Some notes on Prohibition on its centennial in Wyoming

We've been running some items on prohibition as we've run up to its centennial in the state.  In doing that, we noted some of the myths associated with it.  Indeed, we noted a bunch of them yesterday, so we'll re-post those here and fellow with a little additional commentary:

The movement to ban alcohol had been growing strength for years prior to World War One, inspired in no small part by the fact that the "Saloon Trade" was unregulated.  Widespread unregulated drinking was a huge social problem that had reached the point of disgusting a lot of people. There's only so many drunk seven year olds, basically, that you can take.

In addition to that, however, the Temperance Movement was boosted by the fact that it was a Progressive movement, and one of many.  Often missed in the story of any one movement is that movements tend to travel in packs, and indeed the limit of their success usually is the enactment of a bad idea into law that was travelling along with other movements that were good or better ideas. Then the reaction sets in.

The Laramie newspaper addressed the national law but, oddly, not the local one.

In this case, Prohibition oddly has a fairly straight line back to the mid 19th Century when the movement to abolish slavery reached full steam and ultimately success, albeit due to the Civil War.  Abolitionist typically had that as their focus, but some were generally fairly "progressive" in the modern context on other issues as well.  Quite a few of those individuals went right from the Abolitionist movement to the the issue of full franchise for women which, as we've seen, also just achieved success in 1919.

With those movements came also Temperance, which was thought of by many as being a generally a progressive platform.  As the country entered World War One it received a big boost for an interesting mix of reasons.

In contrast to nearby Laramie, Cheyenne's headlines featured Wyoming going dry.

One reason was that it consumed a lot of grain, and there was a genuine desire to conserve grains during the stretched wartime years.  That lead to the law that came into effect today, which brought distilling. . . and maybe brewing and vinting, illegal during the war.  Ironically the date that law came into effect was June 30, 1919.  I.e., the last legal day for hard alcohol nationwide, and maybe beer and wine, was this day.  July 1 was sort of dry.

Maybe.  As can be seen, the Federal government was having a hard time figuring out what the law actually applied to.

Sheridan, which like Cheyenne, had a military post claimed that Cheyenne had already depleted its stores of alcohol.

In addition to that, there was a visceral reaction to all things German, which beer was conceived of being, during the war and Prohibitionist took advantage of that to boost their cause.  As we've seen here earlier, there were a lot of accusations against brewers, some backed by Prohibitionist, claiming they were funded by or in league with the Germans.  The whole thing seems silly now, but it was front page news then. 

Indeed the war had the effect of actually effectively destroying German culture in the United States as many German institutions came to an abrupt end.  For many urban German Americans there had been a long tradition (as indeed their had been in England prior to the Reformation) of gathering after church for fellowship of one kind or another.  In rural areas that included such things as summertime shooting events of a special type, called a Schützenfest.  These events would feature shooting from special precision rifles, but also a fair amount of beer drinking.

Whimsical road sign in contemporary Germany put up for a From Wikipedia Creative Commons, with a special sign for a Schützenfest.  MalteFilmFan

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sign_-_Attention_%22Sch%C3%BCtzenfest%22_.jpg.  Use restricted in accordance with license.

While the tradition was just as strong, it might be noted, in the Irish American culture, the war did not impact the Irish culturally the same way. As part of the United Kingdom they were, of course, on the winning side of the war and, more importantly, on the same side as the United States, and they were also used to being a struggling minority.  It'd take economic success to really put a dent in Irish culture.

Compounding the story, quite a few Americans, and the United States was a more rural nation at the time with many more small communities that were more stable and less mobile than they are now, were horrified by the thought of their young men going over to booze drenched France, where they'd be confronted, they supposed, with gallons of wine and French women of questionable virtue.  That seems extreme, of course, and I'm putting it in that fashion clearly, but you can find examples of statements to just that effect.  One Wyoming legislator, for example, stated that he'd rather is boy die in France having never tasted alcohol than live on imbibing. 

