Prohibition

[L. prohibitio: cf. F. prohibition.]

1. The act of prohibiting; a declaration or injunction forbidding some action; interdict.

The law of God, in the ten commandments, consists mostly of prohibitions.

2. Specifically, the forbidding by law of the sale of alcoholic liquors as beverages.

Writ of prohibition (Law), a writ issued by a superior tribunal, directed to an inferior court, commanding the latter to cease from the prosecution of a suit depending before it. Blackstone.

Note: By ellipsis, prohibition is used for the writ itself.

Prohibition has lurked in the English language since the fourteenth century, when it was borrowed from the French of the ruling classes and law courts. But until modern times it was a rare word, confined for the most part to legal documents. So was the related verb prohibit; most English speakers preferred the Anglo-Saxon forbid. Shakespeare uses both prohibit and prohibition only once, the King James Bible not at all. They are forbidden territory.

A reform movement in mid-nineteenth-century America changed all that. The temperance movement borrowed prohibition from lawyers and legislators as a one-word summary of its goal: to pass laws that would rid the country of alcoholic beverages. So, for example, the 1851 annual report of the American Temperance Union declared, "The State of Vermont has struggled arduously to arrive at the summit level of entire prohibition."

Temperance, misleadingly, hinted at compromise, implying that moderate drinking was the desired end, as Benjamin Franklin had stated for the virtue of Temperance: "Eat not to Dulness. Drink not to elevation." But the movement wanted total abstinence, and it needed absolute language to make its goal clear. Here it must have been influenced by the antislavery movement, which often involved the same individuals. Abolition (1787) was the word chosen to conjure the end of slavery. If abolition had not already been adopted for that purpose, it could have been used against alcohol; then again, if it had not been in use against slavery, those against alcohol might never have thought to adopt a word ending in -tion. By its similar sound prohibition echoes abolition's ring of absolute war against evil.

The battle over prohibition intensified during the remainder of the nineteenth century and the early part of the twentieth. By 1919, if alcohol was not on the tip of everyone's tongue, prohibition was, with the passage of the Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. It inaugurated the "noble experiment" that lasted thirteen years, till the Twenty-First Amendment undid it officially, as bootleggers and gangsters had undone it already. Those events of the early twentieth century made Prohibition the word for a dry moment of American history.

For more information on Prohibition, visit Britannica.com.

Prohibition was a tool to which temperance reformers repeatedly turned during more than a century's efforts to change American drinking habits. The first attempts to ban alcohol consumption through government action appeared on the local and state levels during the 1830s. Local prohibition has flourished on and off ever since.

During the early 1850s, twelve states and territories followed the example of Maine by enacting statewide prohibition laws. Most of these, however, were struck down by the courts or repealed. After the Civil War, new organizations were formed to advance the prohibition cause: the Prohibition Party (1869), the Woman's Christian Temperance Union (1874), and the Anti-Saloon League (1893). During the early years of the twentieth century, many localities and states adopted prohibition. During the same period, per capita alcohol consumption rose, buoyed by the rising popularity of beer, which increasingly replaced distilled liquor in American drinking preferences. Rising consumption had two results. On one hand, it motivated prohibitionists to focus their efforts toward a national solution to a problem they perceived as intensifying. On the other hand, it persuaded brewers, who had previously cooperated politically with distillers, that their beverage enjoyed enough popular support to be spared by a federal prohibition law, and thus disrupted the liquor-industry coalition. The Anti-Saloon League's nonpartisan lobbying and balance-of-power approach was rewarded in 1916 by the election of a dry Congress, which approved a proposed prohibition constitutional amendment in December 1917. Three-quarters of state legislatures ratified within the next thirteen months, and national Prohibition came into force one year later, on 16 January 1920. World War I contributed to Prohibition's triumph by eliciting a spirit of sacrifice, restricting liquor production and sales, and discrediting German American antiprohibitionists, but most states ratified after the war's end.

