it is your support that makes this possible. if you are joining us for the first time, an open invitation to explore the wide range of activities we offer at smithsonian associates. now is the perfect time to silence your cell phones. we are thrilled tonight to welcome author garrett peck back to the smithsonian. in addition to the many tours he leads for smithsonian associates , he has presented at the library of commerce and the national archives. his tempered tour has been featured on c-span book tv and history channel programs, 10 things you did not know about with punk rock legend henry rollins. he was featured on a to our documentary on the smithsonian channel and is the author of seven books, including prohibition in washington, d.c., how dry we weren't. [laughter] the prohibition hangover, alcohol in america, from demon rum to called cabernet. 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 to join us in the lobby to sample a prohibition era cocktail. thanks to torrence swain and founding spirits. now please join me in welcoming , garrett peck. [applause] garrett: good evening, everyone. thank you so much for coming out for our wake, our dry wake. 100 years ago today, at 12:01, once the clock ticks over from january 16 to january 17, that was the exact moment federal prohibition began. today, i know. a lot of sour faces here in the room. [laughter] we are going to commemorate this. after the event here tonight, we will have a chance to celebrate our right to drink with a french 75 cocktail in the lobby. i appreciate everyone coming here tonight and for c-span coming tonight. thank you so much. i kind of warned a few people here about this image you see on the screen. this is a rather triggering image, especially for a beer drinker like myself. pouring beer into the sewer, so tragic. one of the most famous shots that isone of the most famous shots from prohibition. this the police commissioner shows in york city, john leach in the hat overseeing them throwing the beer down the drain. it is really unfortunate. i want to cover tonight how prohibition came to be and why ultimately it did not last, why it lasted less than 14 years. and while we ended up repealing the 18th amendment. today, most of us drink and we don't think anything of it. prohibition did not just appear magically on its own. there was actually a giant movement in american history that pushed this upon the country. that movement was the temperance movement. this year, in the library of congress. they have these people frescoes painted on the inside. the temperance movement was the century long social reform movement that was part of the progressive era intended to make americans better people and more middle-class and sober. their idea initially was that they would try to get people to drink more moderately. like hey stop tracking so much , whiskey, and instead drink beer and wine. but by the 1830's, more radicals , had seized charge of the movement, and they decided no one could drink anything at all. if you drink at all, you are on soif you drink at all, you are on the slippery slope to , becoming a drunkard, as they called alcoholism back then. so, is one of those things. they really demonized drinking. as we'll see from this propaganda poster from showing 1872, king alcohol and his prime minister. you see the king and his prime minister next to him, death. you might notice some of the things in the foreground. showing the tragedy of this occasion. for example there is a family , over here to the right, minus their father. of course, you have a weeping widow in the foreground. women were so important to the temperance union - for the temperance movement. often women were victimized because their husbands were drinking so much. the temperance movement did not come out of nowhere. it was a legitimate societal response to the heavy drinking of the 1820's. and on, in american history. they just took it to the extreme that no one should drink at all, and we should also change the constitution to ban out the - to ban alcohol. women are so important to this movement. 1873 was the beginning of the women's christian temperance union. this is the ground zero for temperance, the state of ohio. you have such a large number of german immigrants, and they controlled all the breweries. this is where the wctu was founded. and where the anti-saloon league was headquartered and created as well. frances willard is this incredible woman in american history. she is the first woman to get a statue in statuary hall in the u.s. capital. she really is a big deal. she is from the state of illinois. she was one of the leading proponents of women's rights in our history, our country's history. i really take my hat off to her even if i don't agree with her on the anti-alcohol stance. her motto for the wctu was take up everything. they took up every imaginable issue for women's rights and family rights. domestic violence, children working in factories, it was incredible. unfortunately, the women did not have the vote yet. so, women could only have influence, but they could not actually vote on these different issues. at its peak, the wctu numbered a quarter of a million members. a very strong movement. they got into the classrooms. they taught children to be ashamed of alcohol. my grandmother grew up with that and i come from a long line of methodists. most of us now drink. but they had a lot of heavy-handed moralizing they took into the classrooms. they also built numerous water fountains all around the country. here in d.c. we have a water fountain not put up by the wctu, and a number still survive. there's one in rehobeth beach and one in ocean city, new jersey. they're all around the country. and here in d.c., we have the cogswell water fountain. it is catty corner from archives, navy memorial. this is our temperance fountain. it once was an active fountain. the symbolism of the fountain was to tell people to drink water instead of whiskey. the 1880'sected in when the temperance movement was becoming this massive national movement. suasionng to use moral to keep people from tricky alcohol. after about 20 years or so of the wctu, that moral persuasion thing was not taking root. people were still drinking. it was not having a big effect. other than americans had shifted , after the civil war away from , drinking whiskey, and now they were drinking beer. ever since the civil war, beer has been our national beverage. in 1893, in ohio is founded the organization known as the anti-saloon league. they only existed for 40 years. they disbanded in 1933. this is the organization that gives us the prohibition amendment, the 18th amendment. one of the early hires was a college student named wayne