All language subtitles for Prohibition S01E01 [WEBDL-720p][AAC 2.0][h264]-CtrlHD.en

One snowy evening in
January of 1826,

the Reverend Lyman Beecher,

pastor of
the First Congregational Church

of Litchfield, Connecticut,
rode out to visit

a parishioner in need.

The young man had been among his
very first converts to Christ,

Beecher remembered,
"always most affectionate

and kind."

but something was wrong.

His wife was weeping.

"What is the matter?"
Beecher asked her.

She said that her husband's
fondness for drink had

overcome his love
for her... and for God.

Beecher had heard the same sad
story from parishioners again

and again: Jobs lost,
life savings swallowed up, wives

and children beaten and abused,
all because of alcohol.

Now he resolved
to do something about it.

Like slavery, the traffic
in ardent spirits must come to

be regarded as sinful...

let the temperate part of
the nation awake and reform.

The impassioned
sermons Lyman Beecher wrote

and delivered on successive
Sundays echoed sentiments

that had been heard for at least
half a century in America.

But Beecher was so eloquent,
and the scourge of alcohol had

become so pervasive, that when
those sermons were published,

it set in motion events even
he could not have imagined.

For the next 100 years,
Americans would argue fiercely

over what to do about the
age-old problem of drunkenness.

The battle would eventually
result in an amendment

to the Constitution of
the United States... prohibition.

It was meant
to eradicate an evil.

Instead, it would turn millions
of law-abiding Americans

into law-breakers.

It's this question of how
much can we tell other people

about how to live their lives.

How much can we
regulate society?

Can we really fix
all the problems

that we see around us?

It's the great example of what
happens when different groups

have different ideas
about what kind of behavior

is acceptable.

Prohibition would pit

the countryside
against the cities,

natives against newcomers,

Protestants against Catholics.

It would raise questions about
the proper role of government,

about individual
rights and responsibilities,

about means and ends
and unintended consequences,

and who is... and who is not...
a real American.

How the hell did that happen?

How does a freedom-loving
people, a nation that's built

on individual rights and
liberties, decide in one kind

of crazed moment, it almost
seems, that we can tell people

how to live their lives?

Virtually every part
of the Constitution is

about expanding human freedom
except prohibition, in which

human freedom was being limited.

When people cross the
line between our essential

character as Americans and
some other superseding vision

of what we should be, then
we get in trouble.

They say that the British
cannot fix anything properly

without a dinner.

But I am sure
the Americans can fix nothing

without a drink.

If you meet, you drink; If you
make acquaintance, you drink;

If you close a bargain,
you drink.

They drink because it is hot;
They drink because it is cold.

If successful in elections,
they drink and rejoice;

If not, they drink and swear.

They begin to drink
early in the morning;

They leave off late at night;

They commence
it early in life, and they

continue it, until they
soon drop into the grave.

Captain Frederick Marryat.

For most of
the nation's history, alcohol

was at least as American
as apple pie.

The hold of the "Mayflower,"
the ship that carried

the first Puritans to
Massachusetts, was filled

with barrels of beer.

At Valley Forge,
George Washington did his best

to make sure his men had half
a cup of rum every day...

and half a cup of whiskey
when the rum ran out.

John Adams began each day
with a tankard of hard cider.

Thomas Jefferson collected
fine French wines and dreamed

of a day when American
vineyards could match them.

After Andrew Jackson's
inauguration, so many drunken

admirers crowded into
the White House, the celebration

had to be moved out onto
the lawn to save the furniture.

Young Abraham Lincoln sold
whiskey by the barrel

from his grocery store
in New Salem, Illinois.

"Intoxicating liquor,"
he later remembered,

was "used by everybody,
repudiated by nobody."

A young Maryland slave named
Frederick Douglass said

whiskey made him feel
"like a president,"

self-assured "and independent."

Physicians recommended whiskey...
and cider and brandy and rum

and beer... as far better for
their patients than water

hauled from muddy rivers
and stagnant pools.

Clergymen drank.

So did craftsmen
and canal-diggers,

and the crowds of men

who turned out
for barn-raisings and baptisms,

funerals and elections
and public hangings.

It's part
of ritual celebrations.

It's part of being social.

It's part of the gathering.

And it's always been there.

It just tells you something.
Maybe we'll never really have

an answer for why we need it.

But if you look at
the history, it's clear we do.

Americans routinely
drank at every meal...

including breakfast.

In many towns a bell rang
twice a day to signal what was

called "grog-time" so that men
could stop whatever they were

doing in factories and
offices, mills and farm fields

to raise a jug.

In farm families,
in New England particularly,

there was a barrel of cider
by the door, and you came

in and you would have
your ladle of cider.

Now this wasn't as powerful
as whiskey, but, you know,

it wasn't the kind
of cider that we have

with doughnuts today.

For thousands of
years, human beings had been

fermenting fruits
and grains to create

mildly intoxicating beverages.

But by the 1800s, rum, whiskey,
and other distilled spirits...

with significantly higher
alcohol content... had become

increasingly available.

All of a sudden,
you have all of these people

growing grain... growing corn,
growing oats, growing wheat...

that can be distilled
into whiskey.

And so all of these
rituals that had been part

of the human experience where
farmers would get up and you

would have beer with breakfast
and beer with lunch

and beer with your afternoon
break and beer with dinner.

But you're talking
about 2% beer.

But now all of a sudden,
people are drinking

whiskey instead.

And it took a while for
the culture to recognize that,

"Wait a minute. There's
something really wrong here."

By 1830, the average
American over 15 years of age

drank the equivalent of 88
bottles of whiskey every year,

3 times as much as their
21st-century descendants drink.

Americans spent more money
on alcohol each year

than the total expenditures of
the Federal Government.

Inebriates filled
the nation's poorhouses

and workhouses and prisons.

More and more, people began
to worry that the country was

becoming a nation of drunkards.

And as the wages of many
husbands and fathers and sons

went to the grog shop,
women and children became

victims... mistreated, abandoned,

deprived of food and shelter.

Alcohol consumption

at that point was

a sign of masculinity
that took away masculinity.

So that you drank to show
that you were a man, but you get

drunk, and all of a sudden you
can't provide for your family,

you can't do your job.

You become violent.

There are so many references
to the degradation

of Saturday night.

Implicit that a man would
go out, first of all,

he would leave the home.

He would go to a saloon.
He would get drunk,

and he would come home
and do whatever he wanted.

This is a time when there is
no divorce; When the concept

of police protection for
domestic violence doesn't exist;

The concept of marital rape
can't be discussed.

But you can discuss it through
alcoholism and what alcohol

does to men.

On April 5, 1840,
6 hard-drinking friends met

in a tavern in Baltimore
and pledged to one another

that they would never
take another drink.

They established
what they proudly called

a "society of
reformed drunkards"

and named it after the first
president of the Republic.

Word spread.

Soon Washingtonian societies
sprang up in every state.

At meetings across the country,

thousands of alcoholics, many in
tears, came forward to confess

their own weaknesses
to each other

and sign
the Washingtonian pledge.

Eventually more than half
a million men would add

their names to the rolls.

There was
a way that the Washingtonians,

by telling their
own stories to each other

and to people that
they wished to recruit,

there was
a great deal of power to that.

It was very personal.
It wasn't some

authoritative or
authoritarian figure from

on high telling you what to do.

It was one-to-one.

But clergymen
denounced the Washingtonians

as ungodly because they
dared claim drunkards could be

reformed by their fellow
sufferers

without joining any church.

