Prohibition has a certain image in the popular mind: Elliot Ness, passwords at speakeasy doorways, terrible liquor. This book provides a comprehensive and highly readable history of one of the strangest legal periods in US Constitutional history. The author also gives a very different view of our history - how quickly the population gave up on enforcement, how little it was wanted anyway. It is ironic that Prohibition became truly unpopular generally once President Hoover took enforcement seriously.
He
also examines the very modern interest group dynamics that led to the 18th
Amendment and places them in the context of a much broader platform of social
legislation. Women's suffrage was
supported by the dry forces because of the certainty that women would vote for
dry candidates. Prohibition was
intimately linked to tax policy, for example, with the income tax a necessary
prerequisite. Alcohol could not be banned
unless an alternative source of revenue could be found to make up for the loss
of liquor excises. (No wonder the author, in a book discussion, once mentioned that his original title might have been "How the Hell Did This Happen?") This same argument
would lead to the drive for repeal of Prohibition by classes hoping to end the
income tax.
In a certain sense, Prohibition is seen as the last struggle by a disappearing America - rural, WASP, and religious against a tide of change to the modern, urban and ethnic culture that America was becoming. The fighting went to the last ditch when the "Dry" forces delayed re-apportionment of Congress after the 1920 Census until 1929 because they knew that the composition of Congressional representation would change radically when urban, ethnic districts began to appear. The parallels to social legislation driven today by the same fear of change makes this more than just a history of a curious period deep in the past.
This book is highly recommended.
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