Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm editor Candy Skipson, joined by staff writer Jane mcgrandy. Jane,
Speaker 1: It's funny when someone tells you that you can't do
Speaker 1: something and makes you want to do it even more. Totally.
Speaker 1: One of my favorite movies maybe not currently, but when
Speaker 1: I was a kid was Pollyanna. Have you ever seen Pollyanna?
Speaker 1: I have. It was Haley Mills, right, yeah, yeah, I know.
Speaker 1: It's toward the end of the movie. She wants to
Speaker 1: go to the carnival, and her aunt says that she
Speaker 1: can't go, so she climbs out the window and she
Speaker 1: makes just the carnival just fine. You know, she's virtually unscathed.
Speaker 1: But it's the coming home when she gets in trouble
Speaker 1: and she ends up plummeting to the ground and becoming paralyzed.
Speaker 1: I'm like, well, yeah, that's just too bad, because if
Speaker 1: her AUNTI let her go in the first place, that
Speaker 1: wouldn't have happened. It's an interesting argument. Yeah, that's true,
Speaker 1: and that's sort of what happened with the prohibition. I
Speaker 1: guess you could say. Indeed, and uh, we're talking about
Speaker 1: is the alcohol prohibition of the nine twenties in the US,
Speaker 1: and it was called at the time the Noble Experiment,
Speaker 1: which I find really interesting that it was called that
Speaker 1: because it sort of had the idea that, um, well,
Speaker 1: obviously it's noble. It's like it's an important thing of
Speaker 1: morality wise, but also that it might not work. It's
Speaker 1: just an experiment and we're not sure what's going to happen,
Speaker 1: and it actually it kind of failed. It did, And
Speaker 1: it's so funny that term noble. I think that that
Speaker 1: really brings up the question of morality and ethics in
Speaker 1: terms of alcohol. And even today I may be out
Speaker 1: of line saying us, but I feel like in America
Speaker 1: it's it's a really hot debate about whether or not
Speaker 1: drinking is wrong or right, or how old should you
Speaker 1: be when you drink, how much should you drink? Should
Speaker 1: families introduce their children to alcohol at a younger age.
Speaker 1: I feel like in other countries or other places where
Speaker 1: there isn't a drinking age or it's you know particular
Speaker 1: where they let them drink it. Yeah, it's like, you know,
Speaker 1: it gradually is inter used into your life, and that's
Speaker 1: as part of the culture and it's not this taboo issue. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's interesting difference. And even today in America we have
Speaker 1: plenty of towns and counties that are dry, so called
Speaker 1: dry and then and that they they don't sell alcohol
Speaker 1: at all. And I would argue that prohibition forever affected
Speaker 1: the American point of view about alcohol. And even though
Speaker 1: it was repealed, I think we still look on it
Speaker 1: as you know, an object that is taboo. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: it's interesting. I mean, it had its roots before the
Speaker 1: twentieth century. Is interesting to look back as far back
Speaker 1: as eighteen forty six, main actually as a state, uh
Speaker 1: was the first state to pass a statewide prohibition law,
Speaker 1: and so they and they and so they sort of
Speaker 1: set a precedent that that gained some some fever. And
Speaker 1: before that, in thirty eight there was a lawn massa
Speaker 1: chose has passed that only allowed people to buy alcohol
Speaker 1: in really large quantities. And the idea behind that was
Speaker 1: that the poor people couldn't get to it. And that's
Speaker 1: what's so funny about prohibition are these ideas that people
Speaker 1: held about alcohol, the idea that only um Irish and
Speaker 1: German immigrants were the ones who abused it, or the
Speaker 1: idea that it was evil or that if you drink
Speaker 1: it would lead to insanity or abuse or poverty. And
Speaker 1: even Henry Ford was one of the more famous advocates
Speaker 1: of prohibition, and he had the idea that it decreased
Speaker 1: worker productivity. And I know, even today there are people
Speaker 1: who suggests that when you're buying a car, you should
Speaker 1: ask to see the manufacturing report and if that particular
Speaker 1: car was manufactured on Monday or Friday. Don't get it
Speaker 1: because people are either you know, getting drunk for the
Speaker 1: weekend or they're hungover from the weekend for the Yeah.
Speaker 1: Or even people who say that they won't eat out
Speaker 1: in restaurants the day after holiday because the people are hungover.
