Here's Where It Gets Interesting - From Hoovervilles to Hummingbirds in Space

Episode Date: May 26, 2023

Do you celebrate National Beer Day on April 7th every year? Did you even know that the U.S. has a National Beer Day? We do! And it’s all thanks to our 32nd president, Franklin D. Roosevelt and his signing of the Cullen-Harrison Act. Celebrated across the country in 1933, the act was just one small step on the path to the ratification of the 21st Amendment and the final nail in the coffin for Prohibition. Hosted by: Sharon McMahon Executive Producer: Heather Jackson Audio Producer: Jenny Snyder Written and researched by: Heather Jackson, Valerie Hoback, Amy Watkin, and Mandy Reid Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello, friends. Welcome. Welcome to Episode 12 of our series on Prohibition, From Hatchets to Hoods. In the summer of 1932, Pauline Sabin, New York socialite and leader of the Prohibition repeal movement, was featured on the cover of Time magazine. She's staring off into the distance with a slight smile on her face. She wears a trendy short hairstyle and three long strands of pearls around her neck. She looks comfortable and confident. She exudes an air of wealth and sophistication. And the nation, suffering from inside the seemingly bottomless pit of the Great Depression, doesn't seem to resent her for it. After all, she was fighting for the very thing their president wouldn't give them, the one thing they wanted more than anything

else, the repeal of Prohibition. I'm Sherrod McMahon, and here's where it gets interesting. Imagine it's the early 1930s, and up until recently, you were a working man, someone who put in an honest day's work, perhaps on an automobile assembly line in Detroit, or in your furniture store in Sacramento. You made enough to care for your family. Then, when the stock market crashed, it caused your bank to fail and shut its doors. Your life savings? Gone. Vanished in an instant. That's all it took. You've been evicted from your home with nowhere to house your children. You take whatever odd jobs you can get for the day, even if picking fruit or chopping

wood breaks your body. Your wife is too weak with hunger to stand in the three-hour-long bread line sponsored by a local charity. Your children are starving and sick because you can't get clean water and your living conditions are unsanitary. And when you get your hands on the daily newspaper, you read about President Hoover's latest speech, and it's more of the same. Pull yourself up by your bootstraps, he says, and find help from a neighbor because the United States government is not going to provide it. But your neighbor's story is exactly like yours. So in honor of the president who's become so out of touch with his people, the shanty town where you live in squalor with thousands of other people is called a Hooverville. The newspaper with his words splashed across its pages becomes your Hoover blanket. When you turn your pockets inside out to show just how completely empty they

are, you call them Hoover flags. There are homemade signs hung around your Hooverville that read, in Hoover we trusted and now we're busted. And here's where Hoover put us. The poverty, the anger, the desperation, it was widespread and commonplace. Around the country, millions of people grew fed up with Hoover's hands-off policies. But believe it or not, there was something making many American people even more ticked off at their president. Prohibition. When the stock market crashed in 1929, thousands of banks failed. And since deposit insurance didn't exist yet, when the banks closed, nearly 9 million Americans lost their entire life savings. Whatever was put in the bank was gone for good. By 1932, nearly a

thousand people were losing their homes every single day, and 100,000 people were losing their jobs each week. One out of every four people were unemployed and standing in long lines every day, hoping to find work, any kind of work that would pay them a few coins. Apartments and houses overflowed as those who were lucky enough to keep their living spaces took in friends and family members who were not. Those who couldn't find shelter found whatever land they could near water and built Hooverville camps. In Washington, D.C., encampments sprung up along the Potomac. In St. Louis, they were stretched out near the bridges over the Mississippi River, and in New York City, they dotted the shores along the East and Hudson Rivers. One of the largest Hoovervilles in the country stood in Seattle around Puget Sound, and it lasted

from 1931 to 1941, despite being burned down twice by the police in hopes that its inhabitants would disperse. A decade, not a few weeks, not a year or two. Makeshift towns for out-of-work Seattleites were home to around 4,000 people, most of them white European immigrants. Factories shuttered their doors, farmers lost their land, Factories shuttered their doors. Farmers lost their land. People stowed away on rail cars, hoping to find work and food in another part of the country. Americans felt like they were left to care for themselves in a time when that was nearly impossible.

