Tags: History | old school

Liquor Laws & Prohibition

What I find amusing is that the amount of bars increased during prohibition as did violence. The thing the law was trying to curb. The article states that 1n 1927, during prohibition there were over 30k bars, twice the number before prohibition, the taxpayers were spending 100’s of millions annually enforcing the liquor laws instead of collecting millions in taxes towards social programs and city services. I guess prohibition goes into the same pile of BS as every other law that tries to impose a small groups moral and social standards onto the masses, they figure out it’s a bit hard to enforce. Since the large breweries were forced to close, ordinary people made bank on home brew and moonshine… unfortunately bathtub brew, if messed up can cause side effects other than drunkenness or a risk of DUI. There were many cases of people going blind, paralysis and death due to home made liquor recipes.

Enforcement of 1920s’ Prohibition was a formidable task. Bootleggers and rum runners were plentiful. Criminal elements organized because of the large profits in bootlegging. Much of the population had contempt for law enforcement during 1920s’ Prohibition. Chicago’s Al Capone and his organization wer

e considered glamorous figures; supposedly, half the city’s police were on their payroll.

The social reform movement that led to prohibition created more social problems than before. Police corruption, murder, bribery, street gangs and organized crime all flourished in new found profits and doubled the amount of now illegal bars than there was before legally. Corruption was one of the things proponents claimed prohibition would abolish…hmmm.

The first half of the 20th century saw periods of prohibition of alcoholic beverages in several countries, The US, the most famous for liquor and prohibition was not the only country practicing the liquor law.

• 1900 to 1948 in Prince Edward Island, and for shorter periods in other locations in Canada
• 1914 to 1925 in Russia and the Soviet Union
• 1915 to 1922 in Iceland (though beer was still prohibited until 1989)
• 1916 to 1927 in Norway (wine and beer also included in 1917)
• 1919 in Hungary (in the Hungarian Soviet Republic, March 21 to August 1; called szesztilalom)
• 1919 to 1932 in Finland (called kieltolaki)
• 1920 to 1933 in the United States

Digitalhistory - liquor law -At midnight, January 16, 1920, the United States went dry; breweries, distilleries, and saloons were forced to close their doors.

Led by the Anti-Saloon League and the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, the dry forces had triumphed by linking Prohibition to a variety of Progressive era social causes. Proponents of Prohibition included many women reformers who were concerned about alcohol’s link to wife beating and child abuse and industrialists, such as Henry Ford, who were concerned

about the impact of drinking on labor productivity. Advocates of Prohibition argued that outlawing drinking would eliminate corruption, end machine politics, and help Americanize immigrants.

Even before the 18th Amendment was ratified, about 65 percent of the country had already banned alcohol. In 1916, seven states adopted anti-liquor laws, bringing the number of states to 19 that prohibited the manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages. America’s entry into World War I made Prohibition seem patriotic since many breweries were owned by German Americans. Wayne Wheeler, lobbyist for the Anti-Saloon League, urged the federal government to investigate “a number of breweries around the country which are owned in part by alien enemies.” In December 1917, Congress passed the 18th Amendment. A month later, President Woodrow Wilson instituted partial prohibition to conserve grain for the war effort. Beer was limited to 2.75 percent alcohol content and production was held to 70 percent of the previous year’s production. In September, the president issued a ban on the wartime production of beer.