Book Outline: Last Call, The Rise and Fall of Prohibition

Last Call, The Rise and Fall of Prohibition
By Daniel Okrent
2010, Scribner

The Temperance movement had longevity, maintaining cohesion over a number of decades. They lasted until circumstances favored them.

Another factor in place for a long period by the time Prohibition passed was the imbalance in state legislative bodies. The country population apparently was more in favor of Prohibition than the city population. In the period leading up to Prohibition, the country population actively resisted reapportionment (of representation). The cities were growing rapidly due to immigration from Europe, and due to people leaving the farms.

Women suffragists also were a movement for some time before, and supported Prohibition.

These three factors were not enough to pass it.

Other factors eventually came together to pass it:

To put Prohibition over the top took:
•    Passing the 16th amendment that permitted income tax. That way the government could afford to go without the liquor taxes which had been a major part of the federal government budget.
•    A coalition of groups.
o    Progressives wanted Prohibition so as to help blacks (since they wouldn’t be drunk, apparently).
o    Conservatives wanted Prohibition in order to break up the political centers that saloons had become for immigrants in the city. Immigrants were organizing in saloons, even electing saloon keepers to represent them.
o    Alliance with the suffragist movement, who felt that Prohibition would improve women’s lot.
•    World War I got people to accept government interference in areas where it wasn’t before. During the war, the government controlled factories, fixed prices, etc. After all that, banning liquor wasn’t as big a deal as it would have been before. Also, the beer brewers were Germans who were unpopular after the war.
•    A charismatic leader, Wayne Wheeler. The strength of his will and his ability in political strategy helped grow the movement and exert strong influence in Congress. He threw the support of the 10% controlled by Prohibitionists to give a majority to whichever of the two political parties would support Prohibition.
•    Financial support from some millionaire types (John Rockefeller, someone named Kresge).

Wayne Wheeler knew how to play politics:
•    To gain support, he let people think that after the amendment passed, the law which followed to implement it would exempt beer and wine. It didn’t.
•    The Volstead law exempted farmers who were turning apples into cider. This made it easier for rural areas to vote for Prohibition.
•    Much of his base was in the church. So religious use of wine stayed legal, was exempted by the Volstead act.
•    The Volstead law didn’t make the actual drinking of alcohol illegal. That was meant to encourage drinkers to turn in their suppliers?
•    To appease state’s rights, he allowed “duel enforcement” to be written into the Volstead law. So states would have a say in enforcement and it would feel less like an intrusion by the Federal government.
•    To appease property rights, he allowed that Prohibition wouldn’t take effect until 1 year after ratification. This was meant to allow alcohol producers to sell their stock rather than making it immediately worthless.
•    He didn’t care if the Congressmen who voted for Prohibition actually drank themselves (either before or after Prohibition started).
•    The ASL allied itself with anyone against alcohol, such as racists who wanted to get rid of saloons which had become political centers for blacks and immigrants.

Other more “pure” supporters would have insisted on zero exemptions, on punishments for people caught drinking. They might have refused to deal with hypocritical politicians.

The ASL started off at the state level with a local-option approach, obtaining a law whereby cities or counties could vote themselves dry.

The 18th Amendment needed an additional law from Congress (The Volstead Act) to implement it, to provide more precise definitions, to create an enforcement bureaucracy.

So in the end, Prohibition was pushed through by a minority. Once it was in place, it seemed impossible that it would ever be overturned since a minority could block change.

However Prohibition was eventually overturned because:
•    It became apparent that enforcement wasn’t working, everyone who wanted to was able to drink.
•    Crime ran rampant fueled by bootlegging money.
•    Rich people agitated to overthrow Prohibition because they wanted to get rid of the income tax. The idea was to swap back the liquor taxes (which the poor would pay) for the income taxes (which the rich could stop paying).
•    The Depression made the Federal government desperate for income that would come from liquor taxes, and desperate for any source of jobs.
•    The Volstead law stipulated that every alcohol offender would get a jury trial, which severely overloaded the courts (which weren’t expanded to accommodate the load).