Learn about 1920s Prohibition with these old magazine articles. Find information on Prohibition in the 1920s.
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..
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)…
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.
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.
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…
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1933, the year Prohibition was rescinded, seemed to have been the bloodiest year in this study – with 12,123 people murdered (being 9.6 per 1000,000 souls).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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
