1920 prohibition essay

If you're seeing this message, it means we're having trouble loading external resources on our website.

If you're behind a web filter, please make sure that the domains *.kastatic.org and *.kasandbox.org are unblocked.

To log in and use all the features of Khan Academy, please enable JavaScript in your browser.

Course: US history   >   Unit 7

• The Nineteenth Amendment
• 1920s urbanization and immigration
• The reemergence of the KKK

Prohibition

• Republican ascendancy: politics in the 1920s
• The presidency of Calvin Coolidge
• 1920s consumption
• Movies, radio, and sports in the 1920s
• American culture in the 1920s
• Nativism and fundamentalism in the 1920s
• America in the 1920s
• Prohibition was a nationwide ban on the sale and import of alcoholic beverages that lasted from 1920 to 1933.
• Protestants, Progressives, and women all spearheaded the drive to institute Prohibition.
• Prohibition led directly to the rise of organized crime.
• The Twenty-first Amendment , ratified in December 1933, repealed Prohibition.

The temperance movement

Enacting prohibition: the eighteenth amendment, repealing prohibition: the twenty-first amendment, what do you think.

• Lisa McGirr, The War on Alcohol: Prohibition and the Rise of the American State (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2016), 11-13.
• Daniel Okrent, Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition. (New York: Scribner, 2010), 2-3.
• Kenneth D. Rose, American Women and the Repeal of Prohibition (New York: NYU Press, 1997), 2-3.
• See Karen Blumenthal, Bootleg: Murder, Moonshine, and the Lawless Years of Prohibition (New York: Flash Point, 2011).

Want to join the conversation?

• Upvote Button navigates to signup page
• Downvote Button navigates to signup page
• Flag Button navigates to signup page

• History Classics
• Your Profile
• Find History on Facebook (Opens in a new window)
• Find History on Twitter (Opens in a new window)
• Find History on YouTube (Opens in a new window)
• Find History on Instagram (Opens in a new window)
• Find History on TikTok (Opens in a new window)
• This Day In History
• History Podcasts
• History Vault

Prohibition

By: History.com Editors

Updated: April 24, 2023 | Original: October 29, 2009

The Prohibition Era began in 1920 when the 18th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which banned the manufacture, transportation and sale of intoxicating liquors, went into effect with the passage of the Volstead Act. Despite the new legislation, Prohibition was difficult to enforce. The increase of the illegal production and sale of liquor (known as “bootlegging”), the proliferation of speakeasies (illegal drinking spots) and the accompanying rise in gang violence and organized crime led to waning support for Prohibition by the end of the 1920s. In early 1933, Congress adopted a resolution proposing a 21st Amendment to the Constitution that would repeal the 18th. The 21st Amendment was ratified on December 5, 1933, ending Prohibition.

Origins of Prohibition

In the 1820s and ’30s, a wave of religious revivalism swept the United States, leading to increased calls for temperance, as well as other “perfectionist” movements such as the abolitionist movement to end slavery .

In 1838, the state of Massachusetts passed a temperance law banning the sale of spirits in less than 15-gallon quantities; though the law was repealed two years later, it set a precedent for such legislation. Maine passed the first state prohibition laws in 1846, followed by a stricter law in 1851. A number of other states had followed suit by the time the Civil War began in 1861.

Did you know? In 1932, Franklin D. Roosevelt defeated the incumbent President Herbert Hoover, who once called Prohibition "the great social and economic experiment, noble in motive and far reaching in purpose." Some say FDR celebrated the repeal of Prohibition by enjoying a dirty martini, his preferred drink.

By the turn of the century, temperance societies like the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) were a common fixture in communities across the United States. Women played a strong role in the temperance movement, as alcohol was seen as a destructive force in families and marriages.

In 1906, a new wave of attacks began on the sale of liquor, led by the Anti-Saloon League (established in 1893) and driven by a reaction to urban growth, as well as the rise of evangelical Protestantism and its view of saloon culture as corrupt and ungodly.

In addition, many factory owners during the Industrial Revolution supported prohibition in their desire to prevent accidents and increase the efficiency of their workers in an era of increased industrial production and extended working hours.

Volstead Act

In 1917, after the United States entered World War I , President Woodrow Wilson instituted a temporary wartime prohibition in order to save grain for producing food. That same year, Congress submitted the 18th Amendment, which banned the manufacture, transportation and sale of intoxicating liquors, for state ratification. Though Congress had stipulated a seven-year time limit for the process, the amendment received the support of the necessary three-quarters of U.S. states in just 11 months.

Ratified on January 16, 1919, the 18th Amendment went into effect one year later, by which time no fewer than 33 states had already enacted their own prohibition legislation. In October 1919, Congress put forth the National Prohibition Act, which provided guidelines for the federal enforcement of Prohibition. Championed by Representative Andrew Volstead of Minnesota, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, the legislation was more commonly known as the Volstead Act.

Enforcement of Prohibition

Both federal and local government struggled to enforce Prohibition—Hoover’s “noble experiment”—over the course of the 1920s. Enforcement was initially assigned to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), and was later transferred to the Justice Department and the Bureau of Prohibition, or Prohibition Bureau.

In general, Prohibition was enforced much more strongly in areas where the population was sympathetic to the legislation–mainly rural areas and small towns–and much more loosely in urban areas. Despite very early signs of success, including a decline in arrests for drunkenness and a reported 30 percent drop in alcohol consumption, those who wanted to keep drinking found ever more inventive ways to do it.

