[On “Repeal Day,” remember that the war against alcohol was
ultimately a war against political corruption and unbridled
capitalism.]
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LET’S RAISE A GLASS TO WHAT PROHIBITION ACCOMPLISHED  
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Mark Lawrence Schrad
December 4, 2022
Politico
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_ On “Repeal Day,” remember that the war against alcohol was
ultimately a war against political corruption and unbridled
capitalism. _

New York City Deputy Police Commissioner John A. Leach, right,
watching agents pour liquor into sewer following a raid during the
height of prohibition |, Library of Congress

 

Was prohibition really the policy failure it is made out to be?

The obvious answer is yes — _of course,_ it was a failure.
Prohibition bred corruption, organized crime, gangland violence and a
general disrespect for law by a thirsty but otherwise law-abiding
population, while the moral and economic rejuvenation touted by
temperance proponents never materialized. For these reasons, it was
easy to write an entire book on prohibition as the quintessential
“bad idea
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After all, good ideas don’t need to be repealed.

A more contrarian argument suggests prohibition was actually a
success
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pointing at dramatic reductions in alcohol consumption during and
after the Prohibition Era, alongside declines in alcohol-related
mortality and crime
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In fact, the success or failure of prohibition should be judged
against its original intent, which neither camp has even remotely
addressed.

Doing so can shed new light on the true meaning of “Repeal Day,”
which takes place every Dec. 5. That’s the day that marks the final
ratification of the 21st Amendment in 1933 and the end of America’s
“noble experiment” with alcohol prohibition. Commemorated with
beer and good cheer, Repeal Day is something of a quasi-holiday,
especially in conservative and libertarian circles
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where the death of prohibition is Exhibit A proving that government
can do no good, no matter how benevolent its aims.

In reality, the key to understanding prohibition is to recognize
that temperance advocates of a century ago were not fighting against
alcohol
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the liquid in a bottle — per se. Instead, they hoped to destroy
“the liquor traffic:” the predatory booze manufacturers and
unregulated saloons that made money hand over fist from the drunken
misery, addiction and pauperism of their customers. As historian K.
Austin Kerr noted
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the most important prohibitionist group was called “the Anti-Saloon
League, not the Anti-Liquor or Anti-Beer League.” It was the
unregulated, profit-maximizing trade that was the problem, not the
booze itself.

This isn’t semantic sleight-of-hand or coy revisionism —
prohibitionists were very clear about their goals. In introducing a
prohibition amendment to the Constitution in 1914, Texas Sen. Morris
Sheppard plainly said
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“I am fighting the liquor traffic. I am against the saloon, I am not
in any sense aiming to prevent the personal use of drink.” This is
the reason why the 18th Amendment
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forbid consuming alcohol, but rather “the manufacture, sale, or
transportation of intoxicating liquors” — the focus was the
traffic.

So judging prohibition by personal-consumption statistics misses the
point. A more reasonable comparison would be between the “liquor
traffic” before and after prohibition — and it was objectively
awful before prohibition.

Nowadays, the word “saloon” evokes nostalgic Wild West motifs:
cowboys, spittoons and swinging doors. But in reality, the saloon was
the scourge of the local community. The saloonkeeper was not your
friend, he was there to make as much money off you as possible. A
drunkard sent home was profit lost. Better to keep an addict all night
until his last penny was spent, and then sell him more on credit,
barter or pawn, so that he remains in your debt. Many saloonkeepers
also trafficked prostitutes upstairs and ran illegal gambling dens in
back, while his pickpockets and grifters fleeced the drunks at the
rail — and all with the corrupt acquiescence of police and
politicians. The saloon wasn’t like _Cheers_ and
the_ _saloonkeeper was no Sam Malone.

This is why the oft-parroted claim that prohibition caused organized
crime and political corruption
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while wagging a finger at Al Capone — is shortsighted to say the
least. In the 19th century, every community large and small had their
own Tammany Hall-style corrupt political machines, and everywhere the
liquor traffic was at its core. Ironically, prohibition was envisioned
as a way to _purge_ liquor-traffic corruption from American
governance, when what it did was just push it further underground.

For instance, when an aspiring young police commissioner named
Theodore Roosevelt took on the corrupt New York liquor machine in 1894
— a generation before Capone — it was well-known that
saloonkeepers could pay a bribe
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$5 per month to sell booze illegally on Sundays, $25 to pimp out
prostitutes and another $25 to run a gambling den. These tributes were
collected by Tammany Hall gangsters, ward heelers and skull-crackers
to be spread among the politicians. Every saloon contributed another
$6.50 monthly to the Retail Liquor Dealer’s Association to buy off
the local cops. Everyone was on the take. Everyone knew the game,
especially since it was the saloonkeepers who got those politicians
elected in the first place, by getting the men drunk to the hilt and
marching them off to the polls to select the “correct” candidate,
often multiple times over.

Or take _The Jungle _— Upton Sinclair’s classic muckraking novel
of poverty and corruption in Chicago’s stockyards that prompted
Roosevelt’s administration to sign both the Federal Meat Inspection
Act and the Pure Food and Drug Act (1906). Sinclair describes
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on Election Day, hundreds of gangsters and ward heelers would go out
from the saloons to deliver the required votes, “all with big wads
of money in their pockets and free drinks at every saloon in the
district. That was another thing, the men said — all the
saloon-keepers had to . . . put up on demand, otherwise they could not
do business on Sundays, nor have any gambling at all.” Sinclair was
clear: In Chicago as in New York and American cities big and small,
saloons were pure nests of political corruption.

