Prohibition has always had an interest for me, having been born in 1946, There was still a lot of people that lived through the "noble experiment" and it was interesting to talk to hem about it. My grand Mother and Grand Father were always good to talk to about the subject. I found this article to be very interesting.
In January
1919, the Eighteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution forbade, "the
manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors". It came
into force exactly a year later, with the National Prohibition Act - usually
known as the Volstead Act - setting out the detailed guidelines. Prohibition had not come out of the blue.
The Temperance Movement had been building strong support among the many
churches since the early 1800's. Massachusetts was the first state to introduce
anti-alcohol legislation in 1838, but it was short-lived. Maine did so more
successfully in 1848. |
| Al Capone |
Prohibition
was not a success. Organized crime set up large smuggling operations across the
Canadian and Mexican borders, as well as managing illegal shipping routes from
the Caribbean. Domestic bootleggers began distilling vast quantities of
home brew, and medicinal and denatured alcohol were cut and washed for resale -
sometimes with fatal consequences. All these products were pumped out through
mob-controlled speakeasies and illicit drinking dens. In the space of only a
few years, prohibition had given a new breed of gangsters undreamed of wealth
and geographic reach. From this solid foundation, organized crime then
diversified into narcotics, gambling, prostitution, and finance.
 |
| Eliot Ness |
Law enforcement
agencies and organized crime gangs battled it out on the streets of American
cities. The state's high point came in 1932 when Eliot Ness and his
Untouchables from the Bureau of Prohibition succeeded in securing Al Capone's
imprisonment for income tax offences. However, by this stage the tide had
turned, and the whole violent experience of prohibition had killed off much
popular support for the Temperance Movement.
 |
| Franklin D. Roosevelt |
In April 1933,
the new president, Franklin D Roosevelt, signed the Cullen-Harrison Act, which
legalized beer and wine up to 3.2% ABV. But a framework of far more severe
reforms was already in place. On 20 February, Congress had proposed the
Twenty-First Amendment, aimed at repealing the Eighteenth Amendment completely
and ending prohibition. It was finally adopted on 5 December 1933, and the
Eighteenth Amendment was junked in its entirety - the only constitutional
amendment in U.S. history to have been ditched wholesale. Prohibition was a 13-year
failed experiment, whose main legacy was a sophisticated nationwide criminal
infrastructure.
Read More on the subject at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/02/20/day-1933-congress-strikes-first-blow-fight-kill-prohibition/
