American History Tellers - Prohibition - We Want Beer | 6

Episode Date: March 14, 2018

The people had spoken: They wanted beer, and they wanted it now, but not just for drinking. Protestors wanted the jobs that came with breweries, and the country was desperate from the money that could come from alcohol taxes. As quickly as temperance organizations sprang up in the decade before, anti-Prohibition organizations appeared in every city. But, a constitutional amendment had never been repealed before. The anti-Prohibition leagues realized they needed someone bigger than a governor or mayor to repeal this. They went after the Presidency.For a deeper understanding of the interplay between beer, taxation and the history of Repeal, Ambitious Brew: The Story of American Brew by Maureen Ogle is essential reading.  Kenneth D. Rose’s American Women and the Repeal of Prohibition provided insight into Pauline Sabin’s work, as did David J. Hanson’s comprehensive resource, Alcohol Problems and Solutions.Those who want to do a deeper dive into the 1932 DNC and the mob’s involvement, you can read more in the article from Salon, Corruption for Decades. Lisa McGirr’s The War on Alcohol: Prohibition and the Rise of the American State also explores the relationship between the New Deal and Repeal. For more on Cox’s Army, check out The Bonus Army: An American Epic by Paul Dixon and Thomas B. Allen.Andrew Barr’s Drink: A Social History of America contains a great chapter about the failure of controls and the legacy of prohibition in state liquor laws and the relationship between California’s wine industry and repeal is well documented in When the Rivers Ran Red by Vivienne Sosnowski. To catch up with the bartenders who are bringing back pre-Prohibition cocktails, David Wondrich’s Imbibe is required reading.Support us by supporting our sponsors!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can binge new seasons of American History Tellers early and ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Imagine it's 1932. It's the end of your shift working on a huge new construction project in downtown Manhattan, the Rockefeller Center. It's still a year away from being finished, but you can already see what a massive change is gonna have in the area. As you leave the site, you pass the next shift as they come in. You don't recognize many of the faces, but that's not surprising really, as there are tens of thousands of people working on the project. The pay

isn't bad. With so many people out of work, there's no shortage of hands willing to work for almost nothing. But old man Rockefeller has promised to pay a decent salary. And you're glad for the job. Clearing some of the 200 properties that used to be on the site. You meet up with a friend and head up the street, passing the empty lots. One in particular makes you nostalgic. Man, the nights I had in that place.

Sad to see the speakeasies go. You can't find a drink for a mile around. Yeah, did you know Rockefeller got one of the leases from that mobster who was shot over a card game? What was his name? Al Arnold something. Arnold Rothstein. The guy who fixed the World Series? That's the one.

They never did catch the killer, did they? Hey, let's take a detour. I heard about something on the radio. You turn the corner and run straight into a big crowd. What's all this about? Beer. A demonstration to bring back beer. But I had no idea it was going to be this big.

It's not just a demonstration. It's a parade. You hurry to the end of the block and push through a crowd of people to the front. There are marching bands, private cars, and even clowns on bicycles. People march down the street, signs above their heads. Beer for prosperity. Repeal the 18th.

Beer means work. You can even see a group of Navy sailors carrying a banner that reads, Keep our ships sailing with a beer tax. Right at the front, leading the whole procession, is the mayor. Now everyone knows New York's mayor, Jimmy Walker, likes a drink or two. He's known as the nightclub mayor. But to see him taking part in such a public campaign against Prohibition is still surprising. You and your friend turn to each other and grin.

Then you join the chanting. We want beer! Beer! Beer! We want beer! Beer! Beer! We want beer! Beer! joined the chanting. About 150,000 people took part in this Beer for Prosperity parade. The New York march wasn't the only one, either. There were beer rallies and protests all over the country in 1932. Before this, people who supported the repeal of prohibition, like the nightclub mayor of New York, Jimmy Walker, had sometimes been dismissed as partiers, just out for a good time. But now, brewing and selling beer was promoted as a way to put people back to work. Despite a few big development projects like the Rockefeller Center, there was a desperate need

