James Surowiecki of New Yorker Magazine recently compared the ban on sports betting to Prohibition. According to Surowiecki, “The ban on sports betting does exactly what Prohibition did. It makes criminals rich.”
Prohibition started in the 1920’s when several unions joined together to ban alcohol. Growing women’s movements saw temperance, or abstinence from alcohol, as a way to reduce widespread domestic violence against women and children. World War I pitted the United States and its Allies against Germany and the Central powers. Because breweries were (and continue to be) associated with German culture, beer suddenly became “unpatriotic.” The war effort brought with it an emphasis on frugality, so Americans began to reconsider whether or not it was right to use “good grain” on alcohol. Temperance union and interest groups (including the Ku Klux Klan) ultimately proved more organized and influential than proponents of keeping alcohol legal at the time, leading to the passage of the Eighteenth Amendment and the Volstead Act, establishing Prohibition and its problematic effect––enriching a new class of lawbreakers!
As mentioned, drinking came under fire during WWI because it was thought of as an unpatriotic waste of good grain. Also, alcoholics were regarded as a drain on the wartime economy because they didn’t work that hard since they could not focus and therefore they were an impediment to production. Many of these prideful Americans were also ardent churchgoers calling for or participating in the ban called for by religious leaders, Protestant and Catholic alike, many of whom considered drinking a sin (or poor choice leading to other “unholy” acts).
Sadly, alcoholic male heads of household tended to “drink” up their paychecks at the local saloon. This led to some of these broke and belligerent men beating up their wives and kids. One can see why the Women’s Temperance Union wanted to prohibit, or ban, alcohol in general. Other more moderate groups wanted to prohibit hard spirits, not all alcohol in hopes that it would solve these problems.
A major effect of prohibition was the rising high crime rate and growth of illegal enterprises. Feeling the pressure of a poor economy and job market, many “average people” turned to the underground alcohol trade as an opportunity to make money. “Rumrunners” were people who “ran” beer, rum, or other spirits from the Caribbean or Mexico to the United States. “Bootleggers” were people who strapped alcohol to their legs to smuggle (or otherwise sneak) it to speakeasies, underground bars that sold all the rumrunners’ and bootleggers’ contraband liquor.
Naturally, gangsters wanted a piece of the illicit action, and so played a huge role in Prohibition. At one point the infamous gangster Al Capone had more than 2,000 speakeasies and earned $60 million annually. In order to get this money, he and his crime syndicate committed 522 mob-related murders. He is said to have killed five people himself, but the only thing the government was able to convict him on was income tax evasion.
Prohibition ultimately proved economically disastrous for an overburdened country it forced to support a massive, corrupt enforcement agency and suddenly overstuffed prison system. When prohibition was repealed, the government had more problems to deal with than when it started. Having a poor economy before the Great Depression did not help much due to the fact that more unemployment was going on since Prohibition banned distilleries, eliminating those jobs and diverting the money they brought to mobsters like Al Capone.
By the end of Prohibition, there was a higher crime rate fueled by organized crime bosses, and the price of untaxed alcohol increased. Americans had to pay higher taxes to support enforcement of the ineffective Volstead Act, and still, the problem of widespread alcohol abuse remained. Eventually, these complications forced legislators to bring Prohibition to an end by passing the Twenty-first Amendment, repealing the disastrous Eighteenth and its ban on liquor. Now here is the big question. Would prohibition work today?