Prohibition History – Old Magazine Articles

The First two Years of Prohibition
(N.Y. Times Book Review, 1922)

After living under Prohibition for two years a journalist for The New York Times collected numerous facts and concerns on the matter of Prohibition and the political battles between Wets and Drys..

“Prohibition is undoubtedly the most drastic of all sumptuary laws. I have found it hard to believe that the men who drafted the Constitution ever supposed that it would contain a clause like the Eighteenth Amendment, which, when once inserted in the document, is practically irreversible.”

The Repeal Amendment
(Herald & Examiner, 1933)

“Now, therefore, I, Franklin D. Roosevelt, President of the United States of America,…do hereby proclaim that the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States was repealed on the 5th day of December, 1933…”

Prohibition and the High Seas
(Time Magazine, 1923)

“The Supreme Court ruled, by [a] vote of 7 to 2, that liquor is legal on U.S. ships outside the three-mile limit… The 18th Amendment and the Volstead Act apply only to actual United States territory.”

The Treasury Department Steps Up
(Time Magazine, 1923)

As 1923 was winding to a close, President Coolidge’s Treasury agents were targeted to receive over $28,000,000.00 in equipment and personnel to enforce the Eighteenth Amendment.

The Political Landscape
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1920)

Weeks after the Prohibition Amendment came into effect, there was much scurrying about by all politicians on both the state and Federal levels – all looking for allies they could rely upon to either defend or overturn the legislation, depending upon their respective constituencies. The first question put to each representative was, “Are you wet or dry?” Shortly before this article went to press, Congress held a vote to repeal the Volstead Act: the repeal was rejected by a vote of 254 to 85.

The Good and Bad in Prohibition
(Chicago Herald & Examiner, 1933)

Writing Prohibition’s obituary during the Winter of 1933, Bertrand Russel (1872 – 1970) came away thinking that the best thing that could ever be said about Prohibition was that it served to put an end to that line of Victorian thinking that held up women as morally superior to men.

Post-Repeal Fears
(Liberty Magazine, 1933)

What was to be done with all the racketeers who dominated the Twenties once Prohibition was prohibited? Organizing the collective labor of truck drivers seemed to have been the most obvious project for the kingpins, but what of the average foot soldier?

“Even the rank and file have not been driven to the breadline. Current quotations for gunmen have fallen from $300 a week to as low as $100. Plain sluggers command even scantier wages. A fancy pineapple job once cost $250; by 1933 you could get a good workman for $50.”

Post-Repeal Fears

“The Eighteenth Amendment to the Federal Constitution made the criminal career pay – for the first time, perhaps, in the

The Damage of Prohibition
(The Smart Set, 1921)

Attached is an editorial that was co-authored by George Jean Nathan and H.L. Mencken from their reoccurring column in The Smart Set: Répétition Générale. This brief column sought to expose the damages inflicted upon the country by the guardians of the national virtue and their bastard children, Prohibition and the Volstead Act, which will primarily serve to promote the wide (though illegal) distribution of all the poorest distilled spirits concocted in the most remote frontiers of civilization.

Prohibition Era Prisons Filled with Women
(American Legion Weekly, 1924)

Four and a half years into Prohibition, journalist Jack O’Donnell reported that there were as many as 25,000 women who had run-afoul of the law in an effort to earn a quick buck working for bootleggers:

They range in age from six to sixty. They are recruited from all ranks and stations of life – from the slums of New York’s lower East Side, exclusive homes of California, the pine clad hills of Tennessee, the wind-swept plains of Texas, the sacred precincts of exclusive Washington… Women in the bootleg game are becoming a great problem to law enforcement officials. Prohibition agents, state troopers and city police – gallant gentlemen all – hesitate to embarrass women by stopping their cars to inquire if they are carrying hooch. The bootleggers and smugglers are aware of this fact and take advantage of it.

Verily, so numerous were these lush lassies – the Federal Government saw fit to construct a prison compound in which to incarcerate them; you can read about that here…