Tag: prohibition

Why We Celebrate National Beer Day

In 1919, when Prohibition was signed into law, many people assumed that the definition of “intoxicating liquors” would not include low alcohol beer and wine, therefore, making it legal to manufacture and sell. It is likely that if this had been the case, prohibition may have been a more successful endeavor (notice I said MORE Successful, not ENTIRELY successful). However, the general public, and possibly many “dry” supporting politicians, were misled. After the passing of the amendment, the Volstead Act was written, and it defined “intoxicating liquors” as anything higher than .05% alcohol, thus making the standard 3.2% beer illegal. The public was both aghast and disappointed, and President Wilson actually vetoed it, although for separate reasons entirely from making 3.2% beer illegal.

When the depression hit, the people began to push for legalization of 3.2% beer. Many people felt that it was their right to enjoy a drink after a long day of hard labor or looking for jobs. FDR and the democrats used the promise of beer legalization to their advantage in the 1932 election, and were successful. The Cullen-Harrison Act was enacted in Congress on March 21, 1933 and signed by FDR the next day. The act legalized 3.2% abv beer, and wine with similarly low alcohol content. The law went into effect on April 7, 1933. April 7 has henceforth been celebrated as National Beer Day.

April 7, 2015
Happy Repeal Day!

This day in drink history marks the 81st anniversary of the end of the alcohol prohibition in America!

December 5, 2014
The Story Behind the 18th Amendment

Today marks the 94th anniversary of the 18th Amendment. So much of how Americans think about drinking today stems from the prohibition, so it’s important to not only celebrate its repeal, but learn about what caused the country to add the amendment in the first place.

A Plague of Drunkenness

For nearly a decade prior to the 18th amendment, much of the country was plagued by drunkenness. I don’t mean good old fashioned Friday night cocktails where someone has to take a cab home and passes out on the floor in the kitchen. I mean men getting paid on Friday and heading to the saloon (where women were not allowed, by the way) and drinking away every single penny of their earnings. To make matters worse, the men who made it home (many often ended up in gutters or alleyways), often beat or berated their wives and children. The concept of divorce, marital rape, and help for battered women hadn’t even crossed anyone’s mind yet, so you can imagine what sort of things went on that no one ever talked about.

Women Take Up a Cause

That is until the temperance movement came along. The movement was started by many of the women who were most negatively affected by the plague of drunkenness, and they did a great job convincing lots of municipalities, saloon owners, and other regular people – men and women – to take up moderate drinking or Total abstinence from alcohol. In fact, it is from the latter that the term Teetotaler stems (capital-T Total abstinence turned to teetotaler).

The Anti-Saloon League

The fight to get rid of the saloons and drinking went through plenty of phases throughout the 19th century, but it wasn’t until the Anti-Saloon league showed up on the scene in 1893 that it really started to make a real difference. The reason? The Anti-Saloon League was run by men, and men could vote. It also didn’t hurt that they were powerful guys who had no problem making deals and hurting anyone who got in their way.

Making an Amendment

Mostly a state issue throughout the early 20th century, the temperance movement went into action after the start of World War I. Since many American brewers were German, the Anti-Saloon league took advantage of anti-German sentiments and went to work on the U.S. Congress. The 18th Amendment passed in December 1917 with many progressives believing it would not receive the state ratification (three-fourths) it needed in the time allotted – six years. It took only one.

Ratified on January 16, 1919 and officially put in affect on January 17, 1920, the 18th Amendment banned “the manufacture, sale, and transportation of alcoholic beverages in the United States and its possessions.” It did not make owning or purchasing alcohol illegal, and individuals could keep any booze already in their possession.

A misnomer of the 18th Amendment is the Volstead Act. The Volstead Act was actually a separate law detailing the enforcement of the 18th Amendment.

In the end, despite a solid original goal of ridding the country of drunkenness and the family-hurting saloon, the 18th Amendment was a disaster, causing more organized crime, corruption, and hypocrisy than the U.S. had seen to that point. It was repealed on December 5, 1933 by the 21st Amendment.

January 17, 2014
Rum Runners

The Prohibition era was an interesting time for the liquor industry in America. In the short time in which booze was illegal in the States, it didn’t stop Americans from drinking it. In fact, black market spirit sales sprang to an ultimate high, making way for money to be made from illegal booze. And the rum runners made a killing.

Rum runners were smugglers who specialized in bringing alcohol into the United States via boat. What started with Caribbean rum (hence the term rum runner) eventually moved to include Canadian whiskey and English gin. Rum runners would go to any number of Caribbean islands, buy enough rum to fill their boats and head back to a U.S. port. Originally, they traveled from Bimini to southern Florida, but as authorities started tightening down on booze smuggling, ships would make runs up and down the entire eastern seaboard.

Rum was inexpensive to procure, but the rum runners couldn’t turn much of a profit on it because rum was so inexpensive. Typically, runners employed “profit enhancing” techniques such as watering down the rum or putting expensive brand labels on cheaper or unmarked rum. One of the more famous rum runners, Captain Bill McCoy, made a name for himself by never stooping to these “cost cutting” tactics. This is where the term “The Real McCoy” comes from.

McCoy was also known for the Rum Line. In order to avoid the crack down on the major ports by federal authorities, the runners had to use mid-sized boats to transport the rum and other spirits. After running rum for a while, the intrepid captain realized that they could make most of the trip in much larger boats and then move the cargo to smaller boats offshore and make more profit per trip. Utilizing this model, they could use even smaller boats to make landfall, allowing them to use smaller ports or even beach access points. Once they started implementing this, making the cargo transfer five miles from the U.S. coast (where International waters begin) the idea took hold. The large vessels coming in would sit in a long line just outside of U.S. waters and wait for the smaller vessels to pick up the rum, eventually earning the name, “The Rum Line.”

Rum runners brought in roughly $200,000 in product per week when the average American was making $50 per week. It was a highly lucrative business for the few short years that alcohol was prohibited in the U.S. After prohibition was repealed with the 21st Amendment in 1933, rum running became far less profitable, and fell mainly to less boisterous smugglers. The golden era of the rum runner was gone.

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February 22, 2011