Organized Crime

The illegal manufacturing and sale of liquor (known as “bootlegging”) went on throughout the decade, along with the operation of “ speakeasies ” (stores or nightclubs selling alcohol), the smuggling of alcohol across state lines and the informal production of liquor (“moonshine” or “bathtub gin”) in private homes.

In addition, the Prohibition era encouraged the rise of criminal activity associated with bootlegging. The most notorious example was the Chicago gangster Al Capone , who earned a staggering $60 million annually from bootleg operations and speakeasies.

Such illegal operations fueled a corresponding rise in gang violence, including the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre in Chicago in 1929, in which several men dressed as policemen (and believed to be associated with Capone) shot and killed a group of men in an enemy gang.

When Did Prohibition End?

The high price of bootleg liquor meant that the nation’s working class and poor were far more restricted during Prohibition than middle or upper-class Americans. Even as costs for law enforcement, jails and prisons spiraled upward, support for Prohibition was waning by the end of the Roaring Twenties . In addition, fundamentalist and nativist forces had gained more control over the temperance movement, alienating its more moderate members.

There were also many unintended consequences of Prohibition: Some cash-strapped restaurants shuttered their doors since they could no longer make a profit from liquor sales. Thousands of people died each year from drinking cheap moonshine tainted with toxins. And revenues shrank for many states that had previously relied on liquor taxes to fund roads, schools and other public benefits.

With the country mired in the Great Depression by 1932, creating jobs and revenue by legalizing the liquor industry had an undeniable appeal. Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt ran for president that year on a platform calling for Prohibition’s repeal, and easily won victory over the incumbent President Herbert Hoover .

FDR’s victory meant the end of Prohibition, and in February 1933 Congress adopted a resolution proposing a 21st Amendment to the Constitution that would repeal the 18th. The amendment was submitted to the states, and in December 1933 Utah provided the 36th and final necessary vote for ratification. Though a few states continued to prohibit alcohol after Prohibition’s end, all had abandoned the ban by 1966.

Prohibition: A Case Study of Progressive Reform. Library of Congress . Unintended Consequences of Prohibition. PBS: Prohibition . Alcohol Prohibition Was a Failure. Cato Institute .

Sign up for Inside History

Get HISTORY’s most fascinating stories delivered to your inbox three times a week.

By submitting your information, you agree to receive emails from HISTORY and A+E Networks. You can opt out at any time. You must be 16 years or older and a resident of the United States.

More details : Privacy Notice | Terms of Use | Contact Us

Prohibition

By Annie Anderson

Despite the national prohibition of alcohol from 1920 to 1933, Philadelphia earned a reputation rivaling Chicago, Detroit, and New York City as a liquor-saturated municipality. The Literary Digest described Pennsylvania as a “bootlegger’s Elysium,” with every city as “wet as the Atlantic Ocean.” The Quaker City in particular was singled out, by newspapers from New Haven to Newark, as one of the wettest and wickedest cities in the United States. Philadelphia and Atlantic City, New Jersey, a seaside resort town that served as a major port of entry for illegal liquor, were considered “open towns” during Prohibition—open in their defiance of liquor laws.

Prohibition began in 1919 with the passage of the Eighteenth Amendment , which made the production, transportation, and sale of alcohol illegal. Although the Eighteenth Amendment took effect nationally in 1920, several states enacted prohibition before then, including Delaware on March 18, 1918, and Pennsylvania on February 25, 1919. New Jersey ratified the Eighteenth Amendment on March 9, 1922. A confluence of social forces brought Prohibition to the national stage after nearly a century of Protestant criticism aimed at the supposed moral laxity induced by alcohol. In the early 1900s, the United States saw a rise in xenophobia against immigrants whom nativists associated with alcohol—especially those of Irish and German descent. Factions of the women’s suffrage movement propped up their claims to full citizenship by proclaiming a distinctly feminine moral authority, guided by temperance. Advocates of clean government and clean living argued that the elimination of the saloon would promote moral character and curtail the power that political bosses held. Prohibition encapsulated the Progressive Era ’s impulse toward reform.

Though drinking moved underground with the introduction of Prohibition, Philadelphians actually had more saloons and watering holes to choose from after the law was enacted. The supposed abolition of bars and liquor dispensaries allowed for the emergence of a black market economy regulated only by bootleggers. Journalists reported that Pennsylvania’s largest cities, including Pittsburgh, Harrisburg, and Scranton, showed no pretense of obeying the Prohibition laws. Philadelphia, meanwhile, was the worst Prohibition violator in the Commonwealth, allowing its citizens considerable ease and freedom to obtain intoxicating beverages. Philadelphia had long been one of the nation’s leading beer brewing capitals. Though some breweries switched to making “near beer” (a malt beverage with an alcohol content of less than 0.5%) and soft drinks during Prohibition, many continued brewing beer. Philadelphia police suspected and pounced on the illegal activity. Vice raids on dozens of brewers—including Esslinger & Son, Finkenauer Brewing Co., Liebert & Obert, Roehm Brewing Co., and Philadelphia Brewing Co.—turned up high-powered beer. Most Philadelphia breweries failed or were padlocked out of existence by the early 1930s. A city of nearly 100 breweries in the 1880s, Philadelphia had just 10 licensed breweries when Prohibition ended in 1933.

