America: Prohibition Sources Question

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Name: Sam Koprowski Candidate Number: 7393 School: George Ward Centre Number: 66633 America: Prohibition This poster, published in 1910 by the anti-saloon league, shows what the anti-saloon league has against the making, selling and consumption of alcohol. The most obvious argument is that men waste their money on alcohol in bars. This is put across clearly by the image of a man handing over a bag of money with ‘weeks wages’ written on it to the Bartender. The next point is the fact that the bartender is smiling with open hands, as he is perfectly happy to accept the man’s money. Another part of the poster that shows this factor is the title, “The Poor Man’s Club: the most expensive in the world to belong to”. This is all linked into the first section of writing; whish says that the alcohol trade is a slave trade and that ‘It is natural, of course, that the slaveholder should not care to liberate these slaves’. Another link to the man wasting money is the inset picture of a distraught wife, and a child holding an empty bowl. The caption in the inset is ‘the saloon is well named “the poor man’s club”, it keeps its members and their families always poor’. It is pointing out that married men are not just wasting their own money; it affects their families too. The poster says ‘a member of the club in good standing paying his dues’. This is referring to the man who is giving the bartender his money.  This implies that the man does this regularly. This also links in with the distraught wife, as she would be upset because her husband would be home late and would be drunk. In source B we find that some of the campaigners against American saloons were the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, Protestants, the Anti – Saloon League, and the National Prohibition party who campaigned for the Presidential elections in 1892. Their reasons for supporting prohibition including beliefs that alcohol was ‘ungodly, evil, and wasteful’. Also, the fact that many Germans worked in the liquor industry at the time, alcohol was related to Germans, and as World War I had just ended there was an anti – German feeling in America. This was helpful to the anti – alcohol campaigns. This information is quite likely to be accurate, as impartial observers wrote it. However, they wrote it nearly 70 years later and this could possibly affect how accurate the statements were. Source C states that another reason for campaigning for prohibition was the low efficiency of workers who were addicted to alcohol. This was mainly supported by the more powerful businessmen and factory owners, who were concerned that their employees were not working as hard as they could. John D. Rockefeller put huge amounts of money towards the prohibition campaign - $350,000 before 1920 and $75,000 a year afterwards. This evidence does not contain personal opinions and seems factual, so it appears to be valid and accurate.Source E is a poster which shows Uncle Sam, who symbolises America, attempting to smash a huge pile of liquor bottles with a hammer. The look on his face shows that he is tiring, and he also appears to be worried. This is shown by the fact that the pile of bottles is huge, also by the fact that in the background of the picture is the Devil. He
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is holding a large sack, which he is using to pour even more bottles onto the pile. This is a way of showing that despite America’s good intentions of prohibition, the task of trying to eliminate all of the alcohol problems is far too hard for the small force (represented by Uncle Sam) that had been given the job of eliminating the alcohol. The poster also shows that criminals (represented by Satan) were continuing to import and produce alcohol. This poster is a good way of showing the problems that America was having with prohibition, as it was simply too ...

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