GCSE Coursework: Prohibition
GCSE Coursework: Prohibition Terry Hathaway 1) Source A is useful for studying the spread of prohibition because it shows you that some states, such as New York and Indiana, had local prohibition in 1845 which is about 75 years before the 18th Amendment came into play, this suggests to me that these states were the states in which prohibition started from and then spread from. Source A also shows us how far prohibition had spread in 1915, which is also before the 18th Amendment, which implies that there was growing support for prohibition in those states at that time. However, you can not learn at which time between 1845 and 1915 the states, such as Kansas, became dry. Source A does not show which was the first state to become dry and where the movement started, which is important for studying the spread of prohibition. Source A also doesn’t show the whole of America, it only shows the East Coast, if you were studying the spread of prohibition in America, you would need a map of the whole of America. Source A has an incomplete key, it leaves areas blank on the map and gives us no information about the blank areas, again if you were studying the spread of prohibition in the U.S.A. you would want to know what happened in the whole of the U.S.A. Source A is also problematic because it does not tell us to what extent local prohibition was, or how heavily enforced it was. Another problem with Source A’s title is The Spread of Prohibition 1845-1933, however the map doesn’t have any information after 1915.2) Sources B offers a very simplistic view of why people wanted prohibition, whereas Source C offers several reasons why people wanted prohibition. Also Source B only offers a nationalistic reason, compared to economic, racial, religious and nationalistic reasons. Source B is an extract from a textbook called 20th Century World Affairs this would suggest that it
would only have a short, simple and to the point explanation of Prohibition, because it is a book that would cover most of 20th Century World Affairs, which is a lot of history and Prohibition covered a small amount of time, in one country. Also because of this, not a great deal of time would be spent researching Prohibition because have such a small part in the book. Whereas Source C is from The Culture of the USA in the 1920s, from that title we can tell that the book is specialised in one area of history, which is at ...
This is a preview of the whole essay
would only have a short, simple and to the point explanation of Prohibition, because it is a book that would cover most of 20th Century World Affairs, which is a lot of history and Prohibition covered a small amount of time, in one country. Also because of this, not a great deal of time would be spent researching Prohibition because have such a small part in the book. Whereas Source C is from The Culture of the USA in the 1920s, from that title we can tell that the book is specialised in one area of history, which is at the same time as prohibition, a lot of research would have gone into prohibition while writing this book because of that. Also because it is a specialist book it’s target audience would be people who are interested in that one particular area of time, so it would go into a lot of detail about that particular area of time in America, to increase sales. Source B is written for school children so it would simplified so they can understand, it would also try and link in world events, since that is what the book is about. Source C was written by Dr Theodore Eversole, an American historian, this would suggest that he has a great knowledge about American history.3) Source D is a photograph that shows lots of bottles of alcohol, which have been confiscated from a speakeasy. Source E is a drawing of bottles of alcohol being smashed against a wall after a raid on a speakeasy. I know from my own knowledge that there were raids on speakeasies, so both are representing factual evidence, however there were very few raids of speakeasies, so Source D and E are giving off the wrong impression. Source D looks like it has been posed for, all the men are looking at the camera and the bottles are neatly arranged, the source’s use may have been to show that prohibition was working when it wasn’t. Source E doesn’t look realistic because they are throwing bottles of beer against a wall, disposing of alcohol that way would be tiring and time wasting, compared to hitting the crates with a sledgehammer. The person who took Source D would have to had to be arranged to be there, because of the rarity of these events and the lack of cameras in those days, it would have been extremely coincidental/unlikely if this happened by chance. Source E was drawn in the 60s, we don’t know if the person who drew it was at a raid, but again because of the way they are disposing of the bottles, it would be reasonable to assume it wasn’t, and was either drawn from several pictures, which are likely to have been posed for or from a general knowledge of what happened during prohibition. Source D and Source E don’t actually show anything about an actual raid, they are both after the events, so that would obviously