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La prohibition est arrivée dans presque tous les pays du monde. La version succincte de l'interdiction américaine commence avec les citoyens américains de la fin des années 1700 qui se répartissaient en deux groupes : ceux qui estimaient que boire de l'alcool était un péché (groupes religieux) et les familles lassées que les hommes dépensent de l'argent dans des saloons en buvant tandis que les femmes et les enfants étaient laissés à eux. maison sans le sou et affamée. Ils pensaient que l'alcool était un facteur contributif à l'augmentation de la criminalité, des problèmes de santé, des problèmes relationnels et de l'extrême pauvreté. Ainsi, le mouvement de tempérance est né.
Pour l'Amérique, la prohibition a officiellement commencé à minuit une minute le 17 janvier 1920. Cependant, la prohibition peut être comparée à un ouragan aujourd'hui en ce sens que vous avez beaucoup d'avertissement avant qu'il ne frappe, de sorte que de grandes quantités d'alcool avaient été accumulées pendant des années. Lorsque l'approvisionnement s'est épuisé, de l'alcool a été passé en contrebande du Canada et du Mexique, et les contrebandiers ont commencé à fabriquer du clair de lune. Les gens ont également fait des croisières arrosées à douze milles (la distance légale) vers les eaux internationales. Des bars secrets cachés appelés speakeasies ont ouvert, se cachant souvent dans une pièce derrière une vitrine commerciale légale, ou les entrées se trouvaient dans des ruelles ou dans des sous-sols. On pense qu'à New York seulement, il y avait plus de 100 000 bars clandestins.
Tout cela a créé une activité florissante pour les contrebandiers, mais également une activité florissante pour un nouveau monde sombre du crime organisé appelé la mafia, qui s'est propagé à toutes les grandes villes avec de nombreux gangs et gangsters.
La mafia fabriquait et vendait du « gin de baignoire » aux speakeasies (et à ceux qui en voulaient) en achetant du clair de lune à des contrebandiers, ou légalement par l'intermédiaire de fournisseurs médicaux en l'infusant avec des baies de genévrier et d'autres herbes dans le but d'obtenir l'odeur et le goût de pré- interdire le gin. (Ils utilisaient de grands récipients tels que des barils - pas des baignoires.) Après la mise en bouteille, ils coupaient le clair de lune avec de l'eau en plaçant les bouteilles et les cruches sous les robinets de la baignoire. (Les bouteilles ne rentreraient pas sous un robinet d'évier.) Environ 1 000 personnes mourraient chaque année parce qu'on dit qu'elles obtenaient parfois de l'alcool industriel bon marché (et toxique), qui était utilisé pour les carburants, les vernis, etc., et l'utilisaient dans le processus de coupe aussi.
Quant aux cocktails, plus de mélangeurs et d'ingrédients ont été ajoutés au gin de la baignoire de la mafia pour masquer la vilaine brûlure, comme le Bee's Knees, fait avec beaucoup de jus de citron et de miel. Les cocktails à base de rhum, de whisky et de brandy de contrebande comprenaient le Twelve Mile Limit, Mary Pickford et Between the Sheets. Mais les Américains moyens de la classe moyenne à inférieure se contentent de mélanger - n'importe quel alcool qu'ils peuvent obtenir - à la maison avec des ingrédients aussi simples que des jus de fruits, des herbes et des sirops faits maison. Ces recettes resteront toujours un mystère.
Les dix principales choses à savoir sur la prohibition
L'interdiction (la noble expérience) n'a pas interdit la consommation d'alcool - elle a interdit la fabrication, la vente et le transport de l'alcool.
La prohibition n'a pas seulement eu lieu en Amérique. Cela s'est produit à différents moments dans le monde entier et existe toujours dans certains pays (et comtés américains) aujourd'hui.
Depuis 2018, la Constitution américaine compte vingt-sept amendements. Le dix-huitième amendement marque le début de la prohibition américaine (mardi 20 janvier 1920) et le vingt et unième amendement marque la fin de la prohibition (mardi 5 décembre 1933) pour un total de treize ans, dix mois et quinze jours.