wheeler. anyone here hear of wayne wheeler? probably the most powerful lobbyist in american history. he invented this term pressure politics. he figured out how to squeeze the politicians to force them to vote dry even if they were wet in their personal lives. every politician's first job is to get elected. he made sure if a politician bucked him on the wet-dry issue, he made sure they would not get reelected. he leveraged the base of the anti-saloon league which where the evangelical protestant preachers. this was their base. the temperance movement was a white evangelical protestant faith-based initiative. it was a progressive initiative. we tend to think today in terms of dry counties being very conservative. this was a progressive movement. this was about making americans better people using the power of the government to make us into better people. very important for the anti-saloon league, they formed a new alliance. this alliance engendered two important constitutional amendments that both went into effect in 1920. obviously one of them is prohibition. the other one you can probably guess from this particular photo, which is the suffrage amendment. the 18th amendment and the 19th amendment. this is from january 1, 1917. shows from the national women's party the suffragists , protesting in front of the white house because president woodrow wilson had not yet come out supporting the 19th amendment. so they began the seven by 24 protest. wayne wheeler had this alliance together with the suffrage movement that way both of them could get their way. this alliance fell apart after 1920 once younger women got the right to vote, and they decided they wanted to go visit the speakeasy too. [laughter] there is one thing in american history that really makes prohibition come about. i should back up really quickly. the anti-saloon league recognized, wayne wheeler said in a public statement at some point, we need to change the constitution quickly because this is our very last chance because 1917, considering where the country was, in 1920 there is going to be a census taken. and they could see how much the city's are starting -- cities were starting to outnumber the countryside. so they expected 1920 with the senses the majority of americans so they were expecting in 1920 with the senses the majority of , americans would be in the city, and that would outweigh the temperance movement, which was more rural based. leading up to 1920, the highest proportion ever of immigration into our country. one-third of americans were foreign-born or had a parent born overseas. in many ways, the temperance movement is a nativist movement , because many of these immigrants who were coming in in the 1880's and beyond were catholic or were russian jews. all of these people are bringing in their drinking habits with them. these protestants living in the heartland, tut-tut, we don't recognize these people, and we need to conform them to the way we are living. they should not be drinking alcohol. in a lot of ways, prohibition is targeted at all of these catholic immigrants coming into the country in the late 1800's and early 1900's. what makes prohibition a reality is the event that leads up to this poster, world war i. we declare war against germany on april 6, 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, yes, germans. of course they were the biggest bulwark against the anti-saloon league. right away, as soon as we declared war against germany, wayne wheeler and the other agents within the anti-saloon league began spinning beer drinking into treason with a lot of propaganda. this is a propaganda poster. they did all kinds of things, like they had the brewers association had been funding newspapers and so on, and they brought out a lot of these shenanigans through senate hearings. this is all about embarrassing the wet cause and embarrassing the brewers and further marginalizing them during world war i. they spun beer drinking into treason during this time. in 1917, they brought forth the 18th amendment, and it sailed through congress without a 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 the amendment during the war itself, because part of the selling point was the need to save grain to feed our soldiers during the war, and we need sober soldiers who can fight the german army. we will sort of ignore the fact that the german army was drinking beer and the french army was drinking wine. and the english army was drinking everything. [laughter] garrett: it is all part of the propaganda of selling the dry cost to the country. in the emergency of the war effort, everyone was like, "yeah !we need to do this. need prohibition to win the war." most people thought when they were voting for this that they were simply outlawing liquor, not realizing beer and wine were also being outlawed. they were in for a very big surprise come january 20. everybody has got to hand out of eight prohibition era cocktails. the first one is one of my all-time favorites. it is the french 75. this is a cocktail invented during world war i. it has a couple of different origin stories. one features a british army unit getting together with a french unit, and kind of like the reese's peanut butter cup, you remember the commercial from the 1970's. they made this cocktail. other people say it was invented in new orleans and so on. i was an artillery officer myself when i was in the army. this was an incredible top-secret project from the french. the germans called this thing the double gun. it was so accurate. it could fire off about six shots a minute, and every shell would land in the same spot. it was a really small gun. two men could transport it around. because the u.s. had almost no armaments capability during the war, we had to borrow almost everything from the french. all the tanks, airplanes, and artillery pieces, we had to borrow from the french army. in fact, the very first artillery shell is at the woodrow wilson house. i am on the board, by the way. so come and visit sometime. here it is. this is a french 75 artillery shell. president wilson felt such a responsibility for sending off these 2 million soldiers to go fight in the trenches of france, so he kept it there in his bedroom -- you can see it on the mantelpiece -- so he could see it directly when he woke up in the morning. he felt that responsibility of sending the nation to war. one day, a famous american commanded a battery of french 75's 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 years old when he let d his battery of kansas city misfits. a lot of them were catholic. they were an ill-disciplined group. he whipped them into shape. in part because he was so much older than them. he led them very effectively during