Prohibition and the The Roaring Twenties can be described as a period of American history during which people crossed the line, smashed tradition, and broke boundaries. A brand new culture was created during this period, with jazz, money, the flapper, gangster wars, loose morals, speakeasies, and last but not least, an abundance of liquor. The decade was also called the New Era, the New Freedom, the Jazz Age, the Golden Era, the Lawless Decade, or the Dry Decade. The last title was a joke- the twenties were far from dry.
This is the reason why the 1920’s were given names that described America’s lax view of the 18 th amendment and the Volstead Act. The laws were literally ignored for the 13 years that they were in effect. Prohibition was meant to cause a nationwide revolution in morality. In actuality, it did quite the opposite.
Prohibition law itself had the greatest effect on the culture of the “roaring twenties,” and the carefree lifestyle and feeling of rebellion and invincibility can both be connected to prohibition. The change in American lifestyle began even before the prohibition law was passed. Several months prior to January 16, 1920 (when the 18 th amendment and the Volstead Act were scheduled to go into effect), there were warehouse robberies, stocking up of cellars with liquor, and burglaries of these cellars. Some called it the beginning of the age of hijacking. (Chidsey 73) However, the law affected neither alcohol consumption nor the brewing and distilling companies. At the close of the nineteenth century, the annual per capita consumption of distilled liquors in America was more than one gallon, of wine slightly less than half a gallon, and of malt liquors more than sixteen gallons.
At the time of Prohibition there were 177, 790 saloons in the United States, 1217 legal breweries, 507 legal distilleries, and countless illegal ones. Together the brewers and distillers made up almost a billion- dollar industry- the fifth largest in the country. (Chidsey 58-59) In the early 1900’s when Prohibition was imminent, brewers supported the saloon keepers as much as customers did. A beer company would finance a saloon keeper if he agreed to only sell his sponsor’s beer.
Problems arose, however, when other saloons began to stay open on Sundays and after closing hours to make more money. If the first saloon keeper wanted to stay open, he would be force to pay off the cops. If he didn’t stay open late, he would go out of business. (Chidsey 59-60) During Prohibition, the same ideology applied to the speakeasies. Generally, Americans had always been viewed as a law abiding people (Chidsey 79).
This changed with the advent of Prohibition. Take for example Speakeasies. These illegal saloons were the cause of much crime, and a newfound immorality in people. As these speakeasies competed for business, they began to provide prostitutes and drugs. They served minors if the minors had money to spend, and there were gambling tables.
This was new corrupt thinking in American society, and it contributed to the carefree behavior of the roaring twenties, as is explained later. Bootleggers were also common during Prohibition. These criminals seemed like normal men, because they had the idea that lawbreaking, in this case, was okay to do. (Chidsey 80) The rest of the nation shortly adopted the same thinking. They found breaking the Prohibition law (and eventually, other laws) to be painless, comfortable, and exciting.
People including women and teenagers, began visiting their homey neighborhood speakeasy regularly. The population of cities grew at 1. 5% each year due to “country boys and girls leaving the farm for the excitement of Sodom.” (Chidsey 63) Women had been barred from drinking places before Prohibition, so they went without encouragement to the speakeasies. They were curious, and as eager to break the law and try out their new freedom as the men were. Prohibition helped the advancement of women’s rights in two ways. First, the drys (members of the Prohibition movement or party) tried to help women in their quest for suffrage because they believed that women would vote overwhelmingly dry.
(Perrett 177) Second, speakeasies welcomed women equally with men, as long as they paid the same price for a drink. With this new freedom came the flapper and her unrestricted morals. Women began to drink and participate in wild behavior. Their appearance changed: they wore silk in place of cotton, rolled their hose, wore short skirts, bobbed their hair, and applied more makeup. They were slender and boyish. Due to their freedom in drinking, with a little push from Freud’s writing, they loosened their sexual morals as well.
Petting parties were not uncommon. Perrett describes a couple in a speakeasy: ” The sheik [young male] carried a hip flask, his sheba [girlfriend] a cigarette holder… .” (Perrett 152) Women who came into the speakeasies with their boyfriend or husband were no the only girls that populated the bars. There were also less respectable women who sometimes rented rooms attached to the speakeasies and advertised their sales inside the saloons. The prostitution in the speakeasies sometimes was condemned more than the selling and buying of liquor (Sann 195). Speakeasies purposely had girls for the use of their lonely customers.
They were known as “cigar et” (sic) girls or checkroom girls. Not only the women and the youth were defying Prohibition with their rebellious ways, but middle-aged and reputable people were also taking parting flouting the law. On November 22, 1926, Time published a formula for making gin that was decent tasting (Perett 175). Alice Roosevelt Longworth, the wife of the speaker of the House of Representatives, humbly admitted, ” We had a small still… .” (Perett 175). The fact that police disobeyed Prohibition and overlooked speakeasies should not be forgotten either.
As the wet (anti-Prohibition) ignored Prohibition, so too they abandoned the traditional churches that backed temperance or the Anti Saloon League. Throughout the twenties there was a steady decline in the spirit of religious belief. Individual gifts to religious charities dropped by 40 percent. Churches in the cities and countries reported declining attendance.
