Why Prohibition Was Bound to Fail: A Historical Analysis

The Temperance Movement and Its Utopian Ideology

The anti-alcohol movement began to develop in the early nineteenth century. Physicians, ministers, and business owners concerned about widespread drunkenness among servants and workers began to advocate total abstinence from alcohol. Temperance became an integral part of the women's rights and anti-slavery movements. Supporters believed that alcohol use was at the heart of all social ills. Drinking was often associated with the loss of morality, portrayed as something favored by undesirable immigrants, or even characterized as devilish behavior.

From the very beginning, the temperance ideology contained a powerful deterministic strand. As Harry Levine and Craig Reinarman argue, it held that alcohol was the major cause of nearly all social problems: unemployment, poverty, business failure, slums, insanity, crime, and violence — especially against women and children. For the very real social and economic problems of industrializing America, the temperance movement offered universal abstinence as the panacea. Anti-alcohol campaigners held on to this belief well into the twentieth century, when their ideology began to attract a broader segment of society.

In a book published in 1918 titled Why Prohibition!, Reverend Charles Stelzle, a passionate Presbyterian prohibitionist, argued — in the words of David Kyvig — that drinking "lowered industrial productivity and therefore reduced wages paid to workers; it shortened life and therefore increased the cost of insurance; it took money from other bills and therefore forced storekeepers to raise their prices in compensation; and it produced half of the business for police courts, jails, hospitals, almshouses, and insane asylums and therefore increased taxes to support these institutions." In short, it would have been hard to identify an economic or social ill that prohibitionists did not somehow associate with alcohol.

These ideas nevertheless became prominent even among secular scholars. A writer for the American Journal of Sociology described alcohol as "the mother of felony" and argued that alcohol was at the heart of crime, laziness, and degeneracy. Liquor, the writer argued, was scientifically proven to cloud reason, enfeeble the will, arouse the appetites, inflame the passions, and release the "primitive beast from the artificial restraint of social discipline."

Building the Legal Case for National Prohibition

In the twentieth century, prohibitionists began to pursue a legal battle and call for a national prohibition, arguing that their ideology was consistent with the spirit of the Constitution. A new organization called the Anti-Saloon League began to pursue such a course. The League hired lawyers, organized propaganda campaigns, raised funds, and lobbied Congress. It used its resources to support candidates willing to argue for the prohibition of liquor. Individual states began to adopt "dry laws" prohibiting the production and sale of alcohol at the state level. In 1913, the League officially declared that prohibition must be enshrined in the Constitution.

Their campaign was supported and financed by powerful corporations who believed that worker morale was being destroyed by drunkenness. Prohibitionist campaigns also coincided with the rise of Progressivism, which sought to cleanse America of economic and social ills. Ultimately, it was the right timing that allowed prohibitionists to convince Congress to amend the Constitution.

Wartime Politics and the Path to the Eighteenth Amendment

In 1917, the United States joined the Allied war effort against Germany. The Bolshevik Revolution in Russia simultaneously produced a hysteria known as the "Red Scare." Both developments strengthened a patriotic fervor that prohibitionists exploited for propaganda purposes. Congress passed the War Prohibition Act in 1918, citing American involvement in the war. Prohibitionists claimed that German beer was weakening the American will to fight and that consuming German beer amounted to supporting the enemy. Banning the manufacture, sale, and consumption of beer thus became a matter of patriotic importance.

The specter of Bolshevism was also used to galvanize public support for national prohibition. A chapter of the Anti-Saloon League of Nashville, Tennessee, issued the following warning in one of its campaigns:

"Bolshevism flourished in wet soil. Failure to enforce Prohibition in Russia was followed by Bolshevism. Failure to enforce Prohibition HERE will encourage disrespect for law and INVITE INDUSTRIAL DISASTER. Radical and Bolshevist outbreaks are practically unknown in states where Prohibition has been in effect for years. Bolshevism lives on booze."

The social turmoil caused by American involvement in World War I and the anti-Bolshevik hysteria contributed significantly to the passage of Prohibition. It is important to note, therefore, that with the waning of the Red Scare and the end of World War I, support for Prohibition was also likely to drop accordingly.

The Reality: Crime, Black Markets, and Public Defiance

Virtually none of the prohibitionist fantasies were realized. The crime rate during the Prohibition era of 1920–1933 soared. There were numerous reasons for this increase. Americans widely considered drinking alcohol — at least in measured amounts — acceptable, and they were not willing to give it up all at once. Many were also concerned that a federal ban infringed upon their individual rights. Some began to pursue alcohol in accordance with the allure of "forbidden fruit," treating it as an adventure. While beer was specifically targeted by Prohibition, many Americans turned to wine and home-made or illegally manufactured spirits. New practices such as bootlegging and bathtub gin production appeared, while smugglers brought alcohol from neighboring Canada and transported it across the country.

Crime rates also increased because alcohol smugglers operating in the black market could no longer resolve disputes through legal means, resorting instead to violence and vigilantism. The booming black market also encouraged smugglers to corrupt law enforcement officials. Consumers dissatisfied with faulty alcoholic beverages tended to resolve their disputes through violence or other illegal means, since they could no longer sue sellers or manufacturers.

Available data from the era confirms that the increase in crime was directly attributable to Prohibition. As Levine and Reinarman point out, "Prohibition was massively and openly violated, and alcohol was readily available in most of the United States." Although Prohibition coincided with the Depression era — and some of the crime increase may be attributed to economic hardship — data on homicide rates in the twentieth century reveal two eras of dramatic increase: 1920–1934 and 1970–1990. The first coincided with the prohibition of alcohol, and the second with the prohibition of drugs. As Jeffrey Miron explains, "prima facie, this pattern is consistent with the hypothesis that alcohol prohibition increased violent crime."

Far from curbing alcohol consumption, Prohibition actually led to its increase over time. During the initial years, the consumption rate fell to approximately 30% of its pre-Prohibition level. In later years, however, consumption rose to 60–70% of the pre-Prohibition level. Although the difficulty of obtaining alcohol caused a temporary decline, consumers and suppliers quickly adapted, finding alternative sources of supply and demand. Worker morale also declined, as laborers believed the government was lenient toward the wealthy — who obtained alcohol easily and faced no punishment — while workers bore the law's burdens disproportionately. This collapse in worker morale ultimately convinced many industrial leaders to oppose Prohibition. By the early 1930s, anti-Prohibitionism had become a matter of party politics, with Democrats calling for repeal.