I thought I knew enough about Prohibition, which lasted from 1920 to 1933. I’d heard of Carry Nation, bathtub gin, and bootlegging. But this book is a detailed look not just at the time period between the passage of the Eighteenth and Twenty-First Amendments, but also what led up the passage of each. Okrent also discusses the personalities of the people involved, both those supporting and those opposing Prohibition. Most of the people are not household names today. One ironic thing about Prohibition is that sometimes it was easier to get a drink during Prohibition than after repeal. This is because since the speakeasies were breaking the law by selling liquor anyway, they didn’t bother about closing hours, or checking ID’s. However, by the end of Prohibition, the average American was drinking less.
One thing I didn’t realize was how much groundwork the dry proponents had to lay down before the passage of the Eighteenth Amendment. Which makes sense, something that so completely altered the lives, and livelihoods, of so many Americans can’t have come out of nowhere. Okrent discusses how Prohibition not only led to the rise of organized crime, but how average people were impacted. Many breweries shut down, unless they figured out how to produce something non-alcoholic, and California’s wine industry was hit hard. Cruise lines, especially those based outside the US, capitalized by serving alcohol once they were in International waters. We also made the rest of the world think we foolish, to try to legislate morality.
There are so many phrases and slang words that originated during Prohibition. These include, of course, speakeasy, rum runner, and bootlegger, as well as many euphemisms for “drunk”. Many novels set in the 1920’s, including The Great Gatsby, depict their characters drinking, sometimes to excess, as do many movies set in that era. They claimed they were trying to depict reality! Some of the unintended results of Prohibition are NASCAR, the birth of the leisure cruise, and of course, organized crime. Would it have been repealed if the Depression had not clearly showed the need for revenue generated by liquor sales? Probably, but it might have taken longer. It’s hard to respect a law that is being broken right and left, and Prohibition was virtually impossible to enforce.
If this was your family, how would you research them? I happen to know, because he told us, that my maternal Grandfather was a bootlegger, although he never went into much detail. And my mother remembers that he had some hard cider on their property, which apparently was legal (as long as he didn’t sell it). His mother was not happy about that, however. But how do you research this if you don’t have family stories? Newspapers might be a good resource, and possibly your only one. Also, just learning more about where your ancestors lived in the 1920’s might tell a little about how they handled Prohibition. I have not tried to find any local police records, and those might not even be available. You might never have any documentation, but just keep in mind when you do research, that between 1920 and 1933, the country was officially dry.