Public Domain photo | picryl.com
Prohibition
Prohibition has occurred in one form or another in countries around the world, but the American version was particularly ambitious: the United States tried to outlaw an entire alcohol industry in a country that really, really liked to drink.
Beginning in the late 1700s and early 1800s, temperance reformers increasingly blamed excessive drinking for poverty, crime, domestic abuse, health problems, and families being left without money while wages disappeared at the local saloon. Religious groups joined the cause, along with women who had little legal or financial power to protect themselves from the consequences of a husband's drinking.
Thus grew the Temperance Movement—first encouraging moderation and eventually demanding nationwide Prohibition.
And they got it.
The Eighteenth Amendment was ratified on January 16, 1919, and nationwide Prohibition took effect one year later, on January 17, 1920. The Volstead Act supplied the rules and enforcement machinery. It prohibited the manufacture, sale, transportation, importation, and exportation of intoxicating beverages—but interestingly, drinking alcohol itself was not federally prohibited.
Americans immediately discovered the importance of reading the fine print.
Anyone who had legally purchased alcohol before Prohibition could keep it and drink it at home. Wealthy Americans stocked wine cellars before the law took effect, physicians could prescribe certain alcoholic beverages, churches and synagogues could obtain sacramental wine, and alcohol remained legal for approved scientific and industrial purposes.
Once private supplies began disappearing, thirsty Americans became considerably more creative.
Liquor was smuggled across the Canadian and Mexican borders and brought by ship from the Caribbean and elsewhere. Rum runners operated along the coasts. Moonshiners increased production. Americans took booze cruises beyond U.S. territorial waters, and illegal drinking establishments called speakeasies sprang up everywhere.
New York City alone may have had tens of thousands of them.
Apparently the national response to “You may not drink here” was essentially, “Fine. Where's the secret door?”
Speakeasies could be hidden behind legitimate businesses, inside apartments, below restaurants, down alleys, or in basements. Some were elegant nightclubs filled with celebrities and jazz musicians. Others were little more than a room, a few chairs, questionable liquor, and an owner nervously watching the door.
The illegal alcohol business also generated enormous profits for bootleggers and organized-crime syndicates. Criminal organizations developed sophisticated systems to produce, import, transport, protect, and sell alcohol. Bribery and corruption flourished along with them.
Prohibition had inadvertently created one of the largest black markets America had ever seen.
And business was booming.
Bathtub Gin
Despite the wonderful mental picture, most bathtub gin was not actually made in a bathtub.
Cheap alcohol—sometimes illegally distilled alcohol and sometimes diverted industrial alcohol—could be flavored with juniper oil, glycerin, herbs, or other ingredients to imitate gin. Water was added to dilute it.
The “bathtub” part of the name is often attributed to the large bottles and jugs being filled or diluted using bathtub faucets because they were too tall to fit conveniently beneath many sinks. The exact origin of the term is murky, though, and bathtub gin wasn't a standardized recipe.
In other words, there was no official 1920s Bathtub Gin Association carefully monitoring quality control.
Quality ranged from drinkable to downright dangerous.
Industrial alcohol was legally manufactured for products such as fuels, solvents, perfumes, and other non-beverage uses. Because some of it found its way into the illegal drinking supply, the government required industrial alcohol to be denatured with substances intended to make it undrinkable. Bootleggers tried to redistill or otherwise recover the alcohol, sometimes with disastrous results. Poisonings and deaths occurred throughout Prohibition.
This was a period when asking the bartender, “What's in this?” could be more than casual conversation.
Cocktails During Prohibition
One enduring story says Prohibition cocktails became sweet and strongly flavored because bartenders needed to hide the horrible taste of bootleg liquor.
There is some truth to that—but it has probably been exaggerated over the years.
Much illegal liquor was harsh, young, poorly made, or adulterated, and adding citrus, sugar, honey, ginger ale, fruit juices, and other ingredients certainly made it easier to drink.
Gin was especially popular because a gin-like spirit could be produced without years of barrel aging.
Cocktails associated with or popular during the era include drinks such as the Bee's Knees, Mary Pickford, Southside, Twelve Mile Limit, and Between the Sheets, although not every drink commonly labeled a “Prohibition cocktail” was invented specifically to hide bad booze.
At home, ordinary Americans mixed whatever alcohol they could obtain with fruit juice, sugar, syrups, herbs, sodas, and whatever else was available.
Most of those recipes disappeared with the people who made them. Probably for the best in a few cases.
