Prohibition was the best of intentions; it was the worst of results. A burning passion to cure the world of intoxication begat a wildfire of unintended consequences that permanently changed the American political landscape like no event since the civil war. The 18th Amendment to the Constitution--the first to curtail rather than to protect liberty--was imposed in a bipartisan political landslide of moral fervor led by fiery evangelicals bent on saving Americans from Demon Rum: an idea that had gathered 60 years of steam & brimstone, and whose time had finally come. Prohibition also created powerful new constituencies that profited from its continuance. Even its detractors became hopelessly resigned to its permanence.
It was not a revolution made led by dull people. The morally excited are, for all their dryness (pun intended), more animated, more colorful than the skeptical or the wise. Here the dramatis personnae of this tragicomedy seem more than merely memorable, they come to life on the page. But even in the limelight of the author's wit, prohibitionists don't seem caricatured, uneducated or stupid. (How could they have known? The lessons of hindsight were waiting offstage.) The complex tale of their successful constitutional coup is chronicled here in far more complex depth and detail than you might expect, yet the narrative flows quickly among the actors and events without losing momentum. The avalanche of startling facts and grotesque statistics are leavened with enough really good writing to yield laugh-out-loud descriptions, outrageous quotes and incisive commentary. Along with familiar folks like Rev. Billy Sunday, Carrie Nation, Andrew Volstead, et.al., Daniel Okrent introduces us to the forgotten workaholics who engineered this disastrous triumph of prescriptive moralizing.
Not all the consequences of prohibition were unforeseen. Anti-booze activists were instrumental in passing the 16th Amendment in 1913 authorizing a federal income tax in anticipation of the end of alcohol taxes--then the federal government's 2nd largest revenue source (after tariff duties). The bulldog fixation on winning and keeping the prohibition prize created all sorts of odd bedfellows: suffragettes and Ku Klux Klansmen, Boston puritans and rural sharecroppers, and later on, the bootleggers and prosecutors, smugglers and judges. When prohibition finally arrived, it rode in on the coattails the anti-German hysteria of World War One: most of the nation's brewers had Germanic surnames. Widespread anti-immigrant, anti-Catholic, and anti-Semitic sentiments had heavily fertilized the grass roots of the cause.
And so this catastrophically bad idea was made law by a lopsided legislative majority representing a demographic minority. The the constitutionally mandated congressional reapportionment to reflect the 1920 census was deliberately (and illegally) delayed 8 years to keep that majority intact. But nothing could prevent the unprecedented mass civil disobedience which followed prohibition's victory. The Twenties roared because all liquor laws (save the infamous Volstead Act) had been effectively swept away. Once the fruit was forbidden, it quickly became glamorous, accessible, and demand exploded. With the flotilla of smugglers, an army of bootleggers, and dense constellations of speakeasies came a flood tide of corruption that inundated nearly every police precinct, courtroom, and customs house in the nation. New fault lines appeared: civil service laws were bypassed to give the Anti-Saloon League control of federal liquor enforcement hiring, but state legislatures and local officials were often uncooperative (or obstructive) for a variety of reasons.
To prosecute so many millions of victimless crimes would have bankrupted America in a month. So the token fine and a metastasizing culture of bribery soon replaced enforcement. The profits of crime ballooned. Al Capone is alleged to have made $60 million in a single year. Soon the Klan would be deputized to terrorize moonshiners--and all too predictably, others. Later, Congress would pass the Jones Act "get tough" and "send a message"--like life imprisonment for repeat moonshine sellers. Sound familiar? Wood alcohol, isopropyl alcohol, and even deadlier intoxicants became common bootleg additives. The phrase "blind drunk" originated in prohibition. A neuropathic chemical pollutant would permanently cripple some 500 tipplers in Wichita. (The vindictive crocodile tears of sympathy would be echoed by defenders of Paraquat in the 1980s).
Even economics becomes mesmerizing as legally "dry" America experiences skyrocketing commodity prices for the ingredients of fermentation and the nation's residential cellars (and even bathtubs) are converted to forbidden production. But the irritations and absurdities of alcohol criminalization evolved slowly into political outrage, and like it's entry, prohibition's exit was kicked forward by the hard boot of circumstance: the stock market crash of 1929 and the the Great Depression. That it was overthrown so unexpectedly and so decisively is another part of a tale well worth telling, and in Daniel Okrent's "Last Call" it is wonderfully told. Almost none of this rollicking history is spent on prohibition's moral lessons or drawing parallels to the War on Drugs. They're just too obvious. If you've recently been bored by history books that don't hold your interest, this may be the kind of fun reading you''ve been waiting for.
![[Start the discussion]](http://g-ecx.images-amazon.com/images/G/01/x-locale/communities/discussion_boards/start-new-discussion-sec._V192250339_.gif){kind=small}
