Strange Prohibition Facts and Vintage Photos

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The illegalization of alcohol (consumption and manufacture) was passed into law at a national level in 1919 and enacted in 1920. Often historians regard Prohibition as the culmination, perhaps the over-extension, of the efforts at social change which thrived during the era. Indeed, because of the many important social policies determined, the period of American history from 1865 until 1920 is often called the "Progressive Era." During the period, unions expanded greatly, a number of basic labor rights were secured, including a minimum working age, and women gained the right to vote with the Nineteenth Amendment (1920). Ironically, at the same time that America was pushing forward its own social policy with a number of progressive, forward-looking policies, the first Red Scare ended up in the jailing of tens of thousands of innocent people. The government played an official hand in the chaos, coordinating raids across the country.

What good came from prohibition?

- Prohibition popularized Canadian Whisky that came over the border into the States, and it is still very popular especially in the Midwest. You may not necessarily believe this is a good thing, but come on, Canada needs to be famous for something.

- It also popularized tequila in the United States. Mmm, tequila.

- It set the stage for the tiki movement. Rum fell out of popularity in America long before Prohibition. But during those long years, tourists flocked to rum-producing countries like Cuba to enjoy Daiquiris and other rum drinks. After Repeal, a lot of rum sat around in barrels with nobody drinking it. After WWII, Donn the Beachcomber and Trader Vic used this cheap supply of inexpensive aged rum to create some of the best cocktails the world has ever known.

-It pushed American cocktails and American bartenders abroad to find employment. Yes, this sucked for America, but was great for the rest of the world as bartenders relocated in Europe and South America vastly improved the quality of drinking throughout the world.

-It ended the great sausage party. Speakeasies were integrated with both men and women, allowing the female gender to join the party for the first time. Bars without women are depressing and scary in one way or another.

-It created cocktail hour and cocktail parties and the demand for barware and all the other terms and practices and amenities for drinking at home and entertaining at home with cocktails. As people had to keep drinking on the DL during Prohibition, they turned to entertaining behind closed doors. I, for one, love a good house party, and enjoy the occasional happy hour cocktail.

So raise a glass to all the positive lasting effects of Prohibition! Tomorrow, go out and celebrate in your favorite bar or tavern (that allows women to enter). Tonight, enjoy a little rum or tequila or Canadian whisky cocktail at home.

Fun Facts about the Temperance Movement and Prohibition
• Officials in local towns were so convinced that alcohol was the cause of virtually
all crime that, on the eve of Prohibition, some of them sold their jails.
• During the early 1800s, temperance societies offered 2 pledge options: moderation
in drinking or total abstinence. After those who pledged total abstinence
began writing “T.A.” on their pledge cards, they became known as
“teetotalers.”
• Early temperance writers often insisted that because of their high blood alcohol
content, habitual drunkards could spontaneously combust and burn to
death from inside.
• A temperance publication wrote of drinking parents who gave birth to small
children with a “yen for alcohol so strong that the mere sight of a bottle
shaped like a whiskey flask brought them whining for a nip.”
• One temperance “scientific authority” implied that inhaling alcohol vapors
might lead to defective offspring for at least three generations.
• Because the temperance movement taught that alcohol was a poison, it insisted
that school books never mention the contradictory fact that alcohol was
commonly prescribed by physicians for medicinal and health purposes.
• Temperance leader Lucius Manlius Sargent tried to get secondary schools, colleges,
and universities to eliminate all references to alcoholic beverages in ancient
Greek and Latin texts.

• Because the temperance movement taught that drinking alcohol was sinful, it
was forced to confront the contrary fact that Jesus drank wine. Its solution
was to insist that Jesus drank grape juice rather than wine.
• During Prohibition, temperance activists hired a scholar to rewrite the Bible
by removing all references to alcoholic beverages.
• The Bible’s admonition to “use a little wine for thy stomach’s sake” caused serious
problems for temperance writers, who argued that alcohol was a poison
and drinking was a sin. So they insisted that the Bible was actually advising
people to rub alcohol on their abdomens.
• Prohibitionists often advocated strong measures against those who did not
comply with Prohibition. One suggested that the government distribute poisoned
alcoholic beverages through bootleggers; he acknowledged that several
hundred thousand Americans would die as a result, but thought the cost well
worth the enforcement of Prohibition. Others suggested that those who drank
should be:
• hung by the tongue beneath an airplane and fl own over the country
• exiled to concentration camps in the Aleutian Islands
• excluded from any and all churches
• forbidden to marry
• tortured
• branded
• whipped
• sterilized
• tattooed
• placed in bottle-shaped cages in public squares
• forced to swallow 2 ounces of castor oil
• executed (along with the next four generations of their descendants)

• The Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) taught as “scientific fact”
that the majority of beer drinkers die from “dropsy,” a swelling of body tissues
due to fluid retention.
• To deter student drinking, the WCTU suggested that schoolteachers put half of a
calf’s brain in an empty jar with some alcohol. As the brain turned from pink to
gray, students were to be warned that alcohol would do the same to their brains.
• The president of the WCTU, upon learning that government agents had
clubbed a suspected bootlegger and then shot down his unarmed wife as she
ran to his aid, responded “Well, she was evading the law, wasn’t she?”
• Prohibition agents routinely broke the law themselves. They shot innocent people and regularly destroyed citizens’ vehicles, homes, businesses, and other valuable property.
• “Bathtub gin” got its name from the fact that alcohol, glycerin, and juniper
juice were mixed in bottles or jugs too tall to be filled with water from a sink
tap, so they were commonly filled under a bathtub faucet.
• The speakeasy got its name because one had to whisper a code word or name
through a slot in a locked door to gain admittance.
• Prohibition led to widespread disrespect for law. New York City alone had about
30,000 speakeasies. Even public leaders flaunted their disregard for the law.
• During Prohibition, some desperate people believed that the undrinkable alcohol
in antifreeze could be made safe and drinkable by filtering it through a
loaf of bread. The unfortunate victims who drank it were seriously injured or
killed as a result.
• In Los Angeles, a jury that had heard a bootlegging case was itself put on trial
after the jurors drank the evidence. They argued in their defense that they had
simply been sampling the evidence to determine whether or not it contained
alcohol, which they decided it did. However, because they consumed the evidence,
the defendant charged with bootlegging had to be acquitted.

• National Prohibition not only failed to prevent the consumption of alcohol
but it also led to the production of dangerously unregulated alcohol, lost potential
tax revenues, fostered the development of organized crime, increased
violence, and triggered massive political corruption.
• Although Prohibition was repealed 7 decades ago, there are still hundreds of dry
counties across the United States today.
• Prohibition clearly benefited some people. Notorious bootlegger Al Capone
made $60 million tax free whereas the average industrial worker of the time
earned less than a thousand dollars per year.
• By the time Prohibition was repealed, nearly 800 gangsters in the city of Chicago
alone had been killed in bootleg-related shootings, and thousands of citizens
were killed, blinded, or paralyzed as a result of drinking contaminated
bootleg alcohol.
• Prohibitionists didn’t give up easily. They tried to enforce Prohibition for as
long as 10 years after its repeal.

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