American Women and the Repeal of Prohibition (The American Social Experience Series) (Paperback)

~ Kenneth Rose (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Useful, insightful, and finely balanced. . . . Of the many books on the Prohibition, Rose's is among the best."

- W. J. Rorabaugh, Pacific Northwest Quarterly

"Though neglected by historians, the prohibition-repeal movement loomed large in U.S. politics in the late twenties and early thirties. In this very readable and well-researched study, Kenneth Rose explores the roles of women's organizations in this struggle. In the process he restores some once-influential women to their rightful place; challenges some widely held assumptions; and reminds us that women's history, like all history, can surprise us by its rich diversity and unexpected twists."

- Paul Boyer, University of Wisconsin-Madison

"Rose forcefully demonstrates that in the debate over the repeal of prohibition many of the women involved (notwithstanding marked differences in class, religion, or party affiliation) shared a common moral vision based on the protection of the American home. With commendable intellectual integrity, he refuses to rest with the simplified conclusions some scholars resort to in order to make an attractive and politically tidy case for 'their kind of woman.'"

- Martha Banta, University of California, Los Angeles

"Rose writes with relish and humor and contributes an important set of insights to the American experience with Prohibition, an experiment that still haunts the country over sixty years after Repeal."

- Robert E. Burke, Professor Emeritus of History
University of Wisconsin

"Unique in [its] emphasis on the role of women's organizations in both prohibition and repeal, and how the arguments used by women's organizations to promote the Eighteenth Amendment in 1923 were used by opponents to repeal it in 1933. . . . The author is dedicated to recovering the history of politically conservative women who have been traditionally ignored or dismissed in other historical studies.”

- Book News

Product Description

In 1933 Americans did something they had never done before: they voted to repeal an amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The Eighteenth Amendment, which for 13 years had prohibited the manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages, was nullified by the passage of another amendment, the Twenty-First. Many factors helped create this remarkable turn of events. One factor that was essential, Kenneth D. Rose here argues, was the presence of a large number of well-organized women promoting repeal.

Even more remarkable than the appearance of these women on the political scene was the approach they took to the politics of repeal. Intriguingly, the arguments employed by repeal women and by prohibition women were often mirror images of each other, even though the women on the two sides of the issue pursued diametrically opposed political agendas. Rose contends that a distinguishing feature of the women's repeal movement was an argument for home protection, a social feminist ideology that women repealists shared with the prohibitionist women of the Women's Christian Temperance Union. The book surveys the women's movement to repeal national prohibition and places it within the contexts of women's temperance activity, women's political activity during the 1920s, and the campaign for repeal.

While recent years have seen much-needed attention devoted to the recovery of women's history, conservative women have too often been overlooked, deliberately ignored, or written off as unworthy of scrutiny. With American Women and the Repeal of Prohibition, Kenneth Rose fleshes out a crucial chapter in the history of American women and culture.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 237 pages
• Publisher: NYU Press (June 1, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0814774660
• ISBN-13: 978-0814774663
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #160,556 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

0 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Interesting work on a neglected episode in American history, April 7, 2000

By	Excerpt from "The Independent Review" (Oakland, CA) - See all my reviews

"American Women and the Repeal of Prohibition" is not the place to look for a blow-by-blow account of how repeal was effected. For that matter it asserts but does not demonstrate the centrality of women's activism to the repeal campaign. But it does analyze how and why some women became involved in a cause that not long before had seemed to be the antithesis of womanhood. Rose uses the example of repeal to build an argument about the place of morality and the home in politics and about the failure of arguments and organizations based on the idea of personal liberty....Given Rose's concern with women's politics and moral issues, a conclusion that linked his arguments about appeals to the home and family to other twentieth-century examples--the abortion argument comes to mind--might have been in order. He touches on the "continuing power of a conservative moral appeal to women" (p. 3) without hazarding a guess about the reasons for its enduring potency. Instead, Rose returns to the failure of prohibition as a moral and political question. He argues that, as laudable as the reduction of alcohol consumption might be, "by reducing temptation prohibitionists were also removing choice and eliminating the possibility of the individual choosing between right and wrong. Instead, the 'right' choice was imposed on society, and personal (and civic) virtue was replaced by virtue by fiat" (p. 6). Yet, given his argument about the power of moral issues, he provides scant reason to suspect that personal liberty and individual moral responsibility make good politics. Thus he leaves readers to wonder whether liberty and responsibility, without a coating of home and family, can ever be anything but losers in American politics.