18. Although Most Americans Opposed Prohibition, it Still Became the Law of the Land
On January 8th, 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 – the New Jerseys, Pennsylvania, 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 a Red America losing a popular vote to Blue America and still winning an election. As seen below, the triumph of Prohibition was also helped by the era’s shockingly unequal apportionment of legislatures.