the war. his unit was mostly catholic, and the soldiers that were in his battery that became lifelong friends and political supporters of him, they were getting to talk. they saw the prohibition amendment had passed on january 6, 1919. five days later, harry writes to his fiancée, beth wallace and he , says, 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 do there in time to lay in a supply for future consumption. i think a quart of bourbon will be enough to last me for 40 years. they were already making plans to bootleg. it is just kind of like, what were they thinking? how was this ever going to work? the 18th amendment was ratified by the state of nebraska on january 16, 1919. i will put up the first part so you can read it. i highlighted the most important part of it, which is that the manufacture, sale, and transportation of intoxicating liquors is hereby prohibited. so that is what the amendment states. you now have to have a law to define -- what did they mean by intoxicating liquors? again most people thought they , were going to outlaw distilled spirits, liquor. but wayne wheeler was like nuh-uh, anything with alcohol in it. he helped craft a law with this amazing man who ha man who had g mustache. i will show this to you next. andrew volsted of minnesota. he was a republican, and he chaired the house judiciary committee. he had charge of writing this bill. parts in this 67 bill. it was called the volstead act. he went down in ignominy for writing this law. anything above .05% alcohol was now illegal. that was considered intoxicating. they forbade anyone from calling near beer even near beer. vo and otherhave bev things you would not want to drink. this act had any number of loopholes, many of which are quite famous. you have all heard of, for example, medicinal whiskey. before prohibition, the american medical association said alcohol is not medicine. we know that for a fact. it is not medicine. during prohibition, on the other hand, all the doctors could prescribe, they could make 100 prescriptions of a pint of whiskey for a month. of course all the doctors wanted to get in on this game. so the ama totally changed tack. during prohibition. this was one of the major loopholes. it was widely, widely used during prohibition. you had sacramental wine because the catholic church, the jews, the lutherans, the episcopalians , they still needed to have wine for their services. that was one of the loopholes. you had 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 fruit. you can take all the fruit you wanted and make up to 200 gallons of preserved fruit. if you preserved fruit, by the way, it is going to ferment. if you leave an orange on your counter, i discovered this a couple of days ago -- i had it on the counter, and i bit into it. "ew, it fermented!" you discover this right away. it is a natural process. you leave any fruit, and it will ferment. this is a natural process, fermentation. that was a carve out for the midwestern farmers and the italian immigrants. a whole bunch of loopholes got written into the volstead act, and they were widely abused. president wilson himself actually vetoed the volstead act , and he vetoed it three weeks after his stroke. he suffered a stroke october 2, 1919. he was trying to sell the treaty of versailles to the nation. he did this national barnstorming tour. he began having horrible headaches, so they brought him back to the white house, and he had a stroke. it effectively ended his second .erm of his presidency 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 day, october 20 8, 1919, congress overrode wilson's veto, thus we got this very strict interpretation of prohibition. it is kind of amazing, once people woke up, that is what we signed up for. hmm. yeah. again, i mentioned the woodrow wilson house. when wilson left the white house on march 4, 1921, he actually had a wine collection. he did not want to leave it behind, because his successor, warren harding, was a known heavy drinker and kind of a party boy. 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, it was yours to keep. they were not going to take that away from you. personal possession was not outlawed during prohibition, but you could manufacture, sell, or transport it. so in this case here, wilson had to get special permission to transport his alcohol from the white house to his new estate. house. he got that permit approved. come by the woodrow wilson house at some point. we have a prohibition tour that i lead sometimes. we go down and visit the prohibition-era wine cellar. it is really unique. how many other houses in the country have original bottles? it is amazing. now, look right up front. that sure bottle right in the center that is quantro. , the packaging has hardly changed. it is amazing. many of the bottles we believe the wilsons got from the french ambassador's house, which is about three blocks away. we effectively helped saved france from world war i. they were very grateful for that, so we believe the wilsons got a perpetual resupply from the french embassy during prohibition. embassies themselves were considered foreign territory, and therefore they could supply their own alcohol. that is where the wilsons got there supply. another thing i wanted to point out to you was wartime prohibition, which is an oxymoron. the wartime prohibition bill gets attached to the prohibition bill about 10 days after the war ends. so it is late november, 1918, and senator morris sheppard attaches this onto the appropriations bill, effectively outlawing the sale of distilled spirits for the rest of the war. in other words, until we have a peace treaty, we can have no more distilled spirits sales. distilling, period, so it shut down the distillers. come july 1, 1919, all beer must be under 2.75% alcohol. and so what you are seeing right here is this is a saloon in new york city on june 30, 1919, the last night before people will have to shift down to 2.75% alcohol beer. do you notice what they are drinking? look at what they are all drinking. do you see a single cocktail? they are drinking beer, because that was the only thing that was legal for them to drink at the time. what else is missing from the photo? good. you guys are smart. there are no women in this, because women did not go to saloons. not until the 1920's, when the speakeasies came about. that is when women started going to the speakeasies. beforehand, saloons were a men's-only culture. maybe some good things came out of prohibition. women got the vote, they got equal rights. virginia yesterday ratified the equal rights amendment. [applause] garrett: yeah. my home state. yeah. prohibition starts, again, 100 years ago today, right as the clock ticks over to january 17. 