PROHIBITION
Early in the years following the American Revolution (1775–83), alcohol consumption in the United States increased dramatically. Saloons were built in every city and village and provided a setting for illegal activities such as prostitution (the selling of sex), which led to the spread of sexually transmitted diseases, and gambling. Domestic violence became more commonplace as men spent the family money on too much alcohol, leaving wives and children with little or nothing to eat.
Reformers (people working for change) saw a problem and took measures to correct it. At first, they encouraged people to cut down on the amount of drinking, but eventually they called for total abstinence (no drinking at all). In their eyes, drinking was a sin that led to disease, crime, and the ruin of family relationships. In 1836, those advocating temperance (avoiding excess) formed the American Temperance Union and called for an end to all alcohol consumption.
The temperance movement took hold of government and politics, and by 1855 thirteen states had banned the manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages. By the end of the American Civil War (1861–65), most of these laws had been repealed, but six states were still dry (without the legal manufacturing and sale of alcohol).
Drinking became a major issue in the Progressive Era (roughly 1900–13), a time of major reform. Prohibition came to be seen as a way to help the poor and protect the young. During World War I (1914–18), Prohibition became a patriotic issue because several of the largest breweries were owned by immigrants from Germany, the United States’s enemy in the war.
In 1919, Congress passed the Eighteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, outlawing the manufacturing and sale of alcohol nationwide. Passage of the Volstead Act immediately followed, outlawing even those beverages containing as little as 0.5 percent alcohol (beer and wine). Although many Americans initially were in favor of Prohibition, they thought that only hard liquor, like whiskey, would be outlawed. They were not in favor of banning the consumption of beer and wine, and thus the Volstead Act prompted many to withdraw their support of Prohibition.
Prohibition was never enforceable. The American public simply did not consider moderate drinking a sinful activity and refused to have its morality policed by the government. Prohibition was finally overturned in 1933 with the passage of the Twenty-first Amendment.