Prohibition History – Page 7 – Old Magazine Articles

Theater Intermissions and Prohibition (Vanity Fair, 1919)

Prohibition has been pretty rough on everybody, but there is no class of people which it has hit so hard as the theater-goers. The Federal Amendment has completely wrecked their evenings. It isn’t so bad while the show is going on; the blow falls between the acts. In happier times the intermissions were the high spots of the evening…

With pin-point accuracy, Vanity Fair was able to identify the new minority-victim class that emerged from America’s unfortunate experiment with Prohibition: Broadway theater enthusiasts (It might be argued that the real victims were American bar tenders, many of whom high-tailed it over to Europe where they established a number of American-style bars).

The attached page from the magazine can be classified as humor and is illustrated with six great sketches by Edith Plummer.

Read other articles from 1919.

Wet vs. Dry (Vanity Fair, 1918)

If you are looking for a serious report concerning the political battles fought in Congress regarding Prohibition (1919 – 1933), you can keep looking. The attached essay is a humorous parody of that dispute between the Drys and Wets as it existed just months before the ‘Noble Experiment’ began in earnest. By November of 1918, the American newspaper readers had simply overdosed on the redundant writings of assorted war correspondents – and so, with a bit of whimsy, the VANITY FAIR writer George S. Chappell sat down to write about the political war between these two groups using the same journalistic affectations everyone was so heartily sick of. You will also find a mock military map depicting the faux topography in dispute.

A Prohibition Cartoon by Art Young (Life, 1922)

Art Young (1866 – 1943) was a cartoonist best remembered for his contributions to the radical magazine The Masses, however the hypocritical behavior that was widely inspired by that Noble Experiment, known as Prohibition, no doubt served as the muse for additional cartoons in other rags.

A.D. Walker Prohibition Cartoon (Harper’s Magazine, 1922)

A father/son gag cartoon by the seldom remembered cartoonist A.D. Walker from Harper’s Magazine.

American cartoons drawn prior to the mid-1920s were created in the he-said-she-said manner until the cartoonist Peter Arno (1904 – 1968) shook things up a bit and introduced the format we are all familiar with today: one drawing, one caption.

A Civil Libertarian Rants About Prohibition (Judge Magazine, 1920)

An outraged editorial writer opines that the prohibition of alcohol will serve to corrupt the morality of more Americans than it could possibly save. Additionally, the writer alludes to the fact that, at the time, the U.S. Congress was discussing the prohibition of tobacco, as well:

It is coming time to write the obituary of Joy. Less than a year ago
the Cheering Cup was removed from American life. Now we are told that just as soon as enough Congressmen can be intimidated, not a difficult job, the Soothing Weed is also to be extinguished.

The writer places blame more upon the apathetic American voter rather than the grafters in Congress.