Taft | From 1909 to 1912, Republican Party President Howard Taft stacked the deck in favor of conservative prohibitions on civil rights by appointing six Supreme Court justices (out of the nine total), creating his view of conservative "heaven." As liberal Justice Felix Frankfurter later observed, Taft "had a very different notion of heaven than any I know anything about." Joseph Choate, a conservative corporate attorney, toasted the President at an honorary dinner: "Mr Taft has rehabilitated the Supreme Court." Since the unelected U.S. Supreme Court is literally a "super legislature," immune to the will of the majority of citizens, the stage was set for rubber stamping a Republican Party Prohibition of alcohol by the U.S. Congress.
In 1920, America's national government finally prohibited the manufacture, transportation and sale of all alcohol beverages. The National Prohibition Act, known as the Vorstead Act, became the 18th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. In 1921, Republican Party President Warren Harding appointed Ex-President Taft to the Supreme Court and instantly promoted him to Chief Justice, ensuring that the Court would not veto Prohibition (but would veto America's first minimum wage and child labor laws. This conservative laissez faire attitude placed corporate greed ahead of citizen safety and civil rights.) Taft was the only president to also exert power as a member of the nation's highest court. Ex-President Taft is considered to be the most political member in the history of the Supreme Court, perhaps attempting to compensate for his lame-duck presidency. As the conservative-minded chief justice rationalized, "Unfortunately, we cannot strain the Constitution to meet the wishes of good people."
Vorstead | As Prohibition became more entrenched, Republican President Herbert Hoover proudly proclaimed: "Prohibition is a great social and economic experiment -- noble in motive and far-reaching in purpose." Republican Senator Andrew J. Vorstead predicted, "They can never repeal it." Evengelist Billy Sunday prayed for the day America was "so dry, she can't spit." A Long Island church leaflet celebrated: "An enemy has been overthrown and victory crowns the forces of rightousness." General John J. Pershing, reiterating a war-cry spewed by todays militant antirecreational-drug Prohibitionists, moralized: "Close every saloon, every brewery; . . . death to the seller, or maker [of alcohol]."
Amazingly, the government's rationale behind this "Noble Experiment" was that alcohol was to be "conserved" for fuel use by the military during World War I. Another trick played upon the citizens was that many had been led to believe that beer and wine would remain legal -- the actual wording of the amendment was that only "intoxicating liquors" were to be banned. The National Prohibition Act read: "But it shall not be unlawful to possess liquors in one's private dwelling while the same is occupied and used by him as his dwelling only and such liquor need not be reported, provided such liquors are for use only for the personal consumption of the owner thereof and his family residing in such dwelling and of his bona fide guests when entertained by him therein." However, Congress gave a backdoor key to its Prohibition police by technically requiring such "liquor" to be "lawfully aquired."
Even though the war ("to end all wars") had already ended, the momentum generated by the government's guarantee of a cure for alcohol dependency carried it over the threshold. Dr. Stockard of Cornell University, at the 15th Congress Against Alcoholism in Washington D.C., proposed monastic concentration camps for American citizens: "In order to do that, I suggest not to kill the individual or anything of that kind, but the humane method . . . the real solution to this problem would be to confine them to farms where they would be treated kindly and mercifully, in a sort of colony where they would be prevented from reproducing."
Bootlegger | With the passage of the act, hundreds of thousands of business establishments were put on the scrapheap, and millions of citizens were classified by the government as instant criminals for home-brewing of alcohol. Only 5 percent of this alcohol was ever confiscated by the government, even though it seized over one billion gallons. "Revenuers" shot and killed 137 citizens, and bootleggers were sentenced to five years in prison with a $10,000 fine (equivalent to $100,000 today). From 1920 to 1933, nearly one million citizens were arrested for alcohol crimes, and even more distilleries were confiscated for the government. Newspapers called it a "new category of political prisoner." The American Civil Liberties Union was coincidentally founded in 1920, out of fear of government authorities running amok.
According to Jack Mendelson, M.D. and Nancy Mello, Ph.D., in their book Alcohol, Use and Abuse in America, Prohibition had zero impact on alcoholism and its related diseases. In fact, it killed over 15,000 average American citizens from alcohol poisoning, and caused approximately 200,000 cases of "jakes foot" paralysis, due to the lack of manufacturing safety controls normally undertaken by professional brewers and distillers. Alcohol consumption actually increased, due to its new-found mystique. For the first time, women were welcomed and accepted into the formerly male-dominated saloon establishments ("making whoopie," it was called). Coincidentally, government prohibition was also in effect against condoms; nevertheless, engineers invested the first condom-dispensing machines set up in the illegal taverns. The only potential health benefit of alcohol prohibition, if it can be called that, is that women gave up their previous drug of choice, Heroin (an addictive but non-poisonous over-the-counter brand of opium sold by Bayer corporation).