for jobs. And organizers of these parades also argued that bringing back legal alcohol would give the government a huge new source of tax income. To a strapped country, that sounded like a pretty good deal. But the message was one thing. Getting Congress to act would be another. By 1932, signs of opposition to Prohibition were everywhere, from big public parades to small, individual acts of protest. A small restaurant chain in New York, for instance, started giving customers cardboard beer mugs to hang off the rearview mirrors of their cars. They read, Beer for Taxation. Anti-prohibition organizations were springing up all over the country. There was the National Order of Camels, the Personal Liberty League, and the Light Wine and Beer League. These groups took a leaf out of the playbooks of the campaigns that had pushed for prohibition

more than a decade earlier. They organized demonstrations, lobbied politicians, and gave media interviews. The Crusaders, a Cleveland-based group, even published its own magazine. They called it the Hot Potato because they said politicians didn't want to touch the controversial issue of prohibition. The two largest groups were the Association Against the Prohibition Amendment and the Women's Organization for National Prohibition Reform, started by Pauline Sabin. Sabin was counting on mobilizing women to repeal the very amendment they'd been so essential in passing.

Two years earlier, she had told Congress, I am here to refute the contention by dry organizations that all the women of America favor prohibition. And by 1932, her group had grown to more than a million members. She went one step further than hanging signs in car windows. She would organize entire motorcades of chauffeur-driven cars to drive around New York State. With repeal flags fluttering, these lines of cars rolled into towns and cities like Rochester, Elmira, and Watkins Glen. In each town, they handed out branded repeal matchbooks and even makeup compacts. Sabin had been a leader in the Republican Party and was

no stranger to political campaign work. She put that experience to use, working hard to elect Republican candidates who were in favor of doing away with Prohibition. By the time the 1932 election came around, anti-Prohibition groups had built enormous political power. Getting the mayor of New York to lead a parade was nice, but they were aiming much, much higher. They wanted to pick the next president. Hey, this is Nick. And this is Jack. And we just launched a brand new podcast called The Best Idea Yet.

You may have heard of it. It's all about the untold origin stories of the products you're obsessed with. Listen to The Best Idea Yet on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. Now streaming. Welcome to Buy It Now. idea yet on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. Buy it now. Stream free on Freebie and Prime Video. From Wondery, this is American History Tellers. Our history, your story. I'm Lindsey Graham. We're concluding our sixth episode series on Prohibition with this episode, We Want Beer.

After 12 years of Prohibition, all of the alcohol poisoning, rum running, and violence had taken a toll. The majority of the American people wanted to do away with the 18th Amendment. But it would not be easy. After Prohibition passed, one of its supporters, Senator Morris Shepard, had boasted, there's as much chance of repealing the 18th Amendment as there is for a hummingbird to fly to Mars with a Washington monument tied to its tail. In fact, no other amendment had ever been repealed in American history. But with a wildly unpopular incumbent president, reform groups saw an opportunity to do exactly that. In 1932, President Herbert Hoover accepted the Republican Party's nomination to run for office for a second time. And I have but one desire, and that is to see my country again on the road to prosperity, which shall be more sane and lasting through the lessons of this experience, to see

the principles and ideals of the American people perfected. But Hoover's reputation was in tatters. Rightly or wrongly, Hoover was blamed for the catastrophe of the Great Depression. And by this point, nearly one in four Americans were out of work. Homelessness had reached epidemic levels. Businesses were going bankrupt and farms were getting foreclosed on. The Democrats had the White House for the taking, but the question remained, who would be their candidate? At the party's national convention in, where else, Chicago, the fight for the nomination boiled down to a three-way race between New York State Governor Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Speaker of the House John Nance Garner, and Al Smith, former governor

of New York. In back rooms and hotel suites, delegates argued back and forth. Fueling these debates was a steady supply of liquor, generously provided by mobsters Lucky Luciano and Meyer Lansky. After six days of horse trading, infighting, and last-minute negotiations, they reached a decision. My friends of the Democratic National Convention of 1932, you have nominated me, and I am here to thank you for the honor. It was Roosevelt who would be the Democratic candidate. He wasted no time in clarifying his platform, a new deal, and a repeal.

Let it be from now on the task of our party to break foolish tradition and leave it to the Republican leadership far more skilled in that art to break promises. Convention wants repeal. Your candidate wants repeal and I am confident that the United States of America wants repeal. I say to you now that from this date on, the 18th Amendment is doomed. I pledge myself to a new deal for the American people. The number one topic in the election campaign was the economy, but Prohibition was still a hot-button issue.

