Hes the author of the prohibition hangover and prohibition in washington, d. C. , how dry we werent. Good evening. Im Lauren Rosenberg with Smithsonian Associates. Im so glad youre here tonight. To our members, welcome. Its our ongoing support that makes events like this possible. If youre joining us for the first time, an equally warm welcome and invitation to explore the programs we offer at smithsonian institutes. Now is the perfect time to silence your cell phones or anything else that might make noise during the program. Were thrilled to welcome author, historian and tour guide garrett peck back to the smithsonian. Garrett has presented at the library of congress and the National Archives and his temperance toward our prohibition sites has been featured on cspan, book tv and History Channel program 10 things you didnt know about with henry rollins. He was featured on a document about prohibition by the smithsonian channel. Hes the author of several books including how dry we werent. The prohibition hangover. And the great war in america, world war i and its aftermath which was published in 2018. Before we get started, i want to invite you all to join us in the lobby to enjoy a sample of a prohibition era cook kale thanks to founding spirits gin. So now please join me in welcoming garrett peck. Good evening. Thanks for coming out for our dry wake. About six hours from now, 12 01, once the clock ticks over from january 16th to january 17th, thats the exact moment when National Prohibition began. So today we are yeah, a lot of sour faces in the room. Were going to commemorate this. Well not celebrate it. Well have a chance to celebrate our right to drink with a french 75 cocktail out in the lobby. I appreciate everyone coming here tonight and for cspan to come out here tonight and to film this here for the national audience. So thank you so much. So this is i warned a few people here about this image here. You see this on the screen right now. This is a rather triggering image, especially for a drinker like myself. Pouring beer into a sewer. So tragic. That is the most famous shots from prohibition. The Police Commissioner in the hat overseeing them pouring the beer down the drain. Its really unfortunate. But well give well cover how prohibition came to be and ultimately why it didnt last. Why it lasted less than 14 years and why we ended up repealing the 18th amendment to where today where most of us now drink and dont think anything of it. Prohibition didnt just appear magically on its own. There was a movement that pushed this upon the country, and that movement was the Temperance Movement. And this is from the library of congress so when they have the beautiful frescos painted on the inside and this is a century long social reform movement, part of the progressive era, intended to make americans better people and more middle class and, of course, sober. And their idea was initially was they would try to get people to drink more moderately, stop drinking so much whiskey and instead drink beer and wine but by the 1830s more radicals had seized charge of the moment and decided no one could drink anything at all. If you drink at all, youre on the slippery slope to becoming a drunkard, as they called alcoholism back then. And they really demonized drinking. As youll see from this propaganda poster from 1872 showing king alcohol and his Prime Minister. So you see the king there standing on top of a barrel full of distilled spirits and then the Prime Minister next to him, death. And then notice in the foreground showing the tragedy of this little occasion on here. You see for example there is a family over here to the right. Minus the father. And then you have a weeping widow over there right there in the foreground. Women were so important to the temperance union, for the Temperance Movement because oftentimes women were victimized by the fact their husbands were drinking so much. So the Temperance Movement didnt come out of nowhere. It was a legitimate societal response to the heavy drinking of the 1820s and on in American History. They just took it to the extreme that, hey, no one should drink at all. And hey, we should also change the constitution to ban alcohol. Which is what they did. Again, women are so important to this movement and in 1873 was the beginning of the Womens Christian Temperance Union. The ground state was the state of ohio. Because you had a large number of german immigrants and they controlled the breweries and where the wctu was founded and the antisaloon was created and headquartered as well. So Francis Willard is the first is this incredible woman in American History. Shes the first woman to get a statue in statuary hall in the capitol. Shes from the state of illinois. And she was one of the leading proponents of womens rights in our history, in our countrys history. So i take my hat off to her. Even if i dont agree with her on the antialcohol stance. He motto with the wctu was, do everything. So they took up every imaginable issue with family and womens rights. So domestic violence, children working in factories and what not. It is incredible the Different Things they took up. Unfortunately women didnt have the vote yet. And so women could only have influence, but they couldnt actually vote on these different issues. And at its peak the wctu had a quarter of a million members. And they got into the classrooms and taught children to be ashamed of alcohol. My grandmother grew up with that. I come from a long line of methodists. Most of us now drink, but they had a lot of heavyhanded moralizing they took into the classrooms and whatnot, and they also built numerous water fountains around the country. Here in d. C. , we have a water fountain, not put up by the wctu, a number still survive, one in Rehoboth Beach and ocean city, new jersey, and theyre all around the country and here in d. C. , we have the cogswell temperance fountain which all of you have walked past, it is catty corner from Archives Navy memorial. And this is our temperance fountain. So it once was an active water fountain and the symbolism was to tell people to drink water instead of whiskey. So this was erected in the 1880s. Right when the Temperance Movement was becoming this Massive National movement and trying to again trying to use moral suasion to keep people from drinking alcohol. So after about 20 years or so of the wctu, that moral suasion thing wasnt really taking root. People were still drinking. It wasnt having a whole big effect other than americans had shifted after the civil war away from drinking whiskey and now theyre drinking beer. And since the civil war beer has been our national beverage. And in 1893 in ohio is founded this organization known as the Antisaloon League. They only existed for 40 years. They disbanded in 1933. And this is the organization that gives us the 18th amendment. The prohibition amendment. One of the early hires was a college student, you see a picture of him, named Wayne Wheeler. Anyone here know of Wayne Wheeler . Probably the most powerful lobbyist in American History. He invented this term pressure politics because he figured out how to squeeze the politicians to force them to vote