The Top Twelve Things to Know About American Prohibition
1. Prohibition did not make drinking alcohol federally illegal.
The Eighteenth Amendment prohibited the manufacture, sale, and transportation of intoxicating liquor. Possessing and drinking alcohol that had been legally obtained before Prohibition could still be lawful.
Basically, America outlawed getting the drink to you—but not necessarily what happened after it arrived.
2. American Prohibition lasted almost fourteen years.
The Eighteenth Amendment was ratified on January 16, 1919, took effect on January 17, 1920, and was repealed when the Twenty-First Amendment was ratified on December 5, 1933.
Thirteen years, ten months, and nineteen days.
America gave it a pretty fair shot.
3. America was hardly the only country experimenting with Prohibition.
Various forms of alcohol prohibition were enacted at different times in Canada, Iceland, Finland, Norway, Russia, and elsewhere. Alcohol remains prohibited or heavily restricted in some countries today.
4. Much of America was already dry before national Prohibition.
States and local governments had been passing temperance and prohibition laws for decades. Maine adopted its famous prohibition law in 1851, and Kansas placed prohibition into its state constitution in 1880.
So January 1920 was not America suddenly waking up dry. The country had been arguing about drinking for generations.
5. There were legal ways to obtain alcohol.
Sacramental wine was permitted for religious purposes. Alcohol could be manufactured for scientific and industrial uses, and physicians were permitted to prescribe medicinal alcohol under federal regulations.
Suddenly everyone discovered just how many ailments might respond favorably to whiskey.
6. Speakeasies changed American nightlife.
Before Prohibition, many traditional saloons were overwhelmingly male spaces and respectable women were often discouraged or excluded from the main barroom.
Speakeasies helped create a more socially mixed nightlife in which women increasingly drank alongside men, smoked, listened to jazz, danced, and participated openly in urban drinking culture.
The cocktail bar was beginning to look much more like the bar we recognize today.
7. Speakeasies weren't necessarily glamorous.
Movies tend to give us chandeliers, flappers, jazz bands, and bartenders in white dinner jackets.
Those existed.
So did filthy rooms selling terrible liquor where robbery, fights, police raids, and shootings were considerably more likely than a perfectly chilled Martini.
8. Prohibition helped organized crime grow enormously.
Demand did not disappear simply because supply became illegal. Criminal organizations filled the gap, controlling production, smuggling, transportation, protection, and distribution.
Alcohol essentially became a very profitable illegal commodity with millions of willing customers.
Not exactly the outcome the Temperance Movement had in mind.
9. Bootlegging helped shape stock-car racing culture.
Southern moonshine runners modified ordinary-looking automobiles with stronger suspensions, increased cargo capacity, and powerful engines so they could transport liquor and outrun law enforcement.
Drivers raced one another when they weren't hauling liquor, and that Southern bootlegging and racing culture eventually became part of the roots of NASCAR, founded in 1948.
So yes, there is a little moonshine in NASCAR's family tree.
10. Prohibition is the only constitutional amendment that another amendment completely repealed.
The Twenty-First Amendment repealed the Eighteenth Amendment in 1933.
Congress essentially said:
Never mind.
11. NASCAR has roots in bootlegging.
During Prohibition—and continuing afterward in the moonshine trade—Southern bootleggers modified ordinary-looking cars with powerful engines, heavy-duty suspensions, and extra cargo capacity so they could haul illegal liquor and outrun law enforcement. When they weren't making deliveries, drivers raced one another. That moonshine-running culture helped give rise to organized stock-car racing, and NASCAR was founded in 1948.
Good to know: The cars needed to look ordinary on the outside. Apparently a trunk full of moonshine was suspicious enough without adding racing stripes.
12. Kansas
Kansas voters approved constitutional Prohibition in 1880, and the law took effect in 1881—almost forty years before national Prohibition.
And Kansas stayed dry after the rest of the country changed its mind.
When the Twenty-First Amendment ended national Prohibition in 1933, Kansas kept its statewide prohibition laws until 1948.
Even after liquor became legal again, drinking laws remained unusually restrictive.
In 1965, Kansas authorized regulated private clubs to serve liquor. Because the state constitution still prohibited the traditional “open saloon,” public liquor-by-the-drink remained highly restricted.
Kansas voters finally amended the constitution in 1986, allowing counties to approve liquor by the drink. Counties could require drinking establishments to receive at least 30 percent of their gross receipts from food sales, and some still operate under that requirement today.
Kansas did not simply end Prohibition.
It eased out of it very, very slowly.
And Then There Was Vern Miller...
Kansas elected Vern Miller attorney general in 1970.
Miller—a former police officer, sheriff, marshal, and lawyer—became famous for aggressively enforcing Kansas liquor laws.
