On January 16th in the Year of 1920, One Year after it’s ratification, the 18th Amendment to the Constitution, prohibiting the sale of alcoholic beverages, went into effect.
It’s also known as Dry Law. This Torturous Law lasted from 1920 to 1933. It was Prohibited to Manufacture, Transport, Import, Export and ,of course, to sell any Alcoholic Beverages in the United States.
The prohibition or “dry” movement began in the 1840s, spearheaded by pietistic religious denominations, especially the Methodists. Some success were registered in the 1850s, including Maine’s total ban on the manufacture and sale of liquor, adopted in 1851. However, the movement soon lost strength. It revived in the 1880s, with the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union and the Prohibition Party. In 1881, Kansas became the first state to outlaw alcoholic beverages in its Constitution, with Carry Nation gaining noteriety for enforcing the Kansas law with a hatchet. After 1900 many other states, especially in the South, enacted prohibition, along with many counties. Hostility to saloons and their political influence was characteristic of the Progressive Era. Supported by the anti-German mood of World War I, the Anti-Saloon League, working with both major parties, pushed the Constitutional amendment through Congress and the states, taking effect in 1920.
Prohibition was an important force in state and local politics from the 1840s through the 1930s. The political forces involved were ethnoreligious in character, as demonstrated by numerous historical studies.[1] Prohibition was demanded by the “dries”—primarily pietistic Protestant denominations, especially the Methodists, Northern Baptists, Southern Baptists, Presbyterians, Disciples, Congregationalists, Quakers, and Scandinavian Lutherans. They identified saloons as politically corrupt, and drinking as a personal sin. They were opposed by the “wets”—primarily liturgical Protestants (Episcopalians, German Lutherans) and Roman Catholics, who denounced the idea that the government should define morality. from Wikipedia about ” Prohibition in the United States”
The Prohibition got Repealed in 1933 with the Ratification of the 21 Amendment on December 5th 1933.This was the first and only time in U.S. history that an Amendment has been repealed.
Did you all know that Presidents John F. Kennedy’s Father, Joseph Kennedy, made most of his Fortune by smuggling Alcohol from Canada to the United States in the Prohibition Era?
I’m sure everybody has heard of Al Capone before?
Capone was notorious during the Era of the Prohibition for his control of large portions of the Chicago underworld and his bitter rivalries with North Side gangsters such as Deanie O’Banion and Bugs Moran. The Capone organization was making a great deal of money from illegal prostitution and alcohol (some estimates were that between 1925 and 1930 it was grossing $100 million a year).