A Cyclical Pattern of Corruption

A city of two million residents, Philadelphia accommodated as many as 16,000 speakeasies during Prohibition. City officials, public servants, bootleggers, and consumers contributed to a cyclical pattern of corruption around the management and distribution of vice. Long before Prohibition, the Republican political machine used the police as a central tool in maintaining control over the city’s various districts. Philadelphia police officers, many taking bribes from bootleggers, prostitution houses, and other illegal entities, contributed to corrupt ward politicians who hand-picked police captains and provided job protection. One policeman estimated that politicians took one day’s pay per month from each of the 7,000 men employed as police officers and firefighters. While Prohibition did not invent corruption among political and law enforcement entities in Philadelphia, it exacerbated established patterns of misconduct. As the 1920s wore on, bootlegging gangs wreaked violent havoc on the city, while officials took a cut of their profits. In describing the Quaker City’s entrenched machine politics and lax law enforcement, journalists resurrected the nickname “ corrupt and contented ,” first used by Lincoln Steffens in 1903.

Philadelphia received help from the federal government twice in the 1920s to combat its Prohibition-fueled crime problem. The first intervention involved the appointment of General Smedley Butler (1881-1940), a decorated Marine, as director of public safety—the equivalent of police commissioner—in 1924. While running for mayor in 1923, Freeland Kendrick (1874-1953) pleaded with President Calvin Coolidge to release Butler from the Marine Corps to Philadelphia. Coolidge complied, and Butler, originally from West Chester, Pennsylvania, arrived in January 1924 with a mandate to clean up the vice-ridden city. Over the course of Butler’s first year in Philadelphia, police closed more than 2,500 speakeasies, compared to just 220 the previous year. While raids and arrests increased during Butler’s tenure, liquor law violators saw few repercussions. In 1925, of the 10,000 individuals arrested on the charge of conducting a speakeasy, only a few hundred were punished with more than a light fine.

Despite—and perhaps because of—Butler’s tenacity in pursuing Prohibition violators, he immediately clashed with Kendrick and the Republican political machine, including South Philadelphia ward boss William Vare (1867-1934). Butler left his post as director of public safety in December 1925. Many observed that his honesty and zealous commitment to enforcing Prohibition contributed to his speedy exit from Philadelphia. Upon his departure, Butler called Philadelphia the “cesspool” of Pennsylvania, and implored Quaker City citizens to demand honesty from their politicians.

A Crime Crescendo in 1928

Gangland murders, as well as Philadelphians’ continued disregard for liquor laws, reached a breaking point in the summer of 1928. Judge Edwin O. Lewis (1879-1974) charged the Special August Grand Jury with investigating organized bootlegging syndicates, gang violence, and police corruption. Investigators and journalists attributed twenty deaths in the year preceding the inquiry to bootlegging gangs vying for territory. Once again, the federal government intervened to help Philadelphia with its Prohibition-fueled crime problem. Prohibition officials in Washington ordered a unit of the Internal Revenue Service ’s intelligence department to Philadelphia to aid the investigation.

The grand jury revealed that hundreds of police officers received bribes for protecting bootlegging operations and illegal taverns. Twenty-four high-ranking police officers, each paid $1,500 to $2,500 in an annual salary, had accumulated $750,000 in assets amongst them. The grand jury’s final report found 138 police officers unfit for service, but failed to garner any indictments against the city’s organized bootlegging outfits.

Prohibition—like the prominent 1928 investigation initiated to curtail bootlegging, payoffs, and violence—proved a failure in Philadelphia, costly in financial and political terms, but also in human lives. One Philadelphia coroner noted that every day ten to twelve deaths from poison liquor, including denatured industrial alcohol improperly distilled, came to his attention. Still more deaths, including untold unreported or unsolved murders, resulted from the violence that sprang up between warring bootleg factions.

A Widespread Disregard of Prohibition

Philadelphians, like many Americans, disregarded Prohibition en masse. Despite the federal mandate, residents of the Quaker City continued to consume alcohol (legal), thereby spurring its production, transportation, and sale (all illegal). In the working class saloons of Brewerytown and Kensington , and the ritzy hotels dotting Center City ’s Broad Street , Philadelphians of divergent classes saw alcohol as social ritual and social fabric. Many advocates for repeal argued that this widespread lawlessness undermined American values, creating a nation of hypocrites. Other critics of Prohibition observed that a multitude of organized crime networks sprung up to control bootlegging, creating a dangerous black market business. Still others exposed Prohibition’s financial failings, an argument that gained potency after the stock market crash of 1929.  Prohibition was costly to enforce, and the government lost millions—if not billions—of dollars in liquor tax revenue. Organizations such as the Association Against the Prohibition Amendment, which counted several members of the wealthy Delaware Valley du Pont family as its leaders, worked to defeat Prohibition. With the passage of the Twenty-First Amendment in 1933, the Eighteenth Amendment mandating Prohibition was repealed.

Liquor laws in Pennsylvania—as well as a slew of South Jersey towns—harken back to an earlier era when temperance advocates held public office. Pennsylvania Governor Gifford Pinchot , a reform-minded “dry” politician, created the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board days before Prohibition ended so that the state would retain some control over the sale and distribution of liquor. Little has changed since Pinchot’s action; Pennsylvania is one of two states (the other is Utah) in which liquor is sold only in state-run stores. Though private retailers may sell beer, the state regulates when, where, and how much. Attempts to privatize liquor sales have met with a measure of popular and political support. However, resistance from the United Food and Commercial Workers’ Union , which represents liquor store clerks, and legislative gridlock have swiftly dissolved these efforts.

Annie Anderson is the senior research and public programming specialist at Eastern State Penitentiary and the co-author, with John Binder, of Philadelphia Organized Crime in the 1920s and 1930s (Arcadia Publishing, 2014). She received her M.A. in American Studies from the University of Massachusetts-Boston.