The young country was in the
midst of a new era of reform,

fueled by a Protestant great
awakening, that called upon

every believer to help
cleanse the country

of every sort of sin.

The same reformers who were
leading the crusade to abolish

slavery saw drinking and the
damage it did to individuals,

families, and communities
as no less sinful,

no less corrupting.

They called
their movement temperance.

At first, advocates preached
mere moderation...

only ardent spirits like
rum and whiskey were off-limits.

But soon, many began demanding
total abstinence

from all forms of alcohol...
insisting

on capital "T"...
Total... abstinence.

New church-based organizations
sprang up:

The Sons of Temperance,

Knights of Jericho, Templars
of Honor and Temperance;

Independent
Order of Good Templars.

Some temperance societies
sponsored separate branches

for African Americans.

Frederick Douglass, who had
escaped slavery,

took the pledge
of total abstinence,

saying, "If we could but make"

"the world sober, we
would have no slavery...

"all great reforms,"
he said, "go together."

Tens of thousands of boys
and girls pledged never to touch

alcohol and enlisted
in what was called

the Cold Water Army.

Women were very
big in these things.

The first expressive life of
women in America was in these

reform movements.

They were almost always
what were called auxiliaries.

An auxiliary was to be
something that was to be

of help along the way.

But while the men are off
working or drinking

or goofing off, the women
more and more organized.

Although it was
thought unseemly for women

to work alongside men, even
in the cause of moral reform,

they would soon put themselves
at the center of the struggle

against alcohol.

When Susan B. Anthony was
refused permission even to

speak at a Sons of Temperance
meeting, she walked out

and formed the nation's first
women's temperance society

in which men could neither
vote nor hold office.

Her friend
Elizabeth Cady Stanton became

the organization's
first president.

For the next 50 years,
temperance

and a far more radical cause,
women's suffrage, would be

inextricably linked.

The early temperance
movement was not about getting

everyone else to
give up alcohol.

I mean, it was voluntary.

You never would have suggested
that you force people to do it

because then it wasn't
sincere, it wasn't

real reform.

You had to really have
this come from within.

Then you start to get
the argument that, well, maybe

we do need to regulate this
because maybe we have a lot

of people in our society who
don't have the strength

or the moral fortitude to
do this themselves.

There is a belief
in human perfectibility,

that humans can be perfect.

And alcohol is the fly
in the ointment.

You could have
a perfect marriage

if it weren't for alcohol.

You could have a perfect husband
if it weren't for alcohol.

You could have
a perfect community

if it weren't for alcohol.

And alcohol, in a way,
becomes the scapegoat

for all of the failures
in society.

If you didn't have alcohol
you wouldn't have poverty,

you wouldn't have
domestic violence.

You certainly wouldn't
have prostitution.

And the solution that the people
in the temperance movement

came up with is
that the only moral solution

to this problem is
to get rid of the drink.

Reformers petitioned
state and local governments,

demanding that taverns
and hotels, groceries

and apothecary shops

be barred from selling alcohol.

Moderates warned
they were going too far.

"Very little good,"
one clergyman wrote,

"has ever been done
by the absolute shall."

It's not that sin is
so terrible, it's that sin

is very attractive.

And that's why we're
always tempted to do it.

So what you need, then,
is to help people to overcome

this temptation.

And if necessary, sometimes,
you have to make sin illegal.

There was a sense of
the extraordinary difficulty

of overcoming the hurdle,
the idea that the temptation

was so powerful
that some people, at least,

perhaps the least-advantaged
people in society, just couldn't

be trusted and that therefore
someone needed to do something

about it from the outside,
not so much for the sake

of those people as for the sake

of their families and for
the sake of their children.

In 1851, Neal Dow,
the wealthy mayor of Portland,

Maine, gathered thousands
of signatures on a petition

demanding the state
legislature enact a law to ban

the sale of alcohol.

Few Americans drank more than
the fishermen and lumbermen,

mill-workers and
hardscrabble farmers of Maine.

In Portland alone, home to
fewer than 10,000 people,

there were 200 licensed
liquor dealers

and perhaps 400 unlicensed ones.

But through Neal Dow's
tireless efforts, the bill

passed on June 2, 1851,
and for the first time,

the legislature of an American
state voted to prohibit

the sale and manufacture
of intoxicating beverages.

A remarkable spectacle
can be seen in Portland.

Temperate men, and nothing
but temperate men,

walk her streets.

A strange quiet prevails.

The clamor and rioting
and fierce turbulence

of drunkenness
are nowhere to be seen.

With the law now
on his side, Dow personally led

raids on liquor sellers,
and when an angry crowd

of 3,000 men,
most of them Irish immigrants

who saw nothing wrong with
alcohol, turned out to protest

his actions, Dow called out
the state militia and ordered

them to fire.

7 men were wounded.

One was killed.

Mayor Dow's critics denounced
him as "the sublime fanatic."

His admirers insisted he was
America's "moral Columbus."

Meanwhile, many of his state's
more enterprising citizens

quickly found ways to profit
from loopholes in his law.

Fishermen up and down Maine's
long, rocky coast smuggled

alcohol ashore in coffins,
and barrels marked

"sugar" and "flour."

Forbidden to sell liquor,
bartenders began charging

handsome fees for
salted crackers...

then threw in a drink for free.

Alcohol for medicinal purposes
was permitted... so Maine

physicians wrote prescriptions
to boost their incomes.

Itinerant liquor-sellers
roamed the streets selling

swigs from pint bottles hidden
beneath their pant-legs.

Their customers called
them boot-leggers.

Over time the law decayed.

It didn't hold up.

And, in fact, many other states
passed similar laws as

the Maine law, but by 1860 every
one of them is off the books.

By 1860,
the temperance movement,

like women's suffrage
and other reforms of the day,

found itself overshadowed...
first by the mounting struggle

over slavery and then by the
Civil War fought to settle it.

Membership in temperance
societies dwindled.

Soldiers and civilians alike
continued to drink, in part

to mask the grief and horror
of the war raging around them.

And in 1862, the Federal
Government itself,

hungry for revenues to pay for
the war, helped to legitimize

the liquor trade by charging
retailers a $20 license fee

and taxing manufacturers
20 cents for every gallon

of distilled spirits
they produced

and a dollar
for every keg of beer.

Within a few years, fully
1/3 of the federal budget

would come from taxing alcohol.

After the Civil War ended,
hundreds of thousands

of immigrants... Irish
and Germans and Bohemians

and others from central
and northern Europe... began

pouring into America's growing
cities and spread out across

the countryside.

They were eager to create new
lives but unwilling to give up

old ways, increasing tensions
with native-born citizens,

who thought they knew best
how Americans should behave.

New immigrants came

with not only
a different culture,

but also with a different
set of drinking habits.

And that immediately became
part of the American debate

about whether certain people
were drinking the wrong kind

of alcohol and too much of it.

Eberhard Anheuser,
Valentin Blatz,

Adolphus Busch, Bernhard Stroh,
Frederick Miller,

Frederick Pabst, Frederick
and Maximilian Schaefer,

Joseph Schlitz... a host
of German-American entrepreneurs

made themselves rich satisfying
the new immigrants'

thirst for beer.

In 1850, they had brewed
just 36 million gallons.

By 1870, their output had soared
to more than 550 million.

To protect their business
interests, they formed

a lobbying organization...

the United States Brewers'
Association,

conducting their meetings
and their communications

in German.

Alarmed at the growing
power of the brewers' lobby,

and the steady increase
in beer drinking all across

the country, the forces of
temperance, dormant since

before the Civil War,
began to stir again.

