Contributions to chapter on Prohibition (current version)

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            REVISED- ENLARGED- ILLUSTRATED

                    THE AMERICAN
                G O V E R N M E N T

                         By
                 Frederic J. Haskin

       before publication every chapter of this book was
      read and approved by a Government authority.

               Illustrations from Photographs by
                       Harris & Ewing

                          published by
                        Frederic J. Haskin
                        Washington D. C
                        MADE IN U. S. A.
                        copyright 1911
                        copyright 1923
                    By Frederic J. Haskin



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             * * * BEGGINING OF CHAPTER * * *

                            XXXVII

                         PROHIBITION

  NATION-wide prohibition became effective in the United States January 16,
  1920, as a result of the adoption of the eighteenth amendment to the
  Federal Constitution and the passage of an enforcement act known as the
  Volstead Law.  This law was passed twice by Congress, the second time
  October 28, 1919, by a two-thirds vote of both House and Senate in order
  to override the veto of President Woodrow Wilson.
  Agitation against the use of intoxicating liquors is coeval with written
  history- The early Mosaic lawgivers attempted to repress drunkenness-
    Over 2,000 years B. C. a King of Babylon, Hammurabi, decreed that a wine
    seller who permitted riotous persons to assemble on his premises shou1d
    be put to death, and Mohammed commanded his followers to abstain from
    the use of intoxicants.  In the United States the first laws to prohibit
    the manufacture and sale of liquors date back to 1838 in Tennessee and
    to 1846 in Maine. Prior to 1906, 18 States had adopted State-wide
    prohibition, but the temperance wave had receded by that year so that
    but three States-Maine, Kansas, and North Dakota remained in the
    prohibition column. Campaigns for State laws and constitutional
    provisions were renewed and the movement progressed rapidly from the
    enactment of the Georgia law in 1907.  Ten years later, when the
    so-called Reed Amendment went into effect, there were 23 "bone dry"
    States.
  This law was directed against the shipment of liquors into the dry States.
  The entrance of the united States into the World War materially
  strengthened the prohibition forces. First the sale of liquors to soldiers
  and sailors was forbidden. Next, under the food control act, the President
  was authorized to prohibit the use of grains and fruits in the
  distillation of liquors for beverage purposes. Then followed the passage
  on November 21, 1918 of the war-time prohibition act, prohibiting after
  June 30, 1919, the sale, during the European War and thereafter until the
  termination of demobilization, of any intoxicating liquors except for
  export.  Meanwhile a resolution for a constitutional amendment had been
  passed by both Houses of Congress and the fight was transferred to the
  States to secure the necessary ratification by the legislatures of
  three-fourths thereof.  This was accomplished by January 16, 1919, and
  the eighteenth amendment became effective one year later- The twelve
  months interregnum was provided for in the amendment as a period of
  adjustment to the new order of things
--The immediate effect of prohibition was a loss to the Federal Government
of more than $400,000,000 in annual revenue from the taxes on the liquor
industry, and an increase in its expenditures necessitated by the
administration of the enforcement act, the appropriation for this purpose
for a year being in excess of $9,000,000. States and municipalities that
had licensed the traffic also suffered a corresponding loss in revenues
  A result almost coincident with the taking effect of the law was the
  development of a new industry, or business, known as bootlegging, which
  speedily attained mammoth proportions. Bootlegging is the illegal traffic
  in intoxicants.  The supplies are obtained through illegal manufacture
  within the United States, through theft or illegal withdrawals from
  bonded warehouses, or through smuggling from adjacent countries or near
  -by islands. Tens of thousands of people have engaged in these unlawful
  enterprises and the capital employed has aggregated many millions.
  The risks are great, the prices high, and the profits correspondingly
  large. Fortunes have been amassed within a comparatively short time
  Piracy and hijacking have developed as collateral activities of boot-
  legging and smuggling. Lawless individuals or groups have preyed upon
  others of their kind, stealing the illicit liquor supplies in storage
  or in transit, or the cash that was to be paid for such supplies,
  Desperate fights and many murders have featured the operations of these
  criminals-Most of the crimes go unreported and the perpetrators
  unpunished because the victims are themselves lawbreakers and can not
  appeal to the authorities or to the law.
   Another concomitant evil of bootlegging has been the corruption of
   officials charged with the enforcing of the law. Wherever the illicit
   traffic on a large scale has been discovered, bribery or attempted
   bribery has been disclosed; and it has also been found that officers
   of the law have not always waited to be corrupted but have levied
   tribute. Immense sums in the aggregate have thus been paid for
   protection
  Obviously there would be no bootleggers if there were no market for
  their wares. The volume of their business is therefore indicative of
