Prohibition: Thirteen Years That Changed America (12 page)

Wheeler had discovered a rich propaganda lode and was intent on exploiting it to fullest advantage. During the war, the Prohibition cause advanced hand-in-hand with the growing wave of anti-German sentiment, and largely because of the ASL propaganda machine, anti-German hysteria did not come to an end with the Armistice but persisted in one form or another until the very end of Prohibition. In 1923, five years after the end of the war, an ASL-inspired Senate Judiciary Committee would begin hearings on “brewing and liquor interests and German and Bolshevik propaganda.” It prefigured McCarthyism in action: nothing in its findings justified its title, for the only evidence Senate investigators could produce was that most breweries had contributed to various German-American associations throughout the country. There was absolutely no evidence they
had financed anti-American propaganda in wartime, and the very idea that the overwhelmingly Protestant, conservative German-American brewery-owning families might be Bolshevik dupes or stalking-horses was so ridiculous that the subject was not even brought up during the proceedings.

The ASL’s finest hour, in the pre-Prohibition period, came with the Worldwide Prohibition Congress, held in Columbus, Ohio, in November of 1918, only a few days after the Armistice. By this time it was clear to all that nationwide Prohibition was unstoppable. The only point at issue was when it would finally be voted in by a three-fourths majority of state votes — some observers convinced that this would happen within a year and others that the states’ response would be unanimously favorable.

Representatives from all over the world attended, though, reflecting the moral as well as imperial colonialism of the times, the Indian and Chinese delegations to the Congress supposed to represent their countries consisted exclusively of American missionaries. The ASL literature distributed to delegates made somewhat inflated claims: among countries “with Prohibition” figured “300 million people, or one sixth of the world’s population.” These included not only Canada and Iceland, Greenland and the Faroes (the latter not really sovereign countries), but Rumania and even Russia (with the cautionary asterisk: prior to 1914). “It is significant,” the ASL report added, “that they are all Christian nations.” Countries with “partial prohibition” included Denmark, Sweden, Australia, New Zealand, and Scotland, and a special mention was made of France, Belgium, Switzerland, and Italy, “which outlawed absinthe.” Despite the bias in favor of Christianity, countries “under the influence of so-called Prohibition religions” were China, Manchuria, Japan, India, Persia, Afghanistan, Turkey, Arabia, and some parts of North Africa and Asia, whereas there was “nominal prohibition” in Africa. Liquor was “regulated” (and taxed) “in Britain, France, Germany, Austria, Hungary, Italy, Switzerland, Belgium, Holland, Spain, Portugal and their colonial possessions.”

Delegate after delegate rejoiced in (usually mercifully short) emotional addresses. The tone was set by James A. White, superintendent of the Ohio ASL (the state that witnessed the initial Oberlin College conferences that brought it into being in the first place): “God has wrought wonders in Ohio!” he proclaimed. The Reverend Sam Small,
D.D., a favorite keynote speaker, indulged in the type of oratory that had been popular in the past, but was largely irrelevant now that the United States was on the verge of nationwide Prohibition: “From the Great Lakes to the Gulf a militant majority of American people are crucifying that beastly, bloated bastard of Beelzebub, the liquor traffic. . . . Yet a few months more, and we will bury the putrid corpse of John Barleycorn.”

William Jennings Bryan, the former Secretary of State and Democratic veteran — who a year later would suffer considerable embarrassment with the press revelation that he had long been on the ASL payroll (at a stipend of $11,000 a year) — intervened twice, at considerable length. By now a somewhat passé figurehead who had never recovered from his policy differences with the ASL (until he was overruled by Wheeler and the majority of his party, he had systematically opposed the ASL’s “nonpolitical” policy and insisted that Prohibition should remain an exclusively Democratic issue), Bryan could not resist a sly dig at Republicans. He told the conference:

I have a joy as a citizen and I have a joy the Democrat has, which is more than any Republican can possibly have. Now the fight is almost over, a prediction: we will have prohibition by universal assent! [He was as wrong about that, as he was about ASL nonpartisan strategy.] Is the fight ended? No. We must give the people an understanding of what alcohol means, so that back of these laws we will have a total abstinence nation and boys and girls will be taught that alcohol is a poison, for after we have won this victory, it will have to be guarded by eternal vigilance.

He did, however, accurately reflect the ASL’s new internationalist militancy: in the light of its amazing successes of the last few years, it was now imperative “to export the gift of Prohibition to other countries, turning the whole world dry.” In a tub-thumping speech (that fully endorsed H. L. Mencken’s comment about him that “He was born with a roaring voice, and it had the trick of inflaming half-wits”) he urged his fellow Prohibitionists to conquer even more distant goals.

We must turn our energies to other countries until the whole world is brought to understand that alcohol is man’s greatest enemy. Thus it is a fortunate thing that the abdication of the Kaiser and the fall of
arbitrary power came in the same year as does the fall of the brewery autocracy and that these two evils came down together. . . . Now we can go out for the evangelization of the world on the subject of intoxicating liquor.

His call was taken up by Ernest Cherrington, the ASL’s president, who stigmatized “the power of the French Bourse” as an “important factor in the propagation and protection of the wine industry and traffic.” He continued: “Our imperative demands are not limited to the [Versailles] Peace Conference. The important need for temperance reform must be recognized in the reconstruction program of the several nations of Europe.”

What he then outlined was no less than a blueprint “for universal, world-wide prohibition . . . for now is the psychological time to strike.” With considerable naiveté, the final resolutions of the conference reflected this missionary zeal.

“The time has come,” they read, “for the formation of an international league for the extermination of the beverage traffic throughout the world.” ASL field agents were to be stationed abroad and there was to be an international Prohibition press association, “with the launching of a prohibition periodical with a worldwide editorial policy.”