It felt like no one was working to provide relief. In fairness, President Hoover wasn't just sitting back and doing nothing. He formed the President's Emergency Committee for Employment to try to boost jobs. He had the Federal Reserve increase credit. He got food surpluses into the hands of the Red Cross for distribution. But many of his and the federal government's reactions were nothing more than band-aids. And as the Great Depression lengthened from months to years, early emergency responses stopped working. They did too little, and they were too late in reaching Americans. When the 1932 election year rolled around, President Hoover made it clear that he would decline the Republican National Committee's nomination for a second term as president if the party supported repeal of the 18th Amendment. The party backed him and his terms,

and on August 11, 1932, President Herbert Hoover accepted the Republican presidential nomination. And in his speech, he said, It's my belief that in order to remedy present evils, a change is necessary. That change must avoid the return of the saloon. of the saloon. It is my conviction that the nature of this change, and one upon which all reasonable people can find common ground, is that each state shall be given the right to deal with the problem of alcohol as it may determine, but subject to the absolute guarantees in the Constitution of the United States to protect each state from interference and invasion by its neighbors, and that in no part of the United States shall there be a return of the saloon system with its inevitable political and social corruption.

In other words, he said, if prohibition needed to change at all, it only needed to change from a federal to a state law. That wasn't enough for Americans, many of whom were ready for a complete repeal. Hoover had won election in 1928 in part because he generally supported prohibition, even while he vaguely acknowledged its growing flaws. His opponent, Al Smith, had wanted to repeal prohibition altogether, but voters rejected that idea when 58% of them cast their ballots for Hoover. But by 1932, four years later, it was a completely different story. The Great Depression had now been going on for two entire years. And Americans were hungry and tired. There were cities with half of their populations out of work. And yet prohibition was still costing millions of

dollars to enforce. And everyone knew that enforcement by and large wasn't working. Ending prohibition and resuming the alcohol industry seemed to some like a way to help end the Great Depression. Protests and signs popped up on street corners and vacant storefronts saying, to create employment for at least two and a half million people, amend the Volstead Act. And beer for taxation, jobs for millions. Many Americans saw the millions of dollars spent to enforce prohibition as wasted money for laws they no longer even wanted. Laws that were constantly being flouted by crime syndicates and bootleggers. Sure, Al Capone had gone to prison for tax evasion in May of 1932, but everyone knew that gangsters and rum runners were still hard at work, breaking the prohibition laws and skirting the

authorities. Even if people had once felt that prohibition was important, it was now far less important to them than their ability to put food on the table for their families. Because if alcohol was once again legal, it could be taxed. And money from those taxes could then be filtered into relief programs that would help Americans get back on their feet, programs that would end the suffering from the Great Depression. Hauser Associates, a market research company, conducted a confidential poll before the 1932 election that uncovered the importance of prohibition to the voting public. the importance of prohibition to the voting public. Hauser Associates, by the way, pioneered market research, which would pave the way for similar consulting and research businesses like Gallup. But in 1932, as the best in the fledgling industry, the Hoover campaign hired Hauser to conduct research on voters. They wanted to know what issues were important to them and which

candidate had their support in the upcoming election. Over 5,000 people in 14 American cities were interviewed, and much to the chagrin of the Hoover campaign, the data Hauser associates collected showed that he was very likely going to lose the upcoming presidential election. Surprisingly, the issue that Americans placed the most importance on was not the Great Depression. One of the questions the Hauser poll asked was, would repeal of prohibition be good or bad for the country? Overwhelmingly, the polled Americans favored repeal. Hoover, who was once considered a pretty likable leader, no longer held the favor of the nation's people. And it showed in his demeanor on the campaign trail. There was a noticeable heaviness to him

that was no match for the charisma of his Democratic opponent, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. FDR represented optimism and hope, joy, and the promise that better days were around the corner. FDR's vision to get the country back on track was bold and direct, and it included plans to get people what they needed most, which were jobs. During his campaign, he outlined social programs that he had implemented in the state of New York that would later become the building blocks of his New Deal. And he had the endorsement of Pauline Sabot and the million and a half members of her Women's organization for national prohibition reform because he promised to repeal prohibition. To many Americans, FDR must

have looked like a ray of sunshine when he entered the presidential race. He had already proven himself to be a likable, electable leader. He'd been a New York senator, the assistant secretary of the Navy throughout World War I, and the governor of New York. He'd been a New York senator, the assistant secretary of the Navy throughout World War I, and the governor of New York. He had battled polio, but as far as most people could tell, he recovered just fine because he seemed to walk and stand, with only an occasional need for crutches. FDR's campaign team planted press stories to ensure that the country knew he was physically up to the task of being president. They paid for a Liberty Magazine article with the title, Is Franklin Delano Roosevelt Physically Fit to be the President?