The Eighteenth Amendment prohibited the manufacture, sale, transportation, importation, and exportation of intoxicating beverages and called for concurrent enforcement by the state and federal governments. The amendment's federal enforcement legislation, the Volstead Act, defined "intoxicating" as one-half of 1 percent alcohol by volume. Personal possession and consumption were therefore not proscribed, but Prohibition encompassed a wider range of alcoholic beverages than most Americans had expected. At the same time, the mechanics of concurrent state and federal enforcement were left vague. Prohibition's impact varied among beverage types and social classes. Beer, predominantly the drink of the urban working class, suffered most, and the more easily transported distilled liquors regained a larger place in American drinking patterns. Nevertheless, per capita alcohol consumption declined from its pre-Prohibition peak. Enforcement created political problems, both when it worked, by flooding courts and jails, and when it did not, as speakeasies replaced urban saloons. Federal support for enforcement was inadequate, and federal-state cooperation was consistently problematic. Nevertheless, Prohibition retained considerable popular support until the onset of the Great Depression in 1929.

Leadership for the antiprohibitionist cause was provided during the 1920s by the Association Against the Prohibition Amendment, an upper-class lobby formed in 1918, but its ideological arguments, based upon opposition to centralized federal power, held little popular appeal. Mass support came late in the decade, primarily from the Women's Organization for National Prohibition Reform, led by upper-class women. The needs of the depression produced powerful new arguments for repeal, to generate liquor-industry jobs and government tax revenue. The Democratic Party became repeal's political instrument. After the Democrats' overwhelming victory in 1932, Congress submitted to the states a new constitutional amendment repealing the Eighteenth, and within ten months elected state conventions had ratified the Twenty-first Amendment. The states resumed primary responsibility for liquor control. A few states retained their prohibition laws after federal repeal; the last, Mississippi, abandoned its law in 1966. Per capita alcohol consumption did not regain the level of the pre-Prohibition years until the 1960s.

Bibliography

Blocker, Jack S., Jr. American Temperance Movements: Cycles of Reform. Boston: Twayne, 1989.

Kerr, K. Austin. Organized for Prohibition: A New History of the Anti-Saloon League. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1985.

Kyvig, David E.. Repealing National Prohibition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979.

Pegram, Thomas R. Battling Demon Rum: The Struggle for a Dry America, 1800–1933. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1998.

The popular name for the period in U.S. history from 1920 to 1933 when the manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages were illegal.

From 1920 to 1933 the manufacture and sale of intoxicating liquors were illegal in the United States. The Eighteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution authorized Congress to prohibit alcoholic beverages, and the Twenty-first Amendment repealed this prohibition. The era of Prohibition was marked by large-scale smuggling and illegal sales of liquor, the growth of organized crime, and increased restriction on personal freedom.

The prohibition movement began in the 1820s in the wake of a revival of Protestantism, which viewed the consumption of alcohol as sinful and a destructive force in society. Maine passed the first state prohibition law in 1846, and other states followed in the years before the Civil War.

The Prohibition party was founded in 1869, with a ban on the manufacture and sale of intoxicating liquor its only campaign goal. This party, like most temperance groups, derived its support from rural and small-town voters associated with Protestant evangelical churches. The Prohibition party reached it zenith in 1892 when its candidate for president polled 2.2 percent of the popular vote. The party soon went into decline, and though it still exists, it works mainly at the local level.

The impetus for the Eighteenth Amendment can be traced to the Anti-Saloon League, which was established in 1893. The league worked to enact state prohibition laws and had great success between 1906 and 1913. By the time national prohibition took effect in January 1920, thirty-three states (63 percent of the total population) had prohibited intoxicating liquors.

The league and other prohibition groups were opposed to the consumption of alcohol for a variety of reasons. Some associated alcohol with the rising number of aliens entering the country, many of whom were Roman Catholic. This anti-alien, anti-Catholic prejudice was coupled with a fear of increasingly larger urban areas by the rural-dominated prohibition supporters. Saloons and other public drinking establishments were also associated with prostitution and gambling. Finally, some employers endorsed prohibition as a means of reducing industrial accidents and increasing the efficiency of workers.

When the United States entered World War I in 1917, Congress prohibited the manufacture and importation of distilled liquor in order to aid the war effort. It also authorized the president to lower the alcoholic content of beer and wine and to restrict or forbid their manufacture.

A movement began to support elimination of intoxicating liquors by constitutional amendment. In 1917 Congress passed the Prohibition amendment and submitted it to the states for ratification. The rural-dominated state legislatures made ratification a foregone conclusion, and the Eighteenth Amendment was ratified on January 29, 1919. Congress enacted the Volstead Act, officially known as the National Prohibition Act (41 Stat. 305 [1919]) to enforce the amendment, which became effective on January 29, 1920.