dry even if they were wet in their personal lives. So every politicians first job is to get reelected and so he made sure that if anyone bucked him on the prohibition issue on the wet dry issue, he made sure they didnt get reelected. And he leveraged the base of the Antisaloon League which were the evangelical protestant faithbased initiative and it was a progressive initiative. So we tend to think today in terms of like dry counties that kind of stuff, as being very conservative. This was a progressive movement. This was really about making americans better people and using the power of the government to make us into better people. Very importantly here, for the Antisaloon League, they formed a new alliance and this alliance really engendered two important constitutional amendments that went into effect in 1920. One of them is prohibition and the other one you could probably guess from this particular photo which is the suffrage amendment. Again, the 18th and then the 19th amendment. This is from january 1917 showing the suffrage from the National Womens party, the suffragists were protesting right in front of the white house because president Woodrow Wilson had not come out yet supporting the suffrage amendment. And so they began the 7 by 24 protest. Wayne wheeler had this alliance with the Suffrage Movement so both could get their way and as well see, this alliance then fell apart after 1920 once younger women got the right to vote and they decided they wanted to go visit the speakeasy, too. So there is one thing in American History that really makes prohibition come about. And i should back this up quickly here. The Antisaloon League recognized in fact Wayne Wheeler said in a Public Statement at some point in 1917 in saying we need to change the constitution really quickly because this is our very, very last chance. Because 1917, considering where the country was, in 1920 there was going to be a census taken, and they could see how much the cities were starting to think of this like a teetertotter. The cities were starting to outnumber the countryside and theyre expecting in 1920 with the census majority of americans would be in cities and that would outweigh the Temperance Movement which was more rural based. We had leading up to 1920, the highest proportion ever in our nation of immigration into the country. A third of the americans were foreign born or had a parent who was born overseas. So highest proportion ever in our history. So in many ways the Temperance Movement is a nativist movement. Because many of the immigrants coming in in the 1880s and beyond are catholic overwhelmingly or theyre russian jews. All of the people are bringing in their drinking habits with them which the protestants are tut tut, we dont recognize these people and need an amendment to force them to conform how were living. They shouldnt be drinking alcohol. A lot of ways prohibition is targeted at the catholic immigrants coming into the country in the late 1800s and early 1900s. What makes prohibition a reality is the event that leads up to this poster. World war i. We declare war against germany on april 6th, 1917. And you all know who the biggest ethnic group in the country at the time were . German americans. And guess who the brewers were . The germans. Exactly. And of course they were the biggest bulwark against the Antisaloon League. And right away, as soon as we declared against germany, Wayne Wheeler and the other agents within the Antisaloon League began spinning beer drinking into treason. This is a very famous and effective propaganda poster because it tugs at your heartstrings. They had the Brewers Association had been funding newspapers and so on. And they brought out a lot of the shenanigans through senate hearings. This is all about embarrassing the wet cause and embarrassing the brewers and further marginalizing them all during world war i. So they spun beer drinking into treason during this time. And thus the in 1917 they brought forth the 18th amendment and it fairly sailed through Congress Without a whole lot of debate. Most of the American Public as the polls were going to ratify the amendment, it only took 13 months, by the way, to ratify this amendment. The majority of states ratified this amendment during the war itself. Because part of the selling point was we need to save grain to feed our soldiers during the war, and we need sober soldiers who can fight the vaunted german army, which sort of ignores the fact the german army was drinking beer and the french army was drinking brandy and the wine and the english army was drinking everything. So it is all part of the propaganda of selling the dry cause to the country in this emergency of the war efforts, everyone was like, yeah, we need to do this. We need prohibition to win the war. And most people thought when they were voting for this that they were simply outlawing liquor, not realizing that beer and wine was also going to be outlawed. So people were in for a rude surprise come january 16th, 1920. Now, everyone here has gotten a handout of eight prohibition era cocktails. I want to talk about the first one which is the one well sample afterwards which is one of my allTime Favorites. It is the french 75. This is a cocktail invented during world war i. It has a couple of different origin stories behind it. One of which features a British Army Unit getting together with a french unit and kind of like the reeses Peanut Butter cup and they blended together if you remember that commercial in the 1970s and they blended together to make this cocktail. Other people say it was invented in new orleans and who really really knows. I was an artillery officer myself in the army and this is an incredible top secret project for the french. The germans called this thing the devil gun because it was so accurate and had a top secret pneumatic design on it. It could fire off six shots a minute and every shell would land in the same spot. So deadly. And a very small gun so two men could transport it around. So very, very effective. And because the u. S. Had almost no armament capability during the war, we had to borrow everything from the french. So all of the tanks, airplanes, and artillery pieces we had to borrow from the french. That is what we used for the u. S. Army. In fact, the very first artillery shell is at the Woodrow Wilson house, im on the board by the way to come visit and here it is. President wilson felt such a responsibility for sending off 2 million soldiers to fight in the trenches of france, so he kept it there in his bedroom. You could see it there on the mantelpiece. He could see it when he woke up in the morning. He felt the responsibility of sending the nation to war. Another famous a one day famous american commanded a battery of french 75s during world war i, and it is this man. The only future president to fight in world war i. Harry s. Truman. From kansas city. He was 35 when he led the battery of kansas city misfits and they were catholic and came out of Reform School and an illdisciplined group and he whipped them into shape. In part because he was so much older than the rest of them. And he led them very effectively during the war. And again he led