The Role Of Prohibition In The 1920's

Ilan Timerman
Hartley Pawloski
English III Honors
8 March 2015
Prohibition: The National Experiment

In the 1920’s, a large experiment was conducted in the United States that had a great effect over the economy. The name of this experiment? The National Prohibition Act of 1920. In the “Roaring Twenties” people were not aware, or simply did not care about the consequences of alcohol abuse. People would party, dance and drink all night, the men drinking more than the women, as expected. Eventually, “men lost their jobs and neglected their families” (Avey, Tori). Domestic violence rates started to increase rapidly, causing several anti-alcohol institutions, many of which were institutes consisting of women, to link alcohol to increasing crime rates. The Prohibition act was then approved and officially came into effect in January 29th, 1920. But people did not stop drinking, buying liquor from criminal organizations, those which did not ensure sanitary policies: “Prohibition went into effect, the total deaths from adulterated liquor reached approximately 50,000, and there were many more cases of blindness and paralysis” (Digital History). Was the Prohibition act successful in improving overall health of the country’s citizens and decreasing
crime rates or was it an impulsive measurement that lead to catastrophic results? Instead of decreasing crime rates, the Prohibition act indirectly promoted and stimulated criminal activity and illegal alcohol production.
The overall population felt the absence of alcohol and began looking for alternative sources, while mobsters and several other organizations and individuals saw the opportunity of achieving the American Dream by selling illegal alcohol. Corruption spread among police officers, politicians and prohibition agents who accepted to receive bribes in exchange of secrecy. Prohibition was, according to a temperance advocate, “an orgy of lawlessness and official corruption” (Samuel W. Small). Prohibition did not only increase crime rates, opposing its original purpose: it also establish
corruption. Prohibition was also a major disaster health-relatedly. The adulterated alcohol contained a high percentage of Methanol, a type of alcohol that can cause blindness and paralysis when consumed in small doses, and is fatal if considerable amounts were ingested. Bootleggers and criminal organizations did not take any responsibility and did not follow guidelines to ensure the alcohol would not cause health problems. And as politicians and police officers were corrupted by greed, the population kept on buying and drinking what they would find out was their demise. What anti-alcohol reformers did not add to their equation when trying to prohibit alcohol was that “Alcohol sales created jobs and generated significant tax revenues” (Historic Patterson). Men were drinking more alcohol now than when it was legalized and were less productive due to the effects of the low quality alcohol, something that alarm company owners like Ford. Enforcement of the Prohibition was also proving to be very expensive, and both federal and local government were struggling to enforce the measure. The imprisonment of 17,000 people in New York also had a huge social impact, and a worst economic impact, as each detent had a yearly cost of one hundred and sixty eight thousand dollars. Courts were overrun by cases and had to create new measures to try to enforce Prohibition. At some point, the Hutchins Bureau of Investigation’s payment was ceased due to “not enough founds” in the local government’s bank account. “it was obvious that the measure was a failure” (Historic Patterson).