Copyright 2015, Rutgers University

Smedley Butler Destroying Kegs of Beer

Library of Congress

Philadelphia received help from the federal government twice in the 1920s to combat its Prohibition-fueled crime problem. The first intervention involved the appointment of General Smedley Butler (1881-1940), shown here in 1924 destroying a barrel of beer. Butler was a decorated Marine who became director of public safety—the equivalent of police commissioner—in 1924. While running for mayor in 1923, Freeland Kendrick (1873-1953) pleaded with President Calvin Coolidge to release Butler from the Marine Corps to Philadelphia. Coolidge complied, and Butler, originally from West Chester, Pennsylvania, arrived in January 1924 with a mandate to clean up the vice-ridden city. Over the course of Butler’s first year in Philadelphia, police closed more than 2,500 speakeasies, compared to just 220 the previous year. While raids and arrests increased during Butler’s tenure, liquor law violators saw few repercussions.

Smedley Butler

Major Smedley Butler, born in West Chester, Pennsylvania, in 1881 and seen here in 1910, had a thirty-four-year career as a U.S. Marine. He participated in military action in China, Central America, France, and other countries, and later became a major general. In 1924, Butler was asked to serve as director of public safety for the city of Philadelphia. The city government was notoriously corrupt, and Butler, a man with high moral standards, initially refused. However, after President Calvin Coolidge requested his service, the general took the job.

During his time in city government, Butler made it clear that he was not on the side of corruption. He fired corrupt officers and ordered raids on thousands of speakeasies, closing or destroying many of the illegal drinking establishments. Though Butler cut crime rates and cleaned up the city, the attack on alcohol was too much for the city's political machine and the general fell out of favor quickly, resigning after only two years.

Police Testing a New Speedboat in 1925

Special Collections Research Center, Temple University Libraries

Over the course of Smedley Butler’s first year as Philadelphia’s director of safety, police closed more than 2,500 speakeasies, compared to just 220 the previous year. Butler’s tenacity in pursuing Prohibition violators extended to the waterfront, patrolled by a new police speedboat obtained at Butler’s direction and seen here during a test trip in 1925. Butler’s desire to stop Prohibition violations immediately clashed with Mayor Freeland Kendrick and the Republican political machine. By December 1925, Butler left his post as director of public safety and many observed that his honesty and zealous commitment to enforcing Prohibition contributed to his speedy exit from Philadelphia. Upon his departure, Butler called Philadelphia the “cesspool” of Pennsylvania, and implored Quaker City citizens to demand honesty from their politicians.

Mayor Freeland Kendrick and Senator William Vare

While running for mayor in 1923, Freeland Kendrick (1873-1953), here on the left, pleaded with President Calvin Coolidge to release Smedley Butler from the Marine Corps to Philadelphia. Coolidge agreed, and Butler arrived in January 1924 with a mandate to clean up the vice-ridden city. Despite—and perhaps because of—Butler’s tenacity in pursuing Prohibition violators, he immediately clashed with Kendrick and the Republican political machine, including South Philadelphia ward boss William Vare (1867-1934), on the right in this photo from January 1927.

Special August Grand Jury of 1928

The murders that jump-started the Special August Grand Jury of 1928 were those of Hugh McLoon and Daniel O’Leary. McLoon, a humpbacked little person who in the 1910s served as the mascot for the Philadelphia Athletics baseball team, managed prizefighters and operated a speakeasy at Tenth and Cuthbert Streets. When he was killed in a drive-by shooting outside his nightclub and O’Leary died in a revenge-style killing, Judge Edwin O. Lewis tasked the grand jury with probing the liquor trade and eliminating the banditry and thuggery surrounding it.

District Attorney John Monaghan (1870-1954), leading the investigation, publicly outed the well-known boxing promoter Max “Boo Boo” Hoff (1895-1941) as the “King of the Bootleggers." Monaghan padlocked more than 1,000 speakeasies and claimed to have closed every brewery and distillery in Philadelphia.

Though Hoff owned several well-known speakeasies and entertained the likes of Al Capone, he escaped a liquor charge.

The grand jury's revelations included detailed financial minutiae—high-level bootleggers had accumulated about $10 million in liquor racket earnings—as well as embarrassing testimony—Philadelphia Director of Public Safety George Elliott and several high-ranking police officers were on Hoff's Christmas gift list. As the grand jury's disclosures reached the press, Collier’s magazine noted that lawlessness was the price Philadelphia had to pay for what it wanted to drink. Indeed, a culture of desperado vengeance and violent intimidation around liquor trafficking saturated the city before—and prevailed beyond—Monaghan's ambitious investigation.

The Special August Grand Jury did not shift public opinion against Prohibition or halt bootlegging-related gang violence. Within three years of the investigation's close, one of the city’s most prominent bootleggers, Mickey Duffy (1888-1931), was slain in his hotel suite in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Infighting appears to have killed Duffy (his murder was never solved), as well as several underlings who grabbed for power in his absence.

Celebrating the Repeal of Prohibition

This photograph, from December of 1933, shows a Philadelphia man and two women celebrating the repeal of Prohibition. Alcohol was illegal for fourteen years and when the passing of the Twenty-First Amendment repealed the Eighteenth Amendment, celebrations were held across the country. Though taverns were once predominantly male-dominated spaces, the desire to consume alcohol in secret forced men and women into close quarters together. After the repeal of Prohibition, speakeasy culture influenced the way men and women participated in nightlife. Many taverns ceased to be male only, and led to the modern bar of the twenty-first century, where men and women often drink and socialize together.

