Wayne Wheeler along with Andrew Volstead who was Chairman of the Senate Judiciary committee oversaw the passage of the Volstead Act which made illegal the consumption or distribution of intoxicating liquors. This is according to Wikipedia.org. Mr. Wheeler, and Mr. Volstead placed this bill in front of Woodrow Wilson on October 28th 1919, and Vetoed, yet overridden by Congress the same day.
The prohibition Era proved to be quite expensive, but yet it lasted over ten years. One of my favorite quotes comes from The Dry Decade, A book by Charles Mertz. This is a quote from a labor union representative. He says” Before Prohibition I do not remember ever seeing a milk wagon in our mill yard. Every morning there are three or four milk wagons there, and the men are using milk in place of beer.” I find this very interesting. I guess the milk industry really got a boost during this era.
There were ways that someone could still get alcohol during prohibition though, according to The Dry Decade and Mr. Metz the first source was Medicinal liquor. It was the least important source, but it was most obvious. By July 3, 1920, before prohibition was six months old, more than fifteen thousand physicians and more than fifty-seven thousand druggists and manufacturers of proprietary medicines and extracts had applied for liquor license to prescribe and to dispense intoxicating liquors. New Work times, July 1920.
The second source of supply was illegal beer. Under the terms of the Volstead act, breweries, or cereal beverage plants, as they were now renamed, were forbidden to manufacture beer containing more than half of one percent of alcohol but were permitted to manufacture beer with a lower content. It was however impossible to manufacture a beer with a lower content without producing an illegal mixture first.
The process of making what now came to be known as near-beer involved the production of genuine beer with an alcoholic content of three or four percent and then the de-alcoholization of this beer until it reached the legal limit. Prohibition Commissioner Kramer, New York Times, April 27, 1921.
The third source of supply was smuggled liquor (bootlegging). It was an important source, particularly in the early years of prohibition. This was really easy to accomplish because of the short distances from the neighboring country that border the United States. To prevent such smuggling, the government had in 1920 a force of 1,550 prohibition agents. There duties included not only the prevention of smuggling, but all matters that pertained to the law. There were also some 3,000 customs agents. They received some assistance from the Coast Guard and the Public Health departments, and other local and federal government agencies. Report of the Commissioner of Internal Revenue, Fiscal year ended June 30, 1920 p. 33.
The fourth source was industrial alcohol. This was a munificent source of supply, because the experiment with federal prohibition coincided precisely with the development of a large Chemical industry. By the 1920’s the post-war expansion was in full swing. This brought about finding substitutes for German dyes, discovering new processes like the manufacturing of rayon silk. This increased the need for alcohol for a wide variety of products ranging from photographic film, anti-freeze mixture, shaving cream, and smokeless powder.
The Final was clear from the first day of National Prohibition day, these illicit stills could be relied on to furnish large quantities of liquor. The business of ridding the country of stills required an effective Army of Federal or State police. A commercial still representing an investment of $500 could produce from 50 to 100 gallons of liquor a day. The Prohibition Bureau pointed out that this liquor was mad at a cost of fifty cents a gallon. Prohibition Commissioner Haynes, New York Times, July 18, 1923.
There was another way that the people of the united states could make their own beer was by buying a still that was available in the open market at a reasonable low price six or seven dollars. The problem for the Law Enforcers was extremely large. How would they be able to find all of the people that were making liquor in their own back yards. This would have taken a lot of money and time.
Politicians really tried to enforce prohibition in a speech given by John F. Kramer, the first Prohibition commissioner” This law will be obeyed in cities, large and small, and in villages, and where it is not obeyed it will be enforced…. We shall see to it that it [liquor] is not manufactured. Not sold, nor given away, nor hauled in anything on the surface of the earth or under the earth or in the air.”
After almost 13 years on December 13 1933 the amendment to the United states constitution was turned over. According to Mark E. Lender, and James K. Martin in Drinking in America: A History, “While repeal spelled the doom of the temperature movement as a decisive force the American scene, it has also marked the resurgence of the liquor industry. And for the Roosevelt administration, the revival was welcome. The predicted beverage alcohol tax revenues- a major wet promise in the struggle for repeal- poured into federal, state, and local coffers on schedule.” When prohibition was repealed they added a tax onto the liquor that was being purchased and sold in the United States. It was $2.60 per gallon on distilled liquors this was believed to be able to bring in approximately $500 million a year.
So prohibition in the beginning seemed like a good idea, but turned out to be an expensive lesson that had to be learned. When the politicians first thought about forcing prohibition on the country, they thought that this would help people, but for the few that they helped there were many more that they were unable to save. When the law went into effect the people who really needed, or were addicted to the alcohol would risk everything they had to get it. They would either make it themselves, they would get it from their doctors, or they would go to Canada and get it illegally. When prohibition was repealed in 1933 some might say that for those 13 years that the Country was under prohibition were some of the most expensive times of our lives.
Some believe that we should go back to Prohibition, because of all the problems the world is having with alcohol and teenage drinking, drunk driving, and all other alcohol related problems. According to Nick Gillespie Teenage wasteland Prohibition was repealed 70 years ago, but the mind-set behind it lingers on. According to CASA (Columbia University Center on Addiction and Substance children abuse) they claim that children between the ages of 12 and 20 consume an unbelievable 25% of all alcohol sold in the United States. This is very disturbing, this is why some people think that we should reinstate the 18th Amendment. They believe that this will save the youth, and help the many people who are struggling with alcoholism. If this amendment was reinstated this would not help people, because it would make them go to great, and dangerous lengths to get there fixes.
