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Very Short Introductions #632
Prohibition: A Very Short Introduction
Americans have always been a hard-drinking people, but from 1920 to 1933 the country went dry. After decades of pressure from rural Protestants such as the hatchet-wielding Carry A. Nation and organizations such as the Women's Christian Temperance Union and Anti-Saloon League, the states ratified the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution. Bolstered by the Volstead Act, this amendment made Prohibition alcohol could no longer be produced, imported, transported, or sold. This bizarre episode is often humorously recalled, frequently satirized, and usually condemned. The more interesting questions, however, are how and why Prohibition came about, how Prohibition worked (and failed to work), and how Prohibition gave way to strict governmental regulation of alcohol. This book answers these questions, presenting a brief and elegant overview of the Prohibition era and its legacy.
During the 1920s alcohol prices rose, quality declined, and consumption dropped. The black market thrived, filling the pockets of mobsters and bootleggers. Since beer was too bulky to hide and largely disappeared, drinkers sipped cocktails made with moonshine or poor-grade imported liquor. The all-male saloon gave way to the speakeasy, where together men and women drank, smoked, and danced to jazz.
After the onset of the Great Depression, support for Prohibition collapsed because of the rise in gangster violence and the need for revenue at local, state, and federal levels. As public opinion turned, Franklin Delano Roosevelt promised to repeal Prohibition in 1932. The legalization of beer came in April 1933, followed by the Twenty-first Amendment's repeal of the Eighteenth that December. State alcohol control boards soon adopted strong regulations, and their legacies continue to influence American drinking habits. Soon after, Bill Wilson and Dr. Bob Smith founded Alcoholics Anonymous (AA). The alcohol problem had shifted from being a moral issue during the century to a social, cultural, and political one during the campaign for Prohibition, and finally, to a therapeutic one involving individuals. As drinking returned to pre-Prohibition levels, a Neo-Prohibition emerged, led by groups such as Mothers against Drunk Driving, and ultimately resulted in a higher legal drinking age and
other legislative measures.
With his unparalleled expertise regarding American drinking patterns, W. J. Rorabaugh provides an accessible synthesis of one of the most important topics in US history, a topic that remains relevant today amidst rising concerns over binge-drinking and alcohol culture on college campuses.
During the 1920s alcohol prices rose, quality declined, and consumption dropped. The black market thrived, filling the pockets of mobsters and bootleggers. Since beer was too bulky to hide and largely disappeared, drinkers sipped cocktails made with moonshine or poor-grade imported liquor. The all-male saloon gave way to the speakeasy, where together men and women drank, smoked, and danced to jazz.
After the onset of the Great Depression, support for Prohibition collapsed because of the rise in gangster violence and the need for revenue at local, state, and federal levels. As public opinion turned, Franklin Delano Roosevelt promised to repeal Prohibition in 1932. The legalization of beer came in April 1933, followed by the Twenty-first Amendment's repeal of the Eighteenth that December. State alcohol control boards soon adopted strong regulations, and their legacies continue to influence American drinking habits. Soon after, Bill Wilson and Dr. Bob Smith founded Alcoholics Anonymous (AA). The alcohol problem had shifted from being a moral issue during the century to a social, cultural, and political one during the campaign for Prohibition, and finally, to a therapeutic one involving individuals. As drinking returned to pre-Prohibition levels, a Neo-Prohibition emerged, led by groups such as Mothers against Drunk Driving, and ultimately resulted in a higher legal drinking age and
other legislative measures.
With his unparalleled expertise regarding American drinking patterns, W. J. Rorabaugh provides an accessible synthesis of one of the most important topics in US history, a topic that remains relevant today amidst rising concerns over binge-drinking and alcohol culture on college campuses.
160 pages, Paperback
Published January 16, 2020
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109 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
October 25, 2020
Rorabaugh provides an interesting and readable introduction to a curious period in American history. Most people aren't aware that alcohol consumption contributes to roughly 88,000 American deaths per year, with many more lives ruined by alcohol-fueled accidents, crimes, and domestic violence, along with billions in economic losses. Given that women were disproportionately the victims of male drinking, Prohibition was one of the first feminist issues. If alcohol were a new product being introduced to the market today, no civilized country would permit it. So why do we? Well, for a brief period from 1919-1933, America didn't. Sadly, this enlightened attempt to legislate stupidity away did not last, although it did temporarily reduce alcohol use and the corresponding death rate. The much more highly publicized gangland killings associated with bootlegging were numerically insignificant by comparison to the lives saved by Prohibition - but if humans have ever demonstrated anything about themselves, it's that 98% of them don't understand statistics.