The ASL was also mandated to “get in touch with American Consulates to bring directly to the attention of official foreign representatives of the U.S. government the facts as to the success and benefits of prohibition in the U.S.” The ASL also pledged financial assistance to foreign temperance movements and announced that ASL lobbyists would attend the forthcoming Versailles Peace Conference.

It all reflected a new arrogance. American entry into the war had made it a world power, and the ASL delegates naively assumed that their all-powerful lobby could impose their views not only on vote-hungry American politicians but on the rest of the world. The Conference unanimously called on the governments of Great Britain and France to “issue an order prohibiting the sale of intoxicants to American soldiers and sailors in uniform. . . . We insist there should be no hesitation and no delay in issuing this order, for prompt action will prevent the formation of the wine drinking habit by our soldiers and sailors.” Wheeler himself, always a political realist, doubtless knew what
the Allies’ answer would be, and there is no trace of an official follow-up. But with Prohibition a virtual certainty in the near future, the ASL showed it really believed — in the words of the communist hymn, the “Internationale” — that in a short space of time, Prohibition was fated to be the destiny of mankind, “Sera le genre humain.”

P
rohibition turned Andrew J. Volstead, an otherwise obscure Republican congressman from Minnesota, into a household name. It was commonly assumed that because the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution introducing nationwide Prohibition bore his name it was largely his doing. In fact, Volstead was its facilitator rather than its architect. Wheeler himself, as he would later boast, conceived, drafted, and copiously rewrote it. Its many weaknesses, and omissions, are largely attributable to him.

Volstead, a dour Lutheran of Norwegian origin, with a huge bristling mustache, was not even part of the hard core of dry advocates in Congress and, in his long political career, had never used the Prohibition platform as part of his election campaign strategy. On two occasions, his unsuccessful challengers to his House of Representatives seat had even been Prohibition candidates. As county prosecutor in his earlier days, he had prosecuted many cases involving illicit liquor because Minnesota had been a dry state long before 1917, but he had done so routinely, with no dogmatic belief in Prohibition’s inherent virtues. It was in this same spirit, as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee,
that he oversaw its passage, after the Supreme Court had narrowly (by five votes to four) validated its constitutionality.

Introduced on May 27, 1919, the bill was passed (255 to 166) after a three-month debate. The Senate vote followed on September 5, and, as part of routine procedure, it then went back to the House, to be adopted on October 10 by 321 to 70 votes. An already desperately ill President Wilson, further weakened by his losing fight to keep America within the League of Nations, vetoed it, on both constitutional and ethical grounds. “In all matters having to do with personal habits and customs of large numbers of our people,” he wrote, “we must be certain that the established processes of legal change are followed.” But that same day, the veto was overridden in Congress, and the act became law. Henceforth, the act determined, “No person shall manufacture, sell, barter, transport, import, export, deliver, furnish or possess any intoxicating liquor except as authorized in this act.” The act replaced all previous dry legislation measures in force in the various states.

On the face of it, the Volstead Act was both all-encompassing and foolproof, though it did contain specific exemptions — regarding industrial alcohol, sacramental wine, certain patent medicines, doctors’ prescriptions (but no more than a pint at a time per patient within a ten-day period), toilet preparations, flavoring extracts, syrups, vinegar, and cider. Brewers could remain in business provided they confined themselves to making “near-beer,” with a maximum 0.5 percent alcohol content. Penalties for improper use were to be fines and prison terms — $1,000 or 30 days for the first offense, rising to $10,000 and a year for further convictions.

The act also banned liquor advertising, and the use or sale of anything that might lead to its manufacture. “Any room, house, building, boat, vehicle, structure or place where intoxicating liquor is manufactured, sold, kept or bartered in violation of this tide ... is hereby declared a common nuisance,” it said, outlining the scale of fines and jail sentences for transgressors. Liquor stored for sale or vehicles used for transport were to be seized and destroyed. But the act was mute concerning the actual consumption of liquor in private homes — the one concession to individual liberty. The day before Prohibition came into effect, the New York
Daily News
gave its readers the following invaluable advice:

You may drink intoxicating liquor in your own home or in the home of a friend when you are a bona fide guest.

You may buy intoxicating liquor on a bona fide medical prescription of a doctor. A pint can be bought every ten days.

You may consider any place you live permanently as your home. If you have more than one home, you may keep a stock of liquor in each.

You may keep liquor in any storage room or club locker, provided the storage place is for the exclusive use of yourself, family or bona fide friends.

You may get a permit to move liquor when you change your residence.

You may manufacture, sell or transport liquor for non-beverage or sacramental purposes provided you obtain a Government permit.

You cannot carry a hip flask.

You cannot give away or receive a bottle of liquor as a gift.

You cannot take liquor to hotels or restaurants and drink it in the public dining rooms.

You cannot buy or sell formulas or recipes for homemade liquors.

You cannot ship liquor for beverage use.

You cannot manufacture anything above one half of one percent (liquor strength) in your home.

You cannot store liquor in any place except your own home.

You cannot display liquor signs or advertisements on your premises.

You cannot remove reserve stocks from storage.

In retrospect, the Volstead Act was hopelessly inadequate, because it grossly underestimated the willingness of the lawbreakers to risk conviction, the degree of human ingenuity displayed to get around its provisions, and the ease with which the lawbreakers would be able to subvert all those whose job was to enforce it. Above all, its failure resulted from a naive American belief in the effectiveness of law: the drys, whether ASL or church activists, politicians, law enforcers, or simply individuals of strong moral convictions, were convinced that Americans, as law-abiding citizens intensely respectful of established authority, would obey the provisions of the Volstead Act, even if, as drinkers and as advocates of personal, individual liberty, they deeply resented it.