America. Hes the author of the prohibition hangover, alcohol in america from demon rum to cult cabernet and prohigs hib is in washington, d. C. , how dry we werent. Im lauren rosenberg. To our members, welcome. And if youre joining us for the first time, a warm welcome and open invitation to explore the wide range at Smithsonian Associates. Now is the time to silence your cell phone. Were thrilled tonight to welcome author, historian and tour guide garrett peck back to the smithsonian. Garrett has presented at the library of congress and the national archives. And his tempers to our prohibition sites has been feet urz on cspan and book tv and the History Program and ten things you didnt know about with punk rock legend Henry Rollins and featured about prohibition by the smithsonian channel and he has a book how dry we werent and the prohibition hangover, from demon rum to cult cabernet and world war ii and the aftermath published in 2018. Before we get started, i wan to make sure to invite you to voin us in the lobby following the presentation to enjoy a prohibition cocktail. Now please join me in welcoming garrett peck. Good evening. And thank you for coming out for our wake. Our dry wake. If you wan to look at it. 100 years ago today, in fact sixes from now, at 12 01, once the clock ticks over from january 16th to january 17th, that is the National Moment when prohibition began. So were going to commemorate, not celebration, were going to commemoration. After the event well have a chance to celebrate our right to drink with a french 75 cocktail out in the lobby. So i really appreciate everyone comes here tonight and for cspan to come out here tonight and to film this here for the national audience. So thank you so much. So this is rather i kind of warned a few people about this image here on the screen right now. This is rather triggering image. Especially for a beer drinker like myself. Theyre pouring beer into the sewer like oh, this is just so tragic. That is one of the most famous shots from prohibition. In new york city, the Police Commissioner john leach in the hat overseeing them throwing the beer down the drain so it is really unfortunate. But i want to cover tonight how prohibition came to be and why it didnt last. Why it lasted less than 14 years and we ended up repealing the 18th amendment to where today were most drinking and we dont think anything of it. So prohibition didnt just appear magically on its own. There was actually a giant movement in American History that pushed this upon the country. And that movement was the Temperance Movement. And this is from the library of congress so when they have the beautiful refrescos painted on the inside and this is a century long social Reform Movement, part of the progressive era, intended to make americans better people and more middle class and, of course, sober. And their idea was initially was they would try to get people to drink more moderately, stop drinking so much whiskey and instead drink beer and wine but by the 1830s more radicals had seized charge of the moment and decided no one could drink anything at all. If you drink at all, youre on the slippery slope to being a drunkard, as they called holism back then. And they really demonized drinking. From this propaganda poster from 1872 showing king alcohol and his Prime Minister. So you see the king there standing on top of a barrel full of distilled spirits and then the Prime Minister next to him, death. And then notice in the foreground showing the tragedy of this little occasion on here. You see for example there is a family over here to the right. Minus the father. And then you have a weeping widow over there right there in the foreground. Women were so important to the temperance union, for the Temperance Movement because oftentimes women were victimized because the fact that their husbands were drinking so much. So it didnt come out of nowhere. It was a legitimate societal response to the heavy drinking of the 1820s and on in American History. They just took it to the extreme that, hey, no one should drink at all. And hey, we should also change the constitution to ban alcohol. Which is what they did. Again, women are so important to this movement and in 1873 was the beginning of the womens christian Temperance Movement and the ground state was the state of ohio. Because you had a large number of german immigrants and they controlled the brewery and where the wctu was founded and the antisaloon was created and headquartered as well. So Francis Willard is the first woman to get a statue in statuary hall in the capitol. Shes from the state of illinois. And she was one of the leading proponents of womens rights in our history, in our countrys history. So i take my hat off to her. Even if i dont agree with her on the antialcohol stance. He motto with the wctu is do everything. So they took up every imaginable issue with family and womens rights. So domestic violence, children working in factories and what not. It is incredible the Different Things they took up. Unfortunately women didnt have the vote yet. And so women could only have influence but they couldnt actually vote on these different issues. And at its peek the wctu had a quarter of a million and they got into the classrooms and taught children to be ashamed of alcohol. My grandmother knew that because i come perfect a long line of methodists. Most of us dont drink. But they had heavy handed moralizing into the classrooms and also built numerous water fountains around the country. Here in d. C. We have a water fountain not put up by the wctu, a number still survive, one in Rehoboth Beach and ocean city, new jersey, and theyre all around the country and here in d. C. We have the cogswell temperance fountain which all of you have walked past, it is catty corner from Archives Navy memorial. And this is our temperance fountain. So it once was an active water fountain and the symbolism was to tell people to drink water instead of whiskey. So this was erected in the 1880s. Right when the Temperance Movement was becoming this Massive National movement and trying to again trying to use moral persuasion to keep people from drinking alcohol. So after about 20 years or so of the wctu, that moral persuasion thing wasnt really taking root. People were still drinking. It wasnt having a whole big effect other than americans had shifted after the civil war away from drinking whiskey and now theyre drinking beer and since the civil war beer has been our national beverage. And in 1893 in ohio is founded this organization known as the Antisaloon League. They only existed for 40 years. They disbanded in 1933. And this is the organization that gives us the 18th amendment. The prohibition amendment. One of the early hires was a college student, you see