Every whirlwind has
its first leaf, for the laws

of motion oblige it to begin
somewhere in particular.

The whirlwind of the Lord
began in the little town

of Hillsboro on
the 23rd of December, 1873.

Hillsboro, Ohio,
was the home of a frail wife

and mother named
Eliza Jane Thompson,

the daughter of an Ohio
governor.

Like so many temperance
workers, she had experienced

the impact of alcoholism
first-hand: Her eldest son,

a clergyman, had become addicted

through a doctor's prescription
and then died in what was called

an inebriate asylum.

All she had been able to do
was grieve until the evening

of December 23, 1873, when
a visiting temperance lecturer

urged the town's wives and
mothers to take to the streets

in protest.

If they did that, he said,
they could destroy

the liquor business forever.

Thompson's husband, a local
judge, thought the idea

of women marching in public
sheer tomfoolery.

I ventured to remind him

that the men had been in
the tomfoolery business

a long time, and suggested
that it might be God's will that

the women should now take part.

On Christmas Eve,
Eliza Jane Thompson joined

nearly 200 other women at
the First Presbyterian Church.

After prayers, she led them
outside, lined up two by two,

all dressed in black
and singing her favorite hymn,

"Give to the winds thy fears."

The women's first stop was
William Smith's drug store

on East Main Street.

He was a licensed physician,
so they asked him to sign

a pledge, promising never
again to fulfill

any other doctor's prescription
for alcohol.

He signed.

Two other druggists assured
the ladies of their good

wishes and agreed to stop
selling alcohol entirely.

What you see in one
community in Ohio is that

the women snap.

They go out and they gather
in front of a saloon and they

go down on their knees
and they start praying, blocking

the entrance praying,
which is this act

of radical civil disobedience
but that is also completely

within the parameters
of accepted female behavior.

And the movement takes off
like wildfire.

Within days,
what came to be called

the woman's crusade seemed to be
erupting everywhere in Ohio.

From London, Ohio, comes
the news that an absolute

stagnation of all business
exists, that the schools have

closed, and everybody's
mind is wholly absorbed

with the war.

Portable tabernacles in which
the women pray and sing are

transferred from the front
of one saloon to another.

Coshocton, Ohio.

It is easy enough to conquer
a man, if you only know how.

I wish you could see me
talking to some

of these saloon men that I would
never have spoken to before.

I employ my sweetest accents;
I exhaust all the arguments

I am possessed of; I look into
their eyes and grow pathetic;

I shed tears, and I joke
with them... but all

in terrible earnest.

And they surrender.

Eliza Hackett.

But bigger towns,
like Dayton, with their large

immigrant populations,
presented bigger challenges.

A large, turbulent
rabble followed them

from place to place.

Swearing crowds
of beer-drinkers pressed

into the saloons and drank
as fast as they could, mocking

the praying women
with loud blasphemy.

The "New York Times."

In Cincinnati,
fire companies sprayed

the praying women
with freezing water.

Bartenders pretended
to welcome them inside, drenched

them with buckets of beer,
then drove them back out

into the snow.

The owner of a German beer
garden hauled a cannon up

to the entrance and threatened
to blow away the first crusader

who tried to get past him.

One woman climbed onto
the cannon and led

her sisters in song.

After an hour or so,
the owner surrendered.

The crusade soon spread beyond
Ohio's borders... all the way

west to San Francisco,
where an angry mob,

spurred on by the San Francisco
Saloon-Keeper's Society,

hurled stones at a band
of peaceful, praying women.

Women eventually marched in
911 communities in 31 states

and territories.

They closed down
some 1,300 liquor sellers.

For the thousands of women
who took part in the crusade

and who had never before felt
they could act on their own

outside their homes, it had
been what one temperance worker

called a "baptism
of power and liberty."

It can scarcely be
possible that these women can

again settle back in the old
ruts and betake themselves

once more to hemming flounces,
as if the issue of life

depended on the amount of
stitches they stowed

into each garment.

They can hardly ever again
persuade themselves or others

that they are content to let
the men attend to the politics

of the country, while they
play pretty Polly or Bridget.

But all of a sudden, it
sort of hits you how much work

civil protest is.

And if you're out there praying,
you're not feeding

your family, you're not doing
all of your housework.

And the momentum of
the movement breaks down,

and gradually these
saloons start reopening.

No laws had been changed.

Men still wanted a drink.

Within a year or two,
most liquor dealers were

back in business, alongside
a steadily growing number

of competitors.

Everything that they
had worked so hard for

sort of falls apart.

And it becomes increasingly
clear to them that this model

of moral suasion, of setting
a good example,

isn't going to cut it.

It has come and
it has gone... this whirlwind

of the Lord... but it has set
forces in motion which each day

become more potent, and it will
sweep on

until the rum power in America
is overthrown.

Frances Willard.

Frances Elizabeth
Caroline Willard was

herself a whirlwind.

Called Saint Frances by her
most ardent admirers, she was

a master strategist who would
come to command

a nonviolent national army...
250,000 strong...

against alcohol,

the Woman's
Christian Temperance Union.

Frances Willard is
one of the great unsung heroes

of American history.

There was a time when every
schoolchild in America knew

her, and she was sort of
on par with Betsy Ross.

She was that important
to American history.

A pioneer in women's
education and a champion

of women's rights, Willard
took the reins of the WCTU

in 1879 and did not relinquish
them until her death

19 years later.

At Rest Cottage, her home in
Evanston, Illinois, she rose

at 6:00 each day and for
8 hours straight dictated

letters, speeches, articles,
and books to her secretary

and longtime companion,
Anna Gordon.

But the two women
were rarely at home.

During the first 9 years
of her presidency, Willard

claimed she had spoken

in more than 1,000
American towns,

including every single city with
more than 10,000 citizens...

and most of those
with only 5,000.

She took her struggle abroad
as well, founding

a world's WCTU that gathered
nearly a million signatures

on a canvas petition addressed
to all the rulers of the world,

imploring them to join hands in
a global ban on alcohol.

There is a war about this

in America, a war of mothers
and daughters, sisters

and wives, a war between
the rum shops and religion,

a war to the knife
and the knife to the hilt.

Only one can win.

The question is which one
is it going to be?

Willard forged
an alliance between the WCTU

and the women's suffrage
movement, bringing thousands

of women into the struggle
for the ballot.

To appeal to women still
too timid to assert themselves,

Willard coined
a consciously conservative

slogan... "home protection."

A woman who found it unseemly
to demand the vote solely

as a right could justify calling
for the ballot as what Willard

called "a weapon of protection
from the tyranny of drink."

And concerned that a growing
number of housewives were

becoming addicted to popular
patent medicines that often

contained as much alcohol
as whiskey, she established

homes for inebriate women.

As a pure and wholesome
alternative to alcohol,

the WCTU installed
public water fountains

in village squares
and city parks across America.

But getting rid of alcohol
was not Frances Willard's

only cause.

The WCTU eventually had
more than 45 departments

organized on behalf of a host
of causes... street children

and fallen women, female
matrons for women's prisons,

and free kindergarten
for every child,

equal pay for equal work,

and raising the age
of sexual consent from 10 to 16.

And she would
move from alcohol to votes

for women to orphanages to
asylums to what she called.

Christian socialism... all
these things put together.

It was sort of promising
a heaven on Earth, an idealized

society at a time when
utopian wishes were

not at all uncommon
in American society.

But no single
program had more impact than

the Department of Scientific
Temperance Instruction,

meant to train generations of
boys and girls dedicated

to eradicating alcohol...
and to do it

through the public
school system.