the battery of french 75s. Now his unit was mostly catholic and the soldiers that were in his battery that became lifelong friends and political supporters of him, and so they were getting to talk. They saw that the prohibition amendments had passed. The 36th state, nebraska, ratified it on january 16th, 1919, and so five days later harry writes his fiancee bess wallace, and i love this because hes been talking to soldiers. And anyway, it looks to me like the moonshine business is going to be pretty good in the land of liberty and Green Trading stamps and some of us want to get in on the ground floor. At least we want to get there in time to lay in a supply for future consumption. I think a quart of bourbon would last me about 40 years. He was talking with his soldiers and they were catholics and they were making plans to bootleg and if you have been out to kansas city, it was as wet as detroit and chicago and so on. It is just like what were they thinking . How is this ever going to work . So, again, the 18th amendment was ratified by the state of nebraska on january 16th, 1919. In fact it has three parts of the amendment but ill put up the first part so you can read it. And i highlighted the most important parts of it which is that the manufacture, sale and transportation of intoxicating liquors, dot, dot, dot, is hereby prohibited. That is what the amendment states. Now, you now have to have a law to define what do they mean by intoxicating liquors . Most people thought they were going to outlaw distilled spirits, liquor. But Wayne Wheeler was like, uhuh, anything with alcohol in it is going to be made illegal. He helped craft a law together with his minnesota congressman with this amazing mustache, ill show this to you here next, named Andrew Volstead and he was a republican and chaired the House Judiciary Committee and hence he had charge of writing this bill. I think it had 67 parts in the bill called the volstead act and he went down they took a very hard line against any kind of alcohol at all. So, anything above. 05 alcohol was now illegal. That was considered to be intoxicating. They forbade anyone from calling anything even near beer, beer. So they came up with names like bevo and stuff that you really wouldnt want to drink. And this act also had a number of loopholes, many of which are quite famous. You all heard of medicinal whiskey. The American Medical Association just like today says alcohol is not medicine. And we know that for a fact. Its not medicine. During prohibition, on the other hand, all the doctors could prescribe they can make 100 prescriptions of a pint of whiskey per month. So of course all the doctors wanted to get in on this. So this is one of the major loopholes. It was widely, widely abused during prohibition. You had sacramental wine because the catholic church, the jews, the lutherans, the episcopalians needed to have wine for their services. And so that was one of the loopholes. You had many, many people suddenly declaring themselves to be jewish rabbis so they could distribute alcohol distribute wine especially. They gave a huge license to the midwestern farmers. Everyone could take 200 pounds of truth. You could take all the fruit you wanted and make up to 200 gallons of preserved fruit if you preserve fruit, its going to ferment. If you leave an orange on your counter, i discovered this a couple days ago. I had on the counter for a couple days and i was, like, ooh, it fermented. Its just a natural process. Leave any fruit, it will ferment. You might notice that with an old banana. Its just a natural process, fermentation. Of course that was sort of a carveout for the midwestern farmers and also the italian immigrants. So they could make their own wine. A whole bunch of loopholes got written into the volstead act. And then they were widely, widely abused. President wilson himself actually vetoed the volstead act. And he vetoed it three weeks after his stroke. He suffered a stroke on october 2nd, 1919. He was trying to sell the treaty of versailles to the nation. He did this national barnstorming tour and he began having horrible headaches so they brought him back to the white house and he had the stroke. It effectively ended the second term of his presidency with 17 months left in the office. Three weeks later, allegedly he signed it. More likely his chief of staff signed it for him. He vetoed the volstead act because wilson believed that wine and beer should still be legal, as did most americans. But Wayne Wheeler believed otherwise. And he was so in control of the politicians that the very next day, october 28th, 1919 congress overrode president wilsons veto. So we got this very strict interpretation of prohibition versus something that would be a little more loose like saying 3 or 4 beer is not intoxicating and therefore we can allow that. So, yeah, its kind of amazing once people kind of woke up to, like, oh, wow, thats what we signed up for . So, again, i mentioned the Woodrow Wilson house. When wilson left the white house on march 4th, 1921, he actually had a wine collection. And he did not want to leave it behind because his successor Warren Harding was a known heavy drinker and kind of a party boy. So he got wilson got a permit from the Prohibition Bureau to transport his wine collection and by the way, during prohibition, if you had alcohol in your possession before prohibition started, that was yours to keep. They werent going to take away from you. So personal possession was not outlawed during prohibition. But you couldnt manufacture, sell, or transport it. So in this case here wilson had to get special permission to transport his alcohol from the white house over to his new house over in kalorama on s street. And he got that permit approved. And we have a prohibition tour at the Woodrow Wilson house that i lead sometimes. At the end of the tour we go down and see the prohibition era wine cellar. Its really unique. Its like how many other houses in the country have original bottles . Its amazing. Now the short bottle right in the center, thats quantro. The panel has hardly changed. Many of the bottles, we believe, the wilsons got from the french ambassadors house, which is about three blocks away. It had effectively helped save france during world war i. So we believe the wilsons got a perpetual resupply from the French Embassy during french prohibiti prohibition. Embassies were considered their own territory and they could supply their own during prohibition. Another thing i wanted to point out to you was wartime prohibition which is an oxymoron. This wartime prohibition bill gets attached onto an appropriations bill about ten days after the war ends. So its late november, 1918. And senator moore shepherd attaches this onto this appropriations bill effectively outlaying the sale of dispiltil spirits for the rest of the war. In other words, until we have a peace treaty, we can have no more sales nor transport. And come june 30th, or july 1st, 1919, all beer must be under 2. 75 alcohol. So what youre seeing right here, this is a saloon in new york city on june 30th, 1919, the last night before people had to shift down to 2. 