Speaker 1: It's just so funny to me. But anyway, back to
Speaker 1: the point, Um, so we have this idea that alcohol
Speaker 1: is bad, and we're coming off of World War One
Speaker 1: and we're seeing, you know, a larger influx of immigrants
Speaker 1: to the United States. Yeah, And to your point, of
Speaker 1: World War One is where we get a lot of
Speaker 1: the anti German sentiment. At least it came to boiling
Speaker 1: point at that point. Obviously the United States was fighting
Speaker 1: against Germany and the war and so um uh. Non
Speaker 1: Germans in the United States would look on Germans as
Speaker 1: sort of like are you they're suspicious, like are you
Speaker 1: favoring German in this Germany and this war and etcetera.
Speaker 1: And U So in Germans, obviously, we're also associated with beers.
Speaker 1: I mean you look at the names of beers like
Speaker 1: Budweiser and like all different names, it's it's all German basically,
Speaker 1: So many beers are German. And in the United States
Speaker 1: at this time, a lot of the breweries were actually
Speaker 1: owned by Germans. Ais are Bush for instant that was
Speaker 1: a German ren brewery. So there's this idea. Some historians
Speaker 1: say that prohibition was a result of this idea of
Speaker 1: of wasss white Anglo Saxon Protestants wanting to suppress people
Speaker 1: who are not like them. So, whatever the cause, if
Speaker 1: we look at a rough timeline of how prohibition came
Speaker 1: into existence, we see that there were a lot of
Speaker 1: local and state level laws passed first outlawing alcohol. Main
Speaker 1: went dry, like Jane said in eighty six, and real
Speaker 1: areas went dry in the West and the South, but
Speaker 1: urban areas were a little bit more resistant. Yeah, it's interesting.
Speaker 1: It's also interesting that this was often associated with women's
Speaker 1: movements throughout the nineteenth century. Women were a strong force
Speaker 1: along with the progressive movement obviously of getting women the
Speaker 1: right of vote. There was also this this corresponding idea
Speaker 1: of prohibition. Right in eighteen seventy three, the Women's Christian
Speaker 1: Temperance Union formed, and they were famous in Ohio, especially
Speaker 1: of going to saloons and and praying on the saloon floor.
Speaker 1: You know, they wanted men to abstain because they were
Speaker 1: the people that that the nation turned to to be
Speaker 1: lawmakers and leaders, and women didn't have a voice at
Speaker 1: this time, like you were saying. And so if men
Speaker 1: were drunk and they were able to carry out those duties,
Speaker 1: who was the nation looked to. And one really famous
Speaker 1: female pro temperance figure was Carrie Nation, and she was
Speaker 1: fimous for a hatchet and walking around wielding the hatchet
Speaker 1: to discourage people from going into saloons. And her husband
Speaker 1: was an alcoholic and so she witnessed firsthand the so
Speaker 1: called dangerous of alcohol. And in eighteen sixty and a
Speaker 1: couple of years prior to this union really taking off,
Speaker 1: the Prohibition Party actually formed alongside the Republicans and the
Speaker 1: Democrats because people felt like they weren't getting a voice.
Speaker 1: Their voice wasn't being heard by the Republicans or Democrats.
Speaker 1: And we can think about this so like the third
Speaker 1: party system and the idea that it will come up
Speaker 1: over a certain idea in particular, and hopefully one of
Speaker 1: the party's Republican or Democrat will will adopt it. And
Speaker 1: they weren't doing anything at the time. So that's why
Speaker 1: the prohibition movement where got fed up with it and
Speaker 1: formed their own party. And they pointed out that there
Speaker 1: was a link between alcohol abuse and child abuse and
Speaker 1: crime and violence in the cities. And so finally, by
Speaker 1: nineteen nineteen, sixty percent of the United States had banned
Speaker 1: alcohol at the local level. Yeah, and by nineteen nineteen,
Speaker 1: the Congress actually passed the eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution,
Speaker 1: which gave the government the power basically to enforce prohibition
Speaker 1: among all the entire country, all of the states. And
Speaker 1: the funny thing about prohibition is this, the eighteen Amendment
Speaker 1: outlawed the sale, all the manufacturer and the importation of alcohol,
Speaker 1: but it never outlawed drinking it or possessing it. And
Speaker 1: so if you already had a lot of alcohol in
Speaker 1: your storehouse. You can keep it. You know, if you
Speaker 1: had a flask and he had somewhere to fill it,
Speaker 1: you could do that. You could bring it around with you.
Speaker 1: You just couldn't import it, and you can sell it.