Rogers | In 1920, conservative Senator Morris Shepherd, one of the authors of the Prohibition Amendment, was caught with a moonshine still on his farm -- it was producing 130 gallons a day. Bootleggers roamed the halls of Congress with immunity from prosecution, selling their products. In 1928, nearly the entire political establishment of Pittsburg, Pennsylvania was indicted for conspiring with mobsters to monopolize the city's liquor market. In New York City, police set up their own "speakeasy," claiming it was for "investigative" purposes. Government corruption was boundless. Will Rogers, in his book The Cowboy Philosopher on Prohibition, observed: "Congress voted dry but drinks wet."
Harding & Coolidge | Republican senator and newspaper owner Warren Harding had rammed the Vorstead Act through the Senate during his candidacy for the Presidency. Once elected in 1921, Harding served liquor during his weekly poker games in the White House -- he once gambled away an entire set of White House china.
Strange Deaths | The married Harding was a promiscuous womanizer who suddenly died in office in 1923. The official cause of death was poisoning -- food poisoning. There was no autopsy. History suggests that the First Lady had her doctor poison him in revenge for his philandering, after she discovered her husband had fathered at least one illegitimate child. Another theory was that the alcohol-loving Catholics killed him, since Alcohol-hating Protestants loved Prohibition for its oppression of Catholic immigrants and their offspring. Perhaps Harding committed suicide to avoid the impending Congressional investigations into government corruption of the Teapot Dome military oil reserves (a Knoxville, Tennessee reporter won the Pulitzer Prize for his investigative journalism of the scandal) and the Veteran's Administration. One of his cabinet members allegedly shot himself and was found dead in the attorney general's home, and the unstable president had already had many nervous breakdowns. Within one year of the president's mysterious death, both his wife and their psychiatrist-doctor also died of the same symptoms (at the doctor's "nut farm" -- as the president's advisors referred to it). Perhaps the doctor (who Harding had instantly promoted to general) was horribly incompetent -- he had never heard of a heart attack, despite medical journals reporting such disease for ten years (apologists allege licensed doctors should not be required to read medical journals concerning modern medical discoveries). Perhaps Harding's death was merely the result of a person who ignored health warning signs to take a vacation, succombing instead to greed and ambition for winning the rat race. Harding is universally regarded as America's worst president. (The Strange Deaths of President Harding, Robert Ferrell, 1998.)
Coors | In 1929, beer baron Adolph Coors leapt from a tall building, falling to his death, out of mental depression due to the government closing down his formerly profitable family business. Apparently the Coors Milk didn't sell very well compared to beer.
Adolph Busch, the brewer, wrote President Coolidge: "An unpopular statutory control over individual habits can never be substituted for voluntary temperance, individual self-restraint and reasonable statutory regulation. The law should be written in terms of temperance and reasonable regulation; then the evils of the present system would disappear."
Republican President Calvin Coolidge wrote: "Any law that inspires disrespect for other laws -- the good laws -- is a bad law." The conservative president did nothing, however, to change his nation's legal course.
The Association Against the Prohibition Amendment argued that the law was: "[W]rong in principle, has been equally disastrous in consequences in the hypocrisy, the corruption, the tragic loss of life and the appalling increase in crime which have attended the abortive attempt to enforce it; in the checking of the steady growth of temperance which had preceded it; in the shocking effect it has on the youth of the nation; in the impairment of constitutional guarantees of individual rights; in the weakening of the sense of solidarity between the citizens and the government which is the only sure basis of the country's strength."
150,000 citizens marched in a parade through the streets of New York City demanding the repeal of Prohibition and lower taxes. In a Laramie, Wyoming courtroom, a bootlegger's defense attorney drank the corpus delicti sip by sip until there was no evidence left, allowing the judge to throw out the charges. A jury in San Francisco similarly drank the evidence against a bootlegger and exercised its right to jury nullification by declaring the defendant not guilty.
Prohibition did not ban alcohol for "medicinal purposes" found in prescription medicines and over-the-counter tonics. Increasing the alcohol content thus became a popular marketing tool for the drug companies. The Supreme Court even allowed doctors to legally prescribe their patients up to three pints of government-produced whiskey every month -- often enhanced with life-saving vitamins and nutrients (which is illegal today) -- and doctors routinely prescribed government beer by the gallon.
Roosevelt | Democratic President Franklin Roosevelt denounced Prohibition as "a damnable affliction," and declared, "We have…reached the point as a Nation where we must take action to save the Constitution from the Court" of "Nine Old Men." Roosevelt, America's most-loved president, said: "Let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself -- nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts.... Only a foolish optimist can deny the dark realities of the moment....