75 alcohol beer. Do you notice what theyre drinking besides obviously at the base of the bar . Do you see a single cocktail in their hands . Theyre drinking beer because thats the only thing that was legal for them to drink at the time. What else is missing from the photo . You guys are smart. There are no women in this because women did not go to saloons. Not until the 1920s when the speakeasies come about. Thats when women started going to the speakeasies. But beforehand saloons were mens only culture. Maybe some good things came out of prohibition. Women got to vote, they got equal rights. Virginia just yesterday ratified the equal rights amendment. [ applause ] my home state. So, prohibition starts again 100 years ago today right as the clock ticks over to january 17th. And at First Congregational Church downtown, which is still there, all the leading prohibitionists all got together, and they went through speech after speech, so you had the guy who dried up the navy who a cup of joe comes from. Wayne wheeler was there. William russell was there. Anna boul from the Womens Christian Temperance Union and William Jennings brian, the great commoner. And he died about five years after this, so his career at this point is really waning. But at midnight he delivers this 45minute dynamic sermon. And he compares king herod who is trying to kill the baby jesus and how jesus escaped to egypt with his parents. He made that analogy to jesus escaping to egypt to the wet cause trying to kill the 18th amendment. And at the end of this speech he effectively declares victory. He says they are dead that sought the childs life, they are dead, they are dead and everyone just thunderously applauded this. Theyre believing, yes, the dry millennium is upon us now and the country is about to get better. Of course midnight comes and this new baby is born, but this baby baby thirsty and cranky and wants a drink. [ laughter ] so prohibition begins. I love this photo. This is one of the very few actual dry congressmen. He is from georgia. This photo he is symbolically holding an umbrella over the u. S. Capitol signifying that we are now dry. Of Course Congress never went dry. Well talk about that a little bit later on. But congresswomen amen and sena continued to drink. So, we end up with prohibition lasting nearly 14 years or the 13 awful years. Mencken is an atheist and a very proud germanamerican. He sees the Temperance Movement for what it is. Its a reformed movement that is trying to make us into better people, and he is not having any of this. He writes, he is such a hilarious writer. Hes one of the leading literary critics of the 19teens and 1920s and 1930s. And he writes very disparagingly on both sides of the aisle. But he had such a great sense of humor. In 1929 he writes this really funny article. He is kind of surrounding that prohibition is going to be a while longer but basically saying is, okay, this is what we got. So he draws this comparison like back in the day we used to be able to have, like, steak and fois gras. And now we have to get everything from our bootlegers. And its basically sandwiches and hot dogs. Basically saying, well, let us, while waiting for the end of the methodist hellenium, do the best we can. Let us keep on improving the sandwich and let us give some attention to the dog. [ laughter ] this is the kind of sense of humor that he had. Lets make the most out of the rotgut gin that the bootlegers are supplying us. He had a car which he sold in 1918 and then used the proceeds from the automobile sale and filled up his cellar full of alcohol thinking that would last for the duration of prohibition. But then he said afterwards only four months later he decided that a whole bunch of boot legers were already out there or as he called them booticians. [ laughter ] prohibition goes into effect january 1916. And can anyone remember when tennessee ratifies the 19th amendment in august of 1920. And thus women get to vote for the very first time in the president ial election in 1920. That elects Warren Harding, one of our worst president s ever. But this is alice paul who was about fivefoot nothing, and just an absolute fierce proponent of suffrage. And she is toasting every time they would get a state they would add another star to it. So she is toasting to the fact that tennessees star is now attached to the suffrage flag. So, yay. So we get prohibition, but theres still this major question that ive always been asking myself. Okay, we amended the constitution, which is no mean feat. We only have 27 amendments so far, maybe a 28th, well see. But its really hard to amend the constitution. And the framers put that very, very high hurdle in place to make sure we dont willynilly just amend the constitution. They really expected us to have a National Consensus about any issue before we monkey around with the constitution. So that then kind of raises this question did a National Consensus around prohibition actually exist . And why did prohibition fail . Since the dry cause got their way, why did people immediately start bootlegging afterwards. I think theres a number of answers tieing in with this. But part of the fact is that they took such a draconian measure towards alcohol. And thats when they took away peoples beer, which has long been our natural beverage. President wilson, for example, in 1920 called for congress to reinstate beer. And many of the congressmen in 1920 as they were having the National Conventions on both sides, Wayne Wheeler said over 300 congressmen came to him and complained because they were hearing it from their constituents they wanted to have beer again. 300 out of the 435 were complaining. Just amazing. So it really took a lot of people by surprise how draconian prohibition turned out to be. And a lot of people were, like, i think im going to start drinking. Very quickly there were bootlegers out there who were willing to supply the alcohol for a price. So during prohibition itself, consumption of alcohol actually goes down during this era because its so much more expensive to buy for the bootlegers. So theres this whole myth that people were drinking more than ever, which is not true. Its just more expensive than it was ever before. We think of hemingway and fitzgerald, and so on. But very often they were living in paris and many of the great bartenders went to paris during prohibition. One of the things of course that showed up almost right away right off the coast of the United States was this thing called rum row. All of these ship captains were docking their ships full of alcohol three miles offshore. And right away then all the speed boats were coming out there. So just outside of the threemile limit, filling up their speed boats full of alcohol, then racing it back to shore, usually at nighttime, and then resupplying all the bars and whatnot. This became known as rum row. It was all up and down the east coast. And out of this idea the three mile limit came the threemile limit cocktail. This is one of the scooners that the coast guard seized. They were only able to seize about 10 of the ships. But in the mid1920s, the country negotiated a secret agreement with the british. The british wanted to keep bringing alcohol in on their