Author: W. J. Rorabaugh
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2018
Total Pages: 145
ISBN-13: 0190689935
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Although Americans have always been a hard-drinking people, voters used the democratic process to ban alcohol from 1920 to 1933. This bizarre episode, which uniquely involved two constitutional amendments, has often been humorously recalled, frequently satirized, and usually condemned. Themore 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.During the 1920s alcohol prices rose, quality declined, and consumption dropped. Since beer was too bulky to hide and largely disappeared, drinkers swallowed mixed drinks made with moonshine or mediocre imported liquor. The all-male saloon gave way to the speakeasy, where men and women drank, ate,and danced to jazz.This book illustrates how public support for prohibition collapsed due to gangster violence and the need for local, state, and federal government alcohol revenue during the Great Depression. As public opinion turned against prohibition, Franklin Delano Roosevelt promised to repeal prohibition in1932. Legal, taxed beer came in April 1933, and the Twenty-first Amendment was ratified in December 1933. After 1933, state alcohol control boards adopted strong regulations, whose legacies continue to influence American drinking habits.With his unparalleled historical knowledge and expertise in American drinking patterns, W. J. Rorabaugh provides an elegant and accessible synthesis of one of the most important topics in US history, showing how a powerful socio-political movement can shift emphasis over time.
Author: Richard F. Hamm
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
Published: 2000-11-09
Total Pages: 356
ISBN-13: 0807861871
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Richard Hamm examines prohibitionists' struggle for reform from the late nineteenth century to their great victory in securing passage of the Eighteenth Amendment. Because the prohibition movement was a quintessential reform effort, Hamm uses it as a case study to advance a general theory about the interaction between reformers and the state during the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. Most scholarship on prohibition focuses on its social context, but Hamm explores how the regulation of commerce and the federal tax structure molded the drys' crusade. Federalism gave the drys a restricted setting--individual states--as a proving ground for their proposals. But federal policies precipitated a series of crises in the states that the drys strove to overcome. According to Hamm, interaction with the federal government system helped to reshape prohibitionists' legal culture--that is, their ideas about what law was and how it could be used. Originally published in 1995. A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value.
Author: Josephine Lois Silvers
Publisher:
Published: 1927
Total Pages: 180
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Author: Ernest B. Gordon
Publisher:
Published: 2012-06-01
Total Pages: 306
ISBN-13: 9781258401979
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Author: Lisa McGirr
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 2015-11-30
Total Pages: 450
ISBN-13: 0393248798
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →“[This] fine history of Prohibition . . . could have a major impact on how we read American political history.”—James A. Morone, New York Times Book Review Prohibition has long been portrayed as a “noble experiment” that failed, a newsreel story of glamorous gangsters, flappers, and speakeasies. Now at last Lisa McGirr dismantles this cherished myth to reveal a much more significant history. Prohibition was the seedbed for a pivotal expansion of the federal government, the genesis of our contemporary penal state. Her deeply researched, eye-opening account uncovers patterns of enforcement still familiar today: the war on alcohol was waged disproportionately in African American, immigrant, and poor white communities. Alongside Jim Crow and other discriminatory laws, Prohibition brought coercion into everyday life and even into private homes. Its targets coalesced into an electoral base of urban, working-class voters that propelled FDR to the White House. This outstanding history also reveals a new genome for the activist American state, one that shows the DNA of the right as well as the left. It was Herbert Hoover who built the extensive penal apparatus used by the federal government to combat the crime spawned by Prohibition. The subsequent federal wars on crime, on drugs, and on terror all display the inheritances of the war on alcohol. McGirr shows the powerful American state to be a bipartisan creation, a legacy not only of the New Deal and the Great Society but also of Prohibition and its progeny. The War on Alcohol is history at its best—original, authoritative, and illuminating of our past and its continuing presence today.
Author: Yvonne Bertovich
Publisher: Atlantic Publishing Company
Published: 2017
Total Pages: 131
ISBN-13: 1620234874
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →It’s late at night, and a young man lies low in a boat. He has traveled from the Bahamas to the Hudson River just outside of New York City. Federal agents could be lurking the water nearby, so he’s careful not to make much noise. Is this man a dangerous criminal? Well, it depends on your perspective — he’s a 1920s teen who is supplying thirsty Americans with currently illegal alcohol produced overseas. After a constitutional amendment was passed in 1919, the sale and manufacture of alcoholic beverages in the U.S. became illegal. But that didn’t stop anyone who wanted a beer or a shot of whiskey. Vast criminal networks soon developed across the country, from stills in remote towns in Pennsylvania to streets full of speakeasies — underground bars — in Chicago. Some people just wanted to enjoy a glass of wine or two with friends. Yet as the lawbreaking became more extensive and federal agents couldn’t keep up, the money involved increased. Violent mobsters saw Prohibition as a way to make a killing on illegal alcohol, and things turned dark fast. For the many adults who had supported Prohibition, there was a lot of handwringing. Concerned women and men who had watched men stumble out of seedy saloons in their hometowns, abuse their wives, and abandon their children had believed that prohibiting the sale of alcohol was the answer to many of America’s social ills. But, alarmed by the rampant lawbreaking, Americans — including those who had once supported Prohibition — soon rallied to end it.
Author: National Research Council
Publisher: National Academies Press
Published: 1981-02-01
Total Pages: 478
ISBN-13: 0309031494
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →