Repealing National ProhibitionIn this new edition of the most comprehensive study of the political reaction against the Eighteenth Amendment, a response that led to its reversal fourteen years later by the Twenty-first Amendment, David E. Kyvig examines the operation of the national liquor ban, discusses central issues of U.S. constitutional development, and illuminates continuing public policy issues of alcohol and drug control. Employing previously unexamined archival evidence, Kyvig calls attention to a little-known but broad-based bipartisan movement led by the Association Against the Prohibition Amendment and the Women's Organization for National Prohibition Reform. These organizations ad their allies amassed political power, particularly within the Democratic party. In the midst of the Great Depression they engineered a complicated, yet very democratic process of formal constitutional change, in the end achieving the only amendment reversal in U.S. constitutional history. |
Contents
| 1 | |
| 5 | |
| 20 | |
New Critics | 36 |
Kicking a Stone Wall | 53 |
Thirsting after Righteousness | 71 |
From the Jaws of Defeat | 98 |
Hard Times Hopeful Times | 116 |
Taking Sides | 137 |
Repeal | 160 |
Champagne and Sour Grapes | 183 |
Notes | 203 |
Bibliography | 245 |
Index | 267 |
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
AAPA AAPA executive committee AAPA Report alcoholic beverages American Anti-Saloon League antiprohibition antiprohibitionists April association August beer Benedict Crowell bootleggers campaign candidates Captain Stayton chairman Cong Congress congressional convention Crusaders December delegates Democratic drinking economic efforts Eighteenth Amendment election endorsed February federal government Franklin Grayson Murphy H. L. Mencken Henry Curran Herbert Hoover History Irénée du Pont issue James January Jouett Shouse Judiciary Committee July June leaders legislative legislatures Liberty League liquor ban liquor control majority March ment modification national committee national prohibition November Ohio Organization for National party Pauline Sabin percent Pierre du Pont plank platform political Pont Papers president presidential Prohibition Amendment prohibition enforcement prohibition law prohibitionists Raskob Papers ratification referendum Republican resolution Roosevelt saloon Senate sess Shouse Papers Smith social Stayton temperance tion United VCL Papers violation Volstead Act vote voters Washington William H Women's Organization York
Popular passages
Page 172 - Section 3. This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by conventions in the several States, as provided in the Constitution, within seven years from the date of the submission hereof to the States by the Congress.
Page 35 - In a government of laws, existence of the government will be imperilled if it fails to observe the law scrupulously. Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by its example. Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a law breaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy.
Page 204 - Robert H. Wiebe, The Search for Order, 1877-1920 (New York: Hill and Wang, 1967), esp. 145-63; James Weinstein, The Corporate Ideal in the Liberal State, 19001918 (Boston: Beacon Press, 1968); Louis Galambos, "The Emerging Organizational Synthesis in Modern American History," Business History Review 44 (1970): 279-90; Alfred D.
Page 114 - 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 graft and slime. It's filled our land with vice and crime, It don't prohibit worth a dime. Nevertheless we're for it.
Page 100 - Our country has deliberately undertaken a great social and economic experiment, noble in motive and far-reaching in purpose.
Page 158 - I congratulate this convention for having had the courage, fearlessly, to write into its declaration of principles what an overwhelming majority here assembled really thinks about the 18th Amendment. This convention wants repeal. Your candidate wants repeal. And I am confident that the United States of America wants repeal.
Page 120 - In preprohibition days, mothers had little fear in regard to the saloon as far as their children were concerned. A saloon-keeper's license was revoked if he were caught selling liquor to minors. Today in any speakeasy in the United States you can find boys and girls in their teens drinking liquor, and this situation has become so acute that the mothers of the country feel something must be done to protect their children.
Page 106 - The reaching out of the great central power to brush the doorsteps of local communities, far removed geographically and politically from Washington, will be irritating in such States and communities, and will be a strain upon the bond of the National Union. It will produce variation in the enforcement of the law. There will be loose administration in spots all over the United States and a politically inclined National Administration will be strongly tempted to acquiesce in such a condition.