Prohibition proved most effective in small towns and rural areas. Compliance was much more difficult in urban areas, where illegal suppliers quickly found a large demand for alcohol. Cities had large immigrant populations that did not see anything morally wrong with consuming alcohol. The rise of "bootlegging" (the illegal manufacture, distribution, and sale of intoxicating liquor) by organized crime proved to be one of the unintended consequences of Prohibition.

Besides the illegal importation, manufacture, distribution, and sale of intoxicating liquors by organized crime, millions of persons evaded Prohibition by consuming "medicinal" whiskey that was sold in drugstores on real or forged prescriptions. Many U.S. industries used denatured alcohol, which was treated with noxious chemicals to make it unfit for human consumption. Nevertheless, methods were found to remove these chemicals, add water and a small amount of liquor for flavor, and sell the mixture to illegal bars, called speakeasies, or to individual customers. Finally, many persons resorted to making their own liquor from corn. This type of product could be dangerously impure and cause blindness, paralysis, and death.

The prohibition movement lost political strength in the 1920s. The stock market crash of 1929 and the resulting Great Depression of the 1930s further changed the political climate. Critics of Prohibition argued that the rise of criminal production and sale of alcohol made the legal ban ineffective. In addition, the general public's patronage of speakeasies bred disrespect for law and government. Finally, critics argued that legalizing the manufacture and sale of alcohol would stimulate the economy and provide desperately needed jobs.

In 1932 the Democratic party adopted a platform plank at its national convention calling for repeal. The landslide Democratic victory of 1932 signaled the end of Prohibition. The February 1933 resolution proposing the Twenty-first Amendment contained a provision requiring ratification by state conventions rather than state legislatures. This provision was included to prevent rural-dominated legislatures, which still supported Prohibition, from defeating the amendment.

The state ratification conventions quickly endorsed the amendment, with ratification of the Twenty-first Amendment coming on December 5, 1933. The amendment did allow prohibition by the states. A few states continued statewide prohibition, but by 1966 all states had repealed these provisions. Liquor in the United States is now controlled at the local level. Counties that prohibit the sale of alcohol are known as dry counties, and counties that allow the sale of alcohol are known as wet counties.

See: Capone, Alphonse; Temperance movement.

In January 1920, the U.S. Federal Prohibition Law was enacted through the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution. This law prohibited the manufacture, transportation, or sale of alcoholic beverages. It wasn't until almost 14 years later, in December 1933, that Prohibition was repealed by the Twenty-First Amendment. During Prohibition, certain activities were sanctioned, including home winemaking and wineries being allowed to make sacramental wines. During this period, wine consumption actually increased. Many wineries did not survive Prohibition, however. Those that did had converted their vineyards from high-quality wine grapes to varieties like thompson seedless (which could be used for table grapes, raisins, or very ordi­nary wines) or alicante bouschet (which could survive the cross-country trip for home winemakers in the east). As the close of Pro­hibition drew near, resourceful wineries stockpiled wines and had ample stocks to sell a thirsty nation. The conversion of vineyards back to high-quality grapes happened slowly over the next several decades.

The outlawing of alcoholic beverages nationwide from 1920 to 1933, under an amendment to the Constitution. The amendment, enforced by the Volstead Act, was repealed by another amendment to the Constitution in 1933.

Quotes:

"Prohibition will work great injury to the cause of temperance. It is a species of intemperance within itself, for it goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control a man's appetite by legislation, and makes a crime out of things that are not crimes. A Prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded." - Abraham Lincoln

"Whether or not the world would be vastly benefited by a total banishment from it of all intoxicating drinks seems not now an open question. Three-fourths of mankind confess the affirmative with their tongues, and I believe all the rest acknowledge it in their hearts." - Abraham Lincoln

"prohibition makes you want to cry into your beer and denies you the beer to cry into" - Don Marquis

"The prohibition law, written for weaklings and derelicts, has divided the nation, like Gaul, into three parts -- wets, drys, and hypocrites." - Florence Sabin

Common misspelling(s) of prohibition

• prohabition