40 Historical Markers on the Road to Prohibition

6. Amending the Constitution

Since 1876, a congressional resolution for a Prohibition amendment was introduced in every Congress, but none ever made it out of committee. The growing political clout of the Anti Saloon League changed that pattern. In 1906, the ASL launched a campaign to ban the sale of booze at the state level.

Within a decade, 23 out of 48 states had enacted laws against saloons, and some had even banned the manufacture of alcohol in the first place. Sensing a political tailwind behind their back, and the opening of a window of opportunity before them, the ASL shifted gears and set its eyes on nationwide Prohibition. On December 18^th, 1917, Congress approved the submission to the states of the Eighteenth Amendment to the US Constitution, banning the manufacture, sale, or transportation of liquor.

5. Prohibition Benefited From The Rural-Urban Divide

On January 8^th, 1918, Mississippi’s legislature voted in favor of the Eighteenth Amendment, making The Magnolia State the first to ratify Prohibition. Ratification by a total of 36 out of America’s then 48 states were needed for national Prohibition to go into effect, but geography and demography made the prohibitionists’ task relatively easy.

Generally speaking, America’s cities were overwhelmingly against Prohibition, while the countryside was for it. However, most of the country’s big cities – and most of the population for that matter – were concentrated in relatively few states. That made it possible for Prohibition’s advocates to completely write off America’s twelve most urbanized states – Pennsylvania, New Jerseys, and even Connecticut – and still achieve ratification with victories in the less populous and more rural states. It was an early twentieth-century version of Red America losing a popular vote to Blue America, and still winning an election.

4. Unequal Representation Ensured the Passage of Prohibition

Prohibition was also helped by the era’s shockingly unequal apportionment of legislatures. Today, we take “one person, one vote” as a given. That had not always been the case, and it certainly was not so in the early twentieth century when Prohibition was ratified. Back then, rural citizens were routinely overrepresented in state legislatures, while urban citizens were underrepresented.

In New York, for example, an urban legislator might represent seven times as many people as the rural legislator seated next to him. It meant that the vote of a single Upstate citizen – most likely protestant, prohibitionist, and Republican – was equivalent to the vote of seven Irish-American anti-prohibition Democrats from Manhattan. The figures were even more skewed in New Jersey, where each county got a state senator, regardless of population: Dry rural Cape May County, population 19,000, had the same representation as Wet urban Essex County, population 652,000.

3. The Minority Wins

Prohibitionists and their leading organization, the Anti Saloon League, had long understood and accepted that they were a minority. They sought to avoid referendums because they knew that if voters were given the option of a straight up or down vote on Prohibition, Prohibition would lose. Instead, prohibitionists concentrated on capturing legislators, by leveraging their committed and disciplined Dry followers into disciplined block voting that could swing elections.

Perhaps nothing better illustrates that than Mississippi, the first state to ratify the Eighteenth Amendment. When submitted directly to voters, a prohibition amendment to the state constitution was rejected by a majority of Wet voters, 53% to 47%. Just two months later, however, Mississippi’s legislatures approved the Eighteenth Amendment, 75% to 25%.

2. Ratification of the Eighteenth Amendment

As Prohibition’s advocates had predicted, the lower population and more rural states were the quickest to ratify the Eighteenth Amendment. The exceptions were Connecticut and Rhode Island, both of which had a majority Catholic population, and both of which refused to ratify.

Their votes were neither missed nor needed, as the prohibitionists ran up the score in the legislatures of other small and rural states. On January 16^th, 1919, Nebraska became the 36^th state to ratify the Eighteenth Amendment, when its lower house voted in favor 98-0. It was official, and Prohibition was automatically scheduled to go into effect a year later.

1. Prohibition Did Not Prohibit the Drinking of Alcohol

The Eighteenth Amendment did not prohibit the consumption of alcohol, only its manufacture, sale, and transportation. It was quite legal for people to drink up in their own homes, and in the year’s grace period between the ratification of Prohibition and it is going into effect, Americans rushed to stockpile as much booze as they could, in anticipation of the dry days to come.

For the wealthy, Prohibition was not much of an inconvenience. They had the means to purchase more liquor and wine than they could consume in a lifetime, and they had the cellar space in their various residences in which to store their alcohol. For average Americans of average means, it was a different story. Satisfying their demand for booze, the Eighteenth Amendment be damned, made the thirteen years of Prohibition one of the most fascinating eras of American history – but that is a story for another day.

_________________

Where Did We Find This Stuff? Some Sources and Further Reading

Aaron, Paul, and Musto, David – Temperance and Prohibition in America: An Historical Overview (1981)

Behr, Edward – Prohibition: Thirteen Yeas That Changed America (1996)

Burns, Eric – The Spirits of America: A Social History of Alcohol (2003)

Encyclopedia Britannica – Anti Saloon League

Encyclopedia Britannica – Prohibition

Encyclopedia Britannica – Temperance Movement

Foster, Gaines M. – Moral Reconstruction: Christian Lobbyists and the Federal Legislation of Morality (2002)

Kobler, John – Ardent Spirits: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition (1973)

Murdoch, Catherine Gilbert – Domesticating Drink: Women, Men, and Alcohol in America, 1870 – 1940 (1998)

New York Times, January 19^th, 2019 – How the Klan Fueled Prohibition

Ohio History Central – Temperance Movement

Orkent, Daniel – Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition (2010)

PBS – Prohibition: Anti Saloon League

Sismondo, Christine – America Walks Into a Bar: A Spirited History of Taverns and Saloons, Speakeasies and Grog Shops (2011)

Smithsonian Magazine, December 27^th, 2017 – Three Things to Know About Radical Prohibitionist Carrie A. Nation

Walsh, Victor A., Journal of American Ethnic History vol. 10 no. 1-2 (Fall 1990 – Winter 1991) – Drowning the Shamrock: Drink, Teetotalism and the Irish Catholics of Gilded Age Pittsburgh

Wikipedia – Prohibition in the United States

Smithsonian Magazine – The Modern Craft Cocktail Movement Got Its Start During Prohibition

Paste Magazine – The 1800s: When Americans Drank Whiskey Like it was Water

History – 7 Things You Might Not Know About the Women’s Suffrage Movement

BBC – Prohibition: US Activists Fight for Temperance 100 Years On

Bill of Rights Institution – Was Prohibition a Success or a Failure?

Constitution Daily – Five Interesting Facts About Prohibition’s End In 1933

Vine Pair – For Some States, Prohibition Didn’t End When the 21st Amendment Passed