Childhood saved today
from a saloon and the nation

thus saved tomorrow is
the stake played for

in this desperate game.

All that is holiest in
mother love, all that is purest

in patriotism that would save
the country from the saloon,

enters into our support
of these textbooks.

Mary Hanchett Hunt.

Frances Willard
placed Mary Hanchett Hunt

in charge of the department.

Hunt lobbied state
legislatures and the Congress

to require anti-alcohol
indoctrination in the schools,

forced textbook publishers to
conform to the WCTU's message,

and sometimes demanded
kickbacks in exchange

for her stamp of approval.

She also directed women from
chapters all over the country

to pressure local school boards.

Before long, public school
children in every state...

22 million of them... were sitting
through temperance classes

3 times a week.

Kindergartners were taught to
chant, "Tremble, king alcohol",

We shall grow up."

Older children studied
texts filled with

lurid misinformation calculated
to terrify: Just one drink,

some books alleged, could burn
away the lining of the throat

and stomach and begin eating
away at the liver and kidneys.

You know, little
Johnny has one drink,

and the next picture he's lying

in the gutter unconscious.

One of their most notorious
things is they had diagrams

of body parts.

You would have a diagram
of a stomach.

And then they had a diagram
of an inebriate's stomach

and what happens to you.

Well, the inebriate's
stomach was full color.

Alcohol caused
deafness, dropsy, lunacy,

they claimed... not only in
those who swallowed it,

but in their children
and their children's children.

And always, some textbooks
warned, there was the fearful

possibility that drinking
could spark

spontaneous combustion...

bursting suddenly
into fatal blue flame.

Millions of children came to
believe it all, and it would

not be too long, Willard
prayed, before they all were

old enough to vote.

In
America, ballots are bayonets.

You think maybe the crusade
is dead and its banner trailing

in the dust?

I tell you no.

In the saloons,
life was different.

Men talked with great voices,
laughed great laughs,

and there was
an atmosphere of greatness.

Here was something more
than the common everyday

where nothing happened.

Here life was always very live,
and sometimes even lurid.

Terrible saloons might be,
but then that only meant

they were terribly wonderful.

Jack London.

Despite
the Washingtonians, despite

the woman's crusade
and the WCTU,

despite legions of clergymen
and temperance lecturers

and school books
meant to terrify,

more and more saloons were
opening every day in America.

By the turn of the new
20th century, there would be

some 300,000, as varied as
the people who patronized them.

For millions of working men,
saloons were a refuge...

from long hours
at a clerk's desk

or on a factory floor
or deep in a coal mine...

and from the responsibilities
represented

by the family waiting at home.

"The brass rail was
more than a footrest,"

one man remembered.

"It was a symbol of
masculinity emancipate,

of manhood free to put
its feet on something."

They were places

where people got up
and sang songs.

They were places where
the laughter went on and on.

And the assumption was,
they worked so hard

during the week if they thought
Friday night belonged to them

and the boys, why not?

You know, that was
part of the deal.

It was essential to their
survival, that to get through

a tough life and hard times,
particularly

for the immigrants in
a strange country, you know,

that's not quite yours,
I think it was essential

to them that they had this.

The saloon is
so many different things

to different people.

If you lived in a squalid
tenement house, it was

your living room.

It was your social club.

It was maybe where
your translator was.

Your bartender was there
to watch out for you.

Your bartender might have done
a lot more for you

than the local priest did
or the local cop.

Beer and whiskey were
not the saloon's

sole attraction.

A man could cash his paycheck,
pick up his mail if he didn't

yet have an address
of his own, read the paper,

learn English, play cards
or billiards, find out who was

hiring, even get
himself a city job.

Big-city saloon-keepers often
doubled as politicians,

doling out patronage positions.

In 1890, 11 of
New York's 24 aldermen ran bars.

In East Boston's ward two,
an Irish immigrant's son named.

Patrick J. Kennedy used profits

from two saloons and a wine
and spirits import business

to begin to
build the political machine

that would one day
help put his grandson

into the White House.

Unions met in saloons.

So did veterans' groups,
fraternal organizations,

and immigrant associations.

Ballots were cast in them;
Wakes were held, and so were

christening parties.

They were
the working-class private clubs.

The uptown white Anglo-Saxon
Protestants had their clubs

for the same reasons,
you know, except that they

were talking about, how would
you like to buy Venezuela?

But it was the same essential
thing... that there were

contacts going on in these
rough places, and the majority

of them were not buckets of
blood, as they called them.

They were not places where you
walked in and you were

hauled out by an ambulance.

They were much more clubs.

Most of them had basic rules:

Pay your debts,
vote the straight ticket,

that sort of thing.

Regulars may have
seen their corner taverns

as familiar neighborhood
businesses, but more often

than not they actually
belonged to one or another

of the big brewers.

Brewing companies
owned the saloons, and if.

Pabst opened a saloon on
this corner, Busch was going to

have one on this corner,
and somebody was going to have

one on this corner and this
corner, and the cities were

overwhelmed by
the brewery-owned saloons.

By agreeing to sell
just one brand of beer,

almost anyone could go
into the saloon business.

The brewery paid
for his license,

provided the pool table
and artwork,

the bar and barstools,
even the spittoons...

everything needed
to keep its beer flowing.

They would do
anything to sell beer.

The free lunch... you say there's
no such thing as a free lunch?

Well, in the 1890s and the
couple of decades thereafter,

the free lunch was something
that was served

in nearly every saloon.

You would go in, and you would
get your cheese

and your salami and your
sardines and your saltines,

and what did these things
have in common?

They're incredibly salty,
and so you would drink

a lot of beer.

It was a wonderful
marketing device.

Decent citizens were
appalled that most big cities

had a carefully delineated
district in which vice,

although technically illegal,
was tolerated, a place where

pimps and thugs and strong-arm
men worked hand-in-hand

with corrupt cops
and accommodating politicians.

And all of them were
centered around saloons.

In Manhattan, it was
the midtown tenderloin,

denounced by reformers
as Satan's Circus.

New Orleans had its Storyville.

San Francisco...
the Barbary Coast.

In Seattle, it was named
for the street

along which lumbermen skidded
logs to the docks before looking

for a place to have
a drink... skid road.

In Chicago's notorious
levee district... 20 square blocks

on the South side... there
were said to be 500 saloons,

500 whorehouses, 56 poolrooms,
15 gambling halls,

and too many peep shows
and cocaine parlors

and bawdy theaters to count.

All of it was overseen by
a flamboyant saloon-keeper

and Democratic committeeman,
Mike "Hinky-Dink" Kenna.

He had a tavern,
and he was the alderman

of the first ward.

Of course if you don't think
that's a conflict... to own

a tavern and be the alderman
at the same time.

But he controlled the levee,
and, of course, if you control

the levee you
controlled all, the votes.

They could elect Mickey Mouse
because they'd tell you who to

vote for, and they did.

It fostered a lot of corruption.

The bar became completely
intertwined with politics

in a lot of cities, so you
could buy votes with a whiskey

and a cigar.

You could always make
the argument that the saloon was

a place where morals were
loose, where prostitution was

a danger, where people
were taken advantage of.

My great-grandmother
remembers as a child walking

the streets of Philadelphia
and crossing the street so she

would not have to cross in
front of a saloon because it

was so scary... the noises that
were coming out of it, the men

lying in the gutter
drunk in front of it.

That was the face of
alcohol consumption.

One of the terrifying
stories of my childhood was

my mother telling me
what it was like.