Le dix-huitième amendement ne s'est pas fait d'un seul coup. De nombreux États interdisaient l'alcool auparavant, à partir de 1851. Il en était de même pour le vingt et unième amendement ; de nombreux États n'ont pas levé l'interdiction pendant des années et, aujourd'hui, il existe encore des comtés qui interdisent l'alcool, ce qui se traduit par des comtés «secs». Le vingt et unième amendement a laissé la décision aux États. La lutte pour la prohibition américaine à l'échelle nationale ne s'est pas produite en quelques années. Cela a commencé à la fin des années 1700 avec le Temperance Movement (un mouvement visant à maîtriser l'ivresse généralisée en Amérique).
L'alcool légal pendant la prohibition comprenait le vin sacramentel pour les églises; médicaments brevetés; utilisation dans la recherche scientifique; le développement industriel des carburants, des colorants et d'autres choses dont les industries pourraient avoir besoin ; et utilisation dans les hôpitaux pour le nettoyage. La bière, le vin et le cidre faits maison et l'alcool pré-interdit pouvaient être bu dans l'intimité de sa propre maison.
Jusque dans les années 1920, les seules Américaines admises dans les grandes pièces principales des saloons/bars étaient les prostituées et les madames. Dans les bars sympas, il y avait de petites « Ladies' Rooms » où les femmes éminentes pouvaient boire. Les bars clandestins de 1920 à 1933 ont été les premiers débits de boissons où les femmes pouvaient fréquenter tout le bar.
Les cocktails et les boissons dans les bars clandestins étaient connus pour être chers, alors vous économisiez pour une soirée spéciale en ville, aviez beaucoup d'argent (ou étiez avec quelqu'un avec de l'argent), ou vous faisiez simplement la fête à la maison.
Par nécessité, les contrebandiers des montagnes des Appalaches ont bricolé les moteurs de leurs véhicules pour les rendre plus rapides que les voitures de police. Cela a conduit à ce que nous connaissons aujourd'hui sous le nom de National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing (NASCAR).
Kansas
S'il vous arrive de voyager à travers le Kansas aujourd'hui, alors sentez-vous chanceux car ils gagnent pour avoir la plus longue interdiction d'alcool (soixante-huit ans entre 1880 et 1948). L'interdiction de l'alcool a été levée par une nouvelle loi de l'État du Kansas qui a été adoptée en 1965. Cependant, tous les bars publics ont fermé leurs portes car seuls les bars privés étaient autorisés.
Vingt et un ans plus tard, en 1986, l'interdiction des bars privés a été levée et en un an, 400 bars publics ont ouvert. Cependant, il y avait une stipulation : 30 % des ventes du bar devaient provenir de la nourriture. En passant et pour ouvrir encore plus la folle boîte du Kansas, dans les années 1970 - incroyablement - Vern Miller ( ancien officier de police, shérif adjoint et maréchal du comté qui a ensuite poursuivi ses études de droit) a été élu comme le procureur général du Kansas en 1970. Son travail consistait à appliquer de manière agressive les lois sur l'alcool du Kansas. Des exemples de son affirmation hostile comprenaient des raids sur les trains Amtrak qui traversaient le Kansas et forçant les compagnies aériennes à cesser de servir de l'alcool tout en voyageant dans l'espace aérien du Kansas. Miller a fait la une des journaux et un livre sur lui a été publié en 2008.
The Top Ten 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. The cars needed to look ordinary on the outside — apparently a trunk full of moonshine was suspicious enough without adding racing stripes.
Drivers raced one another when they weren't hauling liquor, and that Southern bootlegging and racing culture eventually became part of the roots of organized stock-car racing. NASCAR was 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.
Kansas: The Last One to Leave the Party
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.
Bring a little Prohibition home—without
the raids, bathtub gin, or organized crime.
Photo du domaine public | picryl.com
Photo du domaine public | 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.
Photo du domaine public | picryl.com
La robe de cocktail a été inventée au début des années 1920 par Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel. La robe noire s'inspire des habitudes des religieuses.
Les charpentiers ont gagné de l'argent supplémentaire en concevant et en construisant des bars de maison cachés construits dans des murs, des horloges creuses, des meubles et tout autre endroit qui a suscité l'inspiration.
Lors d'un raid, le 21 Club de New York avait des leviers de bar qui, lorsqu'ils étaient tirés, laissaient tomber les étagères d'alcool dans les égouts.
Bring a little Prohibition home—without
the raids, bathtub gin, or organized crime.