a of him, named Wayne Wheeler. Anyone here know of Wayne Wheeler . Probably the most powerful lobbyist in American History. He invented this term pressure politics because he figured out how to squeeze the politicians to force them to vote dry even if they were wet in their personal lives. So every politicians first job is to get reelected and so he made sure that if anyone bucked him on prohibition issue on the wet dry issue, he made sure they didnt get reelected. And he leveraged the base of the Antisaloon League which were the protestant faithbased initiative and it was a progressive initiative. So we tend to think today in terms of like dry counties that kind of stuff, as being very conservative. This was a progressive movement. This was really about making americans better people and using the power of the government to make us into better people. Very importantly here, for the Antisaloon League, they formed a new alliance and this alliance really engendered two amendments that woej went into effect in 1920. One of them is prohibition and the other one you could probably guess from this particular photo which is the suffrage amendment. Again the 18th and then the 19th amendment. This is from january 1917 showing the suffrage from the National Womens party, the protest in front of the white house because president Woodrow Wilson was not he had not come out yet supporting the suffrage amendment. And so they began the 7 by 24 protest. Wayne wheeler had this alliance with the Suffrage Movement so both could get their way and this alliance fell apart after 1920 once younger women got the right to vote and decided they wanted to go visit the speakeasy too. So there is one thing in American History that really makes prohibition come about. And i should back this up quickly here. The Antisaloon League recognized and in fact Wayne Wheeler said in a Public Statement at some point in 1917 in saying we need to change the constitution really quickly because this is our very, very last chance. Because 1917, considering where the country was, in 1920 there was going to be a census taken and they could see how much the cities were starting to think of this like a teetertotter. The cities were starting to outnumber the countryside and theyre expecting in 1920 the census majority of americans would be in cities and that would outweigh the Temperance Movement which was more rural based. And up until 1920 we have the highest portion of immigration into the country. A third of the americans were foreign born or had a parent who was born overseas. So highest proportion ever in our history. So in many ways the Temperance Movement is a nativist movement. Because many of the immigrants coming in the 1880s and beyond are catholic overwhelmingly or theyre russian jews. All of the people are bringing in drinking habits with them which the protestants are tut tut, they have to conform to how we are living. They shouldnt be drinking alcohol. So prohibition is targeted at the catholic immigrants coming into the country in the late 1800s and early 1900s. What makes prohibition a reality is the event that leads up to this poster. World war i. We declare against germany on april 6th, 1917. And you all know who the biggest ethnic group in the country at the time were . German americans. And guess who the brewers were. The germans. Exactly. And of course they were the biggest bulwark against the Antisaloon League. And right away, as soon as we declared against germany, Wayne Wheeler and the other agents within the Antisaloon League began spearing beer drinking into treason. This is a very famous and effective propaganda poster because it tugs at your heartstrings. They had the Brewers Association had been funding newspapers and so on. And they brought out a lot of the shenanigans through senate hearings. This is all about embarrassing the wet cause and embarrassing the brewers and further marginalizing them all during world war i. So they spun beer drinking into treason at this time. And thus the in 1917 they brought forth the 18th amendment and it fairly sailed through Congress Without a whole lot of debate. Most of the American Public as the polls were going to ratify the amendment, it only took 13 months, by the way, to ratify this amendment. The majority of the stays ratified this amendment during the war itself. Because part of the selling point was we need to save grain to feed our soldiers during the war and we need sober soldiers to fight the german army, which ignores the fact that the german was drinking beer and the french army was drinking brandy and wine and the english army was drinking everything. So it is all part of the propaganda of selling the dry cause to the country in this emergency of the war efforts, everyone was like, yeah, we need to do this. We need prohibition to win the war. And most people thought when they were voting for this that they were simply outlying liquor, not realize that beer and wine was also going to be outlawed. So people were in for a rude surprise come january 16th, 1920. Now, everyone here has gotten a handout of eight prohibition era cocktails. I want to talk about the first one which is the one well sample afterwards which is one of my allTime Favorites. It is the french 75. This is a cocktail invented during world war i. It has a couple of different origin stories behind it. One of which features a British Army Unit getting together with a french unit and kind of like the reeses Peanut Butter cup and they blended together and they blended together to make this cocktail. Other people say it was invented in new orleans and who really really knows. I was an artillery officer myself in the army and this is an incredible top secret project for the french. The germans called this thing the devil gun because it was so accurate and had a design on it that it could fire off six shots a minute and every shell would land in the same spot. So deadly. And a very small gun so two men could transport it around. So very, very effective. And because the u. S. Had almost no armament capability during the war, we had to borrow everything from the french. So all of the tanks, airplanes, and artillery pieces we had to borrow from the french. That is what we used for the u. S. Army. In fact, the very first artillery shell is at the wood row wilson house, im on the board by the way to come visit over in coloramma and here it is. President wils son felts such a responsibility for sending off 2 million soldiers to fight in the trenches of france, so he kept it there in his bedroom. You could see it there on the mantel piece. He felt the responsibility of sending the nation to war. Another famous a one day famous american commanded a battery of french 75s during world war i and it is this man. The only future