According to the doctors, the article said, he most certainly was. He most certainly was. By the start of his 1932 campaign, FDR had become quite skilled at hiding his near total inability to walk. His team made sure that podiums were always sturdy enough to support the majority of his body weight, as FDR would lean heavily on his hands and arms to keep himself upright while speaking. I've mentioned this before, and I'll say it again. If you watch videos of FDR speaking, you'll notice that he often gestures emphatically with his head and not his hands. And it's because he could not risk letting go of the podium to wave his arms when making a point like I am doing right now, even though nobody at all can see it. During the campaign, FDR was also careful to never be photographed in a wheelchair. Photographs showed him leaning on

something or posed dashingly with a cane. And if he had to walk somewhere, he'd do it with a companion and put on a show of walking together in close camaraderie. His son James was often seen arm in arm with him. So they played it off like, I just love all these people so much. I just love them and I love to walk arm in arm with them. He also relied heavily on the radio to get his message across. Both candidates did, but where Hoover's voice came across the airwaves as stilted and practiced, FDR sounded friendly and sincere. People listening in their homes heard the conviction and hope in his voice and couldn't see any weakness in his physical strength. When FDR stood in Chicago Stadium on July 2nd, 1932,

to accept the Democratic nomination for president, he had to pause several times as the crowd cheered and applauded his position on prohibition repeal. He said, I congratulate this convention for having had the courage fearlessly to write into its declaration of principles what an overwhelming majority here assembled really thinks about the 18th amendment. This convention wants repeal. Your candidate wants repealed. And I am confident that the United States of America wants repealed. I say to you now that from this date on, the 18th Amendment is doomed.

In another similar campaign speech that same year, FDR simply began to speak his thoughts on Prohibition by saying, And now a word as to beer. The crowd cheered so uproariously that even as he laughed and gestured repeatedly for them to settle down so he could keep speaking, they continued to roar their approval. FDR supporters bought license plates with a frothy mug of beer in the center and photos of FDR and his running mate John Nance Garner on either side. either side. Campaign buttons said, vote for Roosevelt and repeal, or for repeal and prosperity, largely because of what FDR had to say about repeal. Hoover's campaign was toast. As the story goes, shortly before the election in November of 1932, the White House received a telegram addressed to the president. It was anonymously sent and it had just one line. It read, vote for Roosevelt and make it unanimous. They were sending that to Hoover saying, vote for Roosevelt and make it unanimous.

And while it wasn't exactly unanimous, almost 23 million Americans voted for FDR, which was more than enough to secure him the win. And what's more, Democrats swept the board and took control over both the House and the Senate. After 12 years of Republican dominance during Prohibition, the message from Americans was clear. They were ready for repeal and trusted the Democrats to make that happen. Almost immediately, an event in Florida solidified the country's trust in their new president-elect. I'm Jenna Fisher. And I'm Angela Kinsey. We are best friends, and together we have the podcast Office Ladies, where we rewatched every single episode of The Office with insane behind the scenes stories, hilarious guests and lots of laughs. Guess who's sitting next to me? Steve!

It's my girl in the studio! studio. Every Wednesday, we'll be sharing even more exclusive stories from the office and our friendship with brand new guests. And we'll be digging into our mailbag to answer your questions and comments. So join us for brand new Office Lady 6.0 episodes every Wednesday. Plus, on Mondays, we are taking a second drink. You can revisit all the Office Ladies rewatch episodes every Monday with new bonus tidbits before every episode. Well, we can't wait to see you there. Follow and listen to Office Ladies on the free Odyssey app and wherever you get your podcasts. On February 15th, 1933, FDR was in Bayfront Park in Miami, giving an impromptu speech before heading to Washington, D.C. to prepare for his inauguration on March 4.

There, on the waterfront, he sat tall on the back of the convertible car with his feet propped up on the back seat and delivered a few remarks to the gathered crowd. propped up on the back seat and delivered a few remarks to the gathered crowd. As the people listened to him talk and out of work, bricklayer named Giuseppe Zangara stepped up on a chair and began shooting at Roosevelt. For the love of all that is holy, can presidents stop riding in convertibles? Stop riding in convertibles. Convertible cars, what caused World War I? That's a story for another day. What Zangara hadn't counted on was Lillian Cross,

a small but mighty 100-pound woman standing in front of him. Here's how Lillian recalled the story. When the president-elect stood up to make his speech, so many stood up in front of me I couldn't see. So I stood up on one of the benches, and this man stood up with me, and the bench almost folded up. I looked around and saw he had a pistol and began shooting towards the president-elect. I grabbed his hand, which held the pistol, and pushed it up in the air and called for help. And a man grabbed his hand and we held it up in the air so he couldn't shoot anymore. My mind grasped the situation in seconds. I said, my God, he's going to kill the president. And I caught him by the arm and twisted it up. Several men then attacked the shooter and might have killed him if FDR had not shouted,