  the widespread disregard of the law on the part of the American people.
  Careful investigators have reported that there is scarcely a community
  in the    United States that is entirely free of the liquor traffic,
  and in the larger cities the evasions and violations of the law are
  constant rather than sporadic. consumption of illegal liquor is by no
  means confined to what is ordinarily known as the lawless element of
  the population. Men and women who are otherwise wholly respectable and
  respected are regular customers of the bootleggers- One of the
  traffickers arrested in Washington had in his Possession a book
  containing the names of persons with whom he dealt that read as if
  someone had been compiling a list of a few hundred of the "best people"
  in the National Capital. Legislators who voted for the prohibition law
  have been charged with infractions of its provisions.
  The Attorney General of the United States has reported that his
  department has been called upon to prosecute members of the judiciary,
  prominent members of the American bar, multimillionaires, and scions of
  the Nation's aristocracy and that it was all a sordid story of
  assassination, bribery and corruption that found its way into the
  very sanctum wherein the inviolability of the law was presumed to have
  been held sacred.  Representative William D. Upshaw, of Georgia, one
  of the spokesmen of the Anti-Saloon League, created a furor in the
  Sixty-seventh Congress, with charges that there was great deal of
  drinking "in high places." they proposed that all public officials of
  the country, State as well as national, pledge themselves to total
  abstinence and respect for the eighteenth amendment and the enforcement
  law.  It is significant, also, that conferences of the governors of
  the various States have been called, first by the late President Harding
  and then by President Coolidge, to consider ways and means of enforcing
  the prohibition act and of creating a public sentiment for law
  observance.
   The Prohibition Unit of the Bureau of Internal Revenue, which is
   charged with enforcing prohibition so far as the Federal Government
   is concerned, is an organization headed by a commissioner established
   in Washington, with State and regional directors, State agents and
   flying squadrons stationed throughout the country. This force numbers
   from 3,000 to 3,500 and has included more than 3,900-
  The stories of prohibition enforcement are more absorbing than detective
  tales. The agents of the Government spend their time in a ceaseless
  contest to outwit and apprehend the illicit distillers, smugglers, and
  bootleggers who resort to every subterfuge to escape detection and
  interference with their highly remunerative business. One still operated
  successfully for months in a house adjacent to a police station, The
  moonshiners had cut through the wall and effected a connection so that
  the smoke and fumes of the still escaped up the chimney of the station
  house. A southern manufacturer of corn liquor marketed his product by
  delivering it to city retailers in. milk cans.
   Smuggling from Mexico and Canada has been successful on a large scale
  because it is an utter impossibility patrol the thousands Of miles of
  border. The liquor brought across the line at the North or at the South
  finds its way hundreds of miles into the interior of the United States,
  instances having been found of bootleggers that maintained large fleets
  of trucks and automobiles running on regular schedules between Mexican
  and Canadian points and cities such as St. Louis, Kansas City, and Denver.
   On the Atlantic Coast the smugglers are so numerous and so active that
   there is at all times what is known as a rum fleet standing off or
   anchored outside the 3-mile limit near New York and New Jersey. The
   fleet consists of vessels of all kinds and sizes that bring there
   illicit cargoes from the Bermudas or the West Indies, or even from
   across the Atlantic.  As long as they remain outside the 3-mile limit
   this Government can not interfere with them and they are able to make
   their deliveries to bootleggers that slip out to them under cover of
   darkness in motor speed boats. The latter are frequently run down and
   captured by the prohibition enforcement officials, but enough of them
   slip through .to maintain a constant supply of intoxicants on the market
   in the larger cities.
  At one time the Prohibition Unit sought the cooperation of the Navy in
  its efforts to curb the business done by the rum fleet, but Attorney
  General Daugherty ruled that under the Constitution neither the Navy nor
  the Army could be used for such enforcement work.  The State Department
  also made diplomatic representations to European nations seeking an
  extension of the 3-mile territorial waters limit to a 12 mile limit so
  that the United States might be better able to enforce its prohibition
  laws by search or seizure of rum vessels farther out at sea. However,
  there was no immediate assent to this proposal.
   Not all the ships engaged in liquor smuggling make their sales outside
  the 3-mile limit. Some of them have boldly entered harbors and unloaded
  their cargoes almost under the eyes of the officials who were detailed
  to put an end to such practices. A tramp steamer put into one of the
  Atlantic seaboard ports. Its decks were covered with watermelons-
Merchants at the docks offered to buy the melons, but for two days the
captain of the vessel asked an excessive price for them. On the third day
he sold them for a fraction of the price originally asked. Then it was
learned that at night the skipper had unloaded his real cargo, which
consisted of several hundred cases of imported liquors and wines