president to fight in world war i. Harry s. Truman. He was 35 when he let the battery of misfits and they were catholic and came out of Reform School and an illdisciplined group and he whipped them into shape. In part because he was so much older than the rest of them. And he led them very effectively during the war. And again he let the battery of french 75s. Now his unit was mostly catholic and the soldiers that were in his battery that became life long friends and political supporters of him, and so they were getting to talk. They saw that the prohibition amendments had passed. The 36 state nebraska ratified it on january 16th, 1919 and so five days later harry writes his fiancee bess walls and i love this because hes been talking to soldiers and anyway, it looks to me like the moon shine business is going to be pretty good in the land of liberty and Green Trading stamps an some of us want to get in on the ground floor. At least we want to get there in time to lay in a supply for future consumption. I think a quart of bourbon would last about 40 years. He was talking with soldiers and catholics and they were making plans to bootleg and if you have been out to kansas city, it was as wet as detroit and chicago and so on. It is just like what were they thinking this was ever going to work. So, again, the 18th amendment was ratified by the state of nebraska on january 16th, 1919. In fact it has three parts of the amendment but ill put up the first part to you so read it. And i highlighted the most important parts of it which is that the manufacture, sale and transportation of intoxicating liquors, dot, dot, dot, is hereby prohibited. That is what the amendment states. Now you now have to have a law to define what do they mean by intoxicating liquor. And Wayne Wheeler said anything with alcohol is going to be made illegal. So he crafted a law together with the minnesota congressman with this amazing mustache, ill show this to you here next, named Andrew Volstead and he was a republican and chaired the House Judiciary Committee and hence he had charge of writing this bill. I think it had 67 parts in the bill called the volstead act and he went down innin egg anyonomy for this. And so anything above. 05 alcohol was now illegal. That was considered to be intoxicating. So they were they forbade anyone from calling near beer, near beer. They had to come up with names like bev othat you wouldnt want to drink. And this act had a number of loopholes. Many of which are quite famous. Youve heard of for example medicinal whiskey. Before prohibition the American Medical Association just like today, said, uhhuh, alcohol is not medicine. We know it is not medicine. During prohibition on the other hand all of the doctors could prescribe, make 100 prescriptions of a pint of whiskey per month and all of the doctors wanted to get in on the game so the a. M. A. Changed tact during the prohibition. So this is one of the major loopholes widely abused 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. And so that was one of the loopholes. You had many, many people suddenly declaring themselves to be jewish rabbis to distribute alcohol or wine especially. They gave a huge license to the mid western farmers who everyone could take 200 pounds of fruit, you could take all of the fruit you waned and make up to 200 gallons of preserved fute if you preverve fute. 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 for a couple of days an i bit into it and i was like, oh, it fermented. You notice it right away. Leave any fruit and it will ferment. And it is a natural it is a natural process, furmentation. So that was a carve out for the mid western farmers and also the italian immigrants. So they could make their wine and what not. So a whole bunch of loopholes got written into the volstead act and then they were widely, widely abused. President wilson himself vetoed the volstead act three weeks after his stroke. He suffered a stroke in october 2nd, 1919. He was trying to sell the treaty of versailles to the nation and did he this national barnstorming tour and he began having horrible headaches and he went back to the white house and he a stroke and effectively ended his second term of the presidency with 17 months left in the office and then he signed it, his chief of staff signed it for him. He votoed the volstead act because he believed that wine and beer should still be legal as did most americans but Wayne Wheeler believed otherwise and he was so in control of the politicians that the very next day, october 28th, 1919, congress overrode president wilsons veto. And thus we have this very strict interpretation of prohibition versus something that is more loose like saying 3 or 4 beer is not intoxicating so therefore we could allow that. So it is kind of amazing. Once people kind of woke up to, oh, wow, that is what we signed up for. Yeah. So i mentioned the Woodrow Wilson house. When he left on march 24th 1921, he had a wine collection and he didnt want to leave it behind because his successor was a part drinker and he so he got permission to transport his wine collection, and during prohibition if you had alcohol in your possession before prohibition started, that was yours to keep. They werent going to take it away from you. So personal possession was not outlawed during prohibition but you cant manufacture or transfer or sell it. It was permission to transport from the white house over to his new house on coloramma. And we have a prohibition tour that i lead sometimes and at the end of the tour we go down and see the prohibition era wine cellar. It is really cool. It is really unique. How many other houses in the country have original bottles. It is amazing. Now, look right up front, that short bottle right in the center, that is kwaund row. The packaging has hardly changed. It is amazing. Many of the bottles with believe the wilsons got from the french ambassadors house which is about three blocks away. We helped save france during world war i so they were grateful for that so we believe the wilsons got a perpetual resupply during the prohibition. Embassies were considered foreign territory and they could supply their own alcohol during prohibition and thus the wilsons got resupplied. Another thing i wanted to point out to you was wartime prohibition which is an oxymoron. This wartime prohibition bill get as attached on to an appropriation bill, about ten days after the war ends. So this is late november 1918. And more shepherd senator morris shepherd attaches this on to the appropriations bill effectively outlawing the sale of distilled spirits for the rest of the war. Until we have a peace treaty, we can have no more distilled spirits sales nor distilling, period. So it shut down the distiller. And come june 30th, or july 1st, 1919, all beer must be under 2. 