I'm all right, I'm all right, and asked the crowd to let the authorities apprehend Zangara. But five people were not all right. Four were wounded by stray gunshots. And a fifth, the mayor of Chicago, Anton Cermak, who had been next to Roosevelt in the car, was critically injured. FDR cradled the mayor and rode with him to the hospital where Cermak died a few weeks later. Giuseppe Zangara was taken to a local jail where he confessed to his plan of attempted murder by telling the police, I kill kings and presidents first, and next, all capitalists. He was executed by electric chair just six weeks later. Newspaper reports about the attempted assassination praised FDR for maintaining

his composure throughout the harrowing event. It reinforced the public's perception of him as a calm, strong leader who was ready to take the helm. FDR was inaugurated on March 4th, 1933, and the phrase from his inauguration speech that has echoed through the ages was the iconic, the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. FDR was speaking about the past 20 years of hardship, World War I, the flu pandemic, and the Great Depression. But one could make the argument that the greater line from his speech was when he said, this nation asks for action and action now. Because President Roosevelt didn't just speak about action. He followed through and he took it.

In his first nine days in office, FDR asked Congress to reorganize the banks, cut federal spending and legalize beer containing 3.2% alcohol or less. Beer manufacturers across the country assured legislators that legalizing low alcohol beer would open up 300,000 jobs and produce $400 million in revenue in a single year. And so on March 22nd, just 18 days after his inauguration, FDR signed the Cullen-Harrison Act, commonly known as the Beer Bill, which amended the Volstead Act by allowing Americans to manufacture and sell beer and wine containing up to 3.2% alcohol. Remember from a previous episode that the 18th Amendment banned intoxicating liquor, episode that the 18th Amendment banned intoxicating liquor, but failed to define what intoxicating liquor was. And the Volstead Act was passed separately, and it defined intoxicating liquor as anything that had 0.5% alcohol or greater, which no beer or wine or spirits could meet that

requirement. So this was amending the Volstead Act, but not yet repealing the 18th Amendment. So this was amending the Volstead Act, but not yet repealing the 18th Amendment. Immediately after signing the Cullen-Harrison Act, FDR cheerfully remarked, I think this would be a good time for a beer. And the country agreed. The Cullen-Harrison Act went into effect a few days later on April 7th, and that day is now observed as National Beer Day. April 6th is New Beer's Eve, in case you were wondering. 19 states opened their beer taps on April 7th that year. The Abner Drury Brewery in Washington, D.C. By the way, try saying Abner Drury Brewery.

Try saying that a few times fast. The Abner Dr brewery in washington dc sent two cases of beer to the white house at 1201 a.m with the message saying president roosevelt the first beer is for you but fdr was asleep so the marine who'd been sent along to guard the beer drank the first one so that newspaper photographers could get photos to print for their morning editions. In the city of Chicago, there was $5 million done in beer sales on April 7th. Americans may have been pinching pennies, but they parted with them in order to celebrate the first monumental step toward full prohibition repeal. Very few arrests were made across the country that day, and several photographs show police officers too busy smiling and drinking beer with the crowds

to prosecute violators who chose the harder forms of alcohol. To commemorate this very first National Beer Day, the Bush Brothers, B-U-S-C-H, beer family, not political family, gifted their father with six resplendent Clydesdale horses. These Anheuser-Busch Clydesdales made their very first public appearance pulling a beer wagon through the streets of New York City towards the Empire State Building. That wagon carried the first case of Budweiser beer delivered in New York State to former New York Governor Al Smith. Al had lost his presidential run in 1928 to Hoover and then

lost the Democratic nomination to FDR in 1932, but he had been vocal and consistent in his work to repeal Prohibition for years. As he received his case of Budweiser, Al said, I'm sure it's a happy day for us all. It will deplete to a great extent. Some of the ranks of unemployment. It will help to promote happiness generally and to produce good cheer. That's something that we all hope for and we all desire. We have great confidence in the future of our country. The United States will stand out. She will come back and while the process may be slow, we will have the happiness and the satisfaction of knowing that there is from today on a little better feeling. Now I've seen some things that amused me, entertained me and amazed me on the corner of 34th Street and Fifth 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. It was a happy day for sure, but when it was over, it wasn't enough progress to satisfy Americans. They wanted Prohibition repealed. Full stop. And although the Colin Harrison Act passed quickly after FDR took office in 1933, Congress had proposed the 21st

Amendment to the Constitution to end prohibition much earlier, way back in December of 1931, in the very same issue, reporting that Hitler was going to start displaying something called the Nazi banner. The New York Times outlined the two dozen bills that were in front of Congress, all laying out lawful attempts to amend or repeal prohibition. In previous years, Congress had been dominated by pro-prohibition Republicans and dry Democrats, and these types of bills were essentially DOA. But as Americans began to change their minds, Congress began to evolve too. Americans had been voting, at least partly, based on a candidate's wet or dry stances for over a decade. But in the 1932 election, candidates running for election campaigned heavily on prohibition and whether or not it would help dig the country out of an economic depression.

