The Prohibition Movement Analysis

The numerous parallels between the prohibition of alcohol and the current drug war are uncanny. The Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) and the Anti-Saloon League (ASL) were the primary groups leading the prohibition movement. Both groups represented large non-partisan voting blocks and were founded in deep religious beliefs that blamed alcohol for much of society’s problems. They specialized in high pressure tactics and effectively ousted politicians who didn’t vote accordingly. In fact, the term “pressure group” was proudly coined by the ASL’s leader, Wayne Wheeler.
These groups were shameless and limitless propagandists. “Ethics be hanged,” said William Eugene “Pussyfoot” Johnson, one of the most aggressive members of the ASL. Johnson literally bribed newspapers from across the nation to print news articles under his pseudonym, “C.L. Trevitt, Literary

Agent.” Likewise, Mary Hunt of the WCTU had her way with the nation’s school boards. Hunt’s “Scientific Temperance Instruction” was inserted into public school textbooks nationwide and as many as 50% of public school textbooks needed an unofficial approval by Hunt. The “Scientific Temperance Instruction” indoctrinated students with claims such as “when alcohol passes down the throat it burns off the skin, leaving it bare and burning.” In addition, students read, “Nearly 3,000 infants are smothered yearly in bed by drunken parents.” Some textbooks even claimed that alcoholics could spontaneously combust.
The prohibition movement began as a moral issue, but it transitioned into fuel for bigotry and racial hatred. A former Congressman from Alabama, Richmond Pearson Hobson, labelled prohibition as the “last stand of the great white race.” He also introduced the first federal attempt at prohibition in 1914. He said, “If a peaceable red man is subjected to the regular use of alcoholic beverage, he will speedily be put back to the plane of the savage. The government long since recognized this and absolutely prohibits the introduction of alcoholic beverage into an Indian reservation. If a negro takes up regular use of alcoholic beverage, in a short time he will degenerate to the level of the cannibal. No matter how high the stage of evolution, the result is the same.” The ASL clearly incentivized his open racism because he was the highest paid public speaker on behalf of their organization. Hobson drew large crowds and his rhetoric fell right in the line with the Jim Crow aspirations of the Ku Klux Klan, which also publicly supported the prohibition movement.
The open bigotry within the prohibition movement wasn’t limited to the Deep South. Many in the north supported this propaganda and the timing coincided with a massive influx of immigrants of Italian, German, and Eastern European heritage. For instance, some prohibition handouts mentioned that “Dagos, who drink excessively, live in a state of filth and use the knife on the slightest provocation.” In addition, Purley Baker of the ASL asserted that Germans “eat like gluttons and drink like swine.” That kind of anti-immigrant, in particular German, message gained even more traction during World War I. Wayne Wheeler of the ASL called the Brewers Association the “enemy in the home camp” and their pamphlets warned of “treasonable liquor trade.” Wheeler, along with some politicians, publicly implored the government to investigate Anheuser-Busch and some other Milwaukee manufacturers because of their German background.
Prohibition went into effect in 1920 with the 18th Amendment, the Volstead Act, but it wasn’t welcomed by all. The various ethnic groups that were lambasted through propaganda tended to be ones most targeted with the new law. In turn, New York City had protests in the streets with Irish, Germans, Italians, and African Americans together waving American flags and holding signs, such as “We’re American Citizens, Not Inmates” and “We Prefer Brewers of Beer to Brewers of Bigotry.”
On the other hand, prohibition was welcomed by big business with hopes of better productivity from their workers. Accordingly, a prominent prohibitionist writer and speaker Reverend Justice Edwards proclaimed, “They will enjoy better health; they can perform more labor; they will live longer.” The Rockefellers, Carnegies, and Henry Ford were strong prohibitionists. Ford even enforced a “no drink, no saloon” rule. He believed, “Prohibition is a moral issue. For it is economically right. We now know that anything which is economically right is also morally right.” He went so far as to send inspectors into the homes of workers suspected of drinking alcohol. He even suggested that the military should help enforce prohibition.
However, the industrialists didn’t foresee the rebellious response and cultural changes that ensued.

Prohibition went into effect at a contradictory time when American individualism and the economy were advancing. The prohibitionists or “drys” had promised that the nation’s moral compass would improve with prohibition; instead it led to nationwide rebellion and disrespect for the law. For instance, a San Francisco jury nullified a case against a bootlegger; in fact, they drank the evidence from the trial. As a sign of the times, a prohibition administrator Col. Ira L. Reeves once lamented, “I do not know of a single agent on my force who was accepted by the community in which he lived as a welcome neighbor and citizen in whom people could place confidence.” Likewise, Michael A. Lerner, author of Dry Manhattan: Prohibition in New York City, pointed out how the stigma attached to an arrest dissipated during prohibition and even became a badge of honor for many people. In addition, NASCAR’s origins are based in the prohibition period, as people paid to watch bootleggers race away from prohibition

agents.