The Battle over Prohibition: Quotations
Directions: Read the following quotations. Create a short list of arguments for and against prohibition that you identify within the quotations.
“It was in the saloon that the working men in those days held their christening parties, their weddings, their dances, their rehearsals for their singing societies, and all other social functions….Undoubtedly the chief element of attraction was the saloon-keeper himself….He was a social force in the community. His greeting was cordial, his appearance neat, and his acquaintance large. He had access to sources of information which were decidedly beneficial to the men who patronized his saloon. Often he secured work for both the working man and his children.”
Charles Stelzle, memoirist, A Son of the Bowery (1926)
“It is very significant that the pictures of naked women are in saloons. Women are stripped of everything by them. Her husband is torn from her, she is robbed of her sons, her home, her food and her virtue, and then they strip her clothes off and hang her up bare in these dens of robbery and murder, Truly does a saloon make a woman bare of all things!”
Carry Nation, reformer, The Life and Need of Carry A. Nation (1908)
“Now, suppose we admit, for the sake of the argument, that sixty percent of the people of this country would vote dry. If sixty percent of the people do not believe in something that the other forty per cent believe in, should they send the forty per cent to jail for what they do?
…if a man were ‘dry,’ even though he might be a thief, a crook, or the worst enemy the world ever had, every blooming fool fellow who belonged to that League [Anti-Saloon League] would vote for him. If he were a statesman, a philosopher, a historian, a wise man, but took a drink, he would have to go. So they loaded up the Congress of the United States with nincompoops, with brainless people who would take their commands and sell their souls for votes—and they voted this country dry while these congressmen had liquor salted away in their cellars.”
Clarence Darrow, lawyer, speech (1924)
“Mother’s in the kitchen washing out the jugs; Sister’s in the pantry bottling the suds; Father’s in the cellar mixing up the hops; Johnny’s on the front porch watching for the cops.”
Prohibition-era poem
“Some folks on both sides have just kidded themselves it is our greatest problem. The real wet is going to drink, I don’t care what your laws are, and a real dry is going to lecture to him while he is drinking, no matter what your laws about it are. You can’t change human nature. But while those two are fighting it out, there will be five hundred passing by tending to their own business, living their own lives, and doing exactly what they think is best for them….”
Will Rogers, entertainer, radio broadcast
“but ‘personal liberty’ is not for his patient, long-suffering wife, who has to endure with what fortitude she can, his blows and curses. Nor is it for his children, who, if they escape his insane rage, are yet robbed of every known joy and privilege of childhood, and too often grow up neglected, uncared for, and vicious as the result of their surroundings and the example before them.
‘Personal liberty’ is not for the sober, industrious citizen who from the proceeds of honest toil and orderly living has to pay, willingly or not, the tax bills which pile up as a direct result of drunkenness, disorder, and poverty—the items of which are written in the records of every police court and poorhouse in the land. Nor is ‘personal liberty’ for the good women who goes abroad in the town only at the risk of being shot down by some drink-crazed creature….
William “Billy” Sunday, evangelical preacher, sermon
“When I appeal to the people for a legislature free from saloon domination my appeal is not based alone upon the grounds of temperance and morality. I want to say to the businessmen and taxpayers of this state that no valuable reform measure of any character can be secured at the hands of a legislature controlled by the whiskey power. Why do I say this? Because the saloon lobby will always be found in alliance with every other corrupt and evil influence that infests the legislative halls. It cannot win alone. It wins in combination with other interests, political and financial…”
Tennessee Governor Ben W. Hooper, speech (1912)
“I’ve been spending the best years of my life as a public benefactor. I’ve given people the light pleasures, shown them a good time. And all I get is abuse, the existence of a hunted man. I’m called a killer….Public service is my motto. Ninety-nine percent of the people in Chicago drink and gamble. I’ve tried to serve them decent liquor and square games. But I’m not appreciated….That’s what I’ve got to put up with just because I give the public what the public wants. I never had to send out high-pressure salesmen. Boy, I could never meet the demand.”
Al Capone, gangster, press conference announcing his departure (1927)
“Jurgis, being a man, had troubles of his own. There was another specter following him. He had never spoken of it, nor would he allow any one else to speak of it—he had never acknowledged its existence to itself. Yet the battle with it took all the manhood that he had—and once or twice, alas, a little bit more. Jurgis had discovered drink.
He was working in the steaming pit of hell; day after day, week after week—until now there was not an organ of his body that did its work without pain….And from all the unending horror of this there was a respite, a deliverance—he could drink! He could forget the pain, he could slip off the burden; he would see clearly again, he would be master of his brain, of his thoughts, of his will. His dead self would stir in him, and he would find himself laughing and cracking jokes with his companions—he would be a man again, and master of his life.”
Upton Sinclair, novelist and reformer, The Jungle (1906)
Description
After reading the primary source, post a response to the following questions:
What arguments for and against Prohibition do you identify after reading the quotations?
Which of the arguments did you feel were the most persuasive and/or the least persuasive and why?