75 alcohol. And so what youre seeing right here, this is a saloon in new york city on june 30th, 1919, the last night before people had to shift down to 2. 75 alcohol beer. Do you notice what they are drinking, obviously the winners that are up front. But look at what theyre all drinking . Do you see a single cocktail in their hands. Theyre drinking beer. Because that is the only thing legal to drink at the time. What else is missing from the photo . Very good. You guys are smart. There are no women in this. Because women did not go to saloons. Not until the 1920s when the spe speakeasies come about. But before that, saloons were mens only culture. Women got to the vote, got equal rights. Virginia yesterday ratified the equal rights amendment. So, yeah. My home state. So, yeah. [ applause ] so prohibition starts again 100 years ago today. Right at the clock ticks over to january 17th. And at First Congressional Church downtown which is still there all of the leading prohibitionists got together and they went through speech after speech, bow seifus daniels who dried up the navy who cup of jo comes from and Wayne Wheeler and william hard russell and a bull from the womens christian temperance mission was there and the man who spoke at midnight, William Jennings brian, the great commoner, yeah. And he died about five years after this, so his career at is waning. But at midnight he delivers this 45minute dynamic sermon. And he compares king herrod, trying to kill baby jesus and how he escaped and he made that analogy to jesus escaping to egypt to the wet cause trying to kill the 18th amendment. At the end of this speech, he declares victory. He says, they are dead, that sought the childs life, they are dead, they are dead. Everyone just thunderously applauded this. Believing, yes, the country is about to get a lot better. Of course, midnight comes and this new baby is born. But this baby is thirsty and cranky and wants a drink. So prohibition begins. I love this photo. This is one of the very few actual dry congressmen. William upshaw from georgia. He is holding an um brbrella ov the u. S. Congress. Of course, Congress Never went dry. We will talk about that later on. Congressmen and senators continued to drink all throughout prohibition. In 1930, it becomes a National Embarrassment when the main bootleger spills the beans on them. We ended up with prohibition lasting nearly 14 years or the 13 awful years. Mencken is an atheist and proud german american. He sees it for what it is. Its a Reform Movement thats trying to make us into better people. He is not having any of this. He is one of the leading literary critics of the 1020s and 30s. He writes disparagingly of every politician. He is very funny. He had a great sense of humor. In 1929, he writes this funny article. He is sur renderi ersurrenderin prohibition will be around. Basically saying, this is what we got. He draws this comparison like, okay, back in the day, we used to be able to have steak and now we have to get things from bootleggers. Its sandwiches and hot dogs. He writes this funny article which i included in my book, basically saying let us, while waiting for the end of the member dift hellenium, do the best we can. Let us keep on improving the sandwich and give some attention to the dog. He had a car which he sold in 1918 and used the proceeds from the sale and filled up his cellar full of alcohol thinking that was going to make it that would last for the duration of prohibition. Only four months later he discovered bootleggers were supplying alcohol. Prohibition goes into affect in 1920 on january 16th. Then august forgetting the date. Anyone remember the date when tennessee tennessee ratifies the 19th amendment in august of 1920. Women get to vote for the very first time in the president ial election in 1920. That elects harding, one of our worst president s ever. This is alice paul, who is five foot nothing. A fierce proponent of suffrage. Shes toasting every time they would get a state, they would add another star. Shes toasting to the fact that tennessees star is attached to the flag, to the suffrage flag. Yay we get prohibition but theres still this major question that i have always been asking myself. We amended the constitution, which is no mean feat. Its really hard to amend the constituti constitutions. The framers put that in place to expect us to have a National Consensus around any issue before we monkey around with the constitution. That kind of raises this question. Did a National Consensus around prohibition exist . Why did prohibition fail . Since the dry cause got their way, why did people immediately start bootlegging. Part is the fact that the anti anti antisaloon had zero tolerance towards alcohol. They took away peoples beer, which has been our national beverage. People were offended. President wilson in 1920 in his address to Congress Called for congress to reinstate beer. Many of the congressmen in 1920, as they were having the National Convention on both sides, Wayne Wheeler said over 300 congressmen came to him and complained, because they were hearing it from constituents, they wanted beer again. 300 out of 435 were complaining. Just amazing. It took a lot of people by surprise how draconian prohibition turned out to be. Right away, people were just deciding, i think im going to start drinking. Very quickly, there were bootleggers willing to supply the alcohol for a price. During prohibition, consumption of alcohol actually goes down during this era, its so much more expensive to buy. Theres this myth that people were drinking more than ever which is not true. Its more expensive than ever before. Famously we think of hemingway and fitzgerald. But they were living in paris and living on their benders and whatnot. Many great bartenders went to paris during prohibition. One thing that showed up almost right away, off the coast of the United States, was this thing called rum row. All of these ships captains were docking their ships full of alcohol three miles offshore. Right away, then all the speedboats were coming out, just outside of the three mile limit, filling up speedboats full of alcohol and racing to shore at night and resupplying bars and whatnot. This became known as rum row. It was up and down the east coast. Out of this idea of the three mile limit came, of course, the three mile limit cocktail. This shows this is one of the schooners the prohibition that the coast guard seized. They were able to seize about 10 of all the different ships. Mid 1920s, the country negotiated a secret agreement with the british. The british wanted to keep bringing alcohol in on their transatlantic liners. They were allowed to do so if they were willing to grant the United States to extend the three