Prohibition
                        
Director: Ken Burns
Year: 2011
Rating: 8.0
This is a fascinating three-part five-and-a-half-hour documentary from Ken Burns about the lead up to Prohibition and the 13-year period of prohibition. It takes in so much of American history and many of the same fractures and forces that exist in society today between genders, city vs rural, natives vs immigrants, religion vs secular, freedom vs government control are what drove much of this going back to the beginning of our country. One lesson perhaps learned - though perhaps not considering what is happening - you can't legislate morality. Especially if huge profits are involved. There is a plethora of talking heads, video and photos to tell this story. It is clearly well-researched and highly informative.

 

Back in the early 1800's drinking was a huge problem. Saloons were everywhere and populated only by men and some women of shady character. Alcoholism and abuse of wives and children were very common. Women had no rights and no options and had to take whatever their husbands did to them in their drunken stupor. It brought on poverty with men losing their jobs because they were drunk. In places there were two breaks a day at work - called Grog Time in which workers would have drinks. A movement began to stop this that was initially led by women. Some men formed the Washington Society which was an early version of AA. The temperance movement gained strength and in 1851 Maine was the first state to ban alcohol. But the issues that later became evident during prohibition were apparent. Drinking and the sale of it went undercover. Men used to drive their carts around and sell alcohol from bottles up their pant leg. They were called bootleggers. By 1860, the law was gone.

 

Through the century there was an ebb and flow in sentiment about prohibiting alcohol. One factor was immigrants from Europe - Germans and Italians in which alcohol - wine for the Italians and beer for the Germans - was part of their culture. They thought the temperance people were crazy. The temperance people thought the immigrants were sinful and dirty. The major breweries were formed by Germans - Adolphus Busch, Pabst, Schlitz and others - and they turned Americans from ale drinkers to beer drinkers.  They also became strong lobbyists against the temperance people or as they called themselves the Anti-Saloon Organization. After the Civil War the movement picked up speed thanks to a few women who were great organizers. Many elementary schools were forced to teach the evils of alcohol three times a week. Francis Willard was one of the major leaders in the temperance movement - but she also fought for equal pay for women, raising the age of sexual consent from ten to sixteen and better education for children.

 

Women began to protest, the great Carrie Nation picked up a hatchet and destroyed saloon after saloon. In the early 1900s, this movement and the suffrage movement became allies and pushed for reform and the right to vote. Much of the country was behind it and they were active. They had women, churches and progressives. Many states began banning alcohol and in 1920 an amendment to the Constitution was passed - the 18th - making it illegal to manufacture or sell alcohol. The nation cheered. Parts of it. For a while.

 

There were loopholes though. Breweries that had supplies were allowed to keep them if not sell them, rabbis could have alcohol, churches could have wine, pharmacies could sell it for medicinal purposes. The number of rabbis skyrocketed. So did sick people who had to visit the local pharmacy. In fact, it is estimated that drinking increased. Speakeasies proliferated in the cities, stills in the country. But the main issue was crime and crime kingpins. Selling alcohol - either smuggled from Canada or from rumrunners from Jamaica - made fortunes for people. And it created the mob - the Mafia - which has been with us ever since. Capone, Lansky, Luciano, Dutch Schultz all came to prominence during this period.



By 1925 people were having doubts if prohibition was such a good idea. The Wets vs the Drys. The election of 1928 was to some degree a referendum on this - Hoover the dry against Al Smith the wet. Hoover easily won. The Depression changed everything. FDR endorsed getting rid of the 18th Amendment. He won in a landslide though it was mainly the economy that won it for him. But bringing back booze meant jobs in the breweries, bottling, distribution and bars. Morality is a funny thing. People don't like it being governed. They don't like their rights being taken away. But there are always people thinking they know best who try to become morality police and force others to believe as they do.