But the liquor business worried little about its image. In fact, with ample funds to assure political support, it insolently faced down complaints. Large brewers owned most of the saloons and used them as outlets for their beers. They openly encouraged heavy drinking. New patrons often received free drinks and, as one industry spokesman explained, this tactic extended even to children. A fewcents spent on free drinks for boys was a good investment; the money would be amply recovered, as these youths became habitual drinkers. Many Americans, and by no means just temperance workers, regarded such practices much the same as our own generation would consider a drug-pusher giving children "free samples." Such conduct accorded temperance workers a perfect target.
It took time to rebuild dry strength, however. The first real resurgence came in the early 1870s, with the founding of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union. Members viewed drink and the saloon as dangers to their families and to their status as women, and they organized nationally with zeal and intelligence. Some initiatives were fairly novel. Using Ohio's Adair Law, for instance, which held taverners responsible for some of the actions of drunken patrons, women helped pioneer litigation as a reform device. But victories came slowly. By the late 1880s, only five states were back in the prohibition column, and national prohibition seemed a remote dream.
Temperance Propaganda Prevails
Yet the slow pace of dry political activity was deceptive. Popular opinion was turning against the demon, reacting to decades of temperance propaganda, including alcohol education in the schools and health warnings from physicians and scientists. It was a sophisticated effort, and Americans heard a consistent anti-liquor message. By the 1890s, grassroots reform efforts had generated enough strength for a renewed temperance surge, including an organization with enough political savvy to capitalize on dry numbers.
This was the Anti-Saloon League, the brain-child of Reverend Dr. Howard Hyde Russell of Ohio.37 With skilled leadership, the league became the most influential political pressure group of its day. National and state offices, with paid staff and thousands of motivated volunteers, brought out the vote and linked grass-roots drys with elected officials at all levels. League speakers traversed the country, speaking in front of church, civic, labor, and business groups. An information clearing house at league headquarters in Westerville, Ohio, sent out millions of tracts for political, public information, and educational purposes. The message was clear and consistent, and represented perhaps the most sophisticated public relations effort any reform organization had ever mounted. Politicians simply could not ignore such massive expressions of dry sentiment; while the alcohol beverage industry, its forces divided over how to respond, never learned to deal with the dry propaganda barrage or the league's vigorous local organizing. It gave the league, and prohibition, the initiative.
National Prohibition loomed ever closer. By 1903, over a third of the nation, or 35 million people, lived under some type of prohibitory law. That figure rose to 46 million, or about half of the populace, by 1913.38 Thus, prohibition had won hundreds of small battles at the local and state levels well before Congress formally considered a prohibitory amendment to the Constitution. Yet in 1916, after a tremendous push from all dry organizations, the general elections sent so many League-endorsed candidates to Congress that National Prohibition was virtually assured. The Eighteenth Amendment easily received congressional approval in December 1917 and, by January 1919, the necessary 36 states had voted to ratify. No previous amendment had ever passed so quickly and with so clear a mandate. The nation thus became constitutionally dry in January 1920.
Yet even in dying (for that is how matters looked in 1920), drink served a vital national purpose. Alcohol had been the enemy to generations of Americans wedded to the venerable ideals of republican virtue and stewardship. Indeed, the anti-liquor reformers saw themselves fulfilling the perfectionist dreams of their predecessors. The temperance wars, in their view, had been every bit as crucial as other conflicts--including the Revolution and the Civil War--that had shaped the contours of American history. Thus the death of liquor symbolized the fruition of dreams unfolding since the late 1780s, the passing of the last hurdle on the path to the virtuous republic. Drinking in America now seemed only a part of an imperfect past.