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 have daniels the guy who , dried up the navy. comes from.joe" wayne wheeler was there. william howard russell was there. most importantly, the man who spoke at midnight, william jennings bryan, the great commoner. and he died about five years after this. his career at this point is really waning. but at midnight, he delivers this 45-minute dynamic sermon. he compares king herod, who is trying to kill the baby jesus, and how jesus escaped to egypt , along with his parents, and he made that analogy to jesus escaping to egypt to the wet cause, trying to kill the 18th amendment. at the end of the speech, he declares victory. and he says, "they are dead that sought the child's life. they are dead. they are dead!" everyone thunderously applauds this. polonium is upona us now, and they believe the country is about to get a lot better. midnight comes, and this new baby is born, but this new baby is thirsty and cranky and wants a drink. [laughter] garrett: so prohibition begins. this is one of the very few actual dry congressman. william upshaw from georgia. he is symbolically holding an umbrella over the u.s. capitol, signifying that we are dry. of course, congress never went dry. i will talk about that later on. congressman and senators continue to drink. it becomes a huge national embarrassment when the main bootleggers spilled the beans on all of them. we end up with prohibition lasting nearly 14 years, or as hl mencken called it, the 13 awful years. mencken is an atheist and a very proud german-american. he sees the temperance movement for what it is. it is a reform movement that is trying to make us into better people. he is not having any of it. he is such a hilarious writer. he is one of the leading literary critics of the 19 teens and 1920's and 1930's. he is very funny. he has a great sense of humor. in 1929, he writes a really funny article. he is kind of surrendering to the fact that prohibition is not going to be around. not realizing it only has four years left. he says this is what we have got. he draws this comparison. back in the day, we used to be able to have steak and fo gras, and now is to get all the stuff from our bootleggers. it is basically sandwiches and hot dogs. he writes this really funny article, basically saying let us while waiting for the end of the , methodist millennium, to do the best we can. but let us keep on improving the sandwich and let us give some attention to the dog. let's make the most of what the the bootleggers are supplying us. he had a car, which he sold in 1918. he used the proceeds to fill up his cellar full of alcohol. thinking that would last to the duration of prohibition. four months later, the bootleggers were out there supplying alcohol. for as he called them, booticia ns. [laughter] prohibition goes into effect in 1920. when tennessee ratifies the 19th amendment in 1920. women get to vote for the very first time in the presidential election in 1920. that elects warren harding, one of our worst presidents ever. this is alice paul, who was about five foot nothing, and an absolute fierce proponent of suffrage. every time they would get a state, they would add another star to it. so she is toasting the fact that tennessee's star is now attached to the suffrage flag. so we get prohibition. but there is a major question that i have always been asking myself. ok, so we amended the constitution, which is no mean feat. we only have 27 amendments so far. it is hard to amend the constitution. the framers put that very high hurdle in place to make sure we don't willy-nilly amend the constitution. they really expect us to have national consensus around an issue before we monkey around with the constitution. so that than kind of raises this question. did a national consensus around prohibition actually exist? and why did prohibition fail? gotcause drive their way, why did people immediately start bootlegging? i think there are a number of answers. part of it is the fact that the anti-saloon league took such a draconian measure toward prohibition. i mean they had to have zero , tolerance. that's when they took away beer, which has long been our national beverage. a lot of people were really offended by this. president wilson in 1920 called , and his address to congress called for congress to reinstate , beer. many of the congressman in 1920, as they were having the conventions on both sides, wayne wheeler said over 300 congressman complained that they were hearing from constituents that they wanted to have beer again. 300 out of the 435 were complaining. it is just amazing. so it really took a lot of people by surprise how are conan draconian prohibition turned out to be. right away, a lot of people were hmm-mmm, i think i am going to start drinking." there were bootleggers out there who were willing to supply the alcohol for a price. during prohibition, consumption of alcohol goes down. because it is so much more expensive to buy it from the bootleggers. there is a myth that people were drinking more than ever, that's actually not true. it's more expensive than ever before. you think of henry fitzgerald and so on, but many of them were in paris. many of the great bartenders went to paris during prohibition. one of the things that showed up almost right away, right off the coast of the united states, was rum row. all of the ship captains were docking their ships. called three miles offshore. speedboats were coming out to that limit, filling up the speedboats and race it back to shore, usually at night time. this became known as rum row. it was up and down the east coast. out of this idea of the three mile limit came the three-mile limit cocktail. this is one of the schooners that the coast guard seized. they are only able to seize about 10% of the different ships. in the mid-1920's, the country negotiated an agreement with the british. the british wanted to keep bringing alcohol on their transatlantic liners. they could do it if they granted the united states to expand the three-mile limit out to 12 miles, so they could trap the bootleggers. without telling anyone, the coast guard went out and captured a bunch of ships. got all the bootleggers. now that we have a three-mile limit, the new cocktail is now called the 12 mile cocktail. those bartenders are pretty creative. you have got beer flooding over the borders from the ocean, through canada coming down , through detroit, which of course is a major, major point, as well as upstate new york. alcohol is flooding into the country. many people are setting up distilleries, often in their bathrooms. your local bootlegger could fit you out with a small still, as long as you did not burn the house or