(Perett 205) Ernest Gordon said in his 1943 book The Wrecking of the Eighteenth Amendment that the anti-clerical image of the ministry found in the twenties was due to the wet interests: “The Protestant ministers have for years been the ones to clean up after the distillers and brewers. They have hel ped the alcohol-sick at their own doors and in little missions,” and for this they have suffered “an attack… unparalleled in American history, in movie and theatre, in novel, and magazine and newspaper.” (Carter 94-95) United Mine Workers president Tom L. Lewis said, “There is no easier way possible to make the unfortunate man, or the oppressed worker, content with his misfortune that couple of glasses of beer.” (Carter 90) Carter also postulates that ” If the working man in America of that period had largely left the church, as the statistics indicate that he had, then perhaps religion had been displaced by a more powerful – or at least more – opiate for the people!” (Carter 90) It was true that the religious faiths seemed increasingly out of place in the new lifestyle and behaviors of the American people.
The new vivacity of the twenties constantly being fueled by the illegal booze, which was acquired in many ways. Some prescription alcohol was stolen out of government warehouses to satisfy the need, although, near the end of Prohibition, it was poisoned to prevent such happenings. Many people concocted their own “bathtub gin” in glass gallon jugs or bottles, filled with one-third grain alcohol (bought from the neighborhood bootlegger), a few drops of glycerin and juniper juice, and bathtub tap water to fill the rest of the bottle (Chidsey 111-112 and Perett 175-176). Viniculturist’s were also doing business with their grapes.
Wine grapes were selling at twenty dollars a ton at the beginning of the Prohibition Era. Within the next six years the price jumped to $175 a ton, and demand was steadily increasing (Chidsey 82). However, the bootlegger was by far the chief source of booze in the Prohibition years. Organized crime did not begin with Prohibition; it became much better organized (Perett 401). When Prohibition came, hundreds of mobsters went straight into bootlegging.
They made millions on illegal traffic in liq our. Dion O’Banion was a classic gangster of the times. He controlled liquor sales in the north side of Chicago. His rival was the Syndicate, headed by Al Capone and Johnny Torri o, who took the profits from booze in all parts and suburbs of Chicago except the north side. Members of the Syndicate later killed Dion O’Banion. Gangsters killings were the result of the beer and whiskey feuds of the twenties.
Murder rose dramatically in some areas in the twenties, but this was not all due to the gangs. Murder generally increased in proportion to population increase. Gang wars such as these were ever been brought about by Prohibition (Chidsey 119). Without Prohibition, the bootleggers would be unfamiliar to people, and nearly every gangster started with the illegal sale of beer and liquor (Chidsey 119). To some extent, the public did not protest against the gangs, because they knew ” that the modern crime gangs provided quality booze.” (Chidsey 402). The speakeasies that these gangsters commanded eventually evolved into the nightclubs that were typical of the roaring twenties.
Prohibition had killed off the old fashioned cabarets. The night clubs took their place, with small tables, hard liquor instead of wine, loud entertainment, and a tiny dance floor. A new form of prostitution also helped the nightclub boom. This was usually attributed to Prohibition (Perrett 154). The girls were forced off the streets and out of the brothels, but they prospered in the new nightclubs where they were now known as “hostesses.” (Perrett 154).
Nightclubs made their money by exclusiveness. The more aloof the nightclub, the higher the admission price, and the freer the spending inside (Perrett 176). This is one way that the American began spending more money, a characteristic of twenties culture. Jazz had its beginnings in the nightclubs of Harlem. People went to the Harlem nightclubs to drink and dance, and jazz caught on. The new music grew into other nightclubs, cities, towns and eventually all across America as people enjoyed the music that was making them as happy as the illegal drink they were holding.
Prohibition also caused a class separation in the twenties. The upper class had supported Prohibition in order to save the workers by denying them drink. They didn’t intend for it to apply to them as well. Also, only the rich were able to store up beer and liquor for the dry days.
During Prohibition, the illegal alcohol grew very expensive, and was sometimes out of the working man’s price range. (Perrett 177). In this way, productivity increased during Prohibition, because it had “cut down sharply on absenteeism, especially on Monday mornings.” (Perrett 337-338) This caused workers to turn to other, safer amusements than drinking, like radio, movies, and automobiles. (Perrett 178) All of these amusements advanced at lightning rate during the Prohibition Era.
The Anti-Saloon League foresaw a much better America with the cork on the bottle. However, both wets and drys agreed that Prohibition did not work. The overall attitude during that time is appropriately expressed by the term scofflaw, which defined a Prohibition law violator. (Chidsey 110) Prohibition shaped the roaring twenties in numerous ways. It promoted the rebellion because people thought that it violated their right to live by heir own standards and do what they wanted to do (and drink when they wanted to drink).
By breaking the law frequently, American people developed slack morals, and felt that they were above the law. Women felt more freedom because they were also accepted in the illegal bars. Jazz, the music of the twenties, was created in the nightclubs that sprouted from speakeasies. People also spent more money in these nightclubs.
Gangsters and their beer wars developed as a result of Prohibition. Franklin P. Adams gave his thinking of Prohibition in a poem called ” The Wickers ham Report ” Prohibition is an awful flop; We like it. It can’t stop what it’s meant to stop. We like it.
It’s left a trail of death and slime, It don’t prohibit worth a dime, It’s filled our land with graft and crime; Nevertheless, we ” re for it. (Perrett 405) Worked Cited – Carter, Paul A. Another Part of the Twenties Columbia University Press. New York, 1977- Chidsey, Donald Barr. On and Off the Wagon Cowles Book Company, Inc. New York, 1969- Perrett, Geoffrey.
America in the Twenties. Simon and Schuster. New York, 1982- Sann, Paul. The Lawless Decade. Bonanza Books. New York, 1957- “The Century: America’s Time.” VCR by ABCNEWS.
Buena Vista Home Entertainment, Inc. Canada.