The Anti-Saloon League was still around, and so were many of the temperance groups that had successfully pushed for Prohibition in the first place. In fact, one of the most powerful organizations, the Women's Christian Temperance Union, actually reached its peak membership in 1931, boasting 370,000 members. To beat the dries, the wets needed to mobilize the silent majority of Americans who were in favor of reform. While the dries were powerful, the Wets weren't underdogs. They had a few strong things going for them. By early 1932, many prominent supporters of Prohibition had switched sides. John D. Rockefeller Jr., the man behind the huge construction project in Manhattan,

was one of them. He had been an anti-saloonist, and his family had contributed more than $15 million to temperance causes over the years. But his views had changed. Like many former supporters of the 18th Amendment, his biggest concern was crime. Over the past decade, ordinary citizens had grown accustomed to breaking the law. Some bought alcohol from bootleggers for home use. Others went to speakeasies. Desperate people went into small-time bootlegging and moonshining for lack of any other work. And respect for the police, who were in some cases blatantly corrupt, was at an all-time low. Now that people had lost respect for the law and law enforcement, Rockefeller worried it was a

slippery slope to more serious lawbreaking. He wrote in the New York Times, A vast array of lawbreakers has been recruited and financed on a colossal scale, that many of our best citizens peaked at what they regarded as an infringement of private rights have openly and unabashedly disregarded the 18th Amendment, and as an inevitable result, respect for all law has been greatly lessened. It's not hard to see what Rockefeller was scared of. America was close to a breaking point. With a country in economic ruins,

it was suddenly all too easy to imagine that resentment and lawlessness might boil over into outright revolt. Rockefeller had already seen an increase in political demonstrations. Early 1932 had witnessed the Cox Army protest when Father James Renshaw Cox, a popular radio preacher, led 25,000 unemployed Pennsylvanians to march on Washington.

In March that same year, the Ford Hunger March near Detroit turned into the Ford Massacre as private security and police tried to break up the protest with tear gas, cold water, and clubs. When that didn't work, shots were fired into the crowd, killing four and injuring 60. Two months later, in May, unemployed war veterans traveled to Washington to demand jobs and early payment of their pensions. As their numbers grew to over 20,000 and pressure built to pass a bill to release the payments, police moved in, shooting and pressure built to pass a bill to release the payments, police moved in, shooting and killing two protesters. Hoover called in the army, who showed up in tanks and with bayonets

drawn. They used tear gas to clear out the veterans and their families, then set fire to their tents. As people watched the blaze and billowing smoke and disbelief, there were no longer any illusions as to how volatile this situation had become. Washington looked like a war zone. Already taking heat for his handling of the economy, Hoover's decision to send in the army to clear the camps in Washington would be one more nail in his political coffin. On the campaign trail, he was met with outright open hostility from voters. At the White House, Hoover even received a letter saying,

why don't you vote for FDR and make it unanimous? By the time election day arrived, the writing was on the wall. Then election night in New York City. Surging crowds everywhere. Uproarious cheering as the news comes in early. Roosevelt has swept the nation. Roosevelt won the popular vote by about 7 million votes. He took the Electoral College in a landslide, 472 to 59. Political commentators couldn't resist rubbing it in.

Time magazine called Hoover the president reject. Inauguration day wasn't until March, so Roosevelt was left to kick his heels for a few months. But in the meantime, Congress got the ball rolling on reform. They had some help on this front. The Association Against the Prohibition Amendment had looked into the legal issues and came up with a plan for repeal. Following the Association's advice, Congress drafted a new amendment, the 21st to the Constitution, which would undo Prohibition. By the time the new president took office, Congress had already approved the proposal. That was relatively easy compared to what would come next.

Four previous amendments had gotten this far down the road to repeal before, but only to fail. To succeed, the amendment needed to be ratified by three-quarters of the state legislatures. That meant convincing at least 36 of the 48 states to reverse course. And there were many states controlled by politicians who still supported prohibition. Enough that ratification by the state legislatures was unlikely. But the Constitution has a backdoor. Instead of requiring only state legislatures to ratify, amendments can also be approved by specially elected state conventions.