  Prohibition enforcement agents have found that even coffins are used for
  the illegal transportation of booze. On more than one occasion make
  -believe funerals have been halted and the hearse and casket found to be
  conveying liquor instead of a corpse. Stills have been captured only
  after electrically charged wires surrounding an illicit distiller's
  place of business were cut. Bootleggers' automobiles have been equipped
  with apparatuses to discharge a screen of dense, black smoke, or
  poisonous gas fumes to enable the drivers to elude pursuit. Trunks with
  false bottoms have been used for the transportation of whisky, and
  barrels of merchandise labeled fish, or sirup, or paint, have been
  seized and found to contain alcohol. One large branch of the bootlegging
  business is the supplying of alcohol to consumers who make synthetic
  gin, which is a much simpler process than distilling moonshine whisky.
  Alcohol is also used in the manufacture of synthetic whisky, which is
  not so popular with consumers, and in "cutting" imported whisky-making
  2 or 8 quarts of what is labeled and sold for whisky out of 1 quart of
  the genuine article This adds greatly to the profits of the bootleggers.
  It also tends to shorten the lives of their consumers, but that does
  not seem greatly to concern the dealers as they always have more
  customers than they are able to supply.
    Foreign diplomats stationed in Washington enjoy an immunity which
    enables them to bring into the country al the wines and liquors they
    require for consumption at their embassies or legations. It has been
    charged that some of this diplomatic liquor has frequently found its
    way into the bootlegging market. One woman, who was arrested on a
    charge of illegal possession and selling of contraband whisky, said
    that she secured her supplies from such a source. This woman, who had
    every appearance of respectability, resided in a fashionable apartment
    house and maintained enviable social connections. She admitted her
    illicit business and said that she was Supporting herself and sending
    her son to college on its profits.
   Another story has it that in a Washington residence that houses a
  certain diplomatic group there is maintained a regular bar, complete
  even to the brass foot rail so familiar in the saloons of former years.
  This latter feature is said to have an especial appeal to drinkers of
  the old school who can not crook the elbow without instinctively bending
  the knee and seeking to rest the foot on the old brass rail.
  The Attorney General of the United States, in reviewing the work of the
  Federal courts in connection with cases arising out of 41 months of
  prohibition enforcement, reported that more than 90,000 cases had been
  terminated, that there had been 72,489 convictions, and that fines
  aggregating more than $12,367,000 had been assessed in criminal cases
  alone. For the fiscal year ending June 50, 1923, the Prohibition
  Enforcement Commissioner reported that his general agents had seized
  more than 5,000 illicit stills and that illicit distilling was on the
  decrease. The general agents numbering less than 300 and not including
  hundreds of other national and State enforcement officers, were
  reported also to have seized 50,000 gallons of whisky, more than
  2,000,000 gallons of mash, 9,000 gallons of pomace, 5,000 pounds of
  sugar, 21,481 fermenters, and other apparatus. The Commissioner further
  reported that in this fiscal year his general agents had seized 859
  automobiles, 57 motor boats and launches, 29 horses and mules, and 15
  wagons, buggies, and sleighs, and that taxes and penalties recommended
  for assessment totaled $24,177,000.
   In review of two years of his administration the Commissioner said in
  1923 that the facts presented warranted fair degree of satisfaction
  with accomplishments as a whole any problems, he said, had been solved;
  but new problem presented themselves every day in different aspects of
  the work and would continue to do so for years. The Commissioner frankly
  stated that one of the chief difficulties presented might be termed
  sectional, where there was adverse public opinion to be combated. This,
  he added, was to be found chiefly on the Eastern seaboard, although
  there were certain interior cities where conditions made enforcement
  difficult. In certain localities, he reported, there had been cooperation
  offered by local authorities, in others such cooperation was lacking.
  The Prohibition Commissioner not only controls by permit all withdrawals
  from bonded warehouses of liquor for medicinal purposes, but he also
  controls the issuance of prescriptions for liquor by physicians. Earlier
