did prohibition partly work? (1920s, biggest, economic, state)

[Angorlee]

Considering prohibition back in the 1920s: All we hear about is the gansters and speakeasy's and the drinking inspite of the laws against alcohol use. But what about all the people who couldn't get booze and therefore stayed home with their families and maybe bought some food with that booze money to feed their kids. There may have been millions of people like that. In fact I read somewhere a long time ago something to that effect. Of course it wouldn't make news to report that Mr. So and So stayed home and read a book because he couldn't get any booze and didn't want to take the chance at doing something illegal. Bigger news would be Al Capone knocking of rivals in Chicago. In the book 'Only Yesterday' by Frederick Lewis Allen he states that public opinion turned against the prohibitionists but it was because they resented the government telling them what to do when that same government couldn't provide jobs. So it sounded like public opinion against prohibition was because of a government attitude rather than the booze issue itself.

[ovcatto]

Originally Posted by Angorlee

But what about all the people who couldn't get booze and therefore stayed home with their families and maybe bought some food with that booze money to feed their kids.

The only people who couldn't get alcohol during Prohibition were businesses that formerly sold it. Prohibition didn't outlaw the possession of alcohol just its manufacture, sale and transportation. As a result there as a increase in deaths due to the manufacture of illegal and toxic alcohol. All of the expected win fall, less consumption, higher spending on alternative forms of entertainment and non alcoholic beverages did not come to pass and in fact it resulted in the failure of theaters, restaurants, and other entertainment venues.

Writing in 1925 H.L. Menchken wrote;

"Five years of Prohibition have had, at least, this one benign effect: they have completely disposed of all the favorite arguments of the Prohibitionists. None of the great boons and usufructs that were to follow the passage of the Eighteenth Amendment has come to pass. There is not less drunkenness in the Republic, but more. There is not less crime, but more. There is not less insanity, but more. The cost of government is not smaller, but vastly greater. Respect for law has not increased, but diminished."

In the book 'Only Yesterday' by Frederick Lewis Allen he states that public opinion turned against the prohibitionists but it was because they resented the government telling them what to do...

As for what Mr Allen wrote, I have have no clue not having read "Only Yesterday." Do you have a quote or is this some sort of paraphrasing that you've stumbled upon?

[chirack]

The only positive effect is that it cut down drinking a bit (Americans today don’t drink as much as they used to) but that was that. Economically it was not so good for restaurants and theaters because people went out less often. Lack of alcohol also made some dishes not taste so good (i.e. wine is a cooking ingredient).

It did little against alcoholism as people who had a drinking problem (the kind that would buy alcohol and not feed the kids) were able to get alcohol elsewhere. Alcohol is easy to produce and easy to smuggle. Alcohol for religious and medicinal purposes was just fine and it was legal to produce your own wine (just not sell it). There was an increase in rabbis due to this law (and the fact that rabbis could get wine and Judaism does not have strict controls over who can become a rabbi.) There was an increase in doctors prescribing alcohol for medicinal purposes (you were allowed a small amount). Just as today you could also produce a small amount of wine, beer or cider for your own use legally(it was the selling or distrubiting to others outside of your family that was a problem.). It also did not ban any alcohol produced before prohibition so if you had a stock of it(just the sale of it). Finally there was grain alcohol which is alcohol for industrial purposes normally laced with poison to keep people from drinking it (alcohol is taxed but grain alcohol is tax free) but people drank it or unscrupulous people turned it into drinks causing illness.

This unregulated aspect made drinking much more dangerous since there was no governmental authority with oversight over alcohol production.

Prohibition really didn’t have the buy in from the public to make it work.

[Grandstander]

Prohibition had the effect of taking an immense amount of revenue which formerly went to the states, and transferring it to organized crime figures who paid no tax at all.

The Great Depression generated an emergency need for governmental revenues in the states and that factor was the primary reason for its repeal. I suspect that the eventual legalization of marijuana on a national level will have similar origins. Those states which have permitted medical marijuana such as California, are now raking in tax revenue from the clinics which vend it. As more and more states legalize or permit medical marijuana, there will be more and more pressure on the Feds to quit interfering with those revenue streams.

[2nd trick op]

Consiider this; We have Prohibition today; it is imposed on one group; 18-to-20-year-olds who otherwise enjoy full legal rights. And in college-centered communities with a large number of people in that age group, it is no more enforcable today than it was in the Twenties.

The expese might be deemed worthwhile by those still naive enough to believe in the nanny-state. But people still "fall through the cracks", occasionally with tragic results. If you think it's worth the trouble. so be it. But personally, I don't; I regularly saw the law flouted during my undergraduate years, and I'm sure the same is going on today -- just a bit less openly.

[markg91359]

I happen to belong to a religious group that actively tells its members not to drink alcoholic beverages. Most of us actually follow that injunction. As a result, my state has the lowest rate of alcoholism, drunk driving, and alcohol-related diseases in the country. I think this shows what giving up alcohol potentially could do for a geographic area or a group of people. When it comes down to it though, there is a key difference between something like Prohibition and belonging to a group that commands its members not to imbibe alcoholic beverages. That difference ist hat membership in any religion is voluntary.

There were two key problems with Prohibition:

1. It didn't work and that's primarily because it was very easy for someone who wanted to break the law to either purchase legitimate alcoholic beverages made in a foreign country like Canada or make their own wine or beer.

2. Any advantages gained by preventing some small segment of the population from drinking was more than offset by the huge amount of corruption in and out of govenment created by Prohibition.