She was an Irish immigrant
growing up in Hell's Kitchen

on the West side of Manhattan.

Of the men who would be
paid on Saturday afternoon,

and taking it directly to
the saloon, coming home drunken,

abusive, with all the money
gone and the mother trying

to figure out how she was going
to hold the family together,

how the children
were going to be fed.

And as a little boy,
identifying myself

with those children, I wondered
how I was going to be fed.

The only way
to solve the problem

of drunkenness, many believed,
was to get rid of the saloon.

When I went to Medicine
Lodge, Kansas, there were

7 dives where drinks were sold.

I began to ask, Why should we
have the saloon, when Kansas

was a prohibition state
and our Constitution made it

a crime to manufacture,
barter, sell or give away

intoxicating drinks?

These dive-keepers really were
not as much to blame

as the city officials
who were in league

with this lawless element
and could see the wicked walking

on every side
and the vilest men exalted.

Carry Nation.

Carry Nation's
life was filled with tragedy.

Her mother died in an insane
asylum, convinced she was.

Queen Victoria.

Her first husband
drank himself to death.

A second unhappy marriage
would end in divorce.

She determined to give herself
over to the struggle

against what she called "the
place where the serpent drink"

crushed the hopes of my
early years"... the saloon.

Kansas had already banned
the sale of alcohol in every one

of its 105 counties,
but the state's dusty cow towns

and large cities alike were
filled with thirsty men,

and no one paid
much attention to the law.

As president of the Barber
County WCTU, Carry Nation had

led peaceful marches that
had had little effect,

wrote letters to legislators
and lawmen that were never even

answered, and eventually
became convinced God wished

her to do more.

On the 6th of June, 1900, before

retiring, I threw myself
downward at the foot of my bed

and told the Lord to use me
in any way to suppress

the dreadful curse of liquor.

I told him I wished I had
a thousand lives that I would

give him all of them, and I
wanted him to make it known

to me some way.

The next morning, before
I awoke, I heard these words

very distinctly.

"Go to Kiowa,
and I'll stand by you."

The next morning,
with an armload of what she

called "smashers"... rocks
and bottles wrapped in paper

to look like harmless
packages... she strode

into a saloon in Kiowa.

I told
the owner, Mr. Dobson,

"Get out of the way.

"I don't want to strike you,
but I am going to break up

this den of vice."

I began to throw at
the mirror and the bottles

below the mirror.

Mr. Dobson and his companion
jumped into a corner, seemed

very much terrified.

From that I went to
another saloon, until I had

destroyed 3.

The other dive-keepers closed
up, stood in front

of their places and would
not let me in.

By this time the streets were
crowded with people.

One boy about 15 years old
seemed perfectly wild with joy.

I have since thought of that
being a significant sign.

For to smash saloons
will save the boy.

She dared
the sheriff to arrest her.

He did not.

She moved on to Wichita to
attack the most opulent saloon

in town, the bar in
the Hotel Carey.

When a policeman arrested her
there for defacing property,

she shouted at him,
"I am defacing nothing!

I am destroying!"

"You put me in here a cub,"
she said from behind bars,

"but I will go out a roaring
lion, and I will make

all hell howl!"

Her exploits were
front-page news.

Hundreds of congratulatory
telegrams arrived

from all over the country.

As soon as she got out,
she attacked another saloon,

this time with the weapon
that would become

her symbol... a hatchet.

Jailed and released once more,
she moved on to the town

of Enterprise, did further
damage there, and then appeared

in Topeka, the state capital
and home to dozens

of flourishing saloons,
all of them illegal.

The leaders of the Topeka WCTU
declared themselves

"not in accord
with her methods."

"I tell you ladies,"
she answered, "you don't

"know how much joy you will
have until you begin to smash,

smash, smash."

The governor implored her
not to do any more damage.

She told him that
if he didn't enforce the law,

she had no choice.

"You are a woman," he said,
and "a woman must know

a woman's place."

She walked out of his
office and called

for a "hatchetation."

Many Kansans believed Nation
was at least half-mad,

but hundreds of women
and a smaller number of men

rallied to her,
bringing their own stones

and bricks, sticks
and hatchets, and calling

themselves
the home defenders' army.

Proprietors of the local
saloons tried and failed

to stop them.

She and her followers tore
apart a joint favored

by state legislators
called the Senate,

then went on to smash
a second bar,

a barn filled with saloon
fixtures and a warehouse

stacked high
with barrels of beer.

That day Carry Nation was
jailed and released 4 times.

Within the month, her admirers
would attack

more than 100 saloons in at
least 50 Kansas towns.

Anxious state legislators
rushed through a bill

to strengthen enforcement of
the law and pacify her

and her home-defenders' army.

It was a remarkable victory.

Carry Nation hoped her
movement would spread across

the country and sweep away
all of the nation's saloons.

But once again, like the
woman's crusade, it died

almost as quickly
as it had arisen.

Carry Nation never stopped
crusading... in saloons

and churches, lecture halls,
even on the vaudeville stage.

For many, she became a figure
of fun, even ridicule.

But so long as she lived,
bartenders never stopped

keeping a wary eye out for
her and her dreaded hatchet.

Every movement
needs some people to call

attention to itself
by bold action.

She knew that you had to
draw attention and you needed

the press following you.

You had to make
the right enemies.

I don't think she's at all
representative of the movement.

She's simply the one who
called attention to it.

And then patient, hardworking
people followed through.

In 1893, in Oberlin,
Ohio, a new organization had

been established to fight
the evils of alcohol:

The Anti-Saloon League.

It would turn out to be
the most effective

political pressure group
in American history.

The founder of the League was

the Reverend
Howard Hyde Russell.

Unlike Frances Willard and
the WCTU, Russell was determined

that his organization would
focus on a single goal:

To get rid of alcohol, period.

Town by town, county by
county, state by state,

they would force
America to go dry.

"The Anti-Saloon League is
not in politics as a party,"

one leader said,

"nor are we trying to abolish
vice, gambling, horse-racing,

"murder, theft or arson.

"The gold standard,
the unlimited coinage

"of silver, free trade and
currency reform do not concern

us in the least."

The League liked to call
itself "the church in action"

against the saloon."

Baptists and Methodists
formed its heart, but every.

Protestant denomination signed
on, except the Episcopalians

and the Lutherans.

I am of Lutheran
heritage, German Lutheran.

It wouldn't have occurred
to them to oppose beer, and they

really resented the Methodists
and the Baptists who imposed

prohibition on them.

So a lot of smart cracks
came from both sides.

And one of them was that
Lutherans drank openly

and praised God secretly.

And the Baptists praised God
openly and drank secretly.

The Anti-Saloon
League was more or less

modeled on the modern
corporation that was already

transforming American business.

It had a national headquarters
to direct its campaigns;

A salaried full-time
staff to oversee

thousands of volunteers;

Ample financing
from millions in annual dues,

as well as church collections;
And a printing plant

at Westerville, Ohio,
that churned out 300 tons

of propaganda every month.

The Anti-Saloon
League was one of the first

modern political movements
in the United States.

Like the Woman's Christian
Temperance Union,

like most suffragists, they
truly believed that alcohol was

a drug that was being pushed
on consumers, that once you

eliminated the pusher that
people would stop drinking

because temperance was
the natural state of humans.

Any politician
who dared oppose the League,

Howard Russell promised,
would live to regret it.

"The Anti-Saloon League,"
he said,

"was formed for the purpose
of administering

political retribution."