It was an option never before exercised, until now. With Congress dealing with the issue of repeal, Roosevelt devoted his March 4th inaugural address to bigger issues. He spoke in general terms about honesty and values,, of course, fear. So first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. Roosevelt would go on to describe that fear as the nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. The previous two decades had been marked by America's struggles with the fast-paced and terrifying changes that came with becoming a modern country. In many ways, alcohol had been blamed for much of that anxiety. The moral panic over drink grew out of an increasing sense that

alcohol, as it was being used in the cities, was leading to urban decay, crime, and racial degeneration. With repeal on the horizon, Roosevelt asked the American people to overcome that terror so that the nation could move, bravely, into the modern world. Even as the plan for repealing the 18th Amendment moved forward, Roosevelt decided things needed to speed up. At a March 15, 1933 press conference, Roosevelt called on Congress to pass the Cullen-Harrison Act. This proposed law would make it possible to buy and sell beer, as long as it wasn't too strong.

This was possible because the 18th Amendment did not actually define what an alcoholic beverage was. It was the Volstead Act, which defined intoxicating liquor as any beverage containing more than one-half of one percent alcohol by volume. The Cullen-Harrison Act raised that level to 3.2 percent. Congress passed the bill, and the president signed it into law just seven days later. On April 7, 1933, beer was legal again. Prohibition was crumbling. A few minutes after midnight on April 7th, a truck rolled up to the White House sporting a sign that read,

President Roosevelt, the first real beer is yours. Hundreds of people gathered outside, cheered as the Secret Service accepted two cases of beer on behalf of the president. Roosevelt wasn't the only one to get a personal thank you from brewers that day. In front of a crowd of reporters, New York's former governor, presidential hopeful, and longtime anti-prohibition campaigner Al Smith got a special delivery of his own. It's my privilege to deliver to you, with a compliment to Dan Hauser-Bush, the first case of Budweiser beer to be delivered in the state of New York. Happy days are here again. Mr. Meyer, I've seen some things that amused me, entertained me, and amazed me on the corner

of 34th Street and 5th Avenue. But for the first time since the Empire State was built, I got a real thrill when I saw the six big horses coming along with the wagon load of beer. The only regret I have is that it isn't all for me. All across the country, breweries were getting back to business. The case of beer given to Al Smith that day might have only been 3.2% alcohol, but full repeal of Prohibition was just around the corner. How did Birkenstocks go from a German cobbler's passion project 250 years ago to the Barbie movie today? Who created that bottle of red Sriracha with a green top that's permanently living in your fridge?

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Mary Elizabeth Ellis, Paul Edelstein, and many, many more, Incoming is a hilariously thrilling podcast that will leave you wondering, how would you spend your last few minutes on Earth? You can binge Incoming exclusively and ad-free on Wondery+. Join Wondery in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Imagine it's 1933. You live in Taylor Junction, Los Angeles, near the river with your parents. The big Hollywood studios are less than 10 miles away, but your side of town feels about as far away from the glamour of show business as you can get.

You're almost 22 years old, but you can't move out. There are no jobs around. Your dad used to work at the Eastside Brewery, and he's been at you to try and get work there. You should apply for a job at the brewery, son. I asked John if he could get me in there, but they're full off. He says the applications came in like crazy as soon as the news broke. You're too young to remember legal beer, and you're excited to try it now that it's legal again.

The only thing you've ever drunk from Eastside is soda pop. But you've heard they've been quietly brewing for a few weeks now, and the first shipment is leaving the brewery by truck tonight. This gives you an idea. Hey, Dad, do you want to head over? Watch it leave? Yeah, you bet. You know, when we used to finish loading the trucks with lager, just a few hours later we'd be drinking the stuff. I'd love to see that first truck leave the dock. As you get closer to the brewery, you realize you're not the only ones to have come to watch. It's nearly midnight, but there are hundreds of people already there, all crowding around the first truck.

Dad, look at this, so many people. Tomorrow, I'll take you for lunch over at the Belmont Grill downtown, son. It's a special day. Plus, they're promising the biggest glass of beer in all of L.A. for a nickel. Your father actually tears up a tiny bit, and his grin grows wide across his face. The truck is loaded with cases of beer printed with the slogan, Put Eastside Inside, and there's a glamorous blonde with a big bottle in her hand. Newspaper men are snapping photos. You recognize her from the movies. It's Jean Harlow.

