Prohibition History

Learn about 1920s Prohibition with these old magazine articles. Find information on Prohibition in the 1920s.

Upper-Class Bootleggers Arrested (Literary Digest, 1923)

When the four brothers La Montagne were arrested for violating the Volstead Act in 1922, the social butterflies of New York society were shocked; not simply because some of their own had been roughed-up by the police, but shocked because they had no idea as to where they were to acquire their illegal hooch in the future.

The plea for leniency made by several well-known lawyers, on the grounds of social prominence of the accused, was ‘pitiable and foolish’, in the opinion of the New York Globe.

In summing up his case…the United States District Attorney said:

‘To allow these defendants to escape with a fine, it seems to me, would…justify the belief that men of great wealth or influence or power are above the law.’

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Prohibition: A Product of American Idealism (Literary Digest, 1922)

Some ninety-eight years ago, as it is also true this day, many people living outside the borders of the United States had a laugh, from time-to-time, concerning America’s commonly held belief that they are an idealistic people whose motives are not always driven by self-interest; this is a broad topic and sound arguments can be made on both sides as to whether it is true or not. The British thinker Bertrand Russel (1872 – 1970; Nobel Prize for Literature, 1950) had some thoughts on the matter and in an address made to a number of assembled Americans he submitted that, in his view, Prohibition was not a ‘noble experiment’ which sought to inspire all Americans to lead a righteous life, but rather a gross perversion of Christian doctrine.

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Repeal + Ten Years (Click Magazine, 1943)

Americans on December 5 [1943] will look backwards to a dramatic night 10 years ago – many will be surprised that a whole decade has passed since the nation abandoned Prohibition… In the early ’30s, Congressman LaGuardia found authorities siphoning an estimated million dollars a day in graft from bootleggers. Cost of the ‘Noble Experiment’ to the government hovered around a billion dollars a year. In the last 14 Prohibition years, the public was figured to have spent more than $36,000,000,000 for bootlegging and smuggled liquor!

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Beer Flowed the Week Prohibition Ended (Literary Digest, 1933)

The attached article is composed of numerous newspaper observations that appeared in print throughout April of 1933; these perceptions all pertain to the goings on that followed in the joyous wake of Prohibition’s demise:

‘The return of beer has really been a remarkable phenomenon,’ says The New York Evening Post.
‘Not one of the bad effects predicted for it actually took place’.

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Congress Discusses the Repeal of Prohibition (Literary Digest, 1933)

During the action-packed opening months of the F.D.R. administration, Congress addressed the option of repealing Prohibition and allowing each state to decide whether it wished to be dry or wet:

Now the people can decide, after more than thirteen years of Prohibition.

Surprising the country, the lame-duck Congress, hereto staunchly dry, reverses itself ‘in a stampede toward repeal,’ to permit the people to decide Prohibition’s fate.

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Talk of Repeal on Capitol Hill (Pathfinder Magazine, 1932)

During the summer of 1932, Democratic Senator Carter Glass (1858 – 1946) turned heads and dropped jaws on Capitol Hill when he introduced a piece of legislation that was intended to water-down the 18th Amendment. Glass, a devoted enemy of the swizzle stick, proposed an amendment to the Constitution that would continue to outlaw saloons nationally while permitting hootch to flow freely throughout the wet states – and cut off booze in the dry.

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‘The Rising Tide of Prohibition Repeal (Scribner’s Magazine, 1930)

Having suffered the scourge of the noble experiment for over ten years, Dudley Cammet Lunt, an attorney, penned this essay about how the states could be done with that Federal edict:

In discussing Article V in The Federalist Papers [Alexander Hamilton] said: ‘We may safely rely on the disposition of the State legislatures to erect barriers against the encroachments of the national authority.’

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Repeal + Four Years (Literary Digest, 1937)

With the [Prohibition] Repeal, approximately one million people went back to work, making wine, beer and distilled spirits, bottles and barrels; transporting, selling and serving and advertising it. Innumerable industries indirectly connected with liquor, such as printing, building and machinery-making, received a sharp stimulus. With Repeal also, sorely needed tax money started to roll into the public coffers. Since 1933 more than two billion dollars in liquor taxes has gone into national, state and local treasuries…

Repeal + Four Years (Literary Digest, 1937) Read More »