth-largest industry in the nation at the time of Prohibition, and at times made up as much as 40% of the federal government’s revenue. If Prohibition was ever to succeed, there had to be a new revenue stream. An income tax on the top 1% of wealthy, industrial Yankees did not seem to be too difficult for the country to adopt.

Incidentally, even local governments were dependent on liquor tax. In 1886, Chattanooga had 49 retail saloons and three wholesale liquor dealers. They paid annual city taxes of $15,000. It was estimated to be 1/8 of all property taxes paid into the city treasury. How that revenue got replaced with the state Prohibition Law of 1909 is unknown to me.

INDUSTRIALISTS: It may surprise you, but most business movers and shakers of the early 20th century were advocates for Prohibition. Henry Ford expected that Prohibition would have made “prosperity universal … and have abolished poverty.” General Motors founder William C. Durant offered prize money for the “best and most practical plan to make the 18th Amendment effective.” John D. Rockefeller Jr. believed Prohibition was a logical undertaking for an active government.

WOMEN’S SUFFRAGE: The 18th Amendment simply does not happen without women pushing the issue and their votes being counted. The women’s suffrage movement did not get its start over social issues like abortion that we see today. It really came from Christian women like Eliza Thompson, Frances Willard, and Susan B. Anthony who wanted America to become sober to produce a better culture and nation for the family.

What Was the Effect of the 18th Amendment?

Did it do any good? What happened after it was implemented?

Alcohol consumption was cut in half during the 1920s and remained below pre-Prohibition levels until the 1940s. It did have a temporary positive impact. There were less arrest, hospitalization from alcoholism, and domestic-violence cases. Productivity increased in manufacturing, where fewer people were getting sick with Blue Monday Disease.

Grand Rapids abandoned its work farm. Chicago closed one of its jails. Church membership grew by 1.2 million in the first full year of Prohibition. Businesses like Tea Merchants and Soda Fountain Manufacturers prospered. Coca-Cola sales tripled during Prohibition. One slogan said it was “the drink that cheers but does not inebriate.”

But not everything was as rosy as Billy Sunday predicted on the eve of implementation at the First Congregational Church. The Volstead Act that implemented the 18th Amendment had three main exceptions for the use of alcohol. All were greatly abused. The first exception was religious wines. That was greatly abused by Jews and Catholics alike. The second exception was homemade intoxicants. Again, that exception was greatly misused. It was not illegal to consume or make hard cider or wine— you just couldn’t sell, manufacture, or transport it. The third exception was for medical purposes. Walgreen went from four stores in 1916 to 525 stores in the decade of the 1920s. There were 15,000 doctors and 57,000 pharmacists who got licensed to prescribe medical alcohol in the early days of the 18th Amendment. From 1921 to 1930, doctors earned about $40 million from whiskey prescriptions.

Prohibition happened but it never really worked. It had unintended consequences that many could just not envision. Prohibition was a failure in at least four ways:

1) It encouraged criminality.

2) It institutionalized hypocrisy.

3) It deprived the government of revenue.

4) It imposed on individual rights of citizens.

Crime is one of the sad legacies of Prohibition after the early years of some success. By 1926, bootlegging was a $3.6 billion business in America— the same amount of the federal budget.

The U.S. Attorneys office spent 44% of its resources and time on Prohibition. Attorneys were often working against states and cities that did not care to enforce the law, similar to sanctuary cities and states that are not on the same page with the federal government today. In New York City, there were 4,000 arrest, 500 indictments, and only six convictions — but not one jail sentence. By 1925, there were over 30,000 speakeasies in New York City alone.

In Chicago, Al Capone is reported to have said, “I give the public what the public wants. I never had to send out high pressure salesman. Why I could never meet the demand.” He claimed he had customers, not victims. “Public Service is my motto,” he once said. “When I sell liquor, it’s bootlegging. When my patrons serve it on a silver tray on Lake Shore Drive, it’s hospitality.”

Some would say enforcement never worked in cities like Chicago and New York because it was never really attempted. It is estimated that in the Windy City, 60% of cops and the mayor were profiting from the liquor trade.

Chattanooga has its own history of politicians and cops violating prohibition. In 1915, there was a headline in the Hamilton County Herald that proclaimed: “POLICE COMMISSIONER BETTERTON CHARGED WITH SHIPPING WHISKEY PACKED IN COFFINS FROM HIS FACTORY — PROVE CONCLUSIVE.”

Prohibition made criminals out of more people than gangsters like Capone or crooked cops. It made average citizens lawbreakers as well. The most egregious case was Etta Mae Miller of Lansing, Michigan. The state had passed a law that said there was a life sentence for a fourth violation of the liquor laws. Mrs. Miller was 48 and the mother of 10 children. Her husband was in jail for violating the Volstead Act. She sold two pints of liquor to an undercover cop and was given a life sentence.

I think Abraham Lincoln had it right in 1840 when he said, “Prohibition will work great injury to the cause of Temperance. It is a species of intemperance within itself, for it goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control a man’s appetite by legislation and make a crime out of things that are not crimes. A prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded.”

I often tell my friends that the government can set the speed limit at 55 m.p.h., but it is my nature to go 65. And if it sets it at 70 m.p.h., I am going to go 80. I think Lincoln saw Prohibition the way I do the speed limit: Some laws are just made to be broken. Millions of average citizens became lawbreakers during Prohibition. They just saw the law as unnecessary and arbitrary.