the apartment down. this is a still. the prohibition bureau captured this one. it's kind of amazing. your bootlegger would come around and collect whatever you had made and give you cash money for it. right away, a lot of people thought about untaxed money. ok, i will start producing alcohol as well. so really quickly, people started to break the law, whether they drank or not. we already had a major moonshine culture in the country. but this expanded the moonshine culture to everywhere around the country. it's 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. this is very common form of speakeasy. it was carl hamill's lunchroom. this guy was raided three times. the way the speakeasy work is you had a legitimate business up front, a lunchroom. and then if you knew someone, you could say the passcode and say, "hey, joe sent me," or whatever and they would invite , you to the back for a little darkroom. you can go get a pint of beer. you can see the prohibition bureau is pulling all the kegs of beer out of the cellar. they were raided three times. you might notice the notation, 922 pennsylvania ave, that is now the site of the department of justice. [laughter] garrett: this next photo is very heartbreaking for me. the prohibition bureau is destroying 18,000 bottles of beer in the arlington dump. these were bottles of beer that were intercepted on the highway coming down from philadelphia and the judge ordered them , destroyed. it's an amazing photo. you can see the agents are throwing the beer bottles. you can see the bottles breaking. they are chattering in place. that is now, the arlington dump, it is now underneath one of the pentagon parking lots. all the bottles are still there. they are just underground. one of the great novels that comes out of prohibition is the a very satirical novel by sinclair lewis. he wrote "main street," and very famously he got the pulitzer -- sorry, he got the nobel prize. it was a novel called "babbitt." he wrote it right here in sinclair circle. in 1922, he has this one little statement in the book, and i think he captures why prohibition is going to fail. it's an unknown character. he is not named, who this passenger is. it is on a train and he is passing a flask of gin. he makes this statement. he captured why prohibition is going to fail. everyone says it is for someone else to obey. not me. i'm going to keep resupplying. those catholics need to stop drinking. i'm a protestant, i can handle my booze. i mean, it is just, you know pure hypocrisy. again, 1922, so only two years into the noble experiment. and he has already captured why public sentiment is going to turned against prohibition. so again we become a nation of scoffcrites, really, and laws. scofflaw, is the next cocktail one of my all-time , favorites. give it a try sometime. you need real grenadine for it. it's easy to make. make an equal amount and you have got grenadine. it's a very unusual cocktail. how does that work? it is delicious. it's also bright pink. it looks like a cosmopolitan. it tastes very different. it's one of my all-time favorite probationary cocktails. "scofflaw," was invented in 1924. there is a guy named king who is a harvard graduate. he was very upset at seeing all of the drinking going on at harvard. and so he sponsored this national competition to come up with a word to name those lawbreakers. there was a $200 prize. two people came up with the name. it was announced on the anniversary of national prohibition. so in two people came up with 1924, the word "scofflaw." it is an ingenious word, someone who scoffs at the law. one week later, and harry's bar scofflaw cocktail was invented. [laughter] garrett: yay, bartenders. this particular word shows you the 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 a saloon to drink, now women could equally break the law, along with men, and go to the speakeasies. so 1920's is really our first sexual revolution. family planning tools come into effect. women start cutting their hair. look at this woman. she is actually a dancer. this shot was done in 1925. women didn't cut their hair before the 1920's. it is just fo remarkable. she is showing how the young kids are partying today. you keep a hip flask in your garter. everyone does that today. women started getting in on the game as well. and it became fun to break the law. it is glamorous to break the law. really, breaking the law is glamorous? yeah, we became a nation of scofflaws. why did the country turn against prohibition? a couple of things happen. everyone saw the organized crime that was going on. especially as the 1920's progressed, you saw in cities like chicago more people were getting killed over who was violence, over who was going to control neighborhoods. very famously on valentine's day day, the st. valentine's massacre, where al capone eliminates his rival gang in chicago. they are machine-gunned by his gang in chicago in a garage. that makes national headlines. it really stunned country and it really showed how violent prohibition was becoming. so many people were saying this is out of control at this point. the violence, the bribery, all of these prohibition agents were horribly corrupt. all of the judges that were getting bribed, it was endemic in society. and it was underlying democracy -- undermining our democracy to have all of this corruption that was going on. people sought is a problem in saw it as a problem in the 1920's. how did we 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 1929 , when the stock market crashed. the great depression. that is ultimately what nailed the coffin shut on prohibition. suddenly the peak, or i should say at the trough of prohibition, a quarter of the american workforce was out of work. it was the worst financial crisis in our country. the economy shrank by one third. horrible. it was just unreal how bad the great depression was. the democrats seized on this. way, thes, by the republican party owned the 1920's. they own both houses of congress and all three presidencies of the 1920's were all republicans. even though prohibition passed as a bipartisan measure, it was up to the republicans to enforce it. they were running the country. the democrats washed their hands of prohibition in 1930 and said we're going to call for a repeal amendment. when prohibition went into effect in 1920, the country lost quarter of a million jobs. suddenly in 1930, a quarter million jobs looks pretty good. they called for an end to prohibition as part of their election plank. hearing this in 1930, the leading prohibitionist in the senate, a man who sponsored the 18th to minute, morris sheppard, laid down the gauntlet. to the wet cause. he made this very famous statement. he said, i