Related Topics

• Corrupt and Contented
• Greater Philadelphia
• Philadelphia and the Nation

Time Periods

• Twentieth Century to 1945
• Center City Philadelphia
• Bootlegging
• Children’s Aid Society of Pennsylvania
• Great Depression
• Immigration (1870-1930)
• Police Department (Philadelphia)

Related Reading

Anderson, Anne Margaret and John J. Binder. Philadelphia Organized Crime in the 1920s and 1930s . Charleston, S.C.: Arcadia Publishing, 2014.

Baldwin, Fred D. “Smedley D. Butler and Prohibition Enforcement in Philadelphia, 1924-1925.” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 84 (July 1960): 352-368

Funderburg, J. Anne. Bootleggers and Beer Barons of the Prohibition Era . Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers, 2014.

Haller, Mark H. “Philadelphia Bootlegging and the Report of the Special August Grand Jury.” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 109 (April 1985): 215-233.

Kobler, John. Ardent Spirits: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition . New York: De Capo Press, 1973.

Leichtman, Ellen C. “The Machine, the Mayor, and the Marine: The Battle over Prohibition in Philadelphia, 1924-1925.” Pennsylvania History 82 (Spring 2015), 109-139.

Okrent, Daniel. Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition . New York: Simon and Schuster, 2010.

Pegram, Thomas R. “Brewing Trouble: Federal, State, and Private Authority in Pennsylvania Prohibition Enforcement Under Gifford Pinchot, 1923-27.” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 138 (April 2014): 163-191.

The Special August Grand Jury (1928), Committee of Seventy, Grand Jury Investigations, Box 7, Temple University Libraries, Special Collections Research Center.

Related Collections

Eastern State Penitentiary , 2027 Fairmount Avenue, Philadelphia.

Independence Seaport Museum , J. Welles Henderson Archives & Library, Bill McCoy scrapbooks, Penn’s Landing, Philadelphia.

Philadelphia City Archives , Record Group 38: Inspector of County Prisons and Record Group 79: Philadelphia Police, 3101 Market Street, Philadelphia.

Pennsylvania State Police Historical, Educational & Memorial Center , 187 E. Hershey Park Drive, Hershey, Pa.

Temple University, Special Collections Research Center , Paley Library, 1210 Polett Walk, Philadelphia.

Related Places

Eastern State Penitentiary , 2027 Fairmount Avenue, Philadelphia, imprisoned a number of bootleggers, including Mickey Duffy, Peter Ford, Francis Bailey, and Al Capone.

1321 Locust Street, the site of one of Max “Boo Boo” Hoff’s speakeasies, The 21 Club.

The Franklin Mortgage & Investment Co ., 112 S. Eighteenth Street, Philadelphia, a speakeasy-style drinking establishment named for Max “Boo Boo” Hoff’s industrial alcohol firm.

Backgrounders

Connecting Headlines with History

• Prohibition left lasting mark on national identity (WHYY, September 30, 2011)
• Constitution Center to focus on 'American Spirits,' the Prohibition years (WHYY, July 31, 2012)
• Could Pa. liquor privatization reignite this year? (WHYY, October 5, 2013)
• Pa. State Police don't care if you're a bootlegger (WHYY, September 3, 2014)
• Potable Power: Delaware Valley Bootlegging During Prohibition (Temple University Libraries)
• Beer and Brewing History at Hagley Museum and Library
• Brewed in Philly (Free Library of Philadelphia)
• A Saint Guided By Spirits (Hidden City Philadelphia)
• Ground Zero for Philadelphia Beer (The PhillyHistory Blog)
• American Spirits: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition (National Constitution Center)
• Indomitable Spirits: Prohibition in the United States (Exhibit, Digital Public Library of America)
• Renovations in Bella Vista Reveal Barber Supply and Bootlegging Biz (Hidden City)

Connecting the Past with the Present, Building Community, Creating a Legacy

Toast the Constitution: Prohibition Resources

Beginning in 1920, t

The Rise and Fall of Prohibition Essay

Beginning in 1920, the Eighteenth Amendment prohibited the manufacture, sale, and transport of alcohol, but the idea of controls on alcohol began more than a century earlier. Eventually, religious groups, politicians, and social organizations advocated for total abolition of alcohol, leading to Prohibition. The Eighteenth Amendment caused widespread disregard for the law and a surge in organized crime before it was eventually repealed in 1933. Why did some groups want a Prohibition amendment passed? How did Prohibition fit into the progressive movement? What were its effects, and why was it eventually repealed? Explore these questions with  this full lesson plan .

Dinner Party Activity

Many notable Americans played many roles during the Prohibition era, from government officials and social reformers to bootleggers and crime bosses. Each person had personal reasons for supporting or opposing Prohibition. What stances did these individuals take? What legal, moral, and ethical questions did they have to wrestle with? Why were their actions important? And how might a “dinner party” attended by them bring some of these questions to the surface? Download  this activity  and step back in time with these American icons.

Prohibition Pictionary Activity

The Eighteenth Amendment banned the manufacture, sale, and transport of alcoholic beverages and was in effect from 1920 to 1933. What impact did this amendment have on government power? What powers did the national government gain or lose? What powers did the state governments gain or lose? Who were the important players in the Prohibition amendments? What ideas, terms, and concepts were developed or came to the forefront during this period?  Download this activity and explore these important questions.