World War One postcard that was part of a series on American soldiers in France.  This soldier is giving a ride on his horse to a French girl as two French villagers observe.  This is just what quite a few Americans feared was going to be going on while their sons were overseas. For what it's worth, the saddle on the horse is a M1917 packer's saddle, so this soldier is likely in the Quartermasters Corp, although not necessarily so.  Of note, he's wearing a watch.

Which takes us to the fact that this particular era was one of Evangelical Protestant revival.

Christianity has no prohibition on alcohol at all, and many of those ordering a draft at East Coast taverns on Sunday afternoons had no doubt been to Mass than morning, in the case of German and Irish Americans.  The concept that Christianity is antithetical to alcohol is a false one, although it very clear is opposed to drunkenness.  At any rate, some Evangelical Christians in the English speaking world saw alcohol as a prohibited substance and they accordingly were very much against it. As they were in the rise at the time, that contributed to the movement.

Another French postcard, one that most soldiers would have been ill advised to send home.  The French translation does not match the English, with the French one stating "We quickly get to know each other.".  By 1919, Americans had somewhat overcome their concern about French women, who were now entering the United States as war brides in large numbers.  Newspaper articles had gone from soldiers' reports about how they still looked back at the girl back home more favorably, to ones in which they were impressed with the French lasses, to reports of a lot of them coming home as the spouses of the troops.  Those women, of course, were coming from a culture in which wine made up a substantial portion of the average person's daily caloric intake to another which was now officially dry.

For this reason, even without the wartime act, alcohol was on its way out in the United States.  Many states had already banned it, and Wyoming was one of them.  This adds to the confusion of the headlines, however, as the local papers were following the national news on the wartime ban, and the local news on the arrival of state Prohibition.

And added to that was the passage of the Volstead Act, which we've just read about.  That act was to bring about the enforcement of the 20th Amendment to the United States Constitution, which was not self enacting.  It was only introduced in June of 1919, so the full Federal law on permanent Prohibition hadn't arrived.  Indeed, a person has to speculate on the extent to which the decision to enforce "wartime" Prohibition in 1919 was due to that fact. The wartime measure could have been viewed as a stopgap until the full law arrived.

What could we add to that?

Well, a couple of things.

For one thing, the press was solidly behind Prohibition.  Solidly.  It was a movement by 1918-19 and it had the absolute backing of the newspapers. 

It also had the absolute backing of nearly every politician, in most places, who was willing to say anything. By 1919 there weren't very many "wets".

And the success of Prohibition. . . in 1919. . . was seen as inevitable social progress by the classes that strongly believed in social progress.  Sure, some people somewhere were unhappy, but they'd fall in line.

All of this is significant in terms of a forgotten lesson. What you often hear about Prohibition is that its an example of how "you can't legislate morality" or that you can't impose an unpopular law on the majority of the nation.  It's not an example of either of those things.

It was hugely popular when it passed.  A minority of people opposed it. But that minority was a large minority and soon would grow in scale.. 

And that gives us the first lesson. At any one time people who believe that the success of any movement is assured are believing that in vain.  Inevitable progressions of history turn out not to be that.  Today, progressives argue for the legalization of new drugs as inevitable progress.  In 1919 the same class argued to ban alcohol and was even beginning to think about taking on caffeinated drinks at this point.  The "right" side of history in 1919 is now regarded as the wrong one.  Things aren't nearly as linear as they might seem.

And the second lesson is hinted at above.  Alcohol prior to 1919 was nearly completely unregulated. When it came back, it came back heavily regulated.  That's what actually addressed the underlying problems that most people worried about.  So Prohibition turned out to be a sort of a success in that fashion. And, as we've discussed here above, the health of the nation actually did improve during Prohibition, in spite of the myths to the contrary, so to the extent people had backed it for that reason, they weren't actually wrong.