mile limit out to 12 miles. That way they could trap all the bootleggers, which they did. The british agreed do this. Without telling anyone, now its 12 miles. The coast guard went out and captured a bunch of ships and rounded up all the alcohol. Guess what . Now that we have the three limit, guess what the new cocktail is called, the 12 mile limit cocktail someone came up with right away. Those bartenders are creative. You start to see right away you have beer flooding over the borders from the ocean, through canada are coming down through detroit, of course, is a major point as well as upstate new york. Alcohol is flooding into our country. As well, many, many people are setting up stills. Often times in their bathrooms. You could your local bootlegger could fit you with a small still, as long as you didnt burn the house or apartment down. Some people put larger stills this is one that had to be in the backyard. The Prohibition Bureau captured this one. Kind of amazing. Your bootlegger would collect whatever you made and give you cash money for it. Right away, people were like, untaxed money, okay. I will start producing alcohol as well. Very quickly, people are starting to break the law, whether they drank or not. We had all the major moon. Dale moonshine culture, but this extended to everywhere around the country. Its amazing. This slide showing a raid on pennsylvania avenue of a speakeasy. This is a common form. Its the carl hamill lunch room. It was raided three times. The way the speakeasy worked. You had a legitimate business up front, a lunch room. If you knew someone, you could say the pass code or joe sent me or whatever and they would then invite you to go in the back in the little dark room. That back you could get a pint of beer. You will see the Prohibition Bureau is pulling the kegs of beer out of the cellar. They were raided three times. This particular site, you might notion on the notation, 922 pennsylvania avenue. That is now the site of the department of justice. [ laughter ] this next photo is very heartbreaking for me. Its the Prohibition Bureau is destroying 18,000 bottles of beer in the arlington dump. These were bottles of beer intercepted on the highway coming down from philadelphia. The judge ordered them destroyed. Its an amazing photo. See the agents are throwing the beer bottles. Right in the middle, you see the glass bottles breaking. The beer is shattering. That is now the arlington dump is now underneath one of the pentagon parking lots. All those bottles are there, all 18,000 of them. They are underground. One of the great novels that comes out of prohibition, its satirical, you heard of sinclair lewis. He wrote main street and got the nobel prize for this book. It was a novel called babbett which he wrought here in Dupont Circle in 1922. In this book 1922, he has this one little statement in the book. I think he captures why prohibition is going to fail. It is set on a train. This guy is passing out a flask of gin. He makes this statement. I dont know how you fellows feel about prohibition, but the way it strikes me is that its a mighty beneficial thing for the poor zob who hasnt got any will power. Forever us, its an infringement of personal liberty. Everyone says prohibition is for someone else to obey but not me. Im still going to drink my cocktail. I know my bootlegger. Thats that. Those catholics, they need to stop drinking. Im a protestant, i can handle my booze. Im going to keep drinking. This pure hypocrisy. 1922, so two years into the experiment. He has captured why public sentiment is going to turn against prohibition. We become a nation of hypocrites. And scofflaws. Its our next cocktail, its one of my all Time Favorite. I love this cocktail. Gif give it a dry. You need real grenadine. Mix an equal amount with simple syr syrup. Its an unusual cocktail if you look at the ingredients. How does that work . It is delicious. Its bright pink. It looks like a cosmopolitan. It tastes very, very different from that. Its one of my all Time Favorite prohibition era cocktails. That world scofflaw was invented in 1924 during prohibition. Theres a guy named king who was a harvard graduate and living in boston. He was very upset at seeing all the drinking going on at harvard. He sponsored this National Competition to come up with a word to name those lawbreakers. It was a 200 prize. Two people came up with the name. This was announced on the fourth anniversary of National Prohibition. January 16, 1924. Two people came up with the word scofflaw. Ingenius. Someone who scoffs at the law. One week later, in harrys bar there paris, the scofflaw cocktail was invented. That alliance that broke down between the Suffrage Movement and Temperance Movement. Now that women had the right to vote and now that it was now that it was illegal for everyone to go to the saloon to drink, women could equally break the law. The 1920s is really our countrys first sexual revolution. You see Family Planning tools come into affect thanks to margaret sanger. Women start cutting their hair. This woman is 25. Shes a dancer. The shot was done in 1925. She has short hair. Women didnt cut their hair before the 1920s. Shes showing how all the young kids are partying today. Hip flask in your garter. Everyone does that today, right . Women started getting in on the game as well. It became fun to break the law. This is glamorous, were breaking the law. Really, breaking the law is glamorous . It became a nation full of scofflaws during this era. Remarkable. Why did the country turn against prohibition . We had a couple things that happened. Certainly, everyone saw all the organized crime going on. Especially as the 1920s progressed, you saw cities like chicago, new york and whatnot, more people were killing over gangland violence, who would control neighborhoods. Famously on valentines day 1929, the massacre where basically al capone eliminates his rival gang in chicago. Seven men that are machinegunned by his gang in chicago in a garage. That made national headlines. That really stunned the country. It really showed how violent prohibition was becoming. So many people were saying, this is out of control, at this point. All these unintended consequences that are coming about because of prohibition. The violence, the bribery. All the Prohibition Bureau agents were horribly corrupt. All the judges that were getting bribed. It was just endemic in our society. It was undermining our democracy to have all this bribery, all this corruption that was going on. People really saw it as a problem by the late 1920s. How did we ultimately unwind prohibition . It took a crisis to get us to the 18th amendment, which was prohibition. It took another crisis to enable a political switch in the country, the democrats ran on the repeal