She smashes a bottle against a truck, christening the first shipment. There were scenes like this all over America. People were happy about being able to drink beer again, and they were especially pleased to see the breweries taking on new hires. When people think of the Great Depression, the images that come to mind are generally lines at soup kitchens, the ramshackle tent cities where the homeless camped, and the dusty, sun-parched fields farmers worked fruitlessly in the drought.

These were shocking sights to the people living through what became known as the Dirty Thirties. That's why the return of beer was such a cause for celebration. People really needed good news and a feeling that some progress was being made. The prospect of repeal and the New Deal gave many people a sense of hope, something they hadn't felt in a long time. Politicians were cheered up by something else, too, the promise of new tax revenue. The first two days of legal beer sales brought in an estimated $10 million to governments at the federal, state, and municipal levels. That's nearly $190 million in today's money. While the people cheered the return of legal beer, the amendment for full repeal was still being approved at conventions, one state at a time. Three days after the country got its beer back,

Michigan became the first state to ratify the 21st Amendment. Wisconsin came two weeks later. By summer's end, 20 states had ratified with 13 more by the end of November. That was three shy of the three-quarters majority needed to make it official. But eight states had sat the whole thing out. The Dakotas, Kansas, Oklahoma, Nebraska, Mississippi, Georgia, and Louisiana didn't organize a vote or hold a convention. There was some outright opposition, too. North Carolina did hold a ballot, but voted not to hold a convention. South Carolina delegates rejected repeal at a December 4th convention. But Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Utah had all their conventions scheduled for the very next day, December 5th.

If all three approved the amendment, Prohibition would be over. Imagine it's December 5th, the day of the Utah State Convention. You're a reporter covering the event at the State Capitol Building in Salt Lake City. The grand old building is filled with the sound of excited chatter. Last month, Utahans overwhelmingly voted in support of ratifying the amendment, despite the fact that the president of the Mormon church had said he thinks prohibition should stay. The vote on the amendment will be taken by a group of delegates elected to their posts in a statewide ballot last month.

But they're loitering, just milling around. Hey, what are they waiting for? I heard they're checking to make sure Ohio and Pennsylvania hadn't delayed their vote. They want to make sure it's Utah that puts us over the top. Oh, that's going to annoy New York. Sure will. They've already had some angry phone calls, and the White House wants to issue a proclamation right away. Still, look, it took us more than a decade to get here. I don't think a few more hours will hurt. Suddenly, there's a commotion on the other side of the building. Ohio and Pennsylvania have voted for the amendment. It's all down to Utah. We're going to bury prohibition.

At 3.32 p.m. local time, the delegates make it official. Utah becomes the 36th state to ratify the amendment. President Roosevelt signs the official proclamation just 90 minutes later. The proclamation asks for two main things. First, that the American people exercise moderation. Second, that no state, in his words, authorized the return of the saloon either in its old form or in some modern guise. The decisive vote of the 36th state against prohibition is happy news for the grain raisers of the United States

and for many others throughout the land. However, everyone's not waiting until December 15th. The lid is off in many places with the downfall of Prohibition being celebrated in real old-time hilarity. Yes, and by the renewal of old acquaintances, hotels and nightclubs report a real pre-war spirit among those revelers. Why? Across the country, beer, wine, and spirit makers rushed to meet demand. Winemakers in California had been busy for months getting ready in anticipation of repeal. One small town in the Sonoma region reportedly shipped wine worth $75,000, $1.4 million in today's dollars,

in less than three days after repeal. As a thank you, the region's winemakers sent a case to San Francisco Mayor Angelo Rossi, who received it at an impromptu city parade celebrating repeal. In New York, people toasted the return of real whiskey with the New Deal cocktail, whiskey, a mere pecan, a bitter French spirit, sugar, and a twist of orange. As for the illegal bars, the New York Daily News reported that the speakeasies had either immediately closed or were open for one last spree, selling their remaining booze at everything must-go prices. Crowds gathered in the rain outside the Roseland Ballroom at Broadway and 51st to kill off old man Prohibition,

who swung from a rope off a flagpole outside the dance hall, hanged in effigy. Prohibition was dead. Now streaming. Welcome to Buy It Now, the show where aspiring entrepreneurs get the opportunity of a lifetime. I wouldn't be chasing it if I didn't believe that the world needs this product.