Because they had
such a devoted following,

a following that was moved by
religion, and there's no more

powerful force
to get people to act,

they were able to say
to politicians,

"Are you with us,
or are you against us?

"And if you are against us,
we will defeat you.

And if you are with us,
we will elect you."

and they were able to do it in
state after state after state.

What a wedge issue
that's effective does is it

forces you to stand up and say,
"I'm for this, or I'm for that."

"I'm for alcohol," or
"I'm against alcohol."

and this kind of a position
that you were required to take

can be a tremendously powerful
political tool, but it's also

profoundly divisive because
that's the whole point of it.

The whole reason you have
a wedge issue is to drive

a wedge between people
and make them stand up

and take a stand
on one particular issue.

And this elevates
that issue in importance

above everything else,

no matter how important
the other issues really are.

The man
who made it all work was.

Wayne Bidwell Wheeler,

the Anti-Saloon League's
ablest commander...

the person, one associate said,
"who can make the Senate

of the United States
sit up and beg."

He looked like a bank
teller, Wayne B. Wheeler,

a name that, at his death in
the twenties, people said,

"he will be remembered forever
as one of the most important

people of our time."

He was the one who figured out
that if you stick to an issue

and you really sell
that issue, you can get

what you want.

Wheeler was an Ohio
farm boy who had lost an uncle

to alcohol and had
himself been injured

by a drunken farmhand
wielding a pitchfork.

He liked to say that "God
made the country, but man made"

the town."

He was ideally suited to lead
what became, at least in part,

a crusade by rural Americans
against the big cities.

Recruited by Howard Russell
at Oberlin, he began his work

on a bicycle, spinning
from door to door to defeat

an anti-prohibition candidate
for the state senate.

As the organization grew,
Wheeler quickly moved up

in the ranks.

He was a skilled lawyer
and a shrewd,

calculating political operative,

willing to work even
with politicians who drank,

so long as they were
willing to vote to keep others

from doing so.

Some old-time temperance
crusaders were horrified

at the tactics he used
and the company he kept.

He didn't care.

He didn't need to win
majorities; He needed to win

at the margin.

So if Wheeler could get
for the Anti-Saloon League

10% of the voters in that state
to vote wherever he told them

to vote, he could
control the state.

He didn't need 51%.

He only needed the margin
that one party needed to control

the legislature.

Wheeler targeted
70 state legislators in Ohio who

opposed the league and by 1903
had driven every one of them

from office.

In 1905, when Ohio's
popular Republican governor,

Myron T. Herrick,
himself a reformer, dared try

to weaken a so-called
local option law that allowed

each community to decide
for itself whether to prevent

alcohol from being sold,
Wheeler denounced him

as "the champion
of the murder mills,"

unleashed the full fury
of the League,

and crushed him at the polls.

Throughout the country,
anxious politicians

in both parties began warning
one another,

"Remember what
happened to Herrick."

"The lessons that have been
taught by this contest are

"important," Wayne Wheeler said.

"Never again will any
political party ignore

the protests of the church and
the moral forces of the state."

The league's power spread
steadily, eventually reaching

into all 46 states...

overshadowing the women's groups

that had been working
for temperance for decades.

The old prohibition
weepers and gurglers were

quite incapable of
this enterprise,

but the new janissaries
of the Anti-Saloon League...

they understood the soul
of the American politician.

They knew that his whole
politics, his whole philosophy,

his whole
concept of honesty and honor,

was embraced in his single
and insatiable yearning

for a job,

and they showed him how,
by playing with them, he could

get it and keep it, and how,
by standing against them,

he could lose it.

H.L. Mencken.

In 1909, Wheeler had help

from an unexpected quarter.

City dwellers with a nickel to
spare could see

something new in the world,

a motion picture version of
"Ten Nights in a Bar Room,"

an old
stage melodrama that had been

the "Uncle Tom's Cabin"
of the temperance movement

and a staple of small-town
entertainment

since before the Civil War.

The film embodied every
temperance fear:

A drunken husband squandering
his pay, the tragic injury

of the daughter sent to bring
him home, the last

ghastly stage of alcoholism...
the agony of delirium tremens.

The film helped to reinforce
the belief that

even one drop of alcohol could
destroy not just individuals,

but whole families.

When Lyman Beecher first
began to preach against drink,

fewer than one in 10 Americans
had lived in a city.

Now almost half of them did.

The country's population had
grown more than 10 times

as millions of immigrants
continued to crowd

into cities.

They went to work in
steel mills and slaughterhouses

and on assembly lines,
transforming America

into an industrial powerhouse.

New circumstances and a new
century seemed to demand a new

kind of reform, progressive
reform, righting wrongs

through legislation
rather than persuasion:

To stop child labor

and win votes for women;
To end sweatshop conditions;

Break up monopolies,
combat political corruption;

And do something about
the crowded, squalid slums.

People
commonly think of prohibition

as being a conservative
movement.

Not at all.

It was a movement that was
embraced by progressives

who thought of this as
a fundamental kind of reform,

in part because alcoholism
was such a terrible problem

and particularly a terrible
problem for the working class,

for the immigrant poor.

There really is
a genuine concern for

the well-being of the immigrant,
the immigrant family,

the immigrant worker.

It's just kind of funny that
the way that they wanted

to improve their lives
didn't include asking them

what they wanted done.

And they went after one of
the things

that actually meant
a great deal to them.

And that's what you hear over
and over again from immigrants

during Prohibition, that
this is important to them.

This is not just some vice.

This is part of their life.

People found it
necessary to believe that this

was an Anglo-Saxon
white country.

And suddenly here were all
these Catholics, these Irish

and Italians, here were
all these Eastern Europeans

including large numbers of
Jews, who were not like them.

And they were changing
the nature of the country.

They made an alloy, a mixture
of metals that was tougher

than any individual metal.

Obviously they made
a better country out of it.

But they didn't want
to believe that.

And in the small towns...
particularly the Midwest...

where native-born Protestants
lived a very...

relatively speaking...
a stable life, they saw the city

as these cauldrons of sin
and debauchery

and of large numbers of
votes that were going to change

the nature of the country.

The Anti-Saloon
League, for all its talk

about getting rid of
the saloon, really was thinking

mostly about the immigrant.

It was a concern about,
Who does the saloon cater to?

"Those are the people
we're worried about."

There's a sense that
they're not real Americans.

That's always a very strong part
of the Anti-Saloon League's

message, that real
Americans don't need a saloon.

They're better than that.

The Anti-Saloon
League was perfectly poised

to exploit small-town concerns,
and their opponents seemed

incapable of seeing
how serious they were.

It's very hard for
people on the other side...

the Wets... to organize
around anything.

What was the common cause?

"I'm going to go march in the
street so I can keep my gin?"

It doesn't have quite the same
ring as the morally inspired

movement that many of
the people on the Dry side had.

For nearly half
a century, the brewers had been

holding their own
against temperance forces.

Their industry was now one of
the largest

in the United States,

producing 900 million
barrels of beer a year.

In some years, taxes on alcohol
comprised 70%

of federal internal revenue.

One brewer's letterhead boasted,
"Uncle Sam is our partner."

The best-known and most
powerful brewer was.

Adolphus Busch.

If you were to imagine
an emperor of beer, that was.

Adolphus Busch.

He built the family firm
into the largest brewery

in the Western hemisphere.

And he was the leader of the
wet movement, such as it was.

An immigrant from
the Rhineland, the youngest

of 21 children, he entered
the brewery supply business

in St. Louis in 1857,
went into partnership

with his father-in-law,

Eberhard Anheuser, and soon
became the first brewer

to succeed at
bottling beer for shipment.

