Prohibition Repealed!

And then, they all died alone...

DATELINE: December 5, 1933: 75 years ago on this date, the 21st amendment to the Constitution of the United States was ratified- the eighteenth article of the Constitution was hereby repealed and the noble experiment known as prohibition was no more. Personally, we here at The Belly think that this should be a national holiday (a “shit face day” as comedian Kevin King would put it). Prof. David Hanson rounded up a few fun facts in honor of the 21st amendment.

•So convinced were they that alcohol was the cause of virtually all crime that, on the eve of Prohibition, some towns actually sold their jails.

•During the early 1800’s, temperance societies offered two pledge options: moderation in drinking or total abstinence. After those who pledged the preferred total abstinence began writing “T.A.” on their pledge cards, they became known as “teetotalers.”

•Early temperance writers often insisted that because of their high blood alcohol content, “habitual drunkards” could spontaneously combust and burn to death from inside.

•One temperance “scientific authority” implied that inhaling alcohol vapors might lead to defective offspring for at least three generations.

•Because the temperance movement taught that drinking alcohol was sinful, it was forced to confront the contrary fact that Jesus drank wine. Its solution was to insist that Jesus drank grape juice rather than wine.

•During Prohibition, temperance activists hired a scholar to rewrite the Bible by removing all references to alcohol beverage.

•Bill McCoy was a bootlegger well known for selling quality imported goods: the original “real McCoy.”

•A major prohibitionist group, the Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) taught as “scientific fact” that the majority of beer drinkers die from dropsy (An unnatural collection of fluid in any cavity of the body).

•”Bathtub gin” got its name from the fact that alcohol, glycerine and juniper juice was mixed in bottles or jugs too tall to be filled with water from a sink tap so they were commonly filled under a bathtub tap.

•The speakeasy got its name because one had to whisper a code word or name through a slot in a locked door to gain admittance.

•Prohibition led to widespread disrespect for law. New York City alone had about thirty thousand (yes, 30,000) speakeasies. And even public leaders flaunted their disregard for the law. They included the Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, who owned and operated an illegal still.

•Some desperate and unfortunate people during Prohibition falsely believed that the undrinkable alcohol in antifreeze could be made safe and drinkable by filtering it through a loaf of bread. It couldn’t and many were seriously injured or killed as a result.

•In Los Angeles, a jury that had heard a bootlegging case was itself put on trial after it drank the evidence. The jurors argued in their defense that they had simply been sampling the evidence to determine whether or not it contained alcohol, which they determined it did. However, because they consumed the evidence, the defendant charged with bootlegging had to be acquitted.

•National Prohibition not only failed to prevent the consumption of alcohol, but led to the extensive production of dangerous unregulated and untaxed alcohol, the development of organized crime, increased violence, and massive political corruption. Amazingly, some people today insist that Prohibition was a success!

•The human body produces its own supply of alcohol naturally on a continous basis, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Therefore, we always have alcohol in our bodies… and no one waits until the age of 21 before producing this alcohol.

•Prohibition clearly benefited some people. Notorious bootlegger Al Capone made $60,000,000…that’s sixty million dollars…per year (untaxed!) while the average industrial worker earned less than $1,000 per year.

•But not everyone benefitted. By the time Prohibition was repealed, nearly 800 gangsters in the City of Chicago alone had been killed in bootleg-related shootings. And, of course, thousands of citizens were killed, blinded, or paralyzed as a result of drinking contaminated bootleg alcohol.

Compiled by Prof. David Hanson, Ph.D.
Sociology Department, State University of New York, Potsdam.
For more “fun facts” about prohibition and references for the above information visit David’s website.