Prohibition The Crimes That Resulted From It

Prohibition: The Crimes That Resulted From It Essay, Research Paper

Prohibition, a time of enlightenment and peace, or so it was hoped to be. The prohibiting of alcohol was the governments attempt to organize society, to try and perfect it, but only led to crime and demoralization. Organized crime, now only in its developing stages, was given a large boost, thanks to the overwhelming desire for alcohol. Organized crime, however, was not the only criminal activity to escalate; the black market also had a surprising boom. The economy itself began to decline, with moral at an overall low, and with crime beginning to reach an all time high. With raised taxes to pay for increased police enforcement, many small businesses were forced to close, leaving many homeless and unable to be self dependant.

Prohibition didn t lead to the perfect society as dreamt, instead it led way to crimes such as bootlegging and places like speakeasies, and bringing down the moral of the common man, prohibition truly was an utter failure.

Where did prohibition come from, why was it ordered. Well, prohibition came from the saloon, which came from the frontier. The work of the frontier, like building the cities and the factories, putting down roads and railroad track created a very large thirst. Many of the men were unmarried, their jobs would not allow it, and it was too

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much of a commitment. There wasn t much too amuse people and they felt life is short. So, almost like today with drugs, they thought drinking would help them get over the pain and strengthen their “camaraderie”.

Saloons could keep up with the growth easily due to their flimsy structures and need for few resources. But this also created a problem, too much competition. The supply of alcohol was much more than the demand. “As the saloons competed for business, they became less and less careful about how they did it. They began to provide prostitutes and drugs. Minors were served without hesitation, if they had ten cents or a quarter to spend. There were even tables strictly for gambling.”(Perret, 166)

The saloon owners were smart though. They would offer free lunches, but they either very salty or dry. People would even be thrown out if they ate more than his money s worth of drinks. Saloons began to go a different way; they would buy of police officers or politicians if necessary. As the communities began to grow though, resistance to the saloon began to grow.

Alcohol was also being “attacked”. At the turn of the century studies were showing that even moderate drinking could be harmful to the liver and kidneys, also that it was a depressant, not a stimulant which it was thought to be, and could even damage the stomach. They said that it itself did not cause diseases, but it did reduce the bodies resistance to other diseases.

Before this alcohol had been for centuries prescribed as a treatment for colds, as

an aid to digestion, and even as a nerve tonic. By WWI though most doctors stopped

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writing prescriptions like these. Hospitals would also refuse to carry it. Pharmacists

would not dispense it. Basically, most of them felt alcohol was a poison.

The group most against saloons, however, was not doctors, it was the Anti-Saloon League. Most of its support came from the evangelical Protestant churches. Episcopalians and Lutherans barely even recognized the ASL s existence. Jews and Catholics wanted the people to exhibit self control, but not prohibition. It was the Baptists, Methodists, and other evangelicals that fully supported the ASL.

The ASL gained more power through the railroad, but so did saloons. Wherever the railroad went, saloons would be built. By 1903 there were thousands of miles of track, thousands of saloons, and also a strengthening outreach of the Anti-Saloon League. The arrival of an ASL “Flying Squad”, a group sent to support small groups of prohibitionists, to back the Prohibitionists crusade of the local churches became almost a party with torchlight parades, brass bands, speakers, singers, and fireworks.

The ASL was not alone though. It had strong support from the Women s Christian Temperance Union, which had hundreds of thousands of members. There was also a Prohibition Party, founded in 1869. It began as a party that was lobbying for business regulation, public education, votes for women, and liberal immigration policies, as well as Prohibition. By 1914 its primary interest was only in prohibition.

Both the Populists and the Progressives, the two major reform movements in America at the turn of the century, supported prohibition. There were important dry

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Republican Progressives such as Borah, and important dry Democratic Progressives

like McAdoo.

Health officials traced venereal disease into the back rooms of over 10,000 saloons. “The man who was liquored up was more likely to sleep with a prostitute than a sober man.

Prohibition was enacted on the sixteenth of January, 1920. While most people believe that prohibition was a law making the consumption of alcohol illegal, it was, in reality, nothing like that. The drinking of alcohol was completely legal, it was the manufacture and selling of alcohol that was a crime. The governme

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