Like I said previously, these were wet candidates. Most of them were Democrats. And they won the majority and began working right away toward repeal. A group of wet anti-prohibition Republicans in the House formed a caucus to work with Democrats. And suddenly, all the anti-prohibition proposals that had been dismissed in years past started to gain bipartisan support. Officially titled the Blaine Act, the Act to Repeal Prohibition was formally introduced on February 14, 1933 by Senator John J. Blaine, a former Wisconsin governor. But on February 15, the same day that Giuseppe Zangara opened fire at FDR's speaking engagement, Texas Democratic Senator Morris Shepard began a filibuster to halt

the furtherance of the bill. Morris Shepard had introduced the 18th Amendment in 1913 and clearly did not want to relinquish his title as the father of prohibition. At its start, Senator Shepard had declared that 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. He meant Prohibition to be ironclad, completely resolute, but in the end, it was Shepard who couldn't see that hummingbird as it flew into outer space. His February filibuster was futile, and he got exactly zero support from his colleagues. On February 16th, the Senate passed the Blaine Act with five more votes than they needed,

and the House of Representatives quickly passed it by an even wider margin on February 20th. it by an even wider margin on February 20th. The Blaine Act gave states permission to organize conventions that would then meet and decide to ratify the proposed 21st Amendment, the repeal amendment. It was going to take the ratification by three quarters of the then 48 states to officially make the amendment part of the Constitution. People thought the process would probably take years. After all, no amendment had ever been repealed before. No one had ever even really tried. But it was done by the end of the year. State conventions were quickly organized and votes trickled in. In December 1933, the Colin Harrison Act, that stopgap beer bill, was voided when Utah became the 36th state

to ratify the 21st Amendment. It was the three-quarters majority the 21st Amendment needed. Federal prohibition was officially repealed. By the way, one of the reasons they used state conventions instead of allowing each state's legislature to ratify the amendment was because they wanted to provide a cushion for state legislators. They wanted to not force state legislators to officially vote on prohibition repeal. They wanted them to be insulated from that. And they also wanted to avoid the influence that groups like the Anti-Saloon League had on the already existing state legislators. So they used this system of calling state ratifying conventions. And every state had their own method of choosing who would get to go to these ratifying conventions. If you look at the list of how states got to choose, some it's very complicated and people were elected.

And some they just appoint you from the already existing state legislature, but it's a separate job than the state legislature. So anyway, I just wanted to explain why they used state ratifying conventions instead of allowing the state legislatures to pass or to ratify the 21st Amendment. The federal government could no longer stop the manufacturing, transportation, or selling of alcohol. And this time, the Budweiser Clydesdales made a stop at the White House to see and to thank President Roosevelt.

The 21st Amendment still allowed states and counties to keep prohibition if they desired, and there were many that did. Mississippi didn't lift its prohibition until 1966, and even now there are still around 30 or so dry counties sprinkled throughout the state. In Kansas, Mississippi, and Tennessee, all counties are considered dry unless they submit specific paperwork to allow alcohol sales. In fact, in Lynchburg, Tennessee, where the Jack Daniels distillery is part of Moore County, which is dry, they can legally distill their product, but it is technically illegal to sell it over the counter. You can only purchase packaged alcohol. Dry states and counties aside, Prohibition Repeal easily won out against its detractors. Splashed across the front page of the New York Tribune on

December 5th, 1933, was the headline that Pauline Sabin and millions of Americans had been waiting for. It read, Prohibition repeal is ratified at 5.32 p.m. And with that, the 13 years, 10 months, and 19 days of federal prohibition in America came to an end. came to an end. Thanks for listening. I hope you enjoyed this series. I hope you learned something new. And I'll see you again next time. Thank you for listening to Here's Where It Gets Interesting. This episode is written and researched by Sharon McMahon, Heather Jackson, Valerie Hoback, Amy Watkin, and Mandy Reed. Our executive producer is Heather Jackson. Our audio producer is Jenny Snyder, and it's hosted by me, Sharon McMahon. If you enjoyed this episode, please be sure to hit the follow or subscribe button on the podcast platform of your choice. We also benefit so much from ratings, reviews, and sharing on social media. Thanks for being here, and we'll see you again soon.