The Darker Side of Prohibition

During Prohibition, industrial-grade alcohol cost hundreds of American lives. The Coolidge administration encouraged its circulation.

When we think of Prohibition, the cultural touchstones of the Jazz Age come to mind: gangsters and molls, feather boas, glittering headpieces, and of course, bathtub gin. Sourced by shadowy bootleggers, noxious homemade moonshine killed or blinded hundreds of Americans. But that’s only half the story. What we once considered criminality run amok, was in fact inextricably tied to a willingness at the highest levels of American government to sacrifice the lives of those considered worthless degenerates.

Throughout the Prohibition period from 1920 to 1933, some forms of alcohol were still available for purchase. Prescription alcohol—to treat bronchitis and other conditions—was one. Industrial-grade alcohol—designed for use in paints and floor thinners—was another. Although it was undrinkable, industrial-grade alcohol was often stolen and resold by criminal syndicates to be used in cheap liquor. The Coolidge administration effectively encouraged the practice as a way of discouraging illegal consumption, by giving tax breaks to industrial-alcohol manufacturers who “denatured,” or poisoned, their supply.

The week of Christmas, 1926, almost a hundred people died from the effects of drinking industrial alcohol. Hundreds more died in subsequent years. They were drinking a substance that, thanks to government intervention, had been intentionally but unnecessarily rendered fatal.

For many in Coolidge’s administration, this was hardly a problem; in fact, in some cases it was seen as beneficial. It did, after all, get drunks off the streets expediently.

But for Charles Norris, New York’s medical examiner, it was just another example of the dark side of Prohibition’s would-be moral certainty. Writing for The North American Review in Christmas of 1928, Norris condemns America’s “essay in extermination” wrought by Prohibition.

“In a word,” Norris says, “wood alcohol is not ‘poison liquor’. It is simply poison. If it gets into liquor, the liquor is poisoned. So these Americans died not of poison liquor but of poisoned liquor. Who poisoned it?” He denies that it is “The Government.” Nevertheless, he sees the ubiquity of wood alcohol poisonings as “a serious indictment of Prohibition before the court of public opinion.” Addicts’ access to unsafe alcohol accelerates an existing danger: “Death by alcoholism means death by excess drinking of alcohol, encouraged and accelerated more or less by sundry poisons put into active service by our benevolent Government.”

Norris is something of a moderate when it comes to his views on Prohibition. He’s at once keen to stress that “these denaturants were originally added to the alcohol under Government control and connivance.” But (perhaps due to his governmental position) he is tactful in his assignation of blame. “But let us not blame the Government too harshly. Something must be added to grain alcohol to prevent its being all drunk away and thereby denied to legitimate industry and business.” Rather, Norris blames the system itself: a moral philosophy of prohibition that drives the drunk and the desperate toward noxious materials the government is perfectly willing to let them consume.

Weekly Newsletter

Get your fix of JSTOR Daily’s best stories in your inbox each Thursday.

Privacy Policy   Contact Us You may unsubscribe at any time by clicking on the provided link on any marketing message.

Norris reveals how New York of the 1920’s viewed certain populations as disposable. By entering the sphere of immorality, alcoholics, in the eyes of the Coolidge administration, forfeited their right to life. It’s telling that, even in death, there are two rules: one related to “respectable drunks” and one for the degenerates.  As Norris writes, “Private physicians will rarely make such a report and expose their deceased customers to the indignity of a post-mortem examination, [but] will prefer to ascribe death to other “natural causes” when they can, in the case of clients in good standing or society.”

Norris’s essay reminds us that moral outrage over perceived danger—and a concern for the reality of human life—don’t necessarily go hand in hand. Especially when those lives lost are not “in good standing” in the society in which they live.

JSTOR is a digital library for scholars, researchers, and students. JSTOR Daily readers can access the original research behind our articles for free on JSTOR.

Get Our Newsletter

More stories.

• The Border Presidents and Civil Rights

Eurasianism: A Primer 

Saffron: The Story of the World’s Most Expensive Spice

The Fencing Moral Panic of Elizabethan London

Recent posts.

• She’s All About That Bass
• Cloudy Earth, Colorful Stingrays, and Black Country
• Beware the Volcanoes of Alaska (and Elsewhere)
• Seeing the World Through Missionaries’ Eyes

Support JSTOR Daily

Sign up for our weekly newsletter.

Study Like a Boss

The Prohibition In The 1920s Essay

During the roaring twenties, society began evolving into political and industrialize perspectives which allow growth in many different aspects of life. The events occurred during this period exceed the feminine rights to vote and show prospects in equality of gender. However, many illegal activity began due to the eighteenth amendment enacted on January 16th, 1920. The eighteenth amendment was ratified to decrease drunkenness and family abuse when consumed alcohol. The prohibition interdicted the manufacture, distribution, and sale of alcohol in the United States.

Thus, contributed in the creation of ootlegging liquor business as a complex criminal enterprise and many other illegal activities. Bootlegging was an illegal production and distribution of liquor into speakeasies. The consequences of drinking liquor in public or selling a beer was considered against the prohibition was six months of jail time and a fine of one thousand dollars. Although, the law did prevent citizens to drink publicly, it was a loose enforced law which did not consider containing liquor within a flask.

Bootlegging was an ‘undercover’ market business and raced up the prices of bottled liquor to make profit due to the emand of alcohol. Even though, at the time it was illegal to sell liquor, many purchases the beverage and drank it at home because the law did not suggest the action as illegal. In the book “Bootleg, Murder, and the lawless years of Prohibition,” Karen Blumenthal emphasizes the bootlegging business in a more depth perspective of American citizens throughout the United States who were in desperate need of alcoholic beverage.