platform. That crisis in the country appeared in late october of 1929 when the stock market crashed. The Great Depression. That suis ultimately what naile the coffin shut on prohibition. At the trough of prohibition, a quarter of the American Work force was out of work. The worst financial crisis we ever had in our country. The economy shrank by a third. Horrible. It was just unreal how bad the Great Depression was. The democrats seized on this quickly. The 1920s, the Republican Party owned the 1920s. They owned both houses of congress and all three presidencies of the 1920s were all republicans. Even though prohibition passed as a bipartisan measure, it was up to the republicans to enforce it because they were running the country during this part. So the democrats basically washed their hands of prohibition in 1930 and said, were going to call for a repeal amendment. When prohibition went into affect in 1920, the country lost a quarter million jobs. In 1930, a quarter million jobs looks good. They started openly calling for an end to prohibition as part of their election plank. Hearing this in the fall of 1930, the leading prohibitionists in the senate, the man who sponsored the 18th amendment, laid out the gauntlet to the wet cause. He made this very famous statement, which you will see right here. He said, i quote, there is as much chance of repealing the 18th amendment as there is for a hummingbird to fly to the planet mars with the Washington Monument tied to its tail. If that doesnt sound like a challenge, then nothing is. The wet cause struck back and, boy, did they ever. Right after this, theres this guy named lusk. He is an irishman and captain during in the u. S. Army during world war i. He is a real estate guy. People might remember back in the 1980s, the lusk papers. He is a real estate guy who gets together data points. He figured out, i could talk 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 but global news. Washington, d. C. Was meant to be considered, quote, the model dry city for the country. But during prohibition, we had 3,000 speakeasies. Thats nothing compared to new york city which had about 50,000. But 3,000 is respectable given the city of 450,000 people. 1932, i found this in the library of congress. This is so cool. This is the 1932 speakeasy map. Dots mark the spot where booze has been bought. Pretty incredible. This is put together by lusk and his organization the crusaders. They were crusading for the wet cause. You will see this is not working. I will point out stuff. All the dots, 1,155 dots that are on there. Showing Prohibition Bureau and police raids where they found alcohol. There were another 600 raids that were conducted in 1931 where they didnt find any alcohol. Very cleverly, lusk put up here big stars. Can you see stars up there . Those are federal offices where raids took place. By the capitol, he put up there the methodist building. Still there across from the supreme court. He put there the Antisaloon League office. You see dots. Showing all the raids. This is a piece of wet propaganda but very effective. This made National News and world news. Very, very effective. He published 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 the first great scoop. The first great scoop was George Cassidy, the man in the green hat, who bootlegged for congress for ten years. For first five years, he worked on the house side. Congress liked him so much that they give him an office in the basement. He hauled his liquor in a suitcase in every day. Then the congressmen come down, play cards with him, buy alcohol and whatnot. 1925 he got arrested. He shifted to the senate side. He worked in the Russell Senate building because senators were more discreet than congressmen. They would send the secretary down to get the booze. He was arrested again and part of his plea agreement with the judge, he agreed he would not bootleg again. But he did later on. He was arrested later on. The Washington Post approached him and said, would you like to write a couple articles . He said, sure. He published six front page articles in the Washington Post, the very last one was push lished a week before the mid term election of 1930. That was a seismic election. Congress shifted from a dry republican majority to an openly wet democratic and republican majority. Its incredible. The wets have taken over congress with a very bold stroke. Cassidy helped make this happen. I should have moved its not moving forward. Whats going on here . Im sorry. There we go. I didnt realize this hadnt shifted. Computer malfunction. Theres George Cassidy right there. A great photo of him taken in october of 1930. There is his green hat. He earned that nickname when he got arrest fed in 1925. Some journalist pointed him out and said that guy over there in the green hat, he got arrested. The nickname stuck. We have a local distiller that opened up in 2012 that named the gin after him. Its a new columbia distillers. Its green hat gin. Its to honor George Cassidy. The role of women is so important in undermining prohibition. In the late 1920s, this organization got together called the National Organization for forgive me. Its the National OrganizationWomens Organization for National Prohibition reform. Back up quickly. It was headed up by polly mortensaben who was the heir to the salt company. She got this organization together effectively to counterbalance the Womens Christian Temperance Union which was claiming they spoke for all women. This was to counterbalance that. She had earlier supported the dry cause. By the late 1920s, shes like, this aint working. She was very, very effective. These are all very famous women in their convention. They were very ecumenical. They approached working class women. She targeted women of every stripe to get them involved in this. Especially for younger women, really got heavily involved in this organization. It became a National Movement to reform prohibition and ultimately they endorsed the democratic appeal to repeal prohibition. She was a republican. She said, this is not working. Support the democrats. This thing here needs to come to an end. Very, very power ful. This formed a counterbalance which assumed they were speaking for women. Here is a couple women who i love this poster. Its a famous poster. That depression era art that is so famous. To a couple young women pointing out they should be supporting that all women should be supporting the repeal amendment, the 21st amendment. With the democrats in control of congress, prohibition and the Great Depression underway, prohibitions days are numbered. As we see, the idealism that the Antisaloon League, the Temperance Movement had shattered on reality that the country turned out to really not be in support at all for this dry cause. There was so much law breaking going on during prohibition. The country got quite cynical about it and decided, lets end this. Lets stuff this genie back into the bottle. Lets get control of alcohol. Lets repeal the 18th amendment. This Broad Movement erupted in 1932. Once Franklin Roosevelt himself ran on the repeal platform. The democrats have seized control of the government in the 1930s. They own the federal government during the 1930s. They are running on this repeal platform. Roosevelt is the last president to be sworn in on march 4, 1933 and before he is even sworn in, congress has debated and passed the 21st amendment. That amendment goes on to the states. Where it gets ratified in an astonishingly short time. The very first state to ratify it is michigan. I see a couple hands. Michigan is the first state. A great beer state. That is on april 10th. This is just a couple days after roosevelt signed a law called the collinharrison act that declared 3. 