In one of his most legendary episodes, he raided trains traveling through Kansas because alcoholic beverages were being served onboard. He also challenged alcohol service aboard commercial aircraft crossing Kansas airspace.
Imagine enjoying your cocktail at 30,000 feet and suddenly wondering whether the Kansas attorney general was going to pull the plane over.
American Prohibition Words to Know
Amendment
A change or addition to the United States Constitution.
Anti-Saloon League
One of the most powerful organizations behind the national Prohibition movement. Founded in 1893, it became an extraordinarily effective political lobbying organization focused almost entirely on eliminating the legal liquor trade.
Their marketing department was apparently excellent.
Bathtub Gin
A nickname for inexpensive homemade or compounded gin-like spirits during Prohibition. Alcohol was commonly flavored with juniper or juniper oil and diluted with water.
Despite the name, it generally wasn't fermented or distilled in a bathtub.
Which is reassuring.
Bootlegger
Someone involved in making, transporting, or selling illegal alcohol.
The word bootleg existed before Prohibition and was associated with concealing contraband—sometimes literally inside the leg of a tall boot.
Al Capone
Alphonse Gabriel “Al” Capone (1899–1947) became the most famous American gangster associated with Prohibition.
Born in Brooklyn to Italian immigrant parents, Capone left school as a teenager and became involved with street gangs. While working at the Harvard Inn on Coney Island, his face was slashed during an altercation, resulting in the nickname he hated: Scarface.
Capone later moved to Chicago and rose through Johnny Torrio's criminal organization before becoming one of the city's most powerful crime bosses.
Bootlegging made him spectacularly wealthy, but prosecutors ultimately couldn't make the biggest criminal charges stick.
Instead, the government convicted him of income-tax evasion.
After all that, accounting got him.
Eighteenth Amendment
The constitutional amendment establishing national Prohibition by banning the manufacture, sale, and transportation of intoxicating liquor for beverage purposes.
It was ratified in 1919 and took effect in 1920.
Flappers
Young women associated with the changing social culture of the 1920s.
Flappers cut their hair into bobs, wore shorter skirts, listened and danced to jazz, smoked cigarettes, drove automobiles, drank cocktails, and challenged traditional expectations about women's behavior.
To their parents, civilization was clearly ending.
Gangster
A member of an organized criminal gang.
During Prohibition, gangsters became closely associated with illegal alcohol production and distribution, although their criminal activities extended well beyond booze.
Jazz Age
A cultural period beginning in the 1920s when jazz music became enormously influential in American popular culture and spread internationally.
Jazz, dancing, radio, nightlife, speakeasies, and changing social attitudes became inseparable from our image of the era.
Ratify
To formally approve something—in this case, a constitutional amendment.
An amendment becomes part of the United States Constitution only after the required number of states ratify it.
Roaring Twenties
The nickname for the decade associated with economic expansion, automobiles, radio, motion pictures, aviation, jazz, Art Deco, changing fashions, celebrity culture, and major shifts in social behavior.
Women's hairstyles got shorter.
Women's skirts got shorter.
Cocktail glasses got fuller.
Traditionalists became increasingly nervous.
Then the stock market crashed.
Rum Runner
Someone who illegally transports or smuggles liquor, particularly by boat.
Despite the name, rum runners transported plenty besides rum.
Speakeasy
An establishment that illegally sold alcoholic beverages during Prohibition.
Speakeasies were also called blind pigs or blind tigers.
The term speakeasy actually predates American Prohibition and probably derives from the idea of speaking quietly or discreetly about an illegal drinking establishment. The popular story that customers had to “speak easy” while giving a password at the door makes a wonderful story, but passwords were not the origin of the word.
Temperance
Moderation or voluntary restraint, particularly regarding alcohol.
Early temperance organizations often promoted moderate drinking before many eventually moved toward complete abstinence and prohibition.
Twenty-First Amendment
Ratified on December 5, 1933, the Twenty-First Amendment repealed the Eighteenth Amendment and ended nationwide Prohibition.
It remains the only amendment ratified specifically to repeal another constitutional amendment.
Teetotaler
Someone who abstains completely from alcoholic beverages.
No tasting flight.
No “just one.”
No Champagne toast.
Nothing.
Volstead Act
The National Prohibition Act of 1919, commonly called the Volstead Act.
It defined intoxicating beverages and established the rules used to enforce the Eighteenth Amendment.
Public Domain photo | picryl.com
Public Domain photo | picryl.com
American Prohibition Timeline
1784
Philadelphia physician and Founding Father Benjamin Rush publishes An Inquiry into the Effects of Spirituous Liquors upon the Human Body and Their Influence upon the Happiness of Society.