Blumenthal accentuates the demand of liquor had not improved since the enact of prohibition where in a matter of months “drinking moved from bars and restaurants to the ome,”(Blumental 62) people began to distilled and brew their own liquor in households. Doctors wrote prescriptions for alcohol as medicine, priest and rabbis would purchase wine for worships and more to be sold for profit. Many would buy kettles, yeats, grains and other supplies create homemade brews and moonshine. William McCoy, known as ‘the real McCoy,’ sold pure liquor and was an early rumrunners who smuggled liquor from the Bahamas to New York.

In the East, many cabarets open businesses and were called “speakeasies. ” Leroy Ostransky father, Sharkey, would inject pure alcohol into he ‘legal beer which contain “less than one-half percent”(67) of alcohol and produce ‘bathtub gin. ‘ Furthermore, bootlegging business in New York and Chicago rose the American Mafia, the Italian-American Mafia and the rise of gangsters. Notorious gangsters rose was Alphonse “Al” Capone, John Gotti, Charles “Lucky” Luciano, and Johnny “Fox” Torrio who increase the rate of crimes for many years which consist of gang violence .

Johnny “Fox” Torrio recruited “Scarface” Capone as an enforcer for debt collecting. In “The Mammoth Book of Gangs: The fascinating inside story of 34 notorious gangs,” James Morton states during he Mann Act in 1910-1920, “Torrio arranged for Jim Colosimo. to receive a shipment of whiskey”(Morton 48) four months after the prohibition was enacted. On February 9, 1925 Torrio gave his position as mafia leader to his understudy Al Capone, who became the Boss of Chicago. Karen Blumenthal states “In Cicero, the Capone crowd turned out in force. ” (Blumenthal 96).

Al Capone had killed the town president because he did not pass Capone order. The killings continue throughout the years and escalated. Additionally, Mafias integrated illegal activities with their racketeering as a cover to not raise any suspicion. In ” Buster, Maranzano and the Castellammare War, 1930-1931,” David Critchley explores key aspects of the Castellammare War, which began in New York City between the two biggest Italian- American criminal gangs. A war for bloody power in the criminal business and Salvatore Maranzano declared himself as “Capo di tutti capi” which means boss of all bosses.

Critchley states “Uprising mobster Charles ‘Lucky’ Luciano murdered Maranzano” and ended the war between gangs . Luciano formed a central organization consist at least 20 crime families across the country. All families in the mafia followed a code of loyalty nd silence. Once the repeal of the prohibition occurred, Mafia moved beyond bootlegging into the underworld activities such as illegal gambling, loan-sharking, to prostitution rings. Into legitimate business which provided millions of dollars to bribe police officers . Al Capone controlled all of the underworld go.

He had a great public relations by donating money to charities and opened a soup kitchen during the Great Depression. Mobsters were engaged with street battles over power control issue. In conjunction with Mafia rivalry, on February 14, 1929 St. Valentine’s Day Massacre occurred etween arch rivals Al capone and George”Bugs” Moran. Based on “History on the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre” states” four men dressed as police officers enter gangster Bugs Moran’s headquarters on North Clark Street in Chicago. ” The police officers were associated as men who worked for Al Capone.

These men killed seven of Moran’s henchmen against a wall. After this event, Criminals became national celebrities which activities in Ch symbolized public’s lack of faith in society’s institutions. The mafia gathered for a conference on May 13-15, 1929 in Atlantic City, New York. Mafia leaders lead the conference in fear of the nding of banning alcohol. Without the prohibition enact there would be less money for the mafia, and would lose business in bootlegging. Violence became discreet, less visible in American society and the mafia’s power increase drastically.

The Teapot Dome Scandal occurred in April 7, 1922 involving national security, big oil companies and bribery and corruption at the highest levels of the government of the United States during President Warren G. Harding term. The Teapot dome was a naval petroleum reserves which would not be drilled unless a national emergency when at time of war. President Harding ave positon of office to his closest friends who had no experience of the role. His best friend, Albert Fall, was given the position of Secretary of the Interior under President Warren G. Harding.

In the book “The Teapot Dome Scandal Trial A headline Court Case,” Jonathan L. Thorndike reveals the main events of the scandal made in the government corruption arising out of the administration of President Warren G. Harding. Jonathan L. Thorndike explains the complex of the scandal which took ten years to resolve and states ” in 1921, Albert B. Fall persuaded him to secretly transfer control of three huge government oil eserves from the Navy to the Department of the Interior. ” (7). The oil reserve for Naval use to insure there was fuel during war time.

Secretary Fall, secretly sold the bases to Teapot Dome oil rights to Harry Sinclair’s Mammoth Oil Company and the Elk Hills oil rights to the Pan-American Petroleum Company to gain profit from leasing the oil fields. President Harding placed his friends in high authority where they committed bribery, embezzled government money, and committed fraud. The first major scandal formed by the Harding administration consist involvement of Charles R. Forbes and the Veterans Bureau.

The Veterans Bureau was in charge of taking care of former members of U. S military. Forbes began taking advantage of his position and sold government medical supplies to private companies. Another crime committed was between Attorney General Harry M. Daugherty and his assistant Jesse Smith, rented a little green house on K. Street which store liquor legally and many times deliver in government vehicles. Attorney Daugherty took “bribes from bootleggers, tried to get criminals out of jail. ” (Thorndike 44). The Harding Administration was known as the ‘Ohio Gang’ because they were a collection of crooks and black-mailers.