The book puts Prohibition into context: historically, culturally, politically, religiously, and (to some degree) scientifically. The First World War was a necessary enabling condition, while the Great Depression made it unsustainable. Unfortunately for the success of the project, the science of the time was in its infancy while the religion of the time was dominant. It turns out that religious superstition is no match for an addictive drug. The naivety of the Prohibitionist reformers is quaint in hindsight - they seem to have imagined that all you need do is pass a law and problem solved. Since the resources necessary for enforcement (and treatment!) were never committed, I wouldn't call Prohibition a failed experiment. I see it as more analogous to Gilbert K. Chesterton's quip about Christianity: not something tried and found wanting, but something found difficult and not tried.
The first step, before any talk of ratifying the Eighteenth Amendment, would have been to recruit an incorruptible police force. The first requirement for such a force, obviously, would have been to find police officers who themselves did not require policing - that is, officers who had no desire to self-harm with alcohol nor to take bribes from bootleggers. Meta-policing would then have been necessary to maintain vigilance against any corruption sneaking in. In a modern context, policing the police is the job of internal affairs departments. It's a tall order, but without it Prohibition was doomed to fail. It's hard to get people to do a job well when they aren't personally committed to it. In contrast, police are able to take a crime such as murder seriously, because most police officers fully agree that murder is wrong and don't make a habit of murdering people.
Most of the book is about the historical period between the Eighteenth and Twenty-First Amendments; the last chapter provides an intriguing but too-brief summary of the aftermath. As the book's publication year is 2020, it should have at least mentioned the recent flood of research on the neurobiology of alcohol use and abuse. Scientists now have the tools to identify many gene variants that influence an individual's choice to harm self and others with this toxic drug. The book documents broader cultural factors that drive overall consumption up and down, but individual behavior forms a statistical distribution around the mean. For whatever amount people are drinking on average at a given time, different individuals are drinking more or less. A fairly steady percentage of individuals in each generation is most at risk for the worst effects of alcohol abuse, and this vulnerability appears to have an at least partly genetic basis. The good news is this could pave the way for early screening (as soon as at birth; Congratulations, you just gave birth to a healthy 8 pounds, 3 ounces future alcoholic!) followed by targeted interventions before the booze industry kills the vulnerable for profit.
A century ago the modern science of willpower did not exist. This deprived temperance campaigners of effective tools for modifying the behavior of drunks. According to the book Maximum Willpower, exercise is the most potent willpower-booster known. Rorabaugh does mention the rise of modern health and exercise culture, which led a small segment of the population to drink less, but says nothing about the way that frequent and vigorous physical exercise appears to strengthen the brain's executive center for making healthful choices. That is, health nuts are drinking less on average, but not only because of their prior commitment to health - they are to some degree making better choices by building better brains. While more people did have physical jobs a century ago, there was almost no health and exercise culture as such. Then again, a glance around at the modern obesity epidemic suggests there is still almost no health and exercise culture, for the majority at least. (How many times did you jump up from reading this review to do a quick set of push-ups? The higher the number you answered, the lower the number of drinks you probably downed in the same time.)
The book puts Prohibition into context: historically, culturally, politically, religiously, and (to some degree) scientifically. The First World War was a necessary enabling condition, while the Great Depression made it unsustainable. Unfortunately for the success of the project, the science of the time was in its infancy while the religion of the time was dominant. It turns out that religious superstition is no match for an addictive drug. The naivety of the Prohibitionist reformers is quaint in hindsight - they seem to have imagined that all you need do is pass a law and problem solved. Since the resources necessary for enforcement (and treatment!) were never committed, I wouldn't call Prohibition a failed experiment. I see it as more analogous to Gilbert K. Chesterton's quip about Christianity: not something tried and found wanting, but something found difficult and not tried.
The first step, before any talk of ratifying the Eighteenth Amendment, would have been to recruit an incorruptible police force. The first requirement for such a force, obviously, would have been to find police officers who themselves did not require policing - that is, officers who had no desire to self-harm with alcohol nor to take bribes from bootleggers. Meta-policing would then have been necessary to maintain vigilance against any corruption sneaking in. In a modern context, policing the police is the job of internal affairs departments. It's a tall order, but without it Prohibition was doomed to fail. It's hard to get people to do a job well when they aren't personally committed to it. In contrast, police are able to take a crime such as murder seriously, because most police officers fully agree that murder is wrong and don't make a habit of murdering people.
Most of the book is about the historical period between the Eighteenth and Twenty-First Amendments; the last chapter provides an intriguing but too-brief summary of the aftermath. As the book's publication year is 2020, it should have at least mentioned the recent flood of research on the neurobiology of alcohol use and abuse. Scientists now have the tools to identify many gene variants that influence an individual's choice to harm self and others with this toxic drug. The book documents broader cultural factors that drive overall consumption up and down, but individual behavior forms a statistical distribution around the mean. For whatever amount people are drinking on average at a given time, different individuals are drinking more or less. A fairly steady percentage of individuals in each generation is most at risk for the worst effects of alcohol abuse, and this vulnerability appears to have an at least partly genetic basis. The good news is this could pave the way for early screening (as soon as at birth; Congratulations, you just gave birth to a healthy 8 pounds, 3 ounces future alcoholic!) followed by targeted interventions before the booze industry kills the vulnerable for profit.
