Category Archives: Prohibition

The more things change …

On the surface, Daniel Okrent’s new book, Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition, sounds like another interesting read about a quaint tradition from the distant past. But as reviewer David Oshinsky makes clear, there are some chilling parallels with today — but NOT in the areas I was expecting.

First, I was sadly unaware of the many connections, both sinister and innocent, that led to the 18th Amendment. As Oshinsky notes, there are studies a’plenty on Carry Nation, Billy Sunday, Al Capone, and the rest. But only Okrent puts the 18th fully in context:

“Knowing that alcohol taxes accounted for about one-third of all federal revenue, temperance leaders campaigned successfully for a federal income tax to make up the difference. Believing that women were more likely than men to support restrictions on alcohol, these leaders strongly supported women’s suffrage. And when America entered World War I in 1917, helped fan the flames of anti-German hysteria by accusing the Busch family and other brewers of harboring sympathies for the kaiser (a charge, not entirely untrue, that turned beer drinking into a disloyal act).”

There’s much more, of course. In the end, Oshinsky notes that Last Call resists the temptation to link what happened in the 1920s to what’s happening now in the political climate. Okrent may resist — but Oshinsky does not:

“About a century ago, a group of determined activists mobilized to confront the moral decay they claimed was destroying their country. Their public demon was alcohol. but their real enemy was an alien culture reflected by city dwellers, recent immigrants and educated elites. Always a minority, the forces of Prohibition drove the political agenda by concentrating relentlessly on their goal, voting in lock-step on a single issue and threatening politicians who did not sufficiently back their demands. They triumphed because they faced no organized opposition. Americans were too distracted — perhaps too busy drinking — to notice what they had lost. It’s a story with an eerily familiar ring.”