Temperance Vs Prohibition

The prohibition on alcohol seemed to achieve more success than the temperance movement of the previous century because the prohibition was a political movement, prohibiting the manufacture, transportation and sale of alcohol. On the other hand the Temperance movement was more of a social movement against the consumption of alcoholic beverages. The temperance movement was based on opinions, people’s beliefs and even religion. The temperance movement was a temporary fix because for example, Carrie Nation started the hatchet movement, in which she and hundreds of women and some men went around to towns in Kansas and destroyed saloon after saloon. Carrie Nation hoped her movement would spread across the country and swipe away all the saloons in the country but instead it died out and saloon owners just rebuild and repaired their businesses and continued to sell alcohol. Another example is the Women’s Crusade were women across the country would pray in front of the saloons hoping the owners would shut their businesses down, but that didn’t affect the owners sell of alcohol nor the customers

People didn’t take the prohibition on alcohol seriously. The Prohibition era increased the underground market for booze, produced by bootleggers and moonshiners. For example, people called Bootleggers, which is the illegal business of transporting alcohol. They achieved this by hiding the alcohol in their pants leg. People did what they wanted regardless of the law. In the 1850s, several states passed prohibition laws, which were victories for the American Temperance Society and the temperance movement as a whole. While the temperance movement gained some ground and power in the early nineteenth century, the Civil War caused people to put the temperance movement on the back