The Ku Klux Klan 653Gulf of
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Wet counties
Dry countiesJanuary 1904
Wet counties
Dry countiesJanuary 1915ARKANSASKANSASNEBRASKAMISSOURIIOWAWISCONSINMINNESOTATEXASDAKOTASOUTHDAKOTANORTHMEXICONEW OKLAHOMAMONTANA
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MISS. GEORGIACAROLINASOUTHCAROLINANORTHVIRGINIA
VIRGINIAWEST
KENTUCKY
TENNESSEEYORKNEW
PENNSYLVANIAN.J.CONN.
MASS.VT.N.H.MAINER.I.
MD.DEL.FLORIDAARKANSASKANSASNEBRASKAMISSOURIIOWAWISCONSINMINNESOTATEXASDAKOTASOUTHDAKOTANORTHMEXICONEW OKLAHOMAMONTANA
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NEVADAOREGONWASHINGTONCALIFORNIAIDAHOThe Advance of ProhibitionProhibition had spread through much of the South and Midwest even before ratification of the Eighteenth
(Prohibition) Amendment in 1919.
World War I aided the prohibitionists by increas-
ing the need for food. The Lever Act of 1917 out-
lawed the use of grain in the manufacture of alcoholic
beverages, primarily as a conservation measure. The
prevailing dislike of foreigners helped the dry cause
still more: Beer drinking was associated with
Germans. State and local laws had made a large part
of the country dry by 1917. National prohibition
became official in January 1920.
This “experiment noble in purpose,” as Herbert
Hoover called it, achieved a number of socially desir-
able results. It reduced the annual national consump-
tion of alcohol from 2.6 gallons per capita in the period
just before the war to less than 1 gallon in the early
1930s. Arrests for drunkenness fell off sharply, as did
deaths from alcoholism. Fewer workers squandered
their wages on drink. If the drys had been willing to
legalize beer and wine, the experiment might have
worked. Instead, by insisting on total abstinence, they
drove thousands of moderates to violate the law. Strict
enforcement became impossible, especially in the cities.
In areas where sentiment favored prohibition
strongly, liquor remained difficult to find. Elsewhere,
anyone with sufficient money could obtain it easily.
Smuggling became a major business, bootlegger a
household word. Private individuals busied them-
selves learning how to manufacture “bathtub gin.”
Many druggists issued prescriptions for alcohol with a
free hand. The manufacture of wine for religious cer-
emonies was legal, and consumption of sacramental
wine jumped by 800,000 gallons during the first two
years of prohibition. The saloon disappeared, replaced
by the speakeasy, a supposedly secret bar or club oper-
ating under the benevolent eye of the local police.
That the law was often violated does not mean
that it was ineffective any more than violations of laws
against theft and murder mean that those laws are
ineffective. Although gangsters such as Alphonse
“Scarface Al” Capone of Chicago were engaged in
the liquor traffic, their “organizations” existed before
the passage of the Eighteenth Amendment. But pro-
hibition widened already serious rifts in the social fab-
ric of the country. Organized crime became more
powerful. Besides undermining public morality by
encouraging hypocrisy, prohibition almost destroyed
the Democratic party as a national organization.
Democratic immigrants in the cities hated it, but
southern Democrats sang its praises, often while con-
tinuing to drink (the humorist Will Rogers quipped
that Mississippi would vote dry “as long as the voters
could stagger to the polls”).
The hypocrisy of prohibition had a particularly
deleterious effect on politicians, a class seldom
famous for candor. Members of Congress catered to
the demands of the powerful lobby of the Anti-
Saloon League yet failed to grant adequate funds to
the Prohibition Bureau. Nearly all the prominent
leaders, Democrat and Republican, from Wilson and
La Follette to Hoover and Franklin D. Roosevelt,
equivocated shamelessly on the liquor question. By
the end of the decade almost every competent
observer recognized that prohibition at least needed
to be overhauled, but the well-organized and power-
ful dry forces rejected all proposals for modifying it.
Prohibition is a Failureatwww.myhistorylab.comThe Ku Klux Klan
The most horrible manifestation of the social malaise
of the 1920s was the revival of the Ku Klux Klan. This
new Klan, founded in 1915 by William J. Simmons, a
former preacher, admitted only native-born white
Protestants. The distrust of foreigners, blacks,
Catholics, and Jews implicit in this regulation explains
why it flourished in the social climate that spawned
religious fundamentalism, immigration restriction,HeartheAudio