Rush argues that excessive consumption of distilled spirits causes serious physical and social harm.
The national alcohol argument has officially begun.
1789
An early American temperance organization forms in Connecticut.
1813
Temperance organizations continue appearing throughout New England, including the Massachusetts Society for the Suppression of Intemperance.
1826
Ministers and reformers establish the American Temperance Society in Boston.
The organization grows rapidly and encourages Americans to pledge abstinence from distilled spirits.
1833
Temperance organizations consolidate into the American Temperance Union, helping turn temperance into a national social movement.
1838
Massachusetts prohibits certain small-quantity alcohol sales.
The restriction is repealed two years later.
America is already discovering that alcohol legislation comes with a lot of revisions.
1840
Six reformed drinkers establish the Washington Temperance Society in Baltimore.
The Washingtonian movement emphasizes recovering drinkers supporting one another through meetings and personal testimony—a striking precursor to later peer-support organizations.
Within a few years the movement fades, but for a while it attracts hundreds of thousands of supporters.
1851
Maine passes a statewide prohibition law championed by Neal Dow, earning it the nickname The Maine Law.
Other states experiment with similar legislation.
1869
The Prohibition Party is organized.
Yes, America once had an entire political party whose brand strategy was essentially:
No drinks.
1874
The Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) is founded.
It becomes one of America's largest and most influential women's organizations and campaigns not only against alcohol but for broader social reforms.
1880
Kansas voters approve a constitutional amendment banning the manufacture and sale of intoxicating liquor.
Kansas settles in for the long haul.
1893
The Anti-Saloon League is founded in Ohio.
Unlike many organizations with broad reform agendas, the League focuses its political power almost exclusively on Prohibition.
It becomes extremely good at it.
1899
Carry Nation, a six-foot-tall Kansas temperance crusader, begins entering illegal saloons and destroying bottles, mirrors, furniture, and fixtures.
She eventually becomes famous for wielding a hatchet.
She is arrested repeatedly.
Apparently “Please stop smashing the bar” was not particularly persuasive.
1901
Prince Edward Island begins provincial Prohibition.
It remains Canada's longest-lasting provincial prohibition, ending in 1948.
1908
Mississippi adopts statewide Prohibition, which takes effect in 1909.
It will retain statewide prohibition policy far longer than national Prohibition itself.
New Year's Eve must have been interesting.
1914
The Anti-Saloon League formally pushes for a constitutional amendment establishing nationwide Prohibition.
1917
Congress approves the proposed Eighteenth Amendment and sends it to the states for ratification.
World War I strengthens the movement. Grain conservation, anti-German sentiment toward the brewing industry, and decades of temperance activism all contribute.
1918–1919
State after state ratifies the Eighteenth Amendment.
The required thirty-sixth state approves it on January 16, 1919, completing ratification.
Congress passes the Volstead Act later that year to enforce the amendment.
President Woodrow Wilson vetoes it.
Congress overrides his veto.
Everyone seems very committed at this point.
1920
At 12:01 a.m. on January 17, national Prohibition takes effect.
The legal liquor industry closes.
The illegal liquor industry begins one of the greatest growth periods in American history.
Also in 1920, the Nineteenth Amendment is ratified, constitutionally protecting women's right to vote.
Temperance organizations—particularly the WCTU—had been closely connected with women's political activism, although the relationship between suffrage and Prohibition was considerably more complicated than simply “women got the vote so they could ban alcohol.”
1920s
Bootlegging explodes.
Rum runners smuggle liquor by sea.
Moonshine production increases.
Speakeasies multiply.
Doctors prescribe medicinal alcohol.
Americans learn several thousand new ways to hide a bottle.
Organized crime expands rapidly in cities including Chicago and New York.
And cocktails somehow survive all of it.
1929
The stock market crashes and the Great Depression begins.
Arguments for repeal increasingly include economics: legalizing alcohol could create jobs and once again provide governments with alcohol-tax revenue.
When the country desperately needs money, that untaxed glass of whiskey starts looking considerably more attractive.
1932
Franklin D. Roosevelt campaigns for president while supporting repeal of Prohibition.
He wins.
Decisively.
Apparently America is ready for a drink.
1933
Congress proposes the Twenty-First Amendment in February.
Before full repeal, the Cullen-Harrison Act allows the legal sale of beer and wine containing up to 3.2 percent alcohol by weight beginning April 7.
Then, on December 5, 1933, Utah becomes the thirty-sixth state to ratify the Twenty-First Amendment.
National Prohibition ends.
