The Noble Experiment
Although President Hoover referred to prohibition as a noble experiment, it might also be called a naive experiment. No matter how honorable the prohibitionists’ motives may have been, their goal, stopping alcohol consumption in a country the size of the United States, with a population of over one hundred million, was unrealistic from the start. Why, then, did the country go along with it?
The 1919 passage of the Eighteenth Amendment was the result of over five decades of effort by the Anti-Saloon League and the Women’s Christian Temperance Union. The prohibition movement was supported primarily by evangelical Protestants, Baptists, and Methodists. In many ways, it was an attempt by rural Americans to stop what they felt was the corrupting influence of the growing cities. In the reform-minded prewar years, prohibition gained political support, due in large part to the intense lobbying efforts of the well-organized prohibitionists. Though "wets" and "drys" debated whether or not it was possible to legislate morality, the drinking public was generally apathetic. Some believed that perhaps their lives would improve if they were forced to give up drinking altogether.
But the nation was by no means unified behind prohibition. Though enough states ratified the amendment to make it part of the Constitution, some states did not sign on, and in those parts of the country especially, federal agents had a difficult time enforcing prohibition. More importantly, it was obvious from the start that many otherwise upstanding citizens were willing to flout the law.
Prohibition got off to an ominous start. During the 1920 New Year’s celebration, over one hundred people were killed from drinking wood alcohol, a highly toxic alcohol made for industrial uses.
Bypassing the Law
On January 16, 1920, national prohibition took effect. Those who still wanted to imbibe, which was a large portion of the population, were already looking for ways around the law. For the wealthy, it was fairly easy — they bought up as much wine, beer, and spirits as they could while it was still legal and stored it in their cellars in preparation for the dry spell. Those who didn’t have access to such funds had to be a bit more creative.
Under prohibition, the manufacture of industrial alcohol for use in such products as paint was still legal, but it had to be denatured, or made undrinkable by the use of additives. During the early years of prohibition, diverted industrial alcohol was one of the major sources of illegal liquor. Bootleggers attempted to recover drinkable alcohol by removing the additives; they then added coloring and flavorings and sold it as gin or whiskey. The danger was that, in an attempt to cut corners or speed up the process, the additives would not all be removed, leaving the alcohol indigestible or even poisonous.
People also took advantage of other loopholes in the Eighteenth Amendment. Under the law, breweries were allowed to make beer, remove the alcohol content, and then sell it as "near beer." To replace the punch that the near beer had lost, speakeasy operators added grain alcohol, and the product was then known as "needled beer." One of the only segments of society allowed legal access to alcohol was doctors, who could prescribe it for medicinal purposes. Some doctors found it quite lucrative to write such prescriptions for their thirsty patients, though so-called "drugstore speakeasies" were not a major source of liquor.
As prohibition wore on, enterprising Americans became more adept at making their own beer, wine, and spirits. Illicit stills were already a part of life in the Appalachian Mountains, but during prohibition, those stills turned out more moonshine than ever before, with names such as "White Lightning" that hint at their potency. The process was cheap, quick, and easy to conceal in the rural countryside. Recipes for bathtub gin were also passed around, though most people actually mixed it in jugs rather than in their bathtubs.
Smugglers were the major suppliers of illegal alcohol, with two-thirds of their inventory coming from Canada. The long border between the United States and its neighbor to the north was impossible to seal, and bootleggers found it relatively easy to travel the back roads to pick up valuable Canadian whiskey. Until 1930, when the Canadian government began cracking down on smugglers, prohibition was a boon to that country’s economy.
The other third of smuggled alcohol came from the sea. Large vessels sailed to the Bahamas, the West Indies, and other islands loaded up with cases of liquor, and then sailed to an area just outside of American territorial waters off the coasts of big cities such as New York and Boston. Stationed in "Rum Row," they sold their contraband to bootleggers who pulled up in speedy motor boats and then zoomed off, hoping to dodge the Coast Guard. While many bootleggers regularly passed off low quality liquor as premium brands with the use of false labels, a smuggler named Bill McCoy was known for selling only genuine Scotch whiskey, imported from Nassau. His wares gave birth to the expression, "the real McCoy."
With so much bad liquor going around, access to a good, reliable bootlegger became a valuable asset and even a status symbol. When the wealthy wanted to drink socially, they could have quality liquor delivered to their homes to serve at cocktail parties. But most people could not afford such luxuries or safety. For the middle class and those seeking a little more excitement, there were speakeasies, usually tucked away in back rooms or basements of buildings. In 1929, there were an estimated thirty-two thousand speakeasies in New York City alone. The modest estimate for the entire country was 219,000. To gain entry, patrons had to make it past a guard stationed at the locked door who peered through a slot to check for recognizable faces or membership cards. The lure was not so much the expensive liquor and obviously not the mediocre food, but the atmosphere of forbidden fun. The famous speakeasy owner Texas Guinan was not far off when she greeted her customers with a call of "Hello, suckers!"
Nightclubs also flourished under prohibition. In addition to food and liquor, they offered entertainment, often including elaborate floor shows. Many nightclubs were run by gangsters who had enough influence that they didn’t have to fear being raided. An evening at a nightclub could be quite expensive. On the other end of the economic scale, the working class drank at illegal saloons known as blind pigs. The alcohol served there was not only cheap but often dangerous, and those who imbibed risked blindness or even death.