transatlantic liners. They were allowed to do so if they were willing to grant the United States to extend the threemile limit out to 12 miles. That way they could trap all the bootlegers, which they did. And the british agreed to this. And without telling anyone, now its 12 miles and the coast guard went out and captured a bunch of ships and rounded up all the alcohol. And guess what now that we have the threemile limit, guess what the new cocktail is now called . The 12mile limit cocktail someone came up with right away. Its kind of those bartenders are pretty creative. You start to see right away though. Youve got beer flooding over the borders from the ocean through canada are coming down through detroit is, of course, a major, major point as well as upstate new york. Alcohol is flooding into our country. And many, many people are setting up stills, often times in their bathrooms, your local bootleger could fit you out with a small still as long as you didnt burn the house or the apartment down. And some people put larger stills. This is one that had to be in the backyard and the Prohibition Bureau captured this one. But kind of amazing. Your boot leger would come around and collect whatever you would made. A lot of people were, like, untaxed money . Okay. Ill start producing alcohol as well. So very quickly people are starting to break the law, whether they drank or not. We already had a mainjor moonshe culture in the country. But this extended it to everywhere around the country. Its pretty amazing. One of the more famous photos from prohibition of course is this slide showing a raid right here in washington, d. C. On pennsylvania avenue of a speakeasy. And this is a very common form of speakeasy. Its the carl hamels lunch room. This guy was raided three times. The way the speakeasy work. You had a legitimate business up front, a lunch room. And then if you knew someone, you could say the pass code or, hey, joe sent me. They would then invite you to go to the little dark room. There you could get a pint of beer. And you will see they are pulling all the kegs of beer out of the cellar. So they were raided three times. This particular site you might notice on the notation, 922 pennsylvania avenue, that is now the site of the department of justice. [ laughter ] and then this next photo is very heartbreaking for me because it is the Prohibition Bureau is destroying 18,000 bottles of beer in the arlington dump. So these were bottles of beer that were intercepted on the highway coming down from philadelphia. And the judge ordered them all destroyed. This is an amazing photo. You see the agents are throwing the beer bottles. And right in the middle you see the glass bottles breaking so the beer is shattering in place. That is now the arlington dump is now underneath one of the pentagon parking lots. So all those bottles are still there, all 18,000 of them and theyre just underground. One of the great novels that comes out of prohibition, its a very satirical novel. Youve all heard of st. Claire louis . He got the nobel prize for this book, and it was a novel called babet which he wrote here in Dupont Circle in 1922. And in this book, 1922 he has this one little statement in the book. And i think he captures why prohibition is going to fail. Theres this unknown character, its set on a train, this guys passing out a flask of gin. And then he makes this statement. I dont know how you fellows feel about prohibition, but the way it strikes me is that its a mighty beneficial thing for the poor zob that hasnt got any willpower. But for fellows like us its an infringement of personal liberty. Everyone says prohibition is for someone else to obey but not me. Im still going to drink my cocktail. I know my bootleger. Im going to keep resupplying. And thats that. Again, we become a nation of hypocrites really and scoff laws as well. That word scoff law which is our next cocktail is one of my all Time Favorite cocktails. I love this cocktail. Give it a try sometime. You need real grenadine, which is easy to make. And mix an equal amount with simple syrup. Its a very unusual cocktail. Rye whiskey and lemon juice and vermouth and grenadine. Its one of my all Time Favorite prohibition era cocktails. That word scofflaw was invented in 1924 during prohibition. Theres a guy who is a harvard graduate and living in boston. And he was very upset at seeing all the drinking going on at harvard. And so he sponsored this National Competition to come up with a word to name those lawbreakers. It was a 200 prize. Two people came up with a name. And this was announced on the fourth anniversary of National Prohibition. So january 16th, 1924. Two people came up with the word scofflaw. An ingenious word. Someone who scoffs at the law. And then one week later in harrys bar in paris, the scofflaw cocktail was invented. [ laughter ] yay, bartenders. This particular woman shows you getting to that theme here of that alliance that broke down between the Suffrage Movement and the Temperance Movement now that women had the right to vote and now that it was illegal for everyone to go to the saloon to drink, well, now women could equally break the law along with men and go to the speakeasies. So the 1920s is really our countrys first actual revolution. You start seeing Family Planning tools come into effect thanks in part to Margaret Sanger and women started cutting their hair. I think this woman is 25. Shes actually a dancer. Shes got short hair. Women didnt cut their hair before the 1920s. And she is showing how all the young kids are all partying today. You keep a hip flask in your garter. So, yeah. Women started getting in on the game as well. So it became kind of fun to break the law. Its, like, ooh, this is glamorous, we are breaking the law. We became a nation full of scofflaws during this era. Just remarkable. Now why did the country turn against prohibition . Well, we had a couple things that happened. Certainly everyone saw all the organized crime that was going on, especially as the 1920s progressed, you saw in cities like chicago, new york, and what not. So more people were getting killed over gangland violence, over who was going to control neighborhoods and what not. And of course very famously on valentines day 1929 is where al cappone eliminates men. That made national headlines. So many people were saying this is out of control at this point. All these unintended consequences that are coming out because of prohibition. The violence, the bribery. All the prohibition agents were horribly corrupt. All the judges that were getting bribed and what not. It was just endemic here in our society. It was undermining our democracy to have all this bribery, all this corruption that was going on. And people really saw it as a problem here by the late 1920s. So how did we ultimately unwind prohibition . It took a crisis to get us to the 18th amendment, which was prohibition. It took another crisis to enable a political switch in the country. The democrats ran on the repeal platform. That crisis in the country appeared in late october of 1929 when the stock market crashed, the Great Depression. That is ultimately what nailed the coffin shut on prohibition. Because