A century ago the modern science of willpower did not exist. This deprived temperance campaigners of effective tools for modifying the behavior of drunks. According to the book Maximum Willpower, exercise is the most potent willpower-booster known. Rorabaugh does mention the rise of modern health and exercise culture, which led a small segment of the population to drink less, but says nothing about the way that frequent and vigorous physical exercise appears to strengthen the brain's executive center for making healthful choices. That is, health nuts are drinking less on average, but not only because of their prior commitment to health - they are to some degree making better choices by building better brains. While more people did have physical jobs a century ago, there was almost no health and exercise culture as such. Then again, a glance around at the modern obesity epidemic suggests there is still almost no health and exercise culture, for the majority at least. (How many times did you jump up from reading this review to do a quick set of push-ups? The higher the number you answered, the lower the number of drinks you probably downed in the same time.)
October 8, 2023
One of my major bugbears about popular histories like Sapiensis that they don't getintoxication. Imagine writing a book about running and never mentioning feet. That's what I'm talking about.
During WWI the Russian Czar signed his death warrant by banning vodka. This single act, against the working class, changed history up to and including tomorrow. W.J. Rorabaugh gives this act a sentence in his book, without mentioning vodka.
There is a lot of history in this short work, but not much about the creation of criminal opportunity offered by Prohibition. The word 'Mafia' doesn't appear in the book, although 'organized crime' does. We don't get any details about the switch from prohibition of alcohol to the prohibition of marijuana and other drugs, which enabled government agencies to stay on their drip feed, and the ultimate enrichment of Columbian and Mexican cartels. In other words, we are only getting half the story here.
During WWI the Russian Czar signed his death warrant by banning vodka. This single act, against the working class, changed history up to and including tomorrow. W.J. Rorabaugh gives this act a sentence in his book, without mentioning vodka.
There is a lot of history in this short work, but not much about the creation of criminal opportunity offered by Prohibition. The word 'Mafia' doesn't appear in the book, although 'organized crime' does. We don't get any details about the switch from prohibition of alcohol to the prohibition of marijuana and other drugs, which enabled government agencies to stay on their drip feed, and the ultimate enrichment of Columbian and Mexican cartels. In other words, we are only getting half the story here.
February 7, 2023
The most interesting part, to me: When you ban something, criminals make a more concentrated form of the banned item available (because it commands a higher price and is easier to smuggle). When Prohibition took effect, it wasn't worthwhile to smuggle beer. But bootleggers started making whiskey, corn liquor, and other distilled spirits available, even though most people didn't care for them and would have chosen beer had it been available. Similarly, when the government banned opium, heroin became available, and when the government banned cocaine, crack became available.
Overall, this was an excellent summary of a social movement and its impact on law and culture. There's a fair amount about women here, including Carry Nation, Frances Willard, Mabel Walker Willebrandt, and Pauline Morton Sabin. The author describes how Prohibition affected poor, middle-class, and rich people.
Overall, this was an excellent summary of a social movement and its impact on law and culture. There's a fair amount about women here, including Carry Nation, Frances Willard, Mabel Walker Willebrandt, and Pauline Morton Sabin. The author describes how Prohibition affected poor, middle-class, and rich people.
August 1, 2024
A little lighter on law enforcement changes than I would like it to be, but it is supposed to be "very short," and it does a lot of excellent stuff in that short amount of space. Definitely a useful baseline for History students working on projects related to Prohibition and temperance.
March 29, 2021
An apt read during this time of discussions about menthol bans in the legislature.
July 16, 2024
Historian H.J. Rorabaugh published Prohibition: A Very Short Introduction in 2019. The book mainly covers Rorabaugh, who writes, “From 1920 to 1933, the Eighteenth Amendment to the United States banned the production, sale, or transportation of alcoholic beverages. This book is about prohibition and the century-long campaign that led to that result” (Rorabaugh 1). The last chapter covers the legacies of prohibition in the United States and briefly looks at control over alcohol consumption worldwide. The book has an index, a section on references, and a section on “further reading” (Rorabaugh 129-132). The book has illustrations, including tables. I learned a lot from the book. For example, I found it interesting that Prohibition at the State level in the Southern United States in the late 1910s led some African Americans to switch from alcohol to cocaine since cocaine was legal at the time (Rorabaugh 46). I agree with several reviewers on Goodreads that Rorabaugh mainly stays focused on alcohol in the United States and does not tie the book to the drug policy of the United States. The book has a very good history of prohibition, though. This book is much more focused than books in A Very Short Introduction usually are, so I feel that a person gets a good overview of the era of Prohibition in the history of the United States.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews