Prohibition in the US

Prohibition in the United States was a nationwide constitutional ban on the production,
importation, transportation, and sale of alcoholic beverages from 1920 to 1933. The Eighteenth
Amendment—which illegalized the manufacture, transportation, and sale of alcohol—was passed by
the U.S. Congress in 1917. In 1919 the amendment was ratified by the three-quarters of the nation's
states required to make it constitutional. Prohibition lasted throughout the US Great Depression.
Back then people drank three times as much as they do now. They drank alcohol at work – counting
numbers and operating machinery, they drank at breakfast, lunch and supper. The prohibition of
alcohol was undertaken to reduce crime and corruption, solve social problems, reduce the tax
burden created by prisons and poorhouses, and improve health and hygiene in America.

The Prohibition amendment would not have passed without the persistence of the women
involved in the temperance movement starting in the 19th century. Women during that time
gradually became sick of their husbands being drunk all the time, as they were bad workers, bad
husbands and bad father figures. The best known women’s organization favouring Prohibition was
the Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU). Throughout American history women had been
involved in social clubs and charities, but the temperance movement not only allowed women to
become participants in national politics, they were the driving force on this issue. They started
protesting all the time. These women were regulators of morality and advocates for other women
and children who had been abused by drunken husbands and fathers. But after some time, they had
to stop protesting and return to their homes because their homes were falling apart without them,
as their husbands didn’t know how to cook, clean or sew.

Prohibition, unfortunately, wasn’t a success. It was a huge failure that led to so much
corruption. When Prohibition took effect on January 17, 1920, many thousands of formerly legal
saloons across the country catering only to men closed down. People wanting to drink had to buy
liquor from licensed doctors for “medicinal” purposes, clergymen and Rabbis for “religious” reasons
or illegal sellers known as ‘bootleggers’. Another option was to enter private, unlicensed barrooms,
nicknamed “speakeasies” for how low you had to speak the “password” to gain entry so as not to be
overheard by law enforcement (speak easy). Speakeasies were generally ill-kept secrets, and owners
exploited low-paid police officers with payoffs to look the other way. Bootleggers who supplied the
private bars would add water to good whiskey, gin and other liquors to sell larger quantities. Others
resorted to selling ‘moonshine’ (high-proof liquor that was produced illegally, the name was derived
from a tradition of creating the alcohol during the nighttime, thereby avoiding being caught), or even
poisonous chemicals such as carbolic acid. The bad stuff, such as “Smoke” made of pure wood
alcohol, killed or maimed thousands of drinkers. To hide the taste of poorly distilled whiskey and
“bathtub” gin, speakeasies offered to combine alcohol with ginger ale, Coca-Cola, sugar, mint, lemon,
fruit juices and other flavourings, promoting the enduring mixed drink, or “cocktail,” in the process.

One of the most radical supporters of the Temperance Movement was a woman called Carrie
Nation, also known as ‘Hatchet Granny’. At first glance she looked like a sweet old lady, but her form
of protesting was finding illegal bars, or ‘saloons’ where men illegally drank alcohol, then attacking
and destroying the bars violently with a hatchet. At first, she destroyed saloons with rocks. She
would gather several rocks, that she called ‘smashers’, arrive unexpected and announce: "Men, I
have come to save you from a drunkard's fate", before completely demolishing everything in her
way. Her fame spread through her growing arrest record. After one of her raids in Wichita, Kansas,
Nation's husband joked that she should use a hatchet next time for maximum damage. Nation
replied, "That is the most sensible thing you have said since I married you." That is when she started
using a hatchet to attack illegal drinking places. She was arrested over 32 times.

The Prohibition Era also gave birth to mobsters, gangsters and overall the mafia. It wasn’t
long before mobsters started raking in absurd amounts of money from the sale of illegal alcoholic
beverages. They also usually almost never got caught, because of the corruption that took place: they
would pay off the policemen (that would take the bribes because they weren’t earning much money
back then) and they would also pay off government officials and even judges and other court officials.
These mobsters and gangsters became businessmen. Before prohibition, criminal gangs were just
local menaces, but the overwhelming business opportunity of illegal booze changed everything. It
made them unstoppable – above everything. It made them gods. Suddenly gang leaders were making
deals with each other, forging mutual protection pacts across state and international borders to
ensure that shipments of illegal alcohol poured freely into the big cities.

One of the most famous gangsters during this era was Al Capone. Alphonse Gabriel Capone,
sometimes known by the nickname "Scarface", was an American gangster and businessman who
attained notoriety during the Prohibition era as the co-founder and boss of the ‘Chicago Outfit’ (a
crime family, which was part of a huge Italian-American Mafia). The demand for illegal beer, wine
and liquor was so great during the Prohibition that mob kingpins like Capone were pulling in as much
as $100 million a year in the mid-1920s (which is roughly worth as much as $1.4 billion in 2018) and
spending a half million dollars a month in bribes to police, politicians and federal investigators.
Capone’s seven-year reign as a crime boss ended when he went to prison at the age of 33. Funny
enough, he was so good at bribing and maintaining a good image for the press, he actually didn’t
even get arrested for his illegal alcohol sales, his mafia, his killings, or his bribes. Capone was actually
convicted on three counts of income TAX EVASION on October 17, 1931 and was sentenced a week
later to 11 years in federal prison, fined $50,000 plus $7,692 for court costs, and was held liable for
$215,000 plus interest due on his back taxes. Capone later died of heart failure from a stroke.