Prohibition History – Page 2 – Old Magazine Articles

Izzy Einstein: Prohibition Agent No. 1
(Literary Digest, 1922)

Here is an interview with Izzy Einstein (Isidor Einstein, 1880 – 1938): Prohibition agent and master of disguise:

A day with Izzy would make a chameleon blush for lack of variation…

He prepared himself to move in high, low and medium circles – on the excellent theory that the taste for liquor and the desire to sell it are no respecters of persons – and in all those circles he has since been whirling with rapidity and a quick-change adeptness.

‘The Literary View of Prohibition”
(Literary Digest, 1919)

Four months into the Noble Experiment of Prohibition, three respected British Writers, Hilaire Belloc, G K. Chesterton and Solomon Eagle all sound-off on American Prohibition.

Farewell to Alcohol
(Literary Digest, 1919)

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.

Mabel Walker Willebrandt Takes On Prohibition
(Collier’s Magazine, 1924)

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.

The Non-Success of Prohibition
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1932)

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.

An Era’s End
(New Outlook Magazine, 1932)

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.

Prohibition Builds the First U.S. Prison for Women
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1926)

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.

The Army as Moral Guardian…
(Literary Digest, 1917)

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.

Billy Sunday Campaign Trail for Prohibition
(Literary Digest, 1913)

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 Hastening of Prohibition
(The Literary Digest, 1918)

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.

Prohibition in England?
(The Pathfinder Magazine, 1920)

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

Getting Around the Prohibition Laws
(Stars and Stripes, 1919)

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.

Shall Tobacco Be Prohibited, Too?
(Current Opinion, 1921)

Tobacco is not food. It is a drug. A healthy human being can get along without it. One who has never used it is better off, his health has a surer foundation and his life expectancy is greater than in the case of one who is a habitual user.

The cautionary paragraph posted above was written in the early Twenties, and this article points out that the health advocates of the that era were not delusional or ill-informed in matters involving tobacco and health care. Tobacco’s ability to harm was understood so well that an effort was afoot in the U.S. Congress to make the weed illegal. Needless to say, that effort did not get very far.

In the 1950s, some people questioned whether cigarettes were truly dangerous – click here to read about it…

Anti-Soft Drink Legislation Defeated
(The Atlanta Georgian, 1917)

On the same day that it was announced that the state of Georgia was going to prohibit alcohol a full year and a half prior to the Congressional measure, a bill died in the state legislature that would have prohibited all alcohol substitutes that had caffeine, as well (Georgia, you’ll recall is the home of the Coca-Cola Company):

In an effort to force the bone-dry majority of the House to the greatest extreme, Representative Stark of Jackson, Friday offered an amendment which would have barred all substitutes for liquor, all patent medicines, and soft drinks containing caffeine.

The 1918 New York Elections
(The Stars and Stripes, 1918)

By the time this short notice was seen on page one of THE STARS and STRIPES during the Spring of 1918, the political momentum was clearly on the side of the Prohibition advocates and the voters of many states had elected to go dry long before the Congress had decided to amend the Constitution. The 1918 election in New York between Wets and Drys was a close one and the eyes of the nation were watching. The headline read:

PROHIBITION RACE NOW NECK AND NECK: TWENTY NEW YORK CITIES DRY AND NINETEEN WET…

The deciding and unknown factor was the women of New York, who were permitted to vote in municipal elections.

Lord, Deliver Us from Prohibition
(The Smart Set, 1920)

For some unexplained reason, H.L. Mencken (1880 – 1956) wrote this essay under the pseudonym Major Owen Hatteras. The one page article is written in typical Menkenese and catalogs example after example of how prohibition is creating a worse society, not a better one; citizens of all stripes who would otherwise be judged as honest souls, are instead committing illegal acts and there seemed to be no end in sight to such behavior.

Christianity vs. Prohibition
(The North American Review, 1918)

Seeing that much of the momentum to prohibit the national sale, distribution and consumption of wine and spirits originated with a hardy chunk of the observant Christian community, the Reverend John Cole McKim decided to weigh in on the topic. McKim tended to believe that:

Christ, being divine and consequently infallible, could not have erred. Since it is well known that Christ used wine Himself and gave it to others…

He further opined:

But to vote what one regards as a natural right shall be declared forever illegal, is cowardly, un-American, and un-Christian.

Bootleg Whiskey as Poisoner
(Literary Digest, 1922)

A 1922 magazine article concerning the dangers of black market liquor in the United States during the Prohibition period (1919 – 1933):

When you drink bootleg the chances are better than nine out of ten that you are drinking rank poison.

This is not the statement issued either by Prohibitionists to discourage drinking, or by a Anti-Prohibitionist to show what Prohibition has brought us to. It is the conclusion of a large newspaper service, which had it’s men in various parts of the country buy the ‘ordinary mine-run of bootleg liquor’, and then had the samples analyzed to get an idea of what a man’s chances are of getting poisonous booze.

Click here to read about President Woodrow Wilson and his wish to re-write the post-war Prohibition restrictions.