20 beer is not intoxicating. It did not violate the 18th amendment. It says intoxicating liquors are prohibited. Congress just said 3. 2 is not intoxicating. On april 6, the country went out and partied. Obviously, prohibition is coming to an end. We have this amendment which states are starting to line up to ratify. Its incredible. Given the democrats now control the country, they pass they put into the 21st amendment it would be ratified by a state convention. Since democrats controlled most of the state houses, states started lining up their conventions and voting one by one by one. How long do you think it took, given michigan is the first state, april 10, how long do you think it took for us to ratify the 21st amendment . The 18th took 13 months during the war. How long did the 21st amendment take . It took a little longer than that. It took eight months. Eight months. Incredible. This is going to stun everyone. Im give uing you a trigger war. The state that put it over the top was utah. The 36th state. December 5, 1933, henceforth known as repeal day. If you saw my button, it says party like its 1933. I know we want to get to q a. I have a couple more slides. A couple more things. Some of my Upcoming Events for the Smithsonian Associates, i have a tour of seneca. We have a tour on april 18th. We go out there and come back. We start off seeing the castle and we see this cool building in Montgomery County and the quarry and have lunch. The place where lunch is is a winery. Its really nice. I have my first nearly weeklong four for the Smithsonian Associates in california. I grew up in sacramento. Its a fiveday tour of the California Gold rush. Thats october 10 through 15th. Thats going to be a lot of fun. Beautiful countryside. We will cram in a lot of history. You get to be with me for five days. Next up quick, i have a quick announcement. You are the first seeing this. I have a book coming out on june 2nd. Its a contemporary history called a decade of disruption, america and the new millennium, 2000 to 2010. Its a history of the stuff we lived through from the dotcom meltdown to the Great Recession and everything in between. We lived through this. Its our history. Its been a decade now. Its an opportunity to go assess what happened with a little more what did the Great Recession mean to us . Why are we still dealing with the impact through this day . Thats coming up in a few months this spring. Lastly, if you want to read more about prohibition, four of my eight books have magically have the topic of prohibition in them. My most recently which deals with the talk i talked about here today, the great war in america. If you want more local history, then prohibition in washington, d. C. , how dry we werent. Which has 11 cocktail recipes in it, including the scofflaw and other ones. With that, wasnt to thank you so much for coming here tonight. Thank you for coming out and for our dry wake. Thank you. [ applause ] we will take questions. State the question loudly. I will repeat it back to the audience. Anyone have questions . Did i stump everyone . Yes, maam. How did the bootleggers respond to the threat of repeal . Im sure they didnt want to go down without swinging. How did the bootleggers respond to prohibition since they probably didnt want repeal. You are right about that. They were making so much money tax free. That was one of the key constituents that was like, no. Al capone and his gang, they were making money hand over fist. We forget about that, about al capone. He is most famous gangster in World History who overwhelmingly made his money from being a bootlegger. Incredible. There was not just the dry cause but many of the bootleggers didnt want prohibition to end. Thats for financial reasons, obviously. The man in the the penalty for breaking the law for the speakeasies, for a general person. 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. Many, many people simply paid the fine. I will pay it. I will plead guilty. On they went. By the mid 1920s, so many people are thats not proving to be a deterrent, by the way. So many speakeasies reopen because theres so much money to be made selling booze. By the mid 1920s, new york city picks up, lets padlock the businesses. That spreads around the country quickly. If we find a joint acting as a beg gin joint, snap a lock and its padlocked for a year. Guess what the owners do s . They find another spot. Thats a temporary measure. Someone finds another place to open up. The one president who really tries to enforce prohibition is hoover. The public is quite cynical by the time hoover gets into the white house in 1929. The country is already opposed. He is sworn in march 4th. This is about three weeks after the st. Valentines day massacre. The country is really cynical about prohibition. Here he is saying, im going to enforce this thing. Most of the public is wlike, wh . It creates more cynicism. He gets his law passed called the jones five and ten act, which imposes very severe per n penalties. A fiveyear prison sentence and a 10,000 fine. It raises penalties. All this does most of the bootleggers were reaching plea deals. Give me my fine. I will pay it. Now everyone is demanding a jury trial. You can imagine how many tens of thousands of bootleggers are. This gums up the league system. So many trials have to be held. The judicial system just its overwhelming. Another unintended consequence of prohibition. You have so many people breaking the law. It shows how unenforceable this is. It makes the public more cynical towards it. It shows this cannot be enforced. Why dont we repeal prohibition and put good regulations on alcohol. Another question. Did they expunge the records . No, they did not. Recently, a researcher got George Cassidys fbi records and sent them to me. Cool. Thats how i learned he