Practices of the unscrupulous money changers stand indicted in the court of public opinion, rejected by the hearts and minds of men.... They know only the rules of a generation of self-seekers. They have no vision, and when there is no vision the people perish.... The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic State itself. That, in its essence, is Fascism, ownership of the government by the individual, by a group, or any controlling private power."
A Depression-era country music song sung by bootleggers while delivering their contraband corn-liquor went:
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Roosevelt was elected,
elected in time,
went to the treasury and found one dime,
got back liquor,
and got back beer,
heap better times in the next four years.
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(As retold by Dr. Stony Merriman in his book Midnight Moonshine Rondevous, Secrets of Luke Alexander Denny's Moonshine-Running Adventures (1930s-1960s), M. Stone Publishing." Note that many states still refused to prohibit Prohibition, necessitating the employment of bootleggers and gangsters to service the recreational needs of Americans for decades.)
The bottom line was that the government lost over $11 billion dollars in tax revenues -- four times more than its income tax revenues -- which could have balanced the nation's budget during the Great Depression. Instead, violent gangsters ended up with the $11 billion. Tommy-guns and mass murder became commonplace in America, and organized crime gained powerful economic and political influence with its newfound wealth and social status. Gangsters gained a reputation as American heroes, and the government was perceived as inept and corrupt.
Capone | Chicago Mafia boss Al Capone, who thanks to the Prohibition War became a billionaire and retired to a beachfront mansion in Florida (despite a conviction for tax evasion and a trip to Alcatraz), exclaimed: "Don't get the idea that I'm one of those goddamn radicals. Don't get the idea that I'm knocking the American system." Capone had profited from controlling interest in 10,000 illegal saloons, in addition to his other Prohibition, extortion, theft and mass-murder rackets. Over 1,000 murders are attributed to Capone, including the infamous St. Valentine's Day Massacre. Capone allegedly was assassinated by a rival who sent him a prostitute known to be infected with syphilis (the same disease that killed President George Washington and was first brought to decimate Europe by Christopher Columbus and his crew of Spanish golddiggers, kidnappers and rapists).
In the National Prohibition Law Hearings in the U.S. Senate, New York City Democratic politician Fiorella LaGuardia testified against Prohibition:
"At least 1,000,000 quarts of liquor is consumed each day in the United States. In my opinion such an enormous traffic in liquor could not be carried on without the knowledge, if not the connivance of the officials entrusted with the enforcement of the law.... I believe that the percentage of whisky drinkers in the United States now is greater than in any other country of the world. Prohibition is responsible for that.... At least $1,000,000,000 a year is lost to the National Government and the several States and counties in excise taxes. The liquor traffic is going on just the same. This amount goes into the pockets of bootleggers and in the pockets of the public officials in the shape of graft.... I will concede that the saloon was odius but now we have delicatessen stores, pool rooms, drug stores, millinery shops, private parlors, and 57 other varieties of speak-easies selling liquor and flourishing. I have heard of $2,000 a year prohibition agents who run their own cars with liveried chauffeurs. It is common talk in my part of the country that from $7.50 to $12 a case is paid in graft from the time the liquor leaves the
12-mile limit until it reaches the ultimate consumer. There seems to be a varying market price for this service created by the degree of vigilance or the degree of greed of the public officials in charge. It is my calculation that at least a million dollars a day is paid in graft and corruption to Federal, State, and local officers. Such a condition is not only intolerable, but it is demoralizing and dangerous to organized government....
"The Government even goes to the trouble to facilitate the financing end of the bootlegging industry. In 1925, $286,950,000
more of $10,000 bills were issued than in 1920 and $25,000,000 more of $5,000 bills were issued. What honest business man deals in $10,000 bills? Surely these bills were not used to pay the salaries of ministers. The bootlegging industry has created a demand for bills of large denominations, and the Treasury Department accommodates them.
"The drys seemingly are afraid of the truth. Why not take inventory and ascertain the true conditions. Let us not leave it to the charge of an antiprohibition organization, or to any other private association, let us have an official survey and let the American people know what is going on. A complete and honest and impartial survey would reveal incredible conditions, corruption,
crime, and an organized system of illicit traffic such as the world has never seen." LaGuardia was eventually elected to the U.S. Congress.
Hoover | Eventually, politicians who supported an end to Prohibition won landslide victories, and state delegates to their Constitutional Conventions who supported repeal won overwhelming majorities in their elections. Roosevelt defeated Republican Herbert Hoover for the presidency. President Hoover was hated not only for Prohibition but also was given credit for the calamity of The Great Depression. Prohibition was repealed on December 5th, 1933, with passage of the 21st Amendment. President Roosevelt, as he signed the legislation proclaimed, "I think this would be a good time for a beer."
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