His brewery on the
St. Louis riverfront sprawled

across 70 acres.

He owned railroads,
ice factories, bottling plants.

Busch had 5 lavish homes
on two continents.

His children's
playhouse had 3 floors.

Tiffany designed
the stained-glass windows

in his stable.

On the occasion of his 50th
wedding anniversary, customers

in 35 cities raised a glass
to the happy couple.

Politicians sought his support.

Presidents befriended him.

He liked to wear medals
and awards, including

the Order of the Red Eagle,

personally presented to him by
Kaiser Wilhelm II.

As the Anti-Saloon League
steadily gained ground,

other members of the brewers'
association looked

to Adolphus Busch
for leadership.

When one side of
a movement is people inspired

by passion and the other is
people inspired by commerce,

passion is likely going to win.

However, commerce, in the
form of Adolphus Busch

and the other brewers and
the distillers, can hold off

passion for many, many years.

And that's what he did.

He threw himself in front
of the prohibition movement,

and he was going to stop it
single-handedly, he thought.

Busch and his
allies fought back, buying

legislators and election
officials

whenever and wherever
they could.

They bribed newspaper editors
to write editorials favoring

their cause... even paid
the poll-tax for Mexican

and African American voters
in Texas because they were

thought likely to favor
the sale of beer.

But the brewers were painfully
slow to understand

the revulsion many Americans
felt at the worst excesses

of the saloons they owned.

And they engaged in
pointless quarrels

with whiskey distillers.

One of the things
that weakened the wet side

of the debate is that
the brewers, trying to preserve

their right to sell beer,
they turned on the distillers

and said, "The distillers are
doing really horrible things."

"It's terrible for
the American family.

"This is a poison that's being
poured into people, where

beer that's liquid bread"...
was actually a term that

they used to define it...

it was a healthy beverage.

They published pictures of
little babies with steins,

you know, and mothers who
drink beer are gonna build

better babies.

Babies should sip
some beer, as well.

They tried to turn it into
a health beverage.

The brewers also poured money

into a national
organization called

the German-American Alliance.

It had been founded simply
to encourage German culture,

but the brewers turned it
into an anti-prohibition army,

pledged to defeat what it called

the prohibitionists' assault

on "German manners and customs"

and the joviality
of the German people."

Nearly two million
German-Americans would

eventually join the Alliance,
helping to ensure that states

with large German populations

like Pennsylvania and New York,

Illinois and lowa, would
not vote themselves dry.

But it also deepened
small-town America's suspicion

of brewers and
the saloons they controlled.

If you really don't
want people to drink, it's not

enough just to ban
alcohol in this town.

You have to ban it at least in
the next town over, or people

will cross the town line
and go and drink there.

The same problem is true,
of course, at the state level.

It became increasingly
clear that you needed

national regulation,

that something needed to
cover the whole country

if it was going
to prohibit alcohol

in a general way.

To outlaw alcohol nationally,
then, what you needed was

a law that would reach
everybody, and that had

to come from the Constitution.

By 1913, thanks
largely to the tireless efforts

of the Anti-Saloon
League and the WCTU, Georgia

and Oklahoma had joined Maine
and North Dakota and passed

laws restricting
liquor state-wide.

So had Kansas, Mississippi,
North Carolina, Tennessee,

and West Virginia.

The brewers
and distillers were suffering.

County by county, state by
state, they were being forced

to close down.

But they still believed that

any kind of national restriction
on alcohol was impossible

because
the United States government

was so dependent on
the taxes they paid.

Then for the liquor industry,
the unthinkable happened.

In early 1913, the 16th
amendment to the Constitution

was ratified, authorizing
the Federal Government to impose

an income tax.

The Anti-Saloon League
had helped bring it about,

shrewdly allying itself with
progressives and populists who

favored the redistribution
of wealth.

The government would no longer
have to rely on alcohol

to fund its operations.

The prohibitionists
knew that they could never,

ever have prohibition until
they could find something

to substitute for the tax
collections that came through

the excise tax.

So therefore they
supported the income tax.

"Prohibition is no
longer a local issue," warned

the American Brewers' Review.

"Prohibition is
now a national danger."

The Anti-Saloon League pounced.

"The time is now," it said.

We therefore declare

for alcohol's
national annihilation

by an amendment
to the federal constitution

which shall forever prohibit
throughout the territory

of the United States
the manufacture and sale

and the importation,
exportation, and transportation

of intoxicating liquor
to be used as a beverage.

On December 10, 1913,
the citizens

of Washington, D.C.,
saw something they had rarely

seen before: A mass march
sweeping toward the Capitol...

two parallel streams of
Several hundred women,

representing the WCTU,
and a thousand men,

members of the Anti-Saloon
League.

They were there to demand
a prohibition amendment

to the United States
Constitution.

A number of other countries
were also considering

prohibition statutes,
but these marchers wanted

an amendment rather than
a mere law because if they

succeeded, the prohibition
of alcohol would be enshrined

in the Constitution of
the United States forever.

No amendment had
ever been repealed.

From the earliest
days the Constitution came

to be seen by Americans
as something much more

than what the people who wrote
it imagined it would be.

It was not just a framework
for government, but it came to

be seen as capturing
the values and ideals that were

essential to what made
a person an American.

The same day
as the march on the Capitol,

Senator Morris Sheppard of Texas
sponsored

an 18th amendment

to the Constitution of
the United States... prohibition.

Representative
Richmond P. Hobson of Alabama

introduced it in the House.

Enacting it would be
a tall order.

They would need to win 2/3 of
the House and Senate before

the amendment could be
submitted to the legislatures

of the 48 states... and then
would need to persuade

36 of them to ratify it.

They had to get
it passed before 1920

because in 1920 there was
going to be a new census,

and when the census changed,
the cities, which were

the wet part of the country,
were going to have more

representation in Congress,
and the small towns were going

to have less representation
in Congress.

In 1914, Drys won
a first vote in the House,

197 to 190, nowhere
near the 2/3 they needed,

but a serious sign of which way
the wind was blowing.

It was clear that millions
of Americans had now come

to support prohibition for all
sorts of reasons... Democrats as

well as Republicans,

progressives
as well as conservatives,

freethinkers
as well as churchgoers.

Some of the richest
industrialists in the country,

including Andrew Carnegie
and Henry Ford,

backed prohibition

because they believed
alcohol undercut the output

of their workers.

The radical industrial workers
of the world were for it,

too, because they thought
alcohol was part

of a capitalist plot to
weaken the workingman.

So was Booker T. Washington
because he believed alcohol

undermined black progress,
while hundreds of thousands

of southern whites supported
it, as well, in part

because they believed
alcohol turned black people

into brutes.

There was a lot
in the temperance movement

and the prohibition movement
that was really temperance

and prohibition
for somebody else.

It was the peak of Jim Crow,
and the prohibition movement

in the South... much of it was
fear of this double combination,

the scariest thing
to a white southern racist:

A black man with
a ballot in one hand

and a bottle in the other
hand, and they would do

anything to keep the black
man from having either one.

Meanwhile, the
Anti-Saloon League intensified

its efforts, sending some 50,000
trained speakers

into the field, collecting
tens of thousands of signatures

on petitions, working
to defeat any senator

or congressman unwilling to
offer unqualified support

for the amendment, and
dispatching secret operatives

to infiltrate
the opposition and ferret out

its plans.

8 more states passed dry laws:
Virginia, Arkansas, Alabama,

Nebraska, Oregon, Washington,
Colorado, and Arizona.

Because of local option laws
already on the books,

more than half the American
people now found themselves

living under some
version of prohibition.

Many of the state laws still
permitted package stores

to sell liquor for
home consumption.

It was the saloon the Drys
were after, and most Americans

went along, certain
any national law

wouldn't really affect them.

President Woodrow Wilson found
himself trapped between

the two wings of his Democratic
party... the wet cities

of the East and Midwest,

and the very dry South and West.

In part to placate the Drys,
he had appointed.

Josephus Daniels, a tee-totaling
North Carolina newspaperman,

as secretary of the Navy.

Daniels promptly banished
alcohol from the entire fleet.

Wilson's secretary of state
was a far more celebrated

champion of prohibition,
William Jennings Bryan

of Nebraska, 3 times a failed
candidate for president.

He was a progressive populist.

His enemies called him
"the fundamentalist pope."

He at first was a temperance
guy but not a prohibitionist,

and I think that it's fair
to say that he saw which way

the movement was going,
and when he saw that there was

a possibility of a prohibition
amendment, he jumped

into the front of it because
he was this major, major figure

in the United States.

On April 2, 1917,
President Wilson traveled

to Capitol Hill to ask Congress
for a declaration of war

against Germany.

The Great War had begun in
Europe almost 3 years earlier,

and over the intervening
months, German submarines had

sunk American vessels...

and enraged the American public.

The war... and the anti-German
propaganda produced by

the Wilson administration's
newly created.

Committee
on Public Information...

set off a wave
of hysteria about Germans

and German-Americans.

Sauerkraut was renamed
"liberty cabbage."

Dachshunds were stoned to death.

School children destroyed
their German textbooks,

and an Illinois mob lynched
an American citizen whose

only crime had been speaking
German over a neighbor's fence.

The frenzied atmosphere
was a disaster

for the German-American
brewers...

and tailor-made
for Wayne Wheeler

and the Anti-Saloon League.

There's an office of
the government that is created

to propagandize and to
build up hatred

for all things German.

Well, to the prohibitionist,
this was the home run.

This is the thing that
they needed to finally win.

We have German
enemies across the water.

But we have German enemies
in this country, too.

And the worst of all of our
German enemies, the most

treacherous, the most menacing
are Pabst, Schlitz, Blatz,

and Miller.

Wayne Wheeler
persuaded the Senate

to investigate links
between the brewers

and the German-American
alliance,

which had
trumpeted the German cause

until the moment
America entered the war.

Wheeler would see to it that
beer and treason were now

linked in the public mind.

The Anti-Saloon League
immediately called

for a temporary wartime ban
on the sale of precious grain

to brewers and distillers...
and eventually saw it passed

by both houses.

For the first time in history,
every American was subject

to federal
restrictions on alcohol.

There had been 1,000 American
breweries

before the United States
entered the war.

Within months, half would
be out of business.

Meanwhile, Wayne Wheeler
was at work behind the scenes,

determined to seize
the moment and win adoption

of the prohibition amendment.

Boies Penrose,
the formidable Republican boss

of Pennsylvania and one of the
Senate's leading Wets, mindful

that passage of the amendment
in Congress was inevitable,

threatened to mount
a filibuster unless the Drys

agreed to a time limit for
ratification by the States.

They would have 6 years.

No more.

Penrose was sure that
36 states would never be able to

ratify the amendment
in the time allotted.

But to the surprise of
the Wets, Wheeler agreed

to the limit.

The Senate voted in favor
of the amendment

on August 1, 1917.

Afterwards, convinced
they had outwitted Wheeler

and the Drys, the Wets went
out for a celebratory drink.

The final House version of
the bill allowed the dry forces

7 years to achieve ratification.

The Wets still remained
confident that it would

never happen.

When the vote in the House
came on December 18th,

Wayne Wheeler was watching
from the gallery.

One of his opponents
said, they would look up

to him as if he were
the Roman consul.

Was he going thumbs-up
or thumbs-down?

And they would vote the way
that he told them to vote.

No matter what your position
was on other issues, if you

were not OK with Wayne Wheeler,
you were in trouble.

The amendment passed
the house easily... 282 to 128...

and was sent to
the States for ratification.

The Anti-Saloon League
and their allies had

only 84 months to convince

more than 5,000 legislators
in 36 states to ratify.

They would do it
in less than 13.

On January 16, 1919, Nebraska,

the home
of William Jennings Bryan,

became the 36th state
to ratify the 18th amendment.

It would go
into effect one year later.

Here were all these
evangelical Christians,

familiar figures today,
who decided to pass a law

that would imprison Jesus
if he turned water into wine.

They'd say, "There he goes.
Lock him up."

As midnight neared on
the night of January 16, 1920,

the First Congregational
Church in Washington, D.C.,

was packed with people eager
to celebrate the moment

when the 18th amendment
came into effect.

It's the First
Congregational Church

in Washington, interestingly
the church

that Frederick Douglass prayed
at, and gathered there are

all the leaders of
the prohibition movement.

Anna Gordon,

Frances Willard's
long-time companion,

now the president of the Woman's
Christian Temperance Union,

was there.

So was Wayne Wheeler of
the Anti-Saloon League.

Secretary of the Navy Josephus
Daniels told the crowd

that "no man living
will ever see a Congress"

"that will lessen
the enforcement of that law.

"The saloon," he said,
"is as dead as slavery."

And giving the crowning speech

after many hours of people
waiting for it, out comes.

William Jennings Bryan,
his great bald dome gleaming,

his eyes filled
with the fire that made him

the greatest orator of his time.

And he gives the speech

that ends at the stroke
of midnight,

and he cries,
"They are dead, they are dead

"who sought the young child's
life," taken from the book

of "Matthew."

"Those who would kill us
and who would destroy us,

we have killed them."

And it is this galvanic
moment when absolute triumph

of working toward
this moment finally arrived.

Millions of
Americans were jubilant.

"The slums will
soon be a memory,"

the evangelist
Billy Sunday said.

"Men will walk upright,
women will smile

and the children will laugh."

Hell, he was sure, would
"forever be for rent."

There really was this
overly optimistic sense among.

Drys that through the stroke
of a pen suddenly everyone

was going to change their
habits and change their ways.

There were a lot of people who
said, "Let's give this a try."

But it wasn't going to be the
easy transformation of America

that the Drys imagined.

After nearly
a century of hard work

by clergymen and women's groups,
reformed alcoholics

and single-issue lobbyists,
the United States of America

was officially dry.

Those who had insisted on
the "absolute shall" had won.

What had been
the fifth-largest industry

in the country was now illegal.

Tens of thousands of workers...
mostly immigrants... would lose

their jobs, and so would
hundreds of thousands

of others in related
Truckers

and barrel makers, bottlers
and grain growers, waiters

and bartenders.

At first, most Americans,
even many of those who had

initially opposed prohibition,
would do their best to obey

the new law.

There was a lot of
the dry movement that was

idealist, and one of
the ideals was a belief in law,

that if we have this in
the Constitution,

in the organic law
of the nation,

and if we have an enforcement
law that has been passed

by Congress
and signed by the president,

people will obey that law.

You know, we don't
murder each other, either.

But in Chicago,

just a few minutes after
prohibition went into effect,

6 masked bandits with pistols

emptied two freight cars full
of whiskey, another gang stole

4 casks of grain alcohol from
a government bonded warehouse,

and still another hijacked
a truck loaded with bourbon.

Making prohibition the law of
the land had been one thing.

Enforcing it would be another.

The devil would turn out
to be in the details.