Prohibition History – Page 4 – Old Magazine Articles

‘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.’

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…

Congress Adresses the Problem of the Hip-Flask
(Literary Digest, 1927)

Seven years after wine and spirits were banished from the land, the government in Washington felt pressured to discipline all those restaurateurs who failed to defenestrate their patrons who brought illicit drink into their establishments. This is an article about how an attempt was made to get restaurant owners to police their customers.

A Look at at What the Prohibition Amendment Might Look Like
(The Outlook, 1916)

Two years before the Prohibition Amendment would be passed, the New York State Superintendent of the Anti-Saloon League, William H. Anderson (1874 – 1959), wrote this piece defending a draft of the amendment that was, at that time, sitting before Congress.

Prohibition: Triumph of the Prissy
(Life Magazine, 1919)

In this 1919 cartoon from the old LIFE MAGAZINE, the cartoonist Paul Beny depicted personal liberty taking it on the chin.

When Alcohol Ads Were on the Extinct Species List
(Judge, 1921)

Prohibition was in it’s second year when the cartoonist Norman Anthony made this ‘he said – she said’ gag for a popular American humor magazine.

A Prohibition Cartoon by James Montgommery Flagg
(Life Magazine, 1922)

James Montgomery Flagg (1877 – 1960) was one of the most celebrated illustrators of this era. He had been a contributing cartoonist for the old LIFE MAGAZINE since he was fourteen years old and he, like many of his colleagues, had a grand old time with the subject of Prohibition.

To read a satirical essay written and illustrated by James Montgomery Flagg, click here..

The War Encouraged Prohibitionists
(Literary Digest, 1917)

An editorial cartoon made to illustrate that some of the combatant nations across the sea had taken measures to discourage liquor consumption and with the recent U.S. Declaration of war, America would be doing the same thing (only on a far more radical level)…

Farewell, Champagne!
(Vanity Fair, 1919)

A chic (if anonymous) poet printed in a fashionable society magazine sings farewellto champagne and pities the poor man-about-town who must now stroll the boulevards with only lemonade on his breath.

A Brief History of Drinking in America
(The Nation, 1918)

When only a few wet months were left before all alcohol was banned from the United States, THE NATION reviewed the 1918 Anti-Prohibition Manual and the Year Book of the United States Brewers Association (1917) and came away with this brief, but amusing and informative history of drinking.

Get Used to Drinking Water
(The New York World, 1920)

One year into the noble experiment, cartoonist Rollin Kirby (1875 – 1952) penned this editorial gag which clearly indicated that the nation was being lorded-over by a bunch of prudes.

In the August, 1932, issue of VANITY FAIR MAGAZINE the Conde Nast editors sang high praise for Rollin Kirby while writing their ‘Hall of Fame’ nomination:

Because he is considered the finest political cartoonist in America; because he has thrice won the Pulitzer Prize; because he was once a successful magazine illustrator; because he invented the high-hatted Prohibition figure…

1920s Prohibition created a criminal climate that appealed to more women than you ever might have suspected…

Prohibition Killings
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1929)

Two sources have been combined on one printable page in order to assess the body count that was created as a result of the murders that the prohibition laws had wrought. The complete number is not here – just the last four years:

1933, the year Prohibition was rescinded, seemed to have been the bloodiest year in this study – with 12,123 people murdered (being 9.6 per 1000,000 souls). The numbers began to drop from there: 1934 through 1936 saw a steady decline in urban homicide.

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.

A Briton on American Prohibition
(Current Opinion, 1921)

Alfred Charles William Harmsworth, 1st Viscount Northcliffe (1865 – 1922) was an influential soul back in the day who owned a string of widely-read newspapers. Just months prior to his death, he spent some time stateside and drew some conclusions regarding American Prohibition which were noteworthy:

While in our midst he made up his mind about Prohibition. In his opinion it is a failure… His reasons seem to be that he saw plenty of liquor everywhere he was entertained; that Prohibition encourages hypocrisy in the vision of the law, and that he did not like it anyhow… But America has taken it’s stand and will stick to it.

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.