January 17, 1920 The Volstead Act Goes into Effect

...and the face of American culture is forever changed

America had a drinking problem. Thirty seconds after the Mayflower landed on Plymouth Rock, someone used it to crack open a bottle of gin. Americans drank and tortured witches, its founders drank and sparked revolution, brother drank and fought brother over slavery. They drank beer and cider. When someone invented rum, which got you blacked out faster and with less peeing, Americans drank that instead. When Irish and Scottish immigrants came to America with distilling knowhow, Americans drank that. If the world was a party, America was the drunkest person at it.

People had recognized the need for intervention. These people were called ‘women’ and they were tired of not being allowed in bars but being forced to deal with the drunk husbands coming home from those bars. After attempts in the 19^th century were shot down, the early 20^th century provided a perfect storm for alcohol prohibition. Alongside women in the cause were factory owners, who were trying to keep workers sober enough to work long hours and not crush themselves to death with new-fangled machines. Then there was good old fashioned racism. The influx of immigrants between 1880-1920 sparked concerns among America’s very very white people, who worried that the low-class saloons they frequented would bring about a decline in the moral character of America. This, rather than, say, racism.

Doing its part was a little situation brewing in Europe that would become known as World War I. An anti-German hysteria swept through America and the only patriotic thing to do was boycott German-owned breweries. (Before you sneer, remember that people are reactionary idiots and that ‘freedom fries’ and ‘liberty cabbage’ are terms that have been used in earnest). Leaders in Europe had already noted the effects of alcohol on soldier performance, with Kaiser Wilhelm stating that the next war (WWI) would be won by, and I’m paraphrasing, the nation whose soldiers didn’t drunkenly blow off their own hands. This concern, combined with rationing cereals and grains, led to bans on alcohol. Tsar Nicholas II, whose Russia had lost the Russo-Japanese War partially due to troops too drunk to aim weapons, banned the sale of vodka in retail stores. The stage was set for booze to be banned, and American went for it.

And so, at 12:01 on January 17, 1920 the Volstead Act made the sale and production of alcohol illegal in the United States. Kegs of beer were emptied, bottles of whiskey smashed, their contents running into gutters, along with America’s will to live.

It was believed that Americans would recognize the dangers of alcohol and embrace sobriety. It was thought that they would turn to other forms of entertainment, such as dining in restaurants (sober) and going to the theater (sober). These predictions were as wrong as pineapple on pizza. How nobody thought to point out the resulting job losses and its consequences is almost criminally negligent. Prohibition cost the United States over $11 billion in tax revenue and over $300 million to enforce. Almost overnight, huge swaths of people with alcohol-related and peripheral jobs were unemployed: bartenders, brewers, waiters, truck drivers, deliverymen, kebab stands. And as for enjoying other pursuits of amusement – um, no. Restaurants and theaters declined dramatically. Americans didn’t want to enjoy other pursuits, they wanted to enjoy other pursuits drunk – and it would find ways to do that.

Americans began instantly exploiting the loophole in the Volstead Act’s wording – which prohibited the ‘sale’ and ‘production’ of alcohol, not the ‘possession’, ‘ownership’, or ‘ingestion’ of it. Pharmacists (whose numbers miraculously tripled) began prescribing whiskey for ailments such as backaches, toothaches, or dry mouth. Religious congregations could buy wine as part of their sacred rites and registration in local churches skyrocketed as if Jesus’ face had been seen in a hotdog bun. The American grape industry began selling kits of juice concentrate with the biggest wink-wink warnings in advertising history, explicitly pointing out that leaving the kit out for too long would result in fermentation into wine. At least they didn’t sell it along with crackers and camembert. Moonshine boiled in every other garage and yard. Speakeasies popped up like venereal diseases at Woodstock. The law meant to curtail drinking sparked American ingenuity and made Americans experts on how to make or find booze. “It’s virtually impossible to drink in Detroit,” said one reporter, “unless you walk ten feet and tell the busy bartender what you want in a voice loud enough for him to hear above the uproar."

Perhaps most remarkable are the vast effects prohibition had on the face of the country. The illegal production and smuggling of booze led to a rise in organized crime. Al Capone, Arnold Rothstein, and Bugs Moran became infamous overnight. Speakeasies introduced America to jazz, table service, Italian food, and women drinking in bars. The attempt to strongarm minorities from selling booze mobilized right wing extremist groups like the Ku Klux Klan, who swore to uphold the 18th Amendment as long as it meant terrorizing black people. It assisted the rise of the Democratic Party, which was against prohibitions many downsides, including the thuggish intimidation of minorities. The Democrats wouldn’t win the White House until a guy named Franklin Delano Roosevelt came along, who ran partially on a platform of ‘man, who needs a drink?’ Spoiler alert: he won. Four times. And they had to make a rule for term limits because he was so popular.

Lastly, prohibition had a huge effect on what Americans drank. The intake of spirits soared during prohibition, because it was the most practical and easiest to get or make. You could hide a barrel of gin better than a swimming pool of beer. It was being smuggled through America’s borders – tequila, Canadian whiskey. Rum runners brought rum from Cuba and the Caribbean. ‘Booze vacations’ to Cuba were hosted by Bacardi. Vacationers were greeted at the airport by bartenders who poured them Daiquiris before they’d picked up their luggage. Industrial alcohol was used to make moonshine, which was manipulated into Scotch (by adding creosote) or bourbon (by adding dead rats or rotten meat). Gin was created by adding juniper oil and glycerine. Since nobody wanted to taste dead rats, mixers became commonplace. Ginger ale covered up dead rat, tonic did a lot to muffle the sound of your taste buds’ death rattle.

Today, in honor of prohibition and its effects on our society and drinking culture, we drink a cocktail called the Bee’s Knees.

Ingredients

-          2 oz Gin

-          3/4 oz fresh lemon juice

-          3/4 oz honey simple syrup 1:1

-          Garnish with a lemon twist

Directions

Add all ingredients to your shaker except for the garnish (which you could just throw out and nobody will care). Shake with ice and strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Do not mix in any dead rats or rotten meat. Like all good cocktails, these have been preadded. Drink to American ingenuity, to FDR, and to the Noble Experiment falling on its face like the drunks it was supposed to help.