The Harding Administration benefited from their positions for personal gain of profits. As a result, in the 1920s many criminal activity rose from the prohibition era lead to illegal activities such as illegal liquor, gambling, prostitution ring, and government corruption. Police complicity to accept bribes and blackmail from bootleggers were a common situation during the time. People wanted to prosper in wealth and business after the great depression drained money and employment in the United States . Throughout the roaring twenties, organized crimes activity began to increase worldwide and manage to continue today .

To export a reference to this article please select a referencing style below:

Related posts:

• Prohibition Led to the Rapid Growth of Organized Crime
• Commercial Vices
• Social change in the United States
• The 18th Amendment to the Constitution
• The 1920s in America and Great Gatsby
• The Economic Boom 1920s
• 1920s And 1930s Essay
• Jazz In The 1920s Essay
• Essay on 1920s Economic Changes
• Prohibition and the Roaring Twenties
• Residential Education In The 1920s Essay
• African American Social Issues In The 1920s Essay
• Prohibition of the 1920’s
• Prohibition in 1920

The Speakeasies of the 1920s Scroll to read more

Speakeasies Were Prohibition’s Worst-Kept Secrets

When Prohibition took effect on January 17, 1920, many thousands of formerly legal saloons across the country catering only to men closed down. People wanting to drink had to buy liquor from licensed druggists for “medicinal” purposes, clergymen for “religious” reasons or illegal sellers known as bootleggers. Another option was to enter private, unlicensed barrooms, nicknamed “speakeasies” for how low you had to speak the “password” to gain entry so as not to be overheard by law enforcement.

The result of Prohibition was a major and permanent shift in American social life. The illicit bars, also referred to as “blind pigs” and “gin joints,” multiplied, especially in urban areas. They ranged from fancy clubs with jazz bands and ballroom dance floors to dingy backrooms, basements and rooms inside apartments. No longer segregated from drinking together, men and women reveled in speakeasies and another Prohibition-created venue, the house party. Restaurants offering booze targeted women, uncomfortable sitting at a bar, with table service. Italian-American speakeasy owners sparked widespread interest in Italian food by serving it with wine. 

Organized criminals quickly seized on the opportunity to exploit the new lucrative criminal racket of speakeasies and clubs and welcomed women in as patrons. In fact, organized crime in America exploded because of bootlegging. Al Capone, leader of the Chicago Outfit, made an estimated $60 million a year supplying illegal beer and hard liquor to thousands of speakeasies he controlled in the late 1920s.

The competition for patrons in speakeasies created a demand for live entertainment. The already-popular jazz music, and the dances it inspired in speakeasies and clubs, fit into the era’s raucous, party mood. With thousands of underground clubs, and the prevalence of jazz bands, liquor-infused partying grew during the “Roaring Twenties,” when the term “dating” – young singles meeting without parental supervision — was first introduced.

Speakeasies were generally ill-kept secrets, and owners exploited low-paid police officers with payoffs to look the other way, enjoy a regular drink or tip them off about planned raids by federal Prohibition agents. Bootleggers who supplied the private bars would add water to good whiskey, gin and other liquors to sell larger quantities. Others resorted to selling still-produced moonshine or industrial alcohol, wood or grain alcohol, even poisonous chemicals such as carbolic acid. The bad stuff, such as “Smoke” made of pure wood alcohol, killed or maimed thousands of drinkers. To hide the taste of poorly distilled whiskey and “bathtub” gin, speakeasies offered to combine alcohol with ginger ale, Coca-Cola, sugar, mint, lemon, fruit juices and other flavorings, promoting the enduring mixed drink, or “cocktail,” in the process.              

As bootlegging enriched criminals throughout America, New York became America’s center for organized crime, with bosses such as Salvatore Maranzano, Charles “Lucky” Luciano, Meyer Lansky and Frank Costello. At the height of Prohibition in the late 1920s, there were 32,000 speakeasies in New York alone. The most famous of them included former bootlegger Sherman Billingsley’s fashionable Stork Club on West 58 th Street, the Puncheon Club on West 49 th favored by celebrity writers such as Dorothy Parker and Robert Benchley, the Club Intime next to the famous Polly Adler brothel in Midtown, Chumley’s in the West Village and dives such as O’Leary’s in the Bowery. Harlem, the city’s black district, had its “hooch joints” inside apartments and the famed Cotton Club, owned by mobster Owney Madden, on 142 nd Street.    

Owners of speakeasies, not their drinking customers, ran afoul of the federal liquor law, the Volstead Act. They often went to great lengths to hide their stashes of liquor to avoid confiscation – or use as evidence at trial — by police or federal agents during raids. At the 21 Club on 21 West 52nd (where the Puncheon moved in 1930), the owners had the architect build a custom camouflaged door, a secret wine cellar behind a false wall and a bar that with the push of a button would drop liquor bottles down a shoot to crash and drain into the cellar. 

Near the end of the Prohibition Era, the prevalence of speakeasies, the brutality of organized criminal gangs vying to control the liquor racket, the unemployment and need for tax revenue that followed the market crash on Wall Street in 1929, all contributed to America’s wariness about the 18 th Amendment. With its repeal via the 21 st Amendment in 1933 came an end to the carefree speakeasy and the beginning of licensed barrooms, far lower in number, where liquor is subject to federal regulation and taxes.

  Next Story: Bootleggers and Bathtub Gin