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a fun-loving, hard-drinking detective couple. Nick had been drinking at the bar all day, teaching the bartenders how to do their job. You see, Nick, the important thing is the rhythm. You always have rhythm when you're shaking. From a Manhattan you shake to Foxtrot time. A Bronx to Two-Step time. A dry martini you always shake towards time. Nora comes in and the pair sit down together.

Say, how many drinks have you had? This will make six martinis. All right. Will you bring me five more martinis? Leo, line them right up here. Yes, ma'am. In reality, few people in Depression-era America could afford to drink like Nick and Nora. And even those who could still had trouble getting their hands on it. The 21st Amendment, which repealed Prohibition, made it clear that it was up to states to decide on how to regulate alcohol. Those states where Prohibition had been least popular did not enact much regulation.

New York, for example, set the drinking age at 18 for buying beer, wine, or liquor, a liberal choice. Mindful of the wine business, California legislators imposed radically low license fees on producers and retailers to encourage entrepreneurship. Illinois got liquor back in bars almost immediately and allowed privately run liquor stores to return. In contemplating new rules, states faced a dilemma. If liquor laws were too relaxed, there was a risk of allowing back the workplace accidents and domestic abuse that made prohibition attractive in the first place. If a state went too far in the other direction, though, with restrictive alcohol control laws that made prices high and buying it inconvenient, people would go back to buying from bootleggers. That would be a threat not only to public health, but would make it impossible to

collect alcohol taxes. And states were still under pressure from the groups who had supported Prohibition in the first place. Having lost the national battle, the Anti-Saloon League worked on convincing states and counties to stay dry or at least restrict access and advertising. On December 5, 1933, the League's founder, Howard Hyde Russell, told CBS Radio, This is no dry funeral, only a period of mistaken public opinion, warped and twisted by the conspiracy of a refuge of lies, of false propaganda and political party duress. The question is, what shall dries do next? If we cannot get the whole loaf,

we can accept a half loaf, a slice, crust, or crumb. The league got more than a crumb in many places. Shortly after repeal, one-third of the population still lived in a dry state or county. Texas, Tennessee, Oklahoma, and Kansas stayed dry for years. Mississippi wouldn't legalize alcohol until 1966. And even the states that became wet straight away faced a lot of decisions about just how to sell alcohol. They didn't want the return of the old saloon any more than Roosevelt did. Several states prohibited the sale of cocktails, shots, and mixed drinks in public drinking spaces because it was believed that hard liquor had been at the root of the saloon's problems. Bartenders were only allowed to serve beer and wine. These

so-called liquor-by-the-drink laws were fairly common, especially in southern states, and they stayed on the books for decades. South Carolina, for example, only modernized its laws in 1973 when it finally allowed bars to sell spirits and cocktails. But there was a catch, namely that bartenders had to use miniature airplane-type bottles to make it harder for people to request hefty drinks poured from full-size liquor bottles. That stipulation would last until 2006. The truth is, we still live with the legacy of prohibition. If you live in a state that doesn't allow happy hour, or one that sells liquor only from government-controlled monopoly liquor stores,

or if you can't buy liquor on Sundays, well, you can thank the legacy of Prohibition. The end of Prohibition was not the total disaster opponents predicted. The 24-hour hard-drinking saloon never made a nationwide comeback. All-day drinking didn't return either. Gone was the corpse reviver for breakfast and the eye-opener cocktails for lunch. But the end of Prohibition also didn't prove the economic magic bullet the Wets had promised. The American whiskey industry took a while to get back on its feet,

since bourbon and rye need to be aged before they're bottled. The wine industry took the while to get back on its feet, since bourbon and rye need to be aged before they're bottled. The wine industry took the longest to recover. Growers have been forced to give up on wine grapes altogether, replacing the European wine varietals with Concord grapes, table grapes that are totally unsuitable for winemaking. It would be another 40 or 50 years before these Prohibition-era vines would be torn out and replaced with wine-friendly varieties of grape. So repeal was not an economic panacea. America would even go into another recession in the 30s. But the idea of banning alcohol outright never gained the same popularity it had enjoyed a couple of decades earlier. In 1942, temperance campaigners would launch another big push for