restrict their use for people researching raids on speakeasies. I think that Source D, even though it was posed for, is more reliable because it was produced at the time, and although maybe biased, is not simplified to give a general feeling of what happened during prohibition.4) We can learn from Source D that the Government wanted to show that it was enforcing prohibition well, when it wasn’t. The person who took Source D would have to had to be arranged to be there, because of the rarity of these events and the lack of cameras in those days, it would have been extremely coincidental/unlikely if this happened by chance. Plus the officers in that were employed by the Government, from that it would be reasonable to assume that the Government wanted the photograph, and I know from my own knowledge that Prohibition wasn’t being enforced. Also if the Government were trying to show that prohibition was working, when it wasn’t it would mean that the government recognise that prohibition was a joke, so we can understand the two attitudes of the people, those who are for it and those who ignore it. In contrast we can learn little from Source E, we can only get a general feeling and basic knowledge out of it, for instance we can find out that prohibition was meant to stop people drinking alcohol. The problem with both of these sources is that they attempt to make prohibition look successful, when in reality, it wasn’t.5) Source F’s information corresponds with my own knowledge of prohibition enforcement, I know that of those who were arrested, very few ever went to trial. The problem with this source is that it only tells us about 1926 and 1927, not the whole of the 1920’s, so it loses some of its utility. Also the source is only about New York not the whole of the USA, so it obviously can’t tell us if the law was enforced like this all over America. Although these figures may have been real, they may have been picked to show that prohibition wasn’t working, so they could be more exaggerated than all the other years. Also Source F may not be reliable because the information would have had to come from the police department and the 6902 people may be made up to show how much good work the police were doing and the convictions ignored. Another problem with the source is that it doesn’t tell us what the people actually did, it doesn’t say if they made moonshine, sold alcohol or drunk and disorderly and it doesn’t give us figures for before the 18th amendment.6) In Source G we see gangsters running around, killing innocent people and causing havoc. They see someone get shot in the street and they don’t care, they only want to get the other gang’s guns. They show that the gangsters are blatant in their breaking of the law and that the police can’t do, or don’t, anything about it. They also show some gangsters drive by and shoot someone just on the pavement. It puts across an extremely negative, inhuman view. It would be reasonable to assume the makers of the movie are against prohibition because it causes gangsterism and crime. They put across a terrible situation, where heartless mobsters shoot people in the street, and in which the only way out of is the end of prohibition. The maker’s view of the public’s view of the gangsters is that they are like demi-gods to them. This makes the film more of a campaign to end prohibition, thus ending gangsterism, than an actual fictitious film. 7) The main reason that people had different views was the two messages the Government was sending out, on the one hand the rich, religious people saw that prohibition was working, but the poor saw everything that happened on the streets. The sources show this. The best sources for looking at this are source D and source F. Also attitudes to Prohibition varied because of mixed messages, on the one hand they had the churches telling people that God didn’t want them to drink, and the government saying it was illegal, but on the other they had people clearly drinking and getting away with it. Source B and C are useful because they show that the supporters of prohibition were opportunistic, they used current problems, such as the war and racial tension to convince people that they wanted prohibition, they used the equivalent of subliminal messaging. When the problems, such as the war went away, people began to realise that they didn’t want prohibition. Source A is useful because it shows that there was support for prohibition long before the 18th Amendment, however it doesn’t show if the majority supported it, or if they even got a chance to vote on it. New immigrants may have been slightly perturbed by the fact that in the so-called “land of the free,” you weren’t allowed to have a drink. Immigration also brings up another problem, and that is that most of the immigrants would have been poor and not stereotyping or anything, a lot of them drink, however none of the sources show this. Source D shows the image that the Government wanted, in reality I know it was a lot different. Source F shows this, it shows the lack of action taken after arrest and Source G, even though it may be dramatised shows the down right blatantness of the actions of the gangsters.