States, however, retain enormous authority over alcohol regulation—and some remain dry for years.
1948
Kansas finally repeals statewide constitutional Prohibition.
Sixty-eight years after adopting it.
Kansas does not rush these things.
1966
Mississippi changes its long-standing statewide prohibition system, allowing counties and municipalities to vote themselves wet under local-option laws.
Although Mississippi's modern alcohol laws remained complicated, 1966 effectively ends the extraordinary era in which statewide prohibition remained the official policy.
1984
Congress passes the National Minimum Drinking Age Act.
Rather than directly establishing a federal drinking age, the law pressures states to set the minimum age for purchasing and publicly possessing alcohol at 21 by threatening a portion of federal highway funding.
Every state eventually complies.
After almost two centuries of arguing about alcohol, America discovers that sometimes the most persuasive temperance tool is apparently highway money.
Public Domain photo | picryl.com
Fun Prohibition Facts
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Doctors could prescribe whiskey. Medicinal alcohol remained legal, and physicians could write government-authorized prescriptions for liquor for ailments ranging from indigestion to “nerves.” Patients could generally obtain a pint every ten days. Take two shots and call me in the morning was almost legitimate medical advice.
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Drugstores became surprisingly good places to find whiskey. Pharmacies could legally dispense medicinal liquor with a prescription, including recognizable brands such as Old Grand-Dad and Johnnie Walker. Prohibition was apparently an excellent time to suddenly develop a mysterious condition requiring bourbon.
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Grape growers sold “wine bricks.” Concentrated grape products came with wonderfully helpful warnings explaining what not to do—such as dissolving the concentrate in water and leaving it long enough to ferment into wine. In other words: Whatever you do, don't follow these very specific instructions.
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Some breweries survived by making ice cream. Anheuser-Busch and Yuengling were among breweries that turned to ice cream, while Coors expanded its ceramics business. Other breweries produced malt syrup and “near beer,” containing less than 0.5 percent alcohol. When life gives you Prohibition, apparently make dessert.
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People hid booze in hollow canes and fake books. Hip flasks were only the beginning. Americans used hollow walking sticks, false books, and other disguised containers to carry alcohol without attracting attention. The 1920s were basically the golden age of the purse flask.
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One Washington, D.C., speakeasy had its secret entrance in a men's room. Patrons turned a faucet handle, which opened a concealed door leading to the drinking establishment. Federal agents eventually figured it out and raided the place in 1925. Somewhere, a plumber deserves credit as a speakeasy architect.
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Washington, D.C., went from 267 licensed saloons to an estimated 3,000 speakeasies. That's one way to measure the effectiveness of Prohibition.
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A floating speakeasy operated on a Michigan lake. The Keuka, an old lumber barge on Lake Charlevoix, was converted into a floating drinking establishment during Prohibition. Why hide your bar behind a bookshelf when you can just float the whole thing away?
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Entire fleets of liquor ships anchored just outside American waters. So many ships gathered along stretches of the Atlantic coast that the areas became known as Rum Row. Customers and smaller boats traveled out to buy liquor and bring it ashore.
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Tiny Saint Pierre and Miquelon became an enormous liquor warehouse. The little French islands near Newfoundland imported only about 98,500 liters of alcohol from 1911–1918. A decade into American Prohibition, more than four million liters of whiskey alone were flowing into the islands—much of it destined for American drinkers.
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The Yale Club prepared in advance. Because alcohol legally owned before Prohibition could still be consumed, New York's Yale Club reportedly stockpiled enough liquor before the law took effect to last throughout Prohibition. That's not a wine cellar. That's strategic planning.
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Sacramental wine became a booming business. Religious use was exempt, and one California vintner reportedly offered 14 varieties of communion wine, including port, sherry and Cabernet Sauvignon. Apparently communion suddenly required an extensive wine list.
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Congress had its own bootlegger. George Cassiday, famously known as “The Man in the Green Hat,” supplied illegal liquor to members of Congress and later claimed that a majority of both houses bought alcohol from him. So some of the people governing Prohibition apparently required refreshments while doing so.
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Federal agents became masters of disguise. Famous Prohibition agents Izzy Einstein and Moe Smith posed as musicians and other characters to infiltrate speakeasies. On one raid, Einstein reportedly revealed his badge after being asked to perform music and announced that he'd play the “Revenue Agent's March.”
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Some bootleg alcohol could literally kill you. Industrial alcohol was denatured with toxic chemicals to discourage people from drinking it, while bootleggers sometimes attempted to recover and resell it. Thousands of Americans died from poisoned or contaminated alcohol during Prohibition.