Unit 12: The Progressive Era

1890-1920

Prohibition

18th Amendment Lesson Plan | Grades 7-12

The Temperance Movement: America’s Battle Against Booze

In 1873, Dr. Dio Lewis, a supporter of the temperance movement, arrived in the small town of Hillsboro, Ohio. With only 5,000 residents, Hillsboro boasted 13 saloons, 4 hotels, and 4 drugstores where alcohol flowed freely. Lewis had come to speak about women’s fitness, but he also shared a story about his alcoholic father and how his mother saved their family. She and her friends prayed outside the saloon where his father drank until the owner closed it—either out of guilt or because the attention hurt business. Inspired by Lewis’s story, Hillsboro women began gathering to pray outside saloons, sparking a movement that spread nationwide.

Not everyone appreciated the praying women’s efforts. Saloon owners and customers reacted with everything from cold stares to throwing eggs and rocks. But the women persisted, fueled by the belief that alcohol caused countless problems like crime, poverty, illness, and broken families. This growing movement, known as temperance, rallied for the total ban of alcohol sales in the U.S. Its supporters, called prohibitionists, believed outlawing alcohol would fix many societal issues.

Building the Prohibition Movement

By the late 1800s, temperance groups like the Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) were educating young people about the dangers of alcohol. They urged kids to pledge lifelong abstinence, marking their names with a “T” for total commitment. These “teetotalers” became part of a broader push to change public attitudes about drinking.

Organizations like the WCTU and the Anti-Saloon League (ASL) gained power by raising millions of dollars from churches and businessmen, like Henry Ford, who strongly supported prohibition. Ford even fired workers who drank and hired private detectives to ensure they weren’t sneaking alcohol. By 1914, one-third of Americans lived in areas where alcohol was banned, though most were in rural towns that already favored temperance. In cities, however, saloons were everywhere, and many urban residents didn’t support prohibition. To pass a nationwide ban, the movement needed a way to win over city-dwellers.

World War I Changes Everything

In the early 1900s, millions of immigrants—many from Germany, Ireland, and Italy—settled in American cities, bringing their love of beer and wine with them. Saloons in immigrant neighborhoods were often blamed for crime and poverty, but stereotypes alone weren’t enough to convince most Americans to support prohibition.

Then came World War I. Anti-German feelings swept the nation, and prohibitionists used this to their advantage, tying beer to German culture. They accused breweries of being unpatriotic and wasting grain that could feed soldiers. This patriotic spin turned temperance into a war effort, and the public began to rally behind it.

By 1917, prohibitionists had the political power they needed. They pushed Congress to pass the 18th Amendment, banning the manufacture, sale, and transportation of alcohol. It wasn’t easy—adding an amendment to the Constitution requires approval from two-thirds of Congress and three-fourths of the states. But the temperance movement succeeded. Over the next year, states debated the amendment. By 1920, the Eighteenth Amendment was ratified, and America officially went “dry.”

Prohibition Begins

On January 17, 1920, breweries and saloons closed their doors, and prohibitionists celebrated the start of a new, alcohol-free era. They believed the nation would finally be free from drunkenness, crime, and family troubles. But many Americans weren’t ready to give up drinking so easily, and Prohibition’s story was far from over.

In the first three months before the 18th amendment became effective, liquor valued at half a million dollars had been stolen from government warehouses. The number of guards were increased, but it continued to disappear.

Prohibition Years

Turns out that “prohibition forever” which came about in 1920 in the form of the Eighteenth Amendment was fated to last just 13 short years until 1933 when the amendment was repealed as a total failure. Ironically, the driest decade in American history was also known the Roaring Twenties, characterized by a new attitude of freedom, flappers, jazz music, and of course plenty of illegal booze. The Prohibitionists were about to learn a hard lesson. It is one thing to outlaw something, but something entirely different to try to enforce it. That task fell to the Prohibition Bureau. Underfunded and its agents poorly paid, it was doomed from the start.

The months before the Eighteenth Amendment took effect, Americans stocked up on any legally purchased liquor they could get their hands on. The law said it was illegal to manufacture or sell it, but having a drink in your home would still be allowed. Oddly enough, it was also legal to sell the equipment to manufacture beer, wine, and liquor. Many stores did brisk business throughout the 20's selling home distilleries. Of course, making your own homebrew–known as hooch–was the hard part. Most of the liquor made in peoples’ homes was foul tasting stuff that burned your throat and tasted (according to most sources) like laundry soap. This "bathtub" gin was made from low-grade grain alcohol. Often the Prohibitionists figured that people would rather quit drinking than drink laundry soap moonshine. They were wrong.

Grocery stores also began to get creative by selling raisin cakes which were dehydrated blocks of fruit–usually grapes. People bought the cakes legally for making pies and cakes. However, fruit, if allowed to ferment, turns into alcohol. So, to be helpful, grocers would hire attractive women to demonstrate how not to turn the raisin cakes into wine. Their demonstrations always ended with a warning that if you don’t want your raisin cake to become an alcoholic avoid doing these very specific step-by-step instructions.

