Study all the sources - Do these sources support the view that the failure of Prohibition was inevitable?

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f.        Study all the sources. Do these sources support the view that the failure of Prohibition was inevitable?

In 1933 Prohibition was brought to an end. It is clear that prohibition did fail. However, we are not sure whether it was destined to fail from the beginning. We know that prohibition started in 1919 because there was a large percentage of the public actually supported the idea of throwing out alcohol. Was Prohibition “bound” to fail?

Sources A and B are both extracts from American History Books. They both state why Prohibition was introduced. This is that the majority of the public supported the view and a lot of groups, such as the Anti-Saloon League were formed. They both mention how much the Anti-Saloon league played a major role in leading the protests against alcohol. These sources also say that the intentions of Prohibition were good because they were guided to think that alcohol was to be a cause of evil at the time. Both source mentioned what happened at the end of prohibition and the results of what happened during it. However neither of them tells us anything about whether prohibition was bound to fail.

Source A briefly states that one of the reasons that alcohol was banned was that that the bulk of brewers of alcohol were German and that they were the rival in the war. The source also mentions that there were large amount of men were absent in the armed forces. This is important point because women would not normally make such a big influence on the public. It also brings up the point of the consequences of Prohibition; it was the cause for the largest criminal boom. This is saying that prohibition had failed but did not tell us enough information to say if it was certain failure from the beginning.

Source B says more about the organizations that had influences on the public. It talks about the Anti-Saloon League on how it led a nation wide campaign in 1917 to bring pressure on congress to ban the use of grain for either distilling or brewing. It also states the year for the when the amendment was passed by the Constitution, which was 1919, resulting in the manufacture, sales and transportation of liquor to be banned. It also says in source B that 1500 Prohibition agents were appointed to help the Prohibition commissioner to crush the use of alcohol. However theses were useless because the source tells us that the rise of gangsters was immense and gangsters had turned Prohibition into a business. This is telling us that there was a great amount of expectation for Prohibition because there was a large amount of public support and the authorities response to this was to have 1500 agents to help the ban, but the fact was that the number of gangsters was too much.

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Sources C and D are both pictures that were both made before Prohibition started. The artists of these pictures are trying to exemplify some of the evils that alcohol was causing. These pictures were aimed to promote Prohibition towards the public. This caused a lot of the public to campaign for Prohibition so a lot of pressure was put on Congress. These sources are trying to gain public support for Prohibition. This is showing that Prohibition was not a definite failure when it began because these sorts of posters gained a lot of public support meaning that when it ...

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