Prohibition, but the idea failed to gain ground in the same way it had in the start of the century. Once powerful groups like the Women's Christian Temperance Union faded from view, it probably didn't help that in 1937, the head of the organization had praised Adolf Hitler for his supposed abstinence from alcohol. The union still exists, though, albeit in a much smaller membership. The Anti-Saloon League is still around, too, now called the American Council on Alcohol Problems. It devotes its energies to regulating alcohol advertising, although it has recently added opioid and marijuana use to its areas of concern. America's relationship with drink was, and

continues to be, complicated. Outright prohibition did not solve the health problems that came with alcohol. So in the wake of legalization, concerned citizens tried other approaches. There are some attempts to treat alcoholism as a medical problem. Dr. Charles Townes treated patients with drug and alcohol dependencies with what became known as the Belladonna cure at his Manhattan hospital. The cure was a cocktail of herbs and medicines, including deadly nightshade, to clear out their system. That led to its other name, purge and puke. One man who reportedly tried this method was Bill Wilson, a World War I veteran. Wilson was admitted to hospital several times in the early 30s after going on drinking binges.

At the time, addiction was considered to be a moral failing, and he and others that sought help faced shame and stigma. To keep himself and others sober, two years after the end of Prohibition, Bill W. would found a new organization based on mutual aid, Alcoholics Anonymous. In the preface to the group's 1939 book, Alcoholics Anonymous, the story of how many thousands of men and women have recovered from alcoholism, Dr. William Silkworth calls alcoholism an illness which only a spiritual experience will conquer. The problems that Prohibition had tried to solve with government regulation were now being tackled at the individual, personal level.

Nineteenth-century temperance campaigners had dreamt of a dry country, one where people were healthier and safer. But they were also part of a bigger reactionary movement that saw the changes in American society as a threat to family, community, and country. All too often, immigrants were blamed for those changes. Groups like the Anti-Saloon League had close relationships with nativist or white supremacist groups, including the Ku Klux Klan. Government enforcement of Prohibition targeted some of those same communities, whether it was bootleggers in Illinois or bartenders in New York. While the

arrests and trials of famous rum runners and mafia bosses got the most attention, lower-level smugglers, small-time moonshiners, and backroom establishments were the hardest hit. Despite these arrests, the Bureau of Prohibition was never able to get a handle on the illegal alcohol industry. The sheer number of speakeasies and moonshiners, as well as widespread corruption, made it almost impossible. The banning of alcohol also had several unintended consequences. Prohibition didn't stop people from wanting to drink, but it did make it more dangerous. Those who continued to drink ran the risk of being poisoned from badly made moonshine or redistilled industrial alcohol. It's estimated that 1,000 people died every year as a result. Prohibition had been in effect for 13 years, 10 months, 19 days, 17 hours, and 32 and a half

minutes. To many, it seemed much longer. One journalist at the time described it as a geologic epic. There was widespread relief to see that epic finally come to an end, even in the highest office. On the day that alcohol became legal once again, President Roosevelt reportedly toasted the event, saying what America needs now is a drink. From Wondery, this is Episode 7 of Prohibition from American History Tellers.

On the next episode, we conclude our series with a special interview segment with Lillian Cunningham, reporter and editor with The Washington Post, and host of the podcast Presidential and Constitutional. We'll discuss Taft, Wilson, Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover. If you like American History Tellers, you can binge all episodes early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Prime members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music. And before

you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey at wondery.com slash survey. American History Tellers is hosted, sound designed, and edited by me, Lindsey Graham, for Airship, with additional production assistance from Derek Behrens. This episode is written by Christine Sismondo, PhD. Executive producers are Hernán López, Marcia Louis, and Ben Adair for Wondery. In a quiet suburb, a community is shattered by the death of a beloved wife and mother. But this tragic loss of life quickly turns into something even darker.

Her husband had tried to hire a hitman on the dark web to kill her. And she wasn't the only target. Because buried in the depths of the internet is The Kill List, a cache of chilling documents containing names, photos, addresses, and specific instructions for people's murders. This podcast is the true story of how I ended up in a race against time to warn those whose lives were in danger. And it turns out, convincing a total stranger someone wants them dead is not easy. Follow Kill List on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.

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