Speaker 1: And I guess sort of the idea behind that is
Speaker 1: to enforce the drink, like to enforce prohibiting the drinking
Speaker 1: of it would be too difficult. I guess. Obviously, if
Speaker 1: someone's one seller is stocked, you can't go into their
Speaker 1: their house and destroy their property. That would be going
Speaker 1: too far. And there wasn't enough manpower to do that either.
Speaker 1: And that's what was so tricky about prohibition in the
Speaker 1: thirteen years that it lasts, which is that it was
Speaker 1: so hard to enforce. And the Volstead Act followed the
Speaker 1: Eighteenth Amendment, and this is what was outlining the different
Speaker 1: enforcement policies that the government had in terms of prohibition.
Speaker 1: So it discussed the penalties to drinking UM, the exceptions
Speaker 1: like if you were using it for religious purposes that
Speaker 1: was okay, and also to find the legal limits of
Speaker 1: the alcohol content for beverage. Azz yahai I said it
Speaker 1: about zero point five percent alcohol was over the legal
Speaker 1: limit UM and to give you a point of reference,
Speaker 1: I think like an average like a week beer basically
Speaker 1: is four percent. So that's a pretty low limit right there.
Speaker 1: So you could drink. I guess it's just that whatever
Speaker 1: you were drinking wasn't going to get you drunk, especially imagining.
Speaker 1: That's true. And it was interesting about the Volstead Amendment.
Speaker 1: I didn't know this until I started researching for this podcast,
Speaker 1: was that Woodrow Wilson actually vetoed it. And UM, it
Speaker 1: was interesting to me because I I know Wilson in
Speaker 1: history are sort of a progressive. He was one of
Speaker 1: the most progressive um uh presidents in the United States,
Speaker 1: and prohibition was a progressive movement. But um, apparently some
Speaker 1: story would say that Wilson found it unnecessarily authoritarian basically,
Speaker 1: and you can make that case because um, the idea
Speaker 1: of enforcing the Volstead Act became a huge headache, and
Speaker 1: obviously it showed how how authoritarian the law really was,
Speaker 1: and it was progressing the nation in a strange direction.
Speaker 1: And today I don't know if there are still people
Speaker 1: who advocate prohibition, or at least there are people who
Speaker 1: probably do promote temperance. But prohibition led to some really
Speaker 1: nasty stuff. And it's again, like we were saying at
Speaker 1: the beginning of the podcast, if someone tells you can't
Speaker 1: do something, you're going to find a way around it.
Speaker 1: And usually the way around it is going to lead
Speaker 1: to breaking some other rules. And organized crime took off exponentially.
Speaker 1: I can't even begin to, you know, describe how bad
Speaker 1: it got. You know, you look at someone like al
Speaker 1: Capone and the speakeasy said he ran, and all the
Speaker 1: gangs that resulted from this, and all the bootlegging, and
Speaker 1: even European rum flights, like people would ride out to
Speaker 1: the different bodies of water around the U. S and
Speaker 1: and meet European ships that had rum waiting for them
Speaker 1: and they would bring them back. And speaking of speakeasies,
Speaker 1: obviously those were there was you legal bars during the prohibition,
Speaker 1: um they actually surged and if you look at the numbers,
Speaker 1: there were more speakeasies during prohibition than there were legal
Speaker 1: bars before prohibition. And that just boggles me. It is.
Speaker 1: And so you look at all this crime that came
Speaker 1: about as a result of prohibition, and when the depression
Speaker 1: on set, people started getting really ticked off because you
Speaker 1: know that the money that came from the legal taxation
Speaker 1: of alcohol could have been supporting the country's economy, and
Speaker 1: instead this money was going to gangsters like al Capone
Speaker 1: who were making a mint off something that was a
Speaker 1: link all. And it's interesting to look at the money
Speaker 1: aspect of this. I actually had researched, um the I
Speaker 1: R S for an article I was doing, and the
Speaker 1: I R S was actually charged with basically enforcing prohibition.
Speaker 1: And I was really interested to learn this because you
Speaker 1: would never think that. But it was the idea of
Speaker 1: there was revenue passing hands and and um, it was
Speaker 1: not being taxed, and that was the main way that
Speaker 1: we could track down the government could track down illegal transactions,
Speaker 1: was the idea of money being around in it and
Speaker 1: there's no proof of taxation. And so that was the
Speaker 1: way that obviously al Capone was called right exactly after
Speaker 1: all the murders that he oversaw and all the gay activity,
Speaker 1: it was on the tax fraud essentially or tax evasion
Speaker 1: that he was he was canned essentially. Yeah, and sorry,
Speaker 1: it's it's interesting that, um that also the dangerous things
Speaker 1: that came as a result of prohibition was that, um,
Speaker 1: this whole atmosphere of criminal activity actually exposed more people
Speaker 1: to dangerous drugs. People like historians look back and they're like, oh,
Speaker 1: these people are hanging around uh, illegal crowds, basically criminal crowds,
Speaker 1: and and so it exposed everyone to more dangerous things.
