The Rise and Fall of Prohibition / The Human Side of What the Eighteenth Amendment and the Volstead Act Have Done to the United States

by Charles Hanson Towne

Senator Frelinghuysen of New Jersey said not long ago that Prohibition was one of the most serious problems with which the American people have to deal. “In the country districts the people are in favor of upholding the Volstead law,” he made it clear. “The church people also are against any modification of the dry law. But when it comes to big industrial centers and to the working classes, to say nothing about the foreign-born population, they are all clamoring for a change in the law to permit the sale of light wines and beer.”

If we would enact laws tomorrow giving the various States the right to control the liquor traffic within themselves, corruption would cease, and a sense of peace and happiness would descend upon the country. The constant agitations of this hour cannot go on. There is a nervous tension in the air; and so long as the Volstead Act remains, there will be disturbances comparable to the rumblings of earthquakes.

Those of us who love America yearn for a return to truth and sanity. The present conditions are intolerable. Each political party is striving to evade this big issue. Each claims that neither the Democrats nor the Republicans gave the people Prohibition; yet the people are looking to one or the other party to take a stand on the question. The last elections proved that.

Not forever can there be a process of evasion. A third political party will come out boldly and strong with a wet plank, and as soon as the politicians sense the will of the people there will be an immediate change. But how long will it take them to sense that will?

Recently, a number of doctors brought suit to test the constitutionality of the Volstead Act as it affects the limitation on liquor which they may prescribe. Not all physicians oppose Prohibition—indeed, many have stated that whiskey is not essential in the practice of medicine; others hold a divergent view. But no one can deny that things have come to a strange pass when Congress, and not our doctors, treats patients ill with pneumonia and other diseases. Surely an issue as clouded as this should be cleared up.

Light wines and beer will return—there is little doubt of that; but many people hold that we should adopt the Swedish and Canadian methods of Government Control. We have seen that, with the federal authorities managing the liquor traffic, a decent business is done, bootlegging is practically stopped, and revenue pours into the governmental coffers. Contentment takes the place of discontent, and those who drink pay the price—which they are more than willing to do. It is so obvious that this is the right method to pursue that it seems strange there should be any argument, that there should be any line-up of opposition.

Yet the Prohibitionists, in the light of their failure in the United States, continue to make prophecies of a “bone dry” world in the years to be. With amazing clairvoyance a member of the World’s Women’s Christian Temperance Union has predicted that in 1924. Uruguay will go dry, and likewise Argentine; Austria and Denmark in 1925; Chili in 1927; Great Britain in 1928; Germany in 1929; France in 1933; Japan in 1936; Italy in 1938; Spain and China in 1939; and Cuba in 1940.

Foreigners have frequently been heard to say that they cannot understand why Americans have not protested with a louder voice against the legislation which concerns Prohibition. They forget—or they do not realize—that the United States is a vast melting-pot, and that there are, alas! too few Americans left to make much of an impression. The links that draw together the individual nations of European countries are lacking in our own land. We have absorbed every race on earth; and these aliens do not know how to band together. They are not really part of us, and they are naturally confused at our methods of government. Many of them are strangers in a strange land, and perhaps they do not feel justified in protesting, even though they are citizens now, saying to themselves that if the Americans tolerate such rigid reforms, who are they to utter words of rebellion?

Is it not self-evident that Prohibition has miserably failed when the President finds it necessary to call a solemn conclave of Governors to see what can be done, after three years, to force the people to obey the law in the various States? The Federal authorities, by that gesture, admit their inability to cope with the situation, which has now become intolerable. Scandal after scandal is being unearthed in sanctimonious Washington, the seat of the Government, and the home of Prohibition. It is being revealed that many Congressmen and Senators preach one thing and practise another. Is it not high time that their dishonesty is shown up? They should be made as ridiculous as possible. They should be made to see that they are the worst Americans in existence, pretending to be virtuous, invoking the law for their constituents, and bootlegging in secret. For at least the rest of the people who conscientiously break the law, are not on record as approving it.

No one is sacrosanct on this flaming issue. Government buildings are said to contain plenty of liquid refreshment for the parched throats of these eloquent advocates of a “dry” country. So long and loudly have they proclaimed their insincere doctrine that at the end of a forensic day they doubtless require a long, cool drink. Let them be seen in all their inglorious hypocrisy. Let the whole land laugh at them; for it is only through laughter that they can be reached and hurt. A law that is winked at by those who framed it is not worth the cost required to set it up in type.