quote, "there is as much chance of repealing the 18th amendment as there is a hummingbird to fly to the planet mars with the washington monument tied to its tail." if that doesn't sound like a challenge, then nothing is. [laughter] right after this, an irishman and a captain during world war i, he is a real estate guy. people might remember the 1980's. the luck papers. he has a real estate guy who gets together data points. you know what? i can take all the police data from all the raids and put them on a map and embarrass the dry cause. he does this in 1930 and again in 1932. this made not just national news this made global news. washington, d.c. was considered the model dry city. during prohibition, there were 3000 speakeasies. i do that's nothing compared to new york city, which had 50,000 speakeasies. in 1932, this is the speakeasy map. i found this in the library of congress. it is so cool. rufus lusk marked the spot where booze had been bought. this is pretty incredible. this was put together by the crusaders. they were crusading for the wet cause. i will point out some of the stuff. there are 1155 dots. they found alcohol. there were another 600 in 1931 where they did not find alcohol. he put up here -- those are federal offices where raids took place. by the capital he put up the , methodist building. it is right by the supreme court. he put up there the anti-saloon offers and the women's christian temperance union. he put all the dots, showing all of the raids. again this is a piece of wet , propaganda. it was very effective. he published this in september of 1930. about a month later, the main bootlegger for congress comes forward with an incredible story. "the washington post" gets -- everyone thinks about watergate being their first great scoop . the first was george cassidy. he had bootlegged for congress for 10 years. for the first five years, he worked on the house side. in fact, congress liked him so much, they gave him an office in the basement. so he hauls his liquor in a suitcase everyday. congressmen would play cards with him buy alcohol. , it was great. he was arrested, so he shifted over to the senate. senators were worse than congressman were, so they would send their secretaries down to get the booze. he was arrested again. part of the plea agreement with the judge, he agreed he would not bootlegged again. which actually he did leg later on. so he was arrested again. the "washington post" approached him. "would you like to write a few articles for us?" sure." he published six front-page articles in "the washington post." the last one was published a week before the midterm election of 1930. that was a seismic election. this was a wave election. dry toss shifted from a drive to an openly wet democratic and republican majority. it's incredible. the wets had taken over congress. and cassidy helped make this happen. this shifted. there we go. i did not realize this hadn't shifted. computer malfunction. there is george cassidy right there. that is him in october, 1930. there is his green hat. he earned that nickname when he got arrested. some journalistspointed them out and said that guy in the green hat, he just got arrested. and the nickname stuck. we have a local distiller that 2012 that named a columbia him, the distillers, and it is called green hat gin. the role of women is so important in undermining prohibition. in the late 1920's, this organization got together called the national organization for always trips me up here, but it is the women's organization for national prohibition reform. it was headed up by polly morton sabin, who was the heir to the morton salt family. she got this organization together to counter balance the women's christian temperature in in, with claim they spoke for all women nationally. pauline morton sabin had supported the dry cause. she realized it wasn't working. these are all very famous women. they were very ecumenical. they were working-class women. they were targeting women of every stripe to get them involved in this. younger women got very heavily involved in the organization. it was a national movement to reform prohibition. and ultimately they endorsed the democratic appeal. prohibition. morton herself was a republican. she said this is not working, support the democrats. that formed a counterbalance to the wetu, which always assumed that it was speaking for women. i love this poster. this is that depression era are. two young women are pointing out that they should be supporting -- little women should be supporting the repeal of the 18th amendment. so with prohibition and the great depression underway, prohibition's days are numbered. the idealism that the anti-saloon league had and the temperance movement had really shattered on reality. that the country turned out to not be in support at all for this dry cause. there was so much lawbreaking that was going on during prohibition. the country got cynical about it. you know what, let's end this, let's stuff this genie back into the bottle, let's get control, and repeal this amendment. the recall movement erupted once roosevelt ran on the repeal platform. the democrats have seized control of the government in the 1930's. they are running on the repeal platform. roosevelt is the last president to be sworn in, on march 4, 1933, and before he is sworn in, congress has already debated and passed the 21st amendment. that goes on to the states. it gets ratified in astonishingly short time. the first state to ratify is michigan. michigan is a great beer state. that is on april 10. this is a couple of days after roosevelt signed a law, which declares 3.2% beer is not intoxicating. he had run on a platform of making beer legal again. and by having a law that is saying it is not intoxicating, therefore i did not violate the amendment. the 18th amendment said intoxicating liquor is prohibited. on april 6, the country went out and partied. prohibition was coming to an end. the states were lining up to ratify. and it is incredible. given that the democrats now control the country, they put into the 21st amendment language that it would be ratified by a state convention. since the democrats controlled most of the statehouses, the states were lining up and voting one by one. how long do you get took? given michigan was the very how long dopril 10, 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. it took eight months. eight months. just incredible. this is going to stun everyone. i am giving you a trigger warning. the state that put it over the top was utah. [laughter] garrett: yes. the 36th state was december 5, 1933. henceforth known as repeal day. or cinco de drinko. my button says "party like it's 1933." i know we want to get to a q&a session. i