Detroit police inspecting equipment found in a clandestine underground brewery during the Prohibition era
Prohibition in the United States (sometimes referred to as the Noble Experiment) was a national ban on the sale, manufacture, and transportation of alcohol, in place from 1920 to 1933. The ban was mandated by the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution, and the Volstead Act
set down the rules for enforcing the ban, as well as defining which
"intoxicating liquors" were prohibited. Prohibition ended with the
ratification of the Twenty-first Amendment, which repealed the Eighteenth Amendment, on December 5, 1933.
The Senate
proposed the Eighteenth Amendment on December 18, 1917. Having been
approved by 36 states, the 18th Amendment was ratified on January 16,
1919 and effected on January 17, 1920.
On November 18, 1918, before the ratification of the Eighteenth
Amendment, the United States Congress passed the temporary Wartime
Prohibition Act, which banned the sale of alcoholic beverages having an
alcohol content of greater than 2.75%. (This act, which was intended to save grain for the war effort, was passed after the armistice
was signed on November 11, 1918.) The Wartime Prohibition Act took
effect June 30, 1919, and July 1, 1919 became widely known as the
"Thirsty-First".
Congress passed the Volstead Act, the popular name for the National Prohibition Act, over President Woodrow Wilson's veto on October 28, 1919, and established the legal definition of intoxicating liquor, as well as penalties for producing it. Though the Volstead Act prohibited the sale of alcohol, the federal government did little to enforce it. By 1925, in New York City alone, there were anywhere from 30,000 to 100,000 speakeasy clubs.
While Prohibition was successful in reducing the amount of liquor
consumed, it stimulated the proliferation of rampant underground,
organized and widespread criminal activity. The bulk of America became disenchanted after the St. Valentine's Day massacre in 1929. Prohibition became increasingly unpopular during the Great Depression, especially in large cities.
On March 22, 1933, President Franklin Roosevelt signed into law an amendment to the Volstead Act known as the Cullen-Harrison Act, allowing the manufacture and sale of certain kinds of alcoholic beverages. On December 5, 1933, the ratification of the Twenty-first Amendment repealed the Eighteenth Amendment. However, United States federal law still prohibits the manufacture of distilled spirits without meeting numerous licensing requirements that make it impractical to produce spirits for personal beverage use.
Organized crime received a major boost from Prohibition. Mafia groups limited their activities to prostitution, gambling, and theft until 1920, when organized bootlegging manifested in response to the effect of Prohibition. A profitable, often violent, black market for alcohol flourished. Powerful gangs corrupted law enforcement agencies, leading to racketeering. In essence prohibition provided a financial basis for organized crime to flourish. Rather than reducing crime it seemed prohibition had transformed the cities into battlegrounds between opposing bootlegging gangs. In a study of over 30 major U.S cities during the prohibition years of 1920 and 1921, the number of crimes increased by 24%. Additionally, theft and burglaries increased by 9%, homicide by 12.7%, assaults and battery rose by 13%, drug addiction by 44.6% and police department costs rose by 11.4%. It has been speculated that this was largely the result of “black-market violence” as well as law enforcing resources having been diverted elsewhere. Despite the beliefs of the prohibitionist movement that by outlawing alcohol crime would surely be reduced, the reality was that the Volstead Act led to worse social conditions than were experienced prior to prohibition as demonstrated by more lethal forms of alcohol, increased crime rates, and the establishment of a black market dominated by criminal organizations.
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