suddenly at the peak or i should say the trough of prohibition, a quarter of the American Workforce was out of work. It was the worst financial crisis weve ever had in our country. And the economy shrank by a third. Horrible. It was just unreal how bad the Great Depression was. And the democrats seized on this very quickly. The 1920s, the Republican Party owned the 1920s. They owned both houses of congress. And all three president s of the 1920s were all republicans. And even though prohibition passed as a bipartisan measure, it was up to the republicans to enforce it because they were running the country during this part. So, the democrats basically washed their hands of prohibition in 1930 and said were going to call for a repeal amendment. When prohibition went into effect in 1920, the country lost a quarter million jobs. Suddenly in 1930 a quarter million jobs looks pretty good. So they started only calling for an end to prohibition as part of their election. Hearing this in the fall of 1930, the leading prohibitionist in the senate, the man who sponsored the 18th amendment, morris shepherd, laid out the gauntlet to the wet cause. And he made this very famous statement which well see right here. And he said, i quote, there is as much chance of repealing the 18th amendment as there is for a hummingbird to fly to the planet mars with the Washington Monument tied to its tail. If that doesnt sound like a challenge, then nothing is. The wet cause struck back. And, boy, did they ever. Right after this there is this guy named rufus lusk. He is an infantryman and he is a real estate guy. People might remember back from the 1980s the rusk paper. I can take all the police data from all the raids and put them on a map and embarrass the dry cause. So he does this in 1930 and again in 1932. And this made not Just National news but global news. Washington, d. C. Was meant to be considered, quote, the model dry city for the country. But during prohibition we had about 3,000 speakeasies. I know thats nothing compared to new york city which had about 50,000 speakeasies. But 3,000 is respectable, given a city of about 450,000 people. 1932, i found this in the library of congress. This is so cool. This is the 1932 speakeasy map. Dots mark the spot where booze has been bought. So pretty incredible. This is put together by rufus lusk in his crusaders and they were fighting for the cause. So all the dots you see on there, theres 1,155 dots that are on there showing prohibition, bureau and police raids where they found alcohol. There were another 600 raids that were conducted in 1931 where they didnt find any alcohol. Very cleverly rufus lusk put up here big stars. Those are federal offices. [ laughter ] where raids took place. Out by the capitol he put up there the methodist building that is still there right across from the supreme court. He put up there as well the antisaloon office and the womens christian temperance office. And around all of those you see a whole bunch of dots showing all the raids. This made National News and world news and it was very, very effective. He published this in september of 1930. And then about a month later, the main bootlegger for Congress Comes forward with an incredible story. The Washington Post, everyone thinks about watergate being its first great scoop. Nope. It was George Cassidy, the man in the green hat who had b bootlegged. They gave him an office in the Canon House Office in the basement. So hed haul his liquor in a suitcase every day and the congressmen would come play cards with him. In 1925 he got arrested. So then he shifted over to the senate side. He worked in the Russell Senate building because senators were more discreet than congressmen were. So theyd send their secretaries to come down and get the booze. And then he was arrested again. And part of his plea agreement with the judge, he agreed he would not bootleg again, but he did bootleg again. The Washington Post approached him and said would you like to write a couple articles for us . And he said sure. He published six frontpage articles in the Washington Post. The very last one was published a week before the Midterm Election of 1930. And that was a seismic election because now congress shifted. This was a wave election. And congress shifted from this ostensibly dry republican majority to now an only wet democratic and republican majority. So its incredible. So the wets have now taken over congress with a very bold stroke. Cassidy helped make this happen. Its not moving forward. I dont know whats going on here. Sorry. There we go. Sorry. I didnt realize this hadnt shifted. Computer malfunction. There is George Cassidy right there. This is a great photo of him taken in october of 1930. And there is his green hat. He earned that nickname when he got arrested in 1925. Some journalists pointed him out across the way and said that guy in the green hat, he just got arrested. And we also have a local distiller that opened up in 2012 that named a gin after him. The gin they make is called green hat gin. And its to honor George Cassidy, the man in the green hat. Again, the role of women was so important in undermining prohibition. This organization got together called the National Organization well, forgive me the name. Always kind of trips me up here. But its the sorry, Womens Organization for National Prohibition reform. And it was headed up by polen morton saben. So a wealthy doyen. And she got this organization together effectively to counterbalance the Womens Christian Temperance Union which was claiming that they spoke for all women nationally. And womper was basically to counterbalance that. She had an earlier support of the dry cause. By late 1920 shes like this thing just aint working. She was very effective. In this case these are all famous women. But they were very ecumenical. They approached workingclass women. She really targeted women of every stripe to get them involved in this. And especially for younger women really got heavily involved in this organization. It became a National Movement to reform prohibition. And ultimately they endorsed the democratic appeal to repeal prohibition. And saben herself was a republican. But she said this thing is not working. Support the democrats, this thing needs to come to an end. So very, very powerful. And, again, that formed a counterbalance to the wctu, which it always assumed that they were speaking for women. Heres a couple women here. And i love this poster. Two couple young women are pointing out that all women should be supporting the repeal amendment, the 21st amendment. So, with the democrats in control of congress, prohibition and the Great Depression underway, prohibitions days are numbered. And as we see, the idealism that the Antisaloon League had, that the Temperance Movement had, really shattered on reality that the country turned out to really not be in support at all for this dry cause. There was so much law breaking that was going on during prohibition. And the country got quite cynical about it and decided lets end this, lets stuff this genie back into the bottle. Lets get control of alcohol and lets repeal the 18th amendment. So this Broad Movement erupted in 1932 once Franklin Roosevelt himself ran on the repeal platform. So now the democrats had seized control of the government in the 1930s, and they owned the federal government during the 1930s. And theyre all running on this repeal platform. So roosevelt is the last president to be sworn in on march 4th, 1933. And before he is even sworn in, congress has already debated and passed the 21st amendment. And that amendment then goes on to the states where it gets ratified in an astonishingly short time. The very first state to ratify it is michigan. Michigans the very first state. A great beer state. And that is on april 10th. So this is just a couple days after roosevelt signed a law called the Cullen Harrison act which declared that 3. 