Speaker 1: And one thing that got me as well was the
Speaker 1: idea that there was still liquor around that needed to
Speaker 1: be used for industrial purposes during the prohibition, and so, uh,
Speaker 1: the the government started contaminating this liquor and and so
Speaker 1: that people wouldn't drink it. And and I guess they
Speaker 1: didn't get the word around enough because it resulted in
Speaker 1: lots of deaths. I think adulterated liquor caused fifty deaths,
Speaker 1: isn't that wild? Yeah, with more people trying to manufacture
Speaker 1: their own liquor or sometimes to be made really really
Speaker 1: dangerously and so ingesting it could mean death and bethlub Yeah,
Speaker 1: And that was one of those strange things about prohibition
Speaker 1: is that for every pro there was a con So
Speaker 1: the number of deaths related to services of the liver
Speaker 1: from drinking too much alcohol went down, but like you
Speaker 1: were saying, the number of deaths from drinking contaminated liquor
Speaker 1: or home manufactured liquor went up, and oddly enough alcoholics.
Speaker 1: The number of alcoholics went up as well. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: more alcoholics, but pro less people drinking alcohol. And so
Speaker 1: finally people could see the prohibition was not working, there
Speaker 1: was no way to enforce it, and so in n
Speaker 1: three the amendment was overturned, and so far it's the
Speaker 1: only amendment in the Constitution to be overturned later again
Speaker 1: by another constitutional amendment. And it's interesting also the the
Speaker 1: amendment that overturned prohibition, UH made sure to make allowances
Speaker 1: that states could at the local level, you can ban
Speaker 1: liquor as much as you want, um and one story
Speaker 1: and noted that there's only two ways for an individual,
Speaker 1: just a single person, to aviolate the constitution. One is
Speaker 1: to enslave someone and the other is to bring alcohol
Speaker 1: through a dry county. And that's to think about the
Speaker 1: opposing and the spectrum and ideas of temperance continue to
Speaker 1: pervade our national culture, especially in places in the South.
Speaker 1: We see that temperance is really strongly advocated, and you
Speaker 1: see that most dry counties are in the South today.
Speaker 1: And something interesting that I was reading, um I love
Speaker 1: Love of Love, Leticia Baldredge I think she's a great writer.
Speaker 1: She was Jackie Kennedy's social secretary during the Kennedy years
Speaker 1: and in Camelot, and she was recounting in one of
Speaker 1: her memoirs that there was a big formal event that
Speaker 1: Kennedy was hosting. It was one of the first ones,
Speaker 1: and she was, you know, helping a planet, and she
Speaker 1: didn't think anything of it. But she had little station
Speaker 1: set up in the ballroom where people could go over
Speaker 1: and and mix their drinks. And everyone looked at the
Speaker 1: White House and they decried Kennedy as someone promoting you know,
Speaker 1: revelry and alcoholism. It was just a mess, and Kennedy
Speaker 1: got really mad and he was like, Leticia, next time
Speaker 1: you mixed the drinks. In the back day, it might
Speaker 1: not be as big of a deal, but you know,
Speaker 1: during that time, it certainly was because, you know, think
Speaker 1: about it, only a few decades had passed since prohibition
Speaker 1: have been overturned, and people were still learning how to
Speaker 1: be temperate with alcohol. And that's that's the main thing
Speaker 1: that people have to do. I think in our cultures,
Speaker 1: you know, you set your own levels for temperance, and
Speaker 1: there are laws that dictate the legal drinking age, and
Speaker 1: you know which counties are dry, but you know, it
Speaker 1: really is a personal choice in the end. That's true,
Speaker 1: and it makes sense now this local level. I wanted
Speaker 1: to give a shout out to Maryland, my home state, UM,
Speaker 1: because during Prohibition it got the name of free state
Speaker 1: and nickname is free state because they weren't they didn't
Speaker 1: really like enforcing prohibition and it's sort of ticked off
Speaker 1: the government at the time, and in Maryland is known
Speaker 1: as sort of free liquor place. Oh, lady Jane Goodness,
Speaker 1: that's where I get it from. Well, if you want
Speaker 1: to learn more about prohibition and temperance and alcohol in general,
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