have got a couple of more slides to talk about. some of my upcoming events for the smithsonian associates, i've got a cool tour in maryland. it is where the smithsonian capital is. we have a day-long tour on april 18. get a bus to go out there area, we area, and we start off seen the castle. we get to see the quarry itself. lunch is at a winery. i got my first nearly week long tour for the smithsonian. it's where i grew up in california. i grew up in sacramento. it is a five-day tour of the california gold rush. that is in october 10 through the 15. that's going to be a lot of fun. that is really beautiful countryside. we are going to cram in a lot of history. you get to be with me for five days. [laughter] garrett: i've got a quick announcement. you guys are the first ones seeing this. i have a book coming out on june 2. it's a contemporary history called "a decade of disruption. millennium, the new 2000 to 2010." is a history of all the stuff we lived through from the dot com meltdown to the great recession and everything in between. it has been a decade now. it is an opportunity to see what happened. we are dealing with the impact of to this day even. that is coming up here in a few months. lastly if you want to read more, myout prohibition, four of eight books have the topic of prohibition in them. the most recent one, if you or local history, prohibition in washington, d.c. "how dry we weren't," which of course has 11 cocktail recipes in it. [laughter] garrett: including the scofflaw and a bunch of others. i want to thank you so much for coming out tonight. thank you for coming out our dry wake. [applause] garrett: we will be happy to take questions. do we have a microphone, by chance? lauren: no. garrett: state the question loudly, and i will repeat it back to the audience. does anyone have questions? >> how did bootleggers respond to the threat of repeal? i'm sure they didn't want to go down without swinging. garrett: how did the bootleggers respond to prohibition? they probably did not want repeal. you are right about that. they were making so much money tax-free. that is when the key constituents were like, "no!" al capone and his gang were making money hand over fist. we forget about that, al capone he is the most famous gangster , in world history. he overwhelmingly made his money being a bootlegger. just incredible. it was not just the dry cause, but many of the bootleggers did not want prohibition to end, either, for financial reasons. right here, the man in the yellow. >> what was the penalty for breaking the law? for the speakeasies? for a person, you know, just a general person? garrett: 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 and whatnot, but many people simply paid the fine. ok, fine, i will pay it. i will plead guilty, and on they went. mid-1920's, so many people, not proving to be a it is deterrent. because the speakeasies reopened right away, because there was so much money to be made selling booze. by the mid-1920's or so, new york city decide take, let's padlock the businesses. that spreads around the country. it is padlock for a year. guess what the owners do? they find another spot to reopen. they are fine. that's a temporary measure. somebody just find another place to open up. the one president who really tries to enforce prohibition is herbert hoover. the public is already quite cynical. by the time hoover gets to the white house in 1929, the public is already opposed. he is sworn in march 4. this is after the st. valentine's day massacre. the country is cynical about prohibition. and here he is saying, "i am going to enforce this thing," and most of the public is like, "why?" it creates more cynicism. he gets a new act passed which , imposes severe penalties. you have a five-year prison sentence and a $10,000 fine. it dramatically raises the penalty. all this does, most were just of the bootleggers were just reaching plea deals. ok, i will pay my fine and then go. well now, everyone is getting a , jury trial. you can imagine how many tens of thousands of bootleggers there are. this completely gums up the legal system. there are so many trials have to be held. the judicial system, it's overwhelming. another unintended consequence of prohibition. because you have so many people breaking the law. it shows how unenforceable for whole thing is. it makes the public more cynical towards it, because it shows this cannot be enforced. repeal prohibition and put reforms in place, and that is the democrats' selling point. >> did they expunge the records? of the people after the amendment was passed? garrett: expunge the records? no, they did not. in the 1930's and 1940's, -- that is how i know george cassidy got arrested a couple of more times. in the 1930's and 1940's, -- i sent them to his son, and fairfax county. right here, next question. >> what drew you to that topic? garrett: half of my books are dealing with prohibition. it's partly family history. i come from a long line of methodists. you see me poking fun at the methodists. the methodists were the first church to embrace the temperance movement. of course most methodists now drink. it was a big deal. the methodist perennial prohibition. back in 2003, i had my first book idea. the hangover. the idea came directly from christmas eve. i had brought a really nice burgundy to my grandmother's in scottsdale. i was there with my mother and my grandmother. three generations. my grandmother kind of tut tutted about the wine. "you know i don't drink." "it is christmas!" this was a generation of value that did not pass on to us. my grandmother was protestant. they were taught by the women's temperance union to be ashamed of drinking. so there was a stigma that her generation grew up with, and that lasted well into the 1970's and 1980's. i think the baby boomers are the first generation that did not have a stigma around alcohol. that earlier generations did. drinking is just what we do. it's how we socialize. there is no stigma or shame. it is part of our lives. and it is easy for us to judge, but what my grandmother went was quite different. she also insisted that she didn't drink at all. after she died, we were cleaning some stuff out and we found a liquor cupboard in the kitchen. [laughter] garrett: ok that goes along with , the social shame. if anyone sees you drinking, they're going to think you are a drunkard. and therefore don't let anybody see you doing that. so it is, you know, that at some of her generation's issue, and i empathize with that. we all have to deal with that today. thank you for that. another question, dan, here in the back, in the white shirt. dan: a completely unrelated question, garrett, but you mentioned earlier that a lot of people