had been arrested again and then a couple more times in the 1930s and 1940s. I sent them to his son who lives in fairfax county. A friend of mine. In the front, ian has a question. I believe you said 50 of the books you have written are around prohibition. Curious what drew you to that topic. Ian asked half of my books deal with prohibition and what drew me to that. Partly family history. I come from a long line of methodists. The methodists were the first church in 1832 to embrace temperance. Most methodists now drink today. It was a big day. Back in 2003, i had my first book idea, the prohibition hang over. The idea from that came from christmas eve. I brought a nice burgundy to my grandmoth grandmothers. My grandmother just kind of tuttutted this bottle of mine. You know i dont drink. Its christmas. The light bulb went on. Here is a generational value that did not pass on to my mom and myself. Were social drinkers. My grandmother was born in 1913 and were protestants. They were taught to be ashamed of drinking. There was a stigma that her generation grew up with. That lasted well i think into the 1970s, 1980s. The baby boom is the first that didnt have the stigma around alcohol that earlier generations had. Im generation x. Drinking is what we do. Its how we socialize and so on. Theres no stigma, no shame. Its part of our lives. Its easy for us to judge. What my grandmother went through was different. She insisted she didnt drink at all. After she died, we were going through her kitchen cleaning stuff out and of course we found the liquor cupboard deep in the kitchen. Okay. That goes along with the social shame that if anyone sees you drinking they will think you are a drunkard. Dont let anyone see you doing it. Thats her generations issue. I empathize with that. We dont have to deal with that today. Thank you for that. Another question. Dan in the back in the white shirt. I have its kind of pink. Two completely unrelated questions. The first is, you mentioned earlier that a lot of people maybe have misconceptions about sort of speakeasies and what they were like. I would love if you could elaborate on that. My second question bringing it to the contemporary times, do you see parallels between the move to legalize marijuana and sort of the traditions and actually how it got made illegal in the first place and some of the underpinnings of that with the Prohibition Movement . Unrelated but both questions. Yeah but parallel. Its a really theres usually one person that asks this question in every audience. Im glad you asked that. The speakeasies, i think we tend to create a lot of mythology around them. People turned their homes into a place where you can buy a drink. Often like carl hamills lunch room, you have a legitimate business up front. Thats another form. If you go to capitol hill to tune in, that cool greasy spoon, opened up in 1947, before it was a candy store. They sold liquor out of the basement. Thats a form of speakeasy. You go to get cocktails. You buy a bottle. You take it home with you. Not every place is like the cotton club where theres a jazz band and people are dancing. Most places are not like that. A lot of places are not good places, especially given the quality of the gin, which much was industrial alcohol that had been repurposed with flavoring or in the case of scotch, you would add carmel and turpentine. Yeah. The bootleggers are doing. People are drinking it. Incredible. The other question about the legalization of cannabis. Its such an interesting question. You might not remember this movie from the 1930s called reefer madness. Creating stigma around cannabis smoking. Once prohibition ends, the country turns now we have a target, pot smoking. They really demonize pot smoking. So does richard nixon. Here we are with pot being a schedule one drug with crystal meth and cocaine and whatnot. Its been so interesting to see among my friends im not a pot smoker. I wouldnt be ashamed if i was. How many of my friends, doctors and lawyers who come out of the woodwork in the last decade. Well, dr. So and so is a pot smoker. Wow. I know conservatives who are as well. Its really this shift thats underway in our society. If you notice back during the Obama Administration, the gallop survey every year does polls on this question. Once i think the Obama Administration saw the majority of americans are in favor of legalization, it is like, okay, why should we step into this battle . You are only goes to lose politically. Obama stayed out of the fight, because there was no win out of this. Let the states handle it. Thats why you see states first legalizing it from medicinal purposes. Thats the first step. Not hard to get a medical prescription. Just like during prohibition. Of course, then the next step is legalization for personal use. More states are doing it. I think you are seeing the writing on the wall. Similar to prohibition this is where im in favor of legalization. Not because im a pot smoker. For the fact that so many people have to buy pot illegally. Consumers have no idea what you are buying. Similarly during prohibition, for you are buying industrial alcohol with turpentine in it. If you can have regulations im in favor of regulations. Consumers will know what they are buying. They can know what kind of what the strength is. Like if you buy a beer, you know that its 4. 5 versus 9 . You know which one to have or not to have if you have to drive. Im all in favor of regulations. Consumers have better choices and they can make better decisions rather than from picking it up from some guy on the corner. You know . Long answer but that was two questions. Thank you for asking that, dan. Another question. Anyone . I think everyone is thirsty. I know i am. Cool. Very good, everyone. Thank you so much for coming tonight. Thank you. [ applause ] we have cocktails outside for you. The french 75. We will toast to our right to drink alcohol. Thank you for coming. Weeknights this month, we feature American History tv programs to preview whats available every weekend on cspan3. Today, a series of lectures presented by the university of Mary Washington in virginia. Thursday, the American Revolution. We learn about 18th century prison camps and how the Continental Congress handled p. O. W. S. Friday, White House HistoricalAssociation Historians talk about their jobs and the Organizations Mission to protect and preserve the ex executive mansion. American history tv this week and every weekend on cspan3. Every saturday night, American History tv takes you to College Classrooms around the country for lectures in history. Why do you all know who listy borden is . Raise your hand if you heard of this murder, the jean harris murder trial before this class. 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