  forms of these permits were counterfeited and much liquor was illegally
  drawn. Later it was claimed there had been devised a new form of permits,
  almost impossible to counterfeit, and under the new system illegal
  withdrawals were much reduced during the first quarter of the year,
  official reports indicated there were only 302 overdrafts out of a total
  of 145,000 withdrawals. In 1920 whisky withdrawals aggregated 12,389,529
  gallons. In 1921, when new methods were employed for checking up,
  withdrawals dropped to 3,243,845 gallons and during the calendar year
  1922 withdrawals of medicinal whiskey aggregated only 1,819,888 gallons.
   Concentration of all whiskies in bond in a limited number of warehouses
  during this period also curtailed distillery robberies and made it more
  difficult for bootleggers to get liquor out of ware houses by forged
  permits.
   The late President Harding said shortly before his death said that it
  would probably require 16 to 20 years to make prohibition fully effective.
  Officials of the Anti-saloon League and the Prohibition Unit are more
  optimistic, but it is generally conceded that legislation so suddenly
  changing the social habits of a people can not be put immediately into
  effect.
   In combating rum running, bootlegging, and illegal transportation and
  possession in the earlier years of prohibition Federal agents staged
  raids that revealed both the wide spread extent of Volstead Law
  Violations as well as the determination of the Government to suppress
  such violations. For instance, in one great city, during the clean-up
  drive, prohibition agents arrested 850 persons and raided 400 saloons
  and soft-drink parlors in one night.
   While admitting the difficulty of cleaning up such wet spots in the
  larger cities where prohibition is less popular than in the rural
  communities generally, prohibitionists claim that eventually the
  situation will be met. It is claimed in behalf of prohibition that
  prohibition enforced is a success, and that prohibition even partially
  enforced is better than the legalized liquor traffic- It is contended
  by such prohibition advocates that arrests for drunkenness throughout
  the United States have been cut in half since prohibition; that the
  family man has largely dropped out of the drinkers' ranks; that there
  has been a great decrease in sex disease, that savings-bank deposits
  have increased even in periods of industrial depression; that the prison
  population has been materially reduced; that the workingmen who formerly
  spent their Saturday nights in corner saloons now take then pay
  envelopes home and spend their money on their families.
   Its opponents say that prohibition can never be effective in America.
  They point out that it has been an issue in the United States for a
  hundred years; that Maine has been legally dry for more than 75 years
  and yet prohibition was an issue in a recent election. Prohibition was
  a failure in China, they say, before the Christian era, and no law made
  to regulate the habits of a people has since been a success.  They assert
  that in Denver, nearly 2,000 miles from the Atlantic seaboard, 170
  persons died of acute alcoholism in 1922 as compared with 5 deaths
  in 1915, and there were 5,315 arrests for drunkenness in 1922 as
  compared with 4,384 in 1915. In Washington, the National Capital, they
  point out that the number of arrests for drunkenness increased from
  3,491 in the year 1920 to 6,375 in 1922. The antiprohibitionists assert
  that prohibition was the result of the hysteria of war time, that it
  came without a popular vote of the people on the direct issue involved,
  and that it was abortive of the principle of local self-government
  because it was imposed on a number of States where the sentiment was
  undeniably against it. Proponents of prohibition reply that prohibition
  sentiment has steadily gained ground for more than 30 years, that
  three-fourths of the States had gone dry, and that national prohibition
  was inevitable and the Federal Government had the duty and the power
  to take the short route, abolish the saloon, and impose prohibition on
  all States, for the general good of the Nation. Such Social and moral
  reforms, they contend, are within the constitutional provinces of the
  parent Government.
   Thus the debate proceeds over the wisdom and effectiveness of national
  prohibition. The existence of such extremely divergent views probably
  will keep the issue alive for years to come and reflects the somewhat
  mercurial temperament of the American people and the slow solution of
  their great experiment.

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