One of the exceptions to the ban on alcohol was for use in religious rituals. This led to one of the biggest scams of Prohibition where fake Jewish rabbis began serving sacrament wine to their Jewish "congregation". Thousands of others converted to Judaism in order
to get their drink on.

Rum Runners

Prohibition put saloon owners, bar tenders, and distilleries out of business. But it created new (illegal) jobs for those who wanted to make fast money as a rum runner. Alcohol could still be purchased in our neighbor to the north. Many ambitious folks couldn’t resist the chance to make fast money by transporting illegal booze from Canada.

The favorite spot for rum runners to cross was the narrow gap between Detroit and the Canadian city of Windsor. The Detroit River was only a mile wide in some parts and the whole water way filled with convenient inlets to hide. Armed with canoes, row boats, and high speed motor boats rum runners tried to outsmart the police patrolling the Michigan border. “Rum Rows” existed all over the country. Bootleggers bought their liquor from Canada and the Caribbean. They sailed through international waters off the Atlantic or Pacific coastline. Because they were in international waters, the American government could do nothing but wait for them to try to make it to the coast.

However, these ships were targets for gangsters and pirates who found the rum runners easy targets. To make even faster money, the booze was watered down and food coloring was added to make it look like the real thing. For this, willing drinkers paid up to ten times the price.

The city of Detroit played an important role during Prohibition. It was one of the busiest points of entry for illegal liquor in the United States.

The Speakeasy

Prohibition did work. America’s consumption of alcohol dropped in some places by as much as 60%. Not until the 1970's would Americans return to drinking like they did before the Eighteenth Amendment. However, Prohibition made possible the era of the speakeasy and the organized gangster.

Speakeasies disguised themselves as private houses or restaurants. To escape being shut down by the fuzz (the police), speakeasies used alarm systems, secret doorways, and trap doors to hide their illegal stash. A flashing light would warn patrons to quickly drink up. The speakeasy was not your typical saloon. It catered to the wealthy and middle-class drinkers– who were the only ones that could afford the outrageously high priced drinks. One bottle of watered-down champagne cost $330 (in today’s money)! Some of the biggest celebrities went to the hottest speakeasies, like New York’s 21 Club. Patrons expected more than just high priced drinks.

Speakeasies–which get their name from the passwords required to gain entry–were places to get a gourmet meal, listen to a live jazz band, or dance. The speakeasy was also the scene for a new type of American woman. The 19th amendment gave women the right to vote. World War One had put women in the factory. The Roaring Twenties saw the rise of the flapper, who was doing things that no respectable 19th-century woman would have dared: she smoked and drank in public. To show her new liberated attitude, their hairstyle and their skirts got scandalously short. They wore too much jewelry and in almost every way bucked the traditions of what a “proper lady” should be.

Because speakeasies were illegal operations the old saloon rules no longer applied. In the days before prohibition saloons were all-male joints where men stood around at a bar and drank. Forget what you might have seen in those bad western films. Saloons had no live music, no tables, and no entertainment.

But prohibition was coming at the same time as women's lib and the jazz age. The American bar scene would never be the same. Women began to drink into the speakeasies and they needed something more than just overpriced booze to keep them entertained. The new speakeasy now featured tableside service and live jazz bands playing the latest tunes.

The Gangster Era

Bootlegging and speakeasies made way too much money to escape the attention of organized crime bosses. In fact, Prohibition created organized crime, more commonly known as "The Mob". Street gangs have always been involved in prostitution, gambling, or any other illegal activity that could make money. But these were small-time slum operations. The new gangsters began dividing up and fighting for control of the black market liquor business. Every city had its own gangs that took over as rum runners, distilling illegal hooch, and running speakeasies. Some of the most notorious gangsters of the 20's went by amusing monikers (nicknames) like Jake “Greasy Thumbs” Guzik, Jack “Machine Gun” McGurn, and George “Bugs” Moran. The most notorious of the notorious was a Chicago mobster by the name of Alphonse “Scarface” Capone.

“Big Al” was a born New York City street thug. The son of Italian immigrants and a product of the Five Points slum, Capone moved to Chicago in 1919 to escape the New York City police on suspicion of murder charges. In Chicago Capone quickly proved to be a ruthless and shrewd businessman. Psychologists would likely label him a sociopath.

Sneaky Smugglers:

During Prohibition bootleggers found some pretty creative ways to smuggle alcohol.

America's All Wet Again

In no time he took over the Windy City’s bootleg business. Capone had his fingers in everything. He extorted “protection money” from restaurant owners, he ran houses of prostitution and gambling, but the real money was in bootlegging. Capone murdered his rivals and at the age of 26 found himself in control of an empire raking in $60 million each year (that's almost $820 million today). With 1,000 hired gunmen at his command and a host of dirty cops on his payroll, Capone operated dozens of speakeasies throughout Chicago. As the murder rate soared, the city newspapers began calling him “Public Enemy Number One”.

The citizens of Chicago really began demanding that the city take action