2 beer was nonintoxicating. So he had run on the platform of making beer legal again. By having a law that saying its not intoxicating. Therefore it did not violate the 18th amendment. Because the 18th amendment said intoxicating liquor is hereby prohibited. And so on april 6th, basically the country went out and partied because they were, like, w who hoo, this is coming to an end. And its incredible. Given that the democrats now control the country, they passed they put into the 21st amendment language that it would be ratified by a state convention. Since the democrats controlled most of the state houses, the states just started lining up their conventions and voting one by one by one. How long do you think it took given michigan is the very first state, april 10th. How long do you think it took for us to ratify the 21st amendment . Keep in mind the 18th amendment took 13 months during the war. How long did the 21st amendment take . It took a little bit longer than that. But it took eight months. Just incredible. And the state, this is going to stun everyone. Im giving you a trigger warning. The state that put it over the top was utah. [ laughter ] the 36th state, december 5th, 1933, henceforth known as repeal day or cinco de drinko. [ laughter ] if you saw my button im wearing it says party like its 1933. In any case here, i know we want to get to a q a session. Ive got just a couple more slides. Some of my Upcoming Events for the Smithsonian Associates. Ive got a really cool tour on april 18th. We get a bus and we come back. So we start off seeing the castle and then we see these really cool buildings that are out there in Montgomery County and then have lunch. And the place where we have lunch is a winery. Ive got my very first nearly weeklong tour for the Smithsonian Associates out where i grew up in california. I grew up in sacramento. And its a fiveday tour of the California Gold rush. Thats october 10th through the 15th. And thats going to be a lot of fun. Its really beautiful countryside. And were going to cram in a lot of history. You get to be with me for five days. And next up real quick. Ive got a quick announcement. You guys are the first ones seeing this. I have a book coming out on june 2nd. And its a contemporary history called a decade of disruption, america and the new millennium 2000 to 2010. Its a history of all the stuff that we live through from the dot com meltdown through the Great Recession and everything in between. We all live through this. Its our history. Its been a decade now so its an opportunity to go assess what happened with a little more, what did the Great Recession mean to us, and why are we still dealing with the impact from that . Thats coming up in a few months later this spring. If you want to read more about prohibition, four of my eight books have, magically, have the topic of prohibition in them. My most recent one, the great war in america, world war i and its aftermath. And then of course if you want more local history, then of course the prohibition in washington, d. C. How dry we warrant. Which, of course, has 11 cocktail recipes in it, including the scofflaw and the ricky and a bunch of other ones. With that i want to thank you all so much for coming here tonight. And thank you for coming out and for our dry wake. Thank you. [ applause ] and well be happy to take questions. And do we have a microphone, by chance . I dont. You guys, state the question loudly and i will repeat it back to the audience. So anyone have any questions or did i stump everyone . Yes, maam . How did the bootleggers respond to the threat of repeal . Im sure they didnt want to go down without swinging . How did the bootleggers respond to prohibition since they probably didnt want repeal. And youre right about that. So they were making so much money taxfree. So that was one of the key constituencies that was like no. Al cappone and his gang, they were making money hand over fist. We forget about al cappone. He is the most famous gangster in World History who overwhelmingly made his money from being a bootlegger. Just incredible. There was not just the dry cause but many of the bootleggers didnt want prohibition to end either. Thats for financial reasons obviously. Right here, the man here in the the penalty for breaking the law for the speakeasies for a person and just a general person . So how stringent was the punishment for breaking the law during prohibition . Initially, it was fairly strict. You got a fine. Sometimes you might get 90 days in jail. But many, many people simply just paid the fine because its, like, okay, fine, ill pay it, and ill plead guilty, and on they went. By the mid1920s, so many people, its not really proving to be a deterrent because so many speakeasies simply just reopen right away because there is so much money to be made selling booze. So by the mid1920s or so, new york city picks up, hey, lets padlock these businesses and that spreads around the country very, very quickly. Which is if we find a joint thats acting as a gin joint, if we catch the place, well just snap a lock on it and its padlocked for the year. Guess what the owners do. They find another spot to reopen at after they paid their fines. Thats a temporary measure, someone just finds another place to open up. The one president who really tries to enforce prohibition is herbert hoover. And the public is already quite cynical. By the time hoover gets into the white house in 1929, the country is already opposed. Hes sworn in march 4th. So this is about three weeks after the valentines day massacre. The country is already really cynical about prohibition. And here he is saying im going to enforce this thing. And most of the public is just like why . So, all it does is create evermore cynicism. He gets his law passed called the jones 5 and 10 act which imposes very severe penalties. You have a fiveyear prison sentence and a 10,000 fine. So really dramatically raises the penalties. And all this does, before they were simply reaching plea deals saying, yeah, give me my fine and ill pay it. Well, now everyones demanding a jury trial. And you can imagine how many tens of thousands of bootleggers there are. This completely gums up the legal system. There are so many trials that have to be held now that the judicial system just its overwhelming. So, another unintended consequence of prohibition because you have so many people breaking the law. And it just shows how unforcible this