Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition
By Daniel Okrent
Please listen to Terry Gross’s interview of Daniel Okrent – who just published an enticing history of the temperance movement in the U.S., Last Call:The Rise and Fall of Prohibition.
Terry Gross interviews Daniel Okrent, author of Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition
Here were some of the highlights:
Gross: What are some of the similarities in today’s style of activism that has descended from the temperance movement?
Okrent: “I definitely think that styles of activism and political agitation come directly from what happened in the years leading up to Prohibition. The issue wasn’t entirely Prohibition; that was a stand-in issue for a whole set of issues. Just the same way today I think we can say same-sex marriage is a stand-in issue. If you tell me what you think of same-sex marriage, I can probably tell you what you think about 10 other things.”
Gross: How did animosity towards German beer brewers help the ratification of the Prohibition amendment?
“This was the final thing that enabled the ratification of the Prohibition amendment. You needed 36 states to approve it, and this was happening just as the U.S. was entering World War I. And the great enemy was Germany — and the brewers were seen by the Prohibitionists as tools of the Kaiser. [Or] if they weren’t actually seen as them [by the Prohibitionists], they were used for that purpose to make their political point. So you have a rising tide of strong anti-German feelings sweeping across the country, [and] the brewers got swept away with it.”
Gross: Tell me more about the connection between the suffrage movement and the temperance movement.
Okrent: “It largely had to do with the fact that in the 19th century, women had no political rights or property rights. So as the saloon culture began to grow up and we would see men going off to the saloon and getting drunk … Susan B. Anthony, in the late 1840s, makes her first attempt to make a speech in public life at a temperance convention. This was before she connected with the suffragist movement. She rose to speak at a meeting of the Sons of Temperance in New York, and they said, ‘You can’t speak. You don’t have the rights. Women aren’t allowed to speak here.’ And that’s what pushed her into the suffragist movement. So in fact, you could say that the birth of the suffragist movement comes with the wish to get rid of alcohol.”
Gross: What were some of prohibition’s loopholes?
Okrent: “The first was that [alcohol] enabled the farmer to preserve his fruit … which is to say, to take the fruit crop and preserve it over the winter, which literally meant take the apple. Turn it into hard cider. And the hard cider into apple jack, which was legal in the farm districts across the country. Interestingly, the farm districts were the ones that most supported Prohibition.
“The second one was medicinal liquor. I have a bottle on my shelf at home — an empty bottle — that says Jim Beam, for medicinal purposes only. In 1917, the American Medical Association — supporting Prohibition — said there was no reason at all to use alcohol as a therapeutic remedy of any kind. Then they realized with this loophole that there was an opportunity to make some money. And capitalism abhors a vacuum. Within two or three years, you could go into virtually any city in the country and buy a prescription for $3 from your local physician and then take it to your local pharmacy and go home with a pint of liquor every 10 days. And this is really how many of the large distilleries in Kentucky and the middle of the country stayed in business throughout the Prohibition years.
“The third loophole is sacramental wine. Among the groups who opposed Prohibition were the Catholics and the Jews — very avidly — and not necessarily for religious reasons; I think more for cultural reasons. … Tangentially to that, there was the reality that wine is used in the Catholic sacrament for Communion. … The Jews needed their sacramental wine for the Sabbath service and other services. They were entitled — under the rules — for 10 gallons per adult per year. … There was no official way to determine who was a rabbi. So people who claimed to be rabbis would get a license to distribute to congregations that didn’t even exist. On the other side of that, one congregation in Los Angeles went from 180 families to 1,000 families within the very first 12 months of Prohibition. You joined a congregation; you got your wine from your rabbi.”
Some other interesting quips were that prohibition was the first time men and women mingled together at the bar (in the speakeasies). This led to table service and chairs in the bar – before that men just stood at the bar.
It was also the first time there was call alcohol as during prohibition rubbing alcohol and shoe polish were tampered with to make them semi-digestible. It is during this time that distilleries (that were still in business making medicinal alcohol) began marketing that their label signified a certain quality.
If you have even the slightest interest in cocktail lore or prohibition history, this interview is a must listen to.
- Columbine Quillen I am a mixologist bartender and this is my blog.