Read Online Prohibition: Thirteen Years That Changed America by Edward Behr - Free Book Online
Authors: Edward Behr
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individual eccentrics: society was becoming more organized, more complicated, and vested interests, on both sides, more formidable. Both the Prohibition activists and their bitterest enemies, the brewers and distillers, became increasingly institutionalized, increasingly manipulative.
The Prohibitionists’ object now was not so much public opinion as the fluctuating mass of constantly wavering, opportunistic or blatantly corrupt politicians. It would be unfair to dismiss all of them as puppets in the hands of powerful vested interests. But the stakes were high, the temptations often irresistible. Most surprising of all, in retrospect, was the intensity of the battle: although Temperance issues became important in Europe, they never affected the political mainstream, except, briefly, perhaps, in Scotland and Scandinavia. In America, from 1810 on, Prohibition became a hugelyimportant political issue, and would remain so for the next 130 years.
Prohibition illuminated the fundamental differences in political agendas on opposite sides of the Atlantic. To Europeans, the American obsession with Prohibition was — and remains — difficult to understand. European issues were very different. The failed Revolutions of 1848, the Paris Commune of 1871, the violent anarchist movements, the Marxist-Leninist explosion and the spread of communism, and the rise of fascism in the 1920s and 1930s: these were the seminal issues of the 1810-1933 period. Ironically, even America’s most militant labor unions, which took their ideological cue from European events, found themselves caught up in the Prohibition dispute. At first, the only well-organized Prohibition lobby was Frances E. Willard’s WCTU. Its impact, on as yet unenfranchised American women, and on all children going to Sunday schools, was huge. But the very cloistered, housewifely constraints imposed on them compelled the WCTU to strike out in many different directions. With American women enthusiastically embracing every worthy cause, from prison reform to adult education for growing numbers of foreign-born illiterates, the WCTU was compelled to extend its activities, inevitably diluting its strength with the pursuit of too many good causes. Its Department of Social Purity campaigned against prostitution and the white slave trade; the Department for the Suppression of Social Evil was intent on proving that alcohol was the cause of all major crime; and the Department of Unfermented Wine lobbied for the use of the unfermented grape in church services. The name Department for Inducing Corporations to Require Total Abstinence on Their Employees speaks for itself.
The WCTU was predominantly middle class. Its members were largely the wives of doctors, lawyers, merchants, and wealthy farmers. They wanted to better the working class economically, socially, and morally — even against its wish and inclination. They had plans (which, predictably, failed) to replace the hated saloon by the innocuous coffeehouse — a typically paternalistic, middle-class ambition that showed how out of touch they were with the working class.
There were a few working-class Prohibitionists, in a handful of trade unions, but they were mostly left-wingers who wanted to educate the workers politically and found that the lure of the saloon interfered with their indoctrination attempts. The International Workers of the World (IWW) did later claim that “the capitalists use saloons to tranquilize and humiliate the proletariate,” but working-class Americans showed no signs that they were averse to such humiliation. 1
Almost as worthy a cause, to WCTU members, as Prohibition was women’s suffrage, and this proved a double-edged, confusing issue, for not all Prohibitionists were in favor of the vote for women, and anti-Prohibitionists were overwhelmingly against it. The Women’s War triggered a fundamental change in attitudes. While it was at its height, an anonymous suffragist wrote in a letter to the New
The Prohibitionists’ object now was not so much public opinion as the fluctuating mass of constantly wavering, opportunistic or blatantly corrupt politicians. It would be unfair to dismiss all of them as puppets in the hands of powerful vested interests. But the stakes were high, the temptations often irresistible. Most surprising of all, in retrospect, was the intensity of the battle: although Temperance issues became important in Europe, they never affected the political mainstream, except, briefly, perhaps, in Scotland and Scandinavia. In America, from 1810 on, Prohibition became a hugelyimportant political issue, and would remain so for the next 130 years.
Prohibition illuminated the fundamental differences in political agendas on opposite sides of the Atlantic. To Europeans, the American obsession with Prohibition was — and remains — difficult to understand. European issues were very different. The failed Revolutions of 1848, the Paris Commune of 1871, the violent anarchist movements, the Marxist-Leninist explosion and the spread of communism, and the rise of fascism in the 1920s and 1930s: these were the seminal issues of the 1810-1933 period. Ironically, even America’s most militant labor unions, which took their ideological cue from European events, found themselves caught up in the Prohibition dispute. At first, the only well-organized Prohibition lobby was Frances E. Willard’s WCTU. Its impact, on as yet unenfranchised American women, and on all children going to Sunday schools, was huge. But the very cloistered, housewifely constraints imposed on them compelled the WCTU to strike out in many different directions. With American women enthusiastically embracing every worthy cause, from prison reform to adult education for growing numbers of foreign-born illiterates, the WCTU was compelled to extend its activities, inevitably diluting its strength with the pursuit of too many good causes. Its Department of Social Purity campaigned against prostitution and the white slave trade; the Department for the Suppression of Social Evil was intent on proving that alcohol was the cause of all major crime; and the Department of Unfermented Wine lobbied for the use of the unfermented grape in church services. The name Department for Inducing Corporations to Require Total Abstinence on Their Employees speaks for itself.
The WCTU was predominantly middle class. Its members were largely the wives of doctors, lawyers, merchants, and wealthy farmers. They wanted to better the working class economically, socially, and morally — even against its wish and inclination. They had plans (which, predictably, failed) to replace the hated saloon by the innocuous coffeehouse — a typically paternalistic, middle-class ambition that showed how out of touch they were with the working class.
There were a few working-class Prohibitionists, in a handful of trade unions, but they were mostly left-wingers who wanted to educate the workers politically and found that the lure of the saloon interfered with their indoctrination attempts. The International Workers of the World (IWW) did later claim that “the capitalists use saloons to tranquilize and humiliate the proletariate,” but working-class Americans showed no signs that they were averse to such humiliation. 1
Almost as worthy a cause, to WCTU members, as Prohibition was women’s suffrage, and this proved a double-edged, confusing issue, for not all Prohibitionists were in favor of the vote for women, and anti-Prohibitionists were overwhelmingly against it. The Women’s War triggered a fundamental change in attitudes. While it was at its height, an anonymous suffragist wrote in a letter to the New
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