Some other posters have mentioned #1. I want to mention #2 for a minute. Anyone who wants to try and minimize offical corruption during the "Roaring Twenties" is simply wrong. It was an overwhelming problem. Entire police departments were "bought off" by gangsters like Al Capone. The police and public officials realized that consumption of alcohol could never be stopped and so they simply turned it into an "economic opportunity". A police force that is "bought off" is unreliable. The authorities in many large cities not only turned their backs on illegal use of alcohol, they also ignored robberies, killings, and cases of extortion committed by the people running the illegal liquor trade.

Prohibition directly lead to the creation of a mafia and organized crime. Supplying millions of people with an illegal product on a regular basis requires structure and rules. Since the law wouldn't provide these elements, mobsters simply jumped into the void and provided them in a crude, but effective way. Prohibition gave the mafia an opening in America. They rapidly moved from illegal sales of alcohol to selling drugs like heroin, providing illegal gambling, and control of prostitution in some areas.

If you search the archives of Youtube, you'll come across an old television series that depicts this period that is called "The Untouchables". A few episodes of this will give you a real idea just how overwhelming the problem of official corruption during this period really was. Nothing gained by Prohibition could possibly have been worth this as a "trade off".

This little poem from the 1920's summed up the contradictory way many felt about Prohibition at the time:

Prohibition is awful flop,

We like it,

It can't stop what its meant to stop,

We're for it,

Its left a trail of graft and slime,

Its filled our land with slums and crime,

It don't prohibit worth a dime,

Nevertheless, we're for it.

[Snowball7]

I think it did more good than harm. People today have no concept
of how endemic heavy drinking was. It was totally out of control.
Prohibition put a check on things at least in the public arena.
Before prohibition it was a common part of life to have people
walking around drunk everywhere. Lax attitudes (by today's standards)
persisted well into the 1970s. Many people used to drink at work
with no repurcussions as long as they did their job.
The game was changed when DUI laws started.

[almost3am]

Originally Posted by Snowball7

I think it did more good than harm. People today have no concept
of how endemic heavy drinking was. It was totally out of control.
Prohibition put a check on things at least in the public arena.
Before prohibition it was a common part of life to have people
walking around drunk everywhere. Lax attitudes (by today's standards)
persisted well into the 1970s. Many people used to drink at work
with no repurcussions as long as they did their job.
The game was changed when DUI laws started.

I think the government could have chosen an alternative path besides prohibition that would have worked better and created a less corrupt and deadly world. I think it did more harm than good.

[NJGOAT]

The question of whether or not it worked is a matter of definition. Most estimates show that the rate of alcohol consumption dropped by between 30%-50% during the Prohibition years. However, alcohol consumption was nowhere near eliminated and around 35% of the population would still have been characterized as "drinkers".

Prohibition did not allow the manufacture, distribution or sale of alcohol but it had no limits on possession, consumption and distilling for personal use. So, at the height of prohibtion, you could drink in front of a cop and they couldn't do anything about it. It also allowed the use of alcohol by "prescription" for certain ailments and the number of licensed pharmacies nearly tripled during those years. Many hardware stores openly sold home distilling packages and grape juice manufacturers had a brisk mail order business where they warned their customers not to let the juice sit around or it would ferment into wine. Wine sales were not banned for religious purposes and there was a sharp increase in the numbers of rabbi's and priests who needed to procure wine for their "flocks".

So, it worked in that it certainly curbed the consumption of alcohol, but it failed because it never eliminated it, not even close. Consumption was still so common that the mayor of Berlin on a trip to NYC in 1929 actually asked the mayor of NYC when prohibition was supposed to go into effect.

Economically it was a major failure. Proponents for prohibition claimed that the money that people spent on alcohol would simply be funneled into other consumer goods. There were wide raning predictions of increased sales in clothing and consumer goods. Real estate officials thought there would be a rise in prices as saloons closed and neighborhoods "improved". Chewing gum and soft drink companies thought there would be a major rise in demand. Theaters thought there would be major increases in attendance. None of it happened.

What did happen was that there was a broad decline in the entertainment and leisure industry. Many restaurants failed because they were unable to earn their profits on alcohol and theater attendance declined. People ultimately didn't spend the money they spent on alcohol on any sort of economically beneficial manner. On top of that, there was a noticable increase in unemployment as distilleries, breweries and saloons closed with trickle down impacts on the barrel making and transportation industries.

Prohibitions nastier economic legacy had to do with tax revenues. Many states derived a large portion of their tax revenues from liquor excise taxes. In New York State it composed almost 75% of state revenue. When that revenue went away, it had to be replaced with other taxes and income taxes were the favored method. At the Federal level, the government lost $11 billion in tax revenue during Prohibition and spent over $300 million trying to enforce it.

Crime is often listed as the biggest failure of Prohibition and while it gets much attention do to the characters of organized crime that became famous during the time, crime rates actually remained rather steady. There was a large upswing in the national crime rate from 1910-1920. These rates remained relatively stable during the Prohibition years and some claim that they actually declined if you remove crimes committed that were related to "bootlegging". Homicide rates, surprisingly, also remained steady at their late 1910's levels.

Organized crime certainly benefitted from the windfall of running the black market on alcohol. However, while it became more "infamous" at the time, organized crime existed before and after at roughly the same levels.

[Irishtom29]

Originally Posted by NJGOAT

However, while it became more "infamous" at the time, organized crime existed before and after at roughly the same levels.

The end of prohibition did cut back on the number of gangsters, when I was young I knew quite a few fellas who'd been in bootlegging gangs and had to turn to honest work when prohibition ended. I knew others who turned from bootlegging to other "unorganized" forms of crime such as burglary and bank robbing before eventually turning to honest work (usually after a stretch in prison).