have misconceptions about speakeasies and what they were really like. i would love it if you could elaborate on that. my second question, bringing it to contemporary times do you see , parallels between the move to legalize marijuana and the sort of traditions and how it was made illegal in the first place and the underpinnings of that with the prohibition movement. garrett: usually only one person asks this question every audience. the speakeasies themselves, we -- i think we tend to create a lot of mythology around them. for the most part, they are in people's homes. people simply turn their homes into a place where you can buy a drink. you have a legitimate business upfront, if you go to capitol hill to tune in, that really greasy spoon. before hand it was a candy , store. and they sold liquor out of the basement. that is a form of speakeasy. you were not going there to buy cocktails, but you were going there to buy a bottle. and wrap it up and take it home. it was not like a cocktail in a club where there was a jazz band playing and people were dancing. most places are not like that. they are not good places given the quality of the gin. in the case of scotch, you would add caramel and turpentine to it. that's with the bootleggers are doing, and people were drinking it. just incredible. the other question we had about the legalization of cannabis, and it is such an interesting question. you might remember this movie from the 1930's called "reefer madness." basically it is a propaganda film creating stigma around cannabis smoking. when prohibition ends, the country sort of turns now, ok now we have to target pot , smoking. they really kind of demonize pot smoking. so does richard nixon. here we are with pot being a schedule 1 drug. up there with crystal methamphetamine and cocaine and whatnot. i am not a pot smoker myself. i would not be ashamed of myself if i was, though. but how many of my friends have come out of the woodwork. doctors and lawyers. dr. so-and-so is a pot smoker. i know some notable conservatives who are as well. it is really this shift that is underway in our society. if you noticed during the obama administration, the gallup poll survey does a poll on this question. once the obama administration saw the majority of americans are in favor of legalization, why should we step into this battle? you're only going to lose the battle politically. there was no win out of this. let the states sort of handle it. that's why you see all of the states legalizing it for medicinal purposes. it's not hard to get a medical prescription. just like during prohibition. then of course, then the next step is legalization for personal use, which more states are doing that now, too. i think it is interesting. i think you see the writing on the wall. this is where i'm in favor. i will put my cards on the table. i'm in favor of legalization. not because i am a possible, but for the fact that somebody so many people have to buy pot illegally. consumers have no idea what they are buying. similarly during prohibition, you were buying industrial alcohol with turpentine in it. if you could actually have some regulations. in this case, i am in favor of regulations, so consumers will know what they are buying, they so they can know what the strength of that is. just like if you go and buy a beer, you know it's 4.5% against versus 9%, etc., so you know which one to have or not to have. i'm all in favor regulations. consumers have better choices and they can make better decisions, rather than picking it up from some guy on the corner. you know? anyway, that's a long answer. but it was two questions. thank you, dan. another question? anyone? i think everyone is thirsty. i know i am. [laughter] garrett: very good, everyone. thank you so much for coming tonight. [applause] garrett: and we have cocktails outside for you. the french 75, and we will toast to our right to drink alcohol. thank you for coming. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2020] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] this is american history tv, exploring our nation's past every weekend on c-span3. next on our weekly series "the civil war," author peter carmichael uses letters written by union and confederate soldiers to examine their battle experience, mental state, and political outlook. he argues that the daily life of the civil war soldier required adaptability to survive the brutal environment of wartime. the rank and forum symposium hosted this event. at 8:00 p.m. eastern, it is "lectures in history." . we visit the university of maryland classroom with professor christopher barnhart, who teaches about the concept of power in antebellum slave society. he explores the different ways owners and enslaved people exerted or expressed their will and look at how these dynamics played out on plantations. at 10:00 p.m. eastern, 7:00 p.m. pacific, "reel america" features a 1945 u.s. war compartment documentary on the dashboard apartment documentary on the big three, joseph stalin, winston churchill, and president franklin roosevelt. p.m. pacific, 7:30 on "oral histories," herschel woody williams recounts his experiences serving as a marine in the pacific in a 2000 six interview conducted by the national world war ii museum. his actions as a demolition sergeant on iwo jima earned him the medal of honor. that is [applause] >> good morning, everyone. my name is jonathan white and i am vice chair of the lincoln forum and it is my pleasure to welcome you to this session. we are on hallowed ground and it is altogether fitting and proper we come to gettysburg every november to commemorate the life and legacy of abraham lincoln. our first speaker this morning is peter carmichael. peter is the professor of civil war studies and director of the civil war institute at gettysburg college. i have seen some
Related Keywords
New York , United States , Georgia , United Kingdom , Paris , France General , France , Minnesota , Virginia , Kansascity , Kansas , Washington , Canada , Michigan , Germany , Tennessee , Egypt , Nebraska , Sacramento , California , Maryland , Pennsylvania , Ocean City , Ohio , Chicago , Illinois , Utah , Americans , America , French , British , German , Germans , American , Joseph Stalin , William Upshaw , Rufus Lusk , Peter Carmichael , Woodrow Wilson , Lauren Rosenberg , Alice Paul , Beth Wallace , Christopher Barnhart , Warren Harding , Morris Sheppard , Al Capone , Isa Harvard , Abraham Lincoln , Wayne Wheeler , William Howard Russell , George Cassidy , Andrew Yang , Garrett Peck , Joe Wayne Wheeler , Iwo Jima , Carl Hamill , King Herod , Torrence Swain , Richard Nixon , Frances Willard , Pauline Morton Sabin ,
comparemela.com © 2020. All Rights Reserved.