Learn about 1920s Prohibition with these old magazine articles. Find information on Prohibition in the 1920s.
Published at a time when America stood so reluctantly on the doorstep of the Prohibition era, an unnamed editor at The Literary Digest compiled a number of quotes from numerous literary sources as if to illustrate the deep roots the Western world of belles-lettres has invested in the culture of alcohol.
An article about Mabel Willebrandt (1889 – 1963), the Assistant Attorney General of the United States between the years 1921 through 1929, her tremendous successes in the past and her ambitions to hold fast in the enforcement of the Volstead Act:
‘Give me the authority and let me have my pick of 300 men and I’ll make this country as dry as it is humanly possible to get it,’ she said without the slightest trace of braggadocio. ‘There’s one way it can be done: get at the source of supply. I know them, I have no patience with this policy of going after the hip-pocket and speakeasy cases. That’s like trying to dry up the Atlantic ocean with a blotter.’
When Mrs. Willebrandt stepped down some seven years after this article went to press, she questioned the willingness of the nation’s law enforcement agencies to see the job through.
Prohibition had been in place for a little over eleven and a half years by the time this uncredited editorial was published. The column is informative for all the trivial events that Prohibition had set in motion and are seldom remembered in our own time – such as the proliferation of private golfing institutions; clubs that intended to appear innocent enough, but were actually created for Wet dues-paying golfers. A recently posted article (1917) that appeared in THE LITERARY DIGEST near the end of 1929 examined the astronomical wealth that had been earned by the gangsters in America’s biggest cities.
What is to be said of an era which produced ‘speak-easy frocks’ and ‘bargain day’ in the Federal courts; battalions of snoopers abroad in the land, legal homicides by dry agents, sopping wet public dinners throughout the Republic and ‘the man in the green hat’ filling the lockers of dry statesmen in the House and Senate office buildings?…What political, sociological and emotional changes the silently resisting mass wrought. We passed from the period when only prohibitionists were regarded by the general public as respectable. We came finally to the time, within twelve years, when the reverse was true.
Alderson Prison in lovely West Virginia was not simply the first Federal prison intended for women, but also the very first prison ever built on American shores to house women only; for as you might have read in this 1924 article, thousands of American women were running afoul of the law as a result of Prohibition.
Our boys are to be drafted into service. We cannot afford to draft them into a demoralizing environment.
-the words of Mr. Raymond B. Fosdick (who would later be lampooned by Chester Gould in the comic strip, Dick Tracy as Fearless Fosdick) as he announced the intentions of the Federal Commission on Training Camp Activities. This long forgotten and failed government program was set up two years prior to prohibition to combat the demoralizing influences so the officers and men could concentrate on more sublime topics, like chemical warfare.
I 1913 Presbyterian preacher Billy Sunday (1862 – 1935) was, without a doubt, one of the most visible advocates for the successful implementation of any federal legislation that would outlaw liquor across America. When it became clear to many that Prohibition was causing far more problems than it solved, he continued to strongly support the legislation, and after its repeal in 1933 the Preacher called for its reinstatement.
The Dry forces in Washington, who vigorously patted themselves on the back for having been able to get the Eighteenth Amendment through Congress in December of 1917, wanted the law to take effect sooner than the amendment had mandated. Shortly after the signing of the Armistice, they rallied their members on the Hill and launched a piece of legislation through Congress called the Emergency Agricultural Appropriations Bill:
President Wilson signs the Emergency Agricultural Appropriations Bill, whose rider provides for national prohibition from July 1 next until the American Army is demobilized.
KEY WORDS: Prohibition Movement in Britain,author John Hay Beith anti-temperance movement,1920 anti-temperance movement in UK,short-lived UK Prohibition Movement,efforts to prohibit
To be sure, there were complications with the prohibition of alcohol in the United States. While American clergy debated with government concerning the issue of sacraments involving wine, one enterprising restaurateur took advantage of the fact that the law, as it was originally written, only involved alcoholic beverages and decided to offer an inebriate in the form of a jelly sandwich.
