Both were products of "Prohibition", established to outlaw the production, sale, and transport of "intoxicating liquors" (alcoholic products and beverages) by the 18th Amendme
…nt to the United States Constitution (ratification certified 16 January 1919; the amendment took effect 17 January 1920). The enforcement of Prohibition was provided for by Congress via the National Prohibition Act (hence the name Prohibition); the Act was also known as the "Volstead Act" in reference to Andrew Volstead, Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, who managed the legislation's progress through Congress. Prohibition spawned "speakeasies", or illegal drinking establishments, and "bootleggers", or providers of illicit alcohol products, in great numbers throughout the country. These were both a reaction to the continued demand for alcohol by a large majority of the citizenry despite any legal prohibition to the contrary, and represented some of the most visible of the many entrepreneurial business efforts to supply said demand. The widespread disregard for this law of the land ("speakeasies" proliferated in virtually every city, town, and village in the country, while "bootleggers" were even more widespread, and large-scale such operations spawned much of the great potency of---as well as the establishment of much of the initial funding enjoyed by---organized crime organizations; some of the same criminal organizations whose rise was rooted in Prohibition continue to plague America to the present day) and the total lack of success in the objectives of Prohibition resulted in even some of it's most ardent supporters calling for it's repeal. In what remains the only instance of a Constitutional Amendment being reversed, Prohibition was repealed by the 21st Amendment (ratified 5 March 1933). (MORE)