What was true of the corruption of local politics was replicated at
the state and national levels. A 1904 grand jury investigation found
that the New York State Liquor Dealer’s Association wielded a
sizable slush fund to keep state legislators “in good humor.” An
exposé in The Nation explained
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“Through affiliations, now with Tammany, now with the rural
Democracy, and now with the Republican machine, the liquor dealers
have managed to secure at each election the control of a considerable
number of Senators and Assemblymen. … In this dirty business,
partisan lines have largely been obliterated; for when the pinch has
come, Republicans have vied with Democrats in subserviency to the
traffic in drink.”

Prohibitionist Ernest Cherrington was more forceful in his
condemnation: “State legislatures were submissive to the supreme
authority of this monster liquor machine, with its undisputed ability
to make or unmake politicians. And the federal government itself,
hushed by the cold bribe of a one hundred and eighty million dollar
annual federal tax, had grown deaf and dumb on all questions affecting
this institution... In short, the saloon controlled politics. It
dictated political appointments. It selected the officers who were to
regulate and control its operations. It had its hand on the throat of
legitimate business. It defiantly vaunted itself in the face of the
church. It ridiculed morality and temperance. It reigned supreme.”

Corruption by liquor traffickers was a blight on American politics at
all levels, and even industry wasn’t shocked by the backlash. When a
wave of state-level prohibition statutes swept the American south in
1907 (still more than a decade before the 18th Amendment), Beverages
— the mouthpiece of the National Liquor League — admitted
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“We dislike to acknowledge it, but we really believe the entire
business all over has overstayed the opportunity to protect itself
against the onward march of prohibition. Five years ago a united
industry might have kept back the situation that now confronts it, but
to-day it is too late... Might as well try to keep out the Hudson
River with a whisk-broom.”

Indeed, the history of prohibition might better be told not as the
onward march of temperance “fanatics,” but rather the corruption,
decay and collapse of a truly odious business model.

By contrast, when nationwide prohibition was finally repealed on Dec.
5, 1933, control over the liquor traffic reverted back to the states.
And while the states varied in _how _they regulated the liquor
traffic — through excise taxation, state-run liquor dispensaries or
continuing on as “dry” prohibition states — there was general
consensus that regulation was a necessity, lest the corrupt
liquor-machine politics return.

Today, the saloons of old are gone, and bars, restaurants and retail
stores face strict scrutiny across the United States. Restrictions
include minimum ages for purchase and consumption of alcohol,
strictly-regulated opening and closing hours of operation, and civil
and criminal punishments both for illegal purchasers and sellers. Add
to that the restrictions on drunken driving, liquor advertising and
even alcohol content, and the booze market is among the most heavily
regulated in the country.

Those who don’t understand the logic of some of these restrictions
— like forbidding booze sales on election days — simply lay bare
their ignorance of how nefarious and corrupting an institution the
liquor business was in the days before prohibition.

For their part, the post-repeal brewers, distillers and retailers
presented a new image as trustworthy, responsible and, above all,
law-abiding corporate citizens — completely at odds with their
saloon-era predecessors. Against the backdrop of the Great Depression,
the reintroduction of a well-regulated alcohol industry promised
thousands of good-paying jobs in industry and hospitality, millions of
dollars annually in badly needed revenues to federal, state and local
treasuries, and a promise not to be a blight on their local
communities. And while abuses and improprieties occasionally occur,
the modern American alcohol market is night and day different from the
systemic economic exploitation, societal parasitism and political
corruption of the liquor machine of old.

Ultimately, when it comes to the goal of expelling liquor-traffic
corruption from American politics and minimizing its predations
against the American people, the Prohibition Era might fairly be
considered a success.

So if you want to raise a toast to the history of Repeal Day, exercise
your right to do so. But also recognize that repeal was no victory of
unbridled capitalism over tyrannical government. Instead, Repeal Day
should rightfully be celebrated as the triumph of sensible government
regulation to rein in the excesses of unregulated capitalism. We
should all drink to that.

MARK LAWRENCE SCHRAD is professor of political science
and director of Russian Area Studies at Villanova University. He is
author of Vodka Politics: Alcohol, Autocracy, and the Secret History
of the Russian State
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the Liquor Machine: A Global History of Prohibition
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can find him on Twitter @VodkaPolitics.

_POLITICO is the global authority on the intersection of politics,
policy, and power. It is the most robust news operation and
information service in the world specializing in politics and policy,
which informs the most influential audience in the world with insight,
edge, and authority. Founded in 2007, POLITICO has grown to a team of
700 working across North America, more than half of whom are editorial
staff. POLITICO Europe, its seven-year-old European edition has grown
to nearly 200 employees. In October, 2021, POLITICO was acquired by,
and is a subsidiary of, Axel Springer SE
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* alchohol
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* Prohibition
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* U.S. Constitution
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* History
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* corruption
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* Politics
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