Why was Prohibition introduced in America in 1900?

            In January 1919, the Eighteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution took away the license to do business from the brewers, distillers, vintners, and the wholesale and retail sellers of alcoholic beverages. Prohibition in the United States was a measure designed to reduce drinking by eliminating the businesses that manufactured, distributed, and sold alcoholic beverages.

            Prohibition was introduced mainly because of the Temperance Movement which had developed during that epoch. Groups mostly constituted of rural and small-town women, such as the WCTU (Women’s Christian Temperance Union) campaigned against alcohol. They believed that drinking was destroying families. For the working women, the money spent by men on alcohol was seen as a waste, since it could have been used to feed and take care of the family’s needs. Other women, from the higher middle classes, saw drinking simply as an immoral practice and consequently wanted the abolition of it. The first culmination of this movement came with the Woman’s Crusade of 1873 – 1874. Women across the United States took action against the saloons and the liquor traffic through petition campaigns, demonstrations, hymn-singing, etc. The crusade wanted that the saloonkeepers would close down their bars and move to other business fields. Later on, the prohibition movement's strength grew, especially after the formation of the Anti-Saloon League, founded in 1893, in Oberlin, Ohio.

The prohibition movement in general excelled in convincing America that Prohibition was necessary. Various methods of propaganda were used. Cartoons, posters, magazines or radio broadcasts were not uncommon menthols of persuading people. As we can see on the left, in this cartoon alcohol is represented as the pied piper who manages to hypnotise the men, and just like in the story where he takes the mice to their death, he will take the men to their ruin. In some extreme cases, Prohibitionists would even invent absurd reasons in order for people to see their way of thinking. Other movements, such as the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, promoted Prohibition through health textbooks for school children. Children at school would be presented the new scientific facts regarding alcohol, such as drinking being a depressant and diminishing a man’s ability to do work. The Anti-Saloon League, and other organisations that supported prohibition, soon began to succeed in enacting local prohibition laws. The movement also got the support of the Protestant Church, who also believed that drinking was immoral and thought that the time spent in the saloons should instead be spent in religious practices. Protestant Churches "sought to overcome the corruption of the world in a dynamic manner, not only by converting men to believe in Christ but also by Christianising the social order through the power and force of law" (Timberlake, an historian from Harvard University). The Church also  controlled a lot of the financial support for the Prohibitionist movements. Furthermore, also leading industrialists, like Rockefeller, approved this act, since they saw it as a way to maintain a sober workforce. The movements began to encourage to vote for ‘dry’ candidates. The word ‘dry’ was used to describe those politicians who were for Prohibition and consequently wouldn’t get ‘wet’ with alcohol, while the ‘wets’ was the anti-Prohibitionist movement. Many Politicians became dry, since they saw that if they would have supported the movement, then they would have gained more support, thus increasing their chances of being elected.

            During this time, the brewing industry was the most prosperous of the alcohol beverage industries. Because of the competitive nature of brewing, the brewers entered the retail business. Americans called retail businesses selling beer and whiskey by the glass to saloons. To expand the sale of beer, brewers expanded the number of saloons.  It was not uncommon to find one saloon for every 150 or 200 Americans. Eager to gain even more money, saloonkeepers also began to introduce vices such as gambling and prostitution into their establishments in an attempt to increase profits. Many Americans considered saloons offensive, noxious institutions.

            World War I also had a rather big influence on the introduction of Prohibition. As a matter of fact, with the intervention of America in the Great War, the United States needed food to feed their troops as well as those of its allies. Brewing used millions of loaves of barley a day. So the banning of using grain for brewing alcohol would have created a lot of extra food which could have been sold to American Allies. Additionally, the main brewers in the United States were of German origins. Consequently, some people believed that they should stop drinking since it was seen as ‘unpatriotic’.

            Furthermore, the leaders of the prohibition movement were alarmed at the drinking behaviour of Americans, and they were concerned that there was a culture of drink among some sectors of the population that, with continuing immigration from Europe, was spreading. They claimed that revolutionaries, like the Bolsheviks from Russia, lived on drink. Other catholic immigrants, such as Italians and Spanish, thought of alcohol as something completely normal. Alcohol also seemed to lead to lawlessness in cities, mainly in the North. Really, the problem was that the white evangelical protestants were xenophobic. That is, they didn’t understand these new behaviours brought by the immigrants in the cities, and consequently they became afraid of them and saw Prohibition as the only possible way to protect themselves.

            In 1917, the movement was strong enough to push the matter up to congress. Finally, in 1919, the Eighteenth Amendment to the US constitution made the sale, manufacture or transport of alcohol illegal. At the same time the Volstead Act made the buying of alcohol illegal. America had finally gone ‘dry’. The era of Prohibition had begun.

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