In addition to crime, Prohibition made many hypocrites. People did not lose a taste for alcohol with the passage of the 18th Amendment. In 1930, The Washington Post estimated that 80% of Congress drank. New York Sen. James Wadsworth famously said, “How the world must despise us for making such asses of ourselves.”

Prohibition deprived governments of revenue. In addition to liquor commerce and taxes, the cost of Prohibition was greater than many anticipated. Restaurants were closing because liquor was not on the menu. House parties grew because you could have a drink there. Many thought the movie industry would flourish but it did not. People simply stayed home. Many immigrants only knew of one industry, and now it was gone. Effects were greatly felt in New Jersey, Wisconsin, and New York. The New York state government was dependent on liquor for 75% of its revenue. Government had to be redesigned in some of these states.

The Road to Repeal

The first major presidential candidate to advocate for repeal was Democrat nominee Al Smith in 1928. He was a Catholic from New York and very wet. No candidate since the passage of the 18th Amendment had been an unconflicted advocate of Prohibition. Al Smith was the first to run an openly wet campaign. The Drys saw it as a huge victory when Herbert Hoover won 444-87 in the Electoral College. The driest-ever Congress was elected with 80 Drys to 16 Wets in the Senate and 329 Drys to 106 Wets in the House. Of the 48 governors, 43 of them were dry.

The country may have rejected Al Smith and elected a dry Congress, but they were turning on enforcement of Prohibition laws. In Montana, Smith got 40% of the vote, but 54% voted against Prohibition enforcement laws. In Massachusetts, Al Smith barely won the state, but repeal of enforcement measures passed 2-1. A few months before the national election, 48% of North Dakotans voted to repeal enforcement. That is amazing when you consider that for four decades, prohibition had been in the state constitution. In 1930, the U.S. House election went from 76 to 146 Wets. The tide was turning.

The Association Against Prohibition Amendment was one of the organizations that helped turn the tide. It was founded by WIlliam H. Stayton in 1918. In 1917, the chief spokesman for the Wets was the president of the U.S. Brewers Association. By 1927, the leadership had passed to president of the Pennsylvania Railroad or chairman of the board at General Motors. Within a few years, the AAPA was composed of men who had “direct … management of $40,000,000,000 and the employment and occupation of 3,000,000 employees.”

One leader was Pierre DuPont. It was all about the money for him. With the Revenue Act of 1916, his income tax rate doubled. He saw the first-ever peacetime inheritance tax and a 12.5% tax on the profits of munitions manufacturers. For DuPont and others, the repeal movement was all about ending the income tax.

John D. Rockefeller Jr. switched to repeal in June 1932. The announcement of his conversion was soon followed by Alfred P. Sloan of General Motors and tire manufacturer Harvey Firestone.

Pauline Sabin from Long Island was an influential socialite who advocated for repeal. She was a leader in the suffrage movement. She supported Hoover but turned on him with his enforcement of Prohibition laws. She was the first and most prominent woman to come out for the Wets. She wrote an article that was widely published entitled, “I change My Mind on Prohibition.” She was the first and most notable woman to make it acceptable to be for repeal.

Many did not think repeal was even possible. It had never been done before and has not been accomplished since.

Clarence Darrow stated of repeal that “13 dry states with a population of less than New York State alone can prevent repeal until Halley’s Comet returns.” Those 13 state had a population of 5.1 million, and New York had 10.4 million in the 1920 Census.

Texas Sen. Morris Sheppard, who sponsored the 18th Amendment in the upper chamber in 1917, said, “There is as much chance of repealing the 18th Amendment as there is a for a hummingbird to fly to the planet Mars with the Washington Monument tied to its tail.”

But the mockingbird did fly.

The stock market crash of 1929 and the Great Depression are what sent the little bird to Mars. People needed to soothe their sorrows like in the Civil War. More importantly, the government needed revenue. The crash of the stock market and the Great Depression made enforcement all the more difficult. Prohibition Commissioner James Doran needed $300 million to enforce the law but was only given $12 million.

As WWI gave the Drys ammunition, so the Depression gave the Wets their ammunition. DuPont said in a radio address that “half the revenue required for the budget … would be furnished by the tax on liquor alone.” Candidate Roosevelt in 1932 came out for the Wets, saying legalization of beer would increase the federal revenue by several hundred million dollars a year.

With Wayne Wheeler in the grave, Bishop Cannon disgraced, and the Great Depression’s full effect on the country, the ASL was struggling. In 1920, with the 18th Amendment passed and the Volstead Act in place, the ASL spent $2.5 million in support of its cause. In 1933, the ASL brought in just $122,000 — a 95% decrease. The most powerful single-issue pressure group the nation had ever known had been reduced to looking for nickels under the couch.

Repeal was voted in February 1933. Sen. Shepard rose to filibuster for 18 hours. Repeal passed 63-23. The House voted 289-121 in favor. Of the 22 senators who voted for the 18th Amendment and were still in the Senate for repeal, only five stayed with Prohibition. Seventeen voted to undo their earlier work.

Sen. Shepard rose on the floor of the U.S. Senate for the remainder of his career every January 16 and gave an eloquent speech about the virtues and values of Prohibition. It was a lost cause. But for him and others, it was a cause worth giving their all.