Page: 373
In almost every respect imaginable, Prohibition was a failure. It encouraged criminality and institutionalized hypocrisy. It deprived the government of revenue, stripped the gears of the political system, and imposed profound limitations on individual rights. It fostered a culture of bribery, blackmail, and official corruption. It also maimed and murdered, its excesses apparent in deaths by poison, by the brutality of ill-trained, improperly supervised enforcement officers, and by unfortunate proximity to mob gun battles.
Wonder if the war on drugs will do any better.
Page: 276
“The business pays very well,” [Clarence] Darrow said, “but it is outside the law and they can’t go to court, like shoe dealers or real-estate men or grocers when they think an injustice has been done them, or unfair competition has arisen in their territory.
“So,” Darrow concluded, “they naturally shoot.”
Justice at the end of a barrel.
Page: 180
In 1917 when wine was legal, Americans consumed 70 million gallons—imported, domestic, and homemade.
By 1925 Americans were drinking 150 million gallons of just the homemade stuff, all of it also legal in its own peculiar way.
Back when Congress was debating Richmond Hobson’s constitutional amendment in 1913, Representative Richard Bartholdt of St. Louis, a leading wet, said the measure would turn “every house in the country…into a distillery.”
A more appropriate word would have been “winery,” but he was on the right track.
It amazes me that not only did consumption of alcohol increase during prohibition but it made drinking more egalitarian.