whole thing is. And it makes the public even more cynical towards it because it shows this can not be enforced. Why dont we repeal prohibition and lets put some good regulations and thats the democrats selling point with the 21st amendment. Another question. Do the people after the amendment was passed . Did they expunge the records . No, they did not. Recently a researcher got George Cassidys fbi records and sent them to me. I was, like, whoa, cool. Thats how i had learned he had been arrested again and then a couple more times in the 1930s and the 1940s. I sent them to his son who lives in fairfax county. [ laughter ] up here in the front ian has a question. I believe you said 50 of the books you have written have been around prohibition. Just curious what drew you to that topic . Half of my books are dealing with prohibition. What drew me to that topic. Its partly family history. I come from a long line of methodists. As you saw poking fun at the methodists. The methodists were the first church to encourage the Temperance Movement. Back in 2003 i had my first book i. D. Of the prohibition hangover. And the idea came directly from christmas eve. I had brought a really nice burgundy to my grandmothers in scottsdale. I was there with my mother and my grandmother. So three generations. And my grandmother just kind of tutted the fact i bought this. She was like you know i dont drink. Its christmas. And, like, a light bulb went on. Like, wow, heres a generational value that did not pass on to my mom and myself. Were both social drinkers. My grandma was born in 1913. And again we are protestants. And they were taught that it was a stigma. And that lasted with el into el 1970s, and the 1980s. Im a generation xer and drinking is what we do. Its how we socialize. So theres no stigma, theres no shame. Its just part of our lives, and so on. And its easy for us to judge. But what my grandmother went was quite different. She also insisted that she didnt drink at all. And im sure she died we were going through her kitchen cleaning some of course. And of course we found the liquor cup boards deep in the kitchen. Okay, that goes along with the social shame that if anyone sees you drinking that theyre going to think youre a drunkard and therefore dont let anyone see you do it. Thats one of her generations issue and i empathize with that. We dont have to deal with that today. Thank you for that. Another question. Dan here in the back, the white shirt. Its actually kind of pink. [ laughter ] two completely unrelated questions. But the first, as you mentioned earlier, that a lot of people maybe have some misconceptions about sort of speakeasies and what they were really like. Id love it if you could elaborate on that. And then my second question bringing it to the contemporary times. Do you see any parallels between sort of the move to legalize marijuana and sort of the traditions, and of course actually how it got made illegal in the first place and some of the usyou would pinnings of tha . Usually one person asks this question every audience. The speakeasies themselves, i think we tend to create a lot of mythology. For the most part they are in peoples hopemes. You have a legitimate business up front. Thats another form of a speakeasy. If you go to capitol hill to tune in, that really cool greasy spoon, so its open up in 1947. Beforehand it was a candy store and they sold liquor out of their basement. You want to go in there to get cocktails but you are going there to buy a bottle. So not every place is like the cotton club where theres a jazz band playing and people are dancing. Most places are not like that. And a lot of places are not terribly good places, especially given the quality of the gin, which much of it was industrial alcohol that had been repurposed with juniper flavoring. Or in the case of scotch, you would add caramel and turpentine to it. Thats what the bootleggers were doing and people were drinking it. Just incredible. So the other question we had here about the legalization of cannabis. Its such an interesting question. You might remember this movie from the 1930s called reefer madness. Effectively once prohibition ends, the country, now we got to target pot smoking. They really kind of demonized pot smoking and what not. So does richard nixon. And here we are with pot being a schedule i drug up there with crystal methamphetamines and cocaine. Its been so interesting. Im not a pot smoker myself. I wouldnt be ashamed if i was though. But how many of my friends have sort of come out of the woodwork in the last decade or so . Like dr. So and so is a pot smoker. I know some notable conservatives who are as well. Its really this shift thats kind of underway in our society. And if you notice like during the Obama Administration, the Gallup Survey every year polls americans on this question. Once i think the Obama Administration saw that the majority of americans are now in favor of legalization, its sort of, like, okay, why should we step into this battle . Because youre only going to lose politically. Obama basically stayed out of the fight because there was no win out of this and let the states sort of handle it. And thats why you are seeing all these states first legalizing it for medicinal purposes. Thats their first step, and not hard to get a medical prescription, just like during prohibition. Then of course the next step is legalization for personal use, which more states are doing that now too. So its kind of interesting. I think youre seeing the writing on the wall. And similar to prohibition, and this is actually where im in favor of. Ill put my cards of the table. I am in favor of legalization not because im a pot smoker but for the fact that so many people have to buy pot illegally. And consumers have no idea what youre buying. Similarly during prohibition for, you know, youre buying industrial alcohol with turpentine in it. If you can actually have some regulations, in this case, i am actually in favor of regulations so consumers will know what theyre buying so they can know what the strength of that is. Just like if you go buy a beer, you know that its 4. 5 versus 9 , et cetera. So you know which one to have or which one not to have if you have to drive, you know . Im all in favor of regulations because consumers have better choices and they can make better decisions rather than from picking it up from some guy on the corner. Anyways, long answer, but that was two questions. So thank you for asking that, dan. Another question. Anyone . I think everyones thirsty. I know i am. Well, very good, everyone. Thank you so much for coming tonight. And thats it. [ applause ] and we have cocktails outside for you, the french 75. And we will toast to our right to drink alcohol. Thank you for coming. Tonight on American History tv beginning at 8 00 p. M. Eastern, from our lectures and history series, university of nevada las vegas professor Michael Green teaches a class on Abraham Lincoln and the 1860 president ial election. Watch American History tv tonight and over the weekend on cspan3. The president s, from public affairs, available now in paperback and ebook. 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