The ‘20s: Culture, Consumption, and Crash 119accessible and sexual attitudes were not quite as restrictive, so women gained
more control over their own bodies and lifestyles. Men and women began
engaging in more social activities together—going to carnivals or drive-in
theaters, for instance, and without chaperones. Women also frequently went
to jazz clubs. Jazz was a new music style, originating among African-
American musicians in New Orleans and elsewhere, with fast beats and
rhythms, and lots of dancing with it. The jazz clubs and dance halls were
liberating for women, places where they could be themselves instead of only
filling their socially-required roles as wives, mothers and guardians of moral-
ity. They could drink, smoke cigarettes, and dance without being condemned.
In this way, women, especially young women called “jazz babies,” could rebel
against the Victorian culture of their elders.
In jazz culture, indeed in all of American culture, drinking also had an
important role. Americans liked to drink, but critics of the new culture
tended to associate alcohol with the cultures of immigrants who came to
America from Italy, Germany, Poland, Ireland, Russia and many other places,
and wanted to get rid of both liquor and the immigrants. This led to a move-
ment for Prohibition, a key issue for Progressives who believed they could make
life better for the poor and immigrants by keeping them away from alcohol.
On January 16th, 1920 every brewery, distillery, and bar closed, forced to shut
by federal law, the 18th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The prohibition
movement was backed by church groups, women who saw their husbands
spend their wages on booze and often become abusive when drunk, social
do-gooders who said that eliminating alcohol would cut crime, and corporate
bosses who wanted their workers sober and obedient [many of the same argu-
ments that would be used in the “war on drugs” in the late 1900s and early
21st Century]. The 18th Amendment had an immediate impact—as the aver-
age consumption of alcohol per adult fell from two gallons to about three-
fourths of a gallon per year. But the law contained a loophole.
Prohibition did not ban the consumption of alcohol, only the sale and
manufacture, and there were few ways to enforce it; only 1,500 federal agents
were available to maintain the ban, and individual states were expected to help
uphold prohibition. As a result, those who had money or political connec-
tions—the upper class, the people who knew Nucky Thompson... and every
city had a Nucky—consumed large quantities of home-brewed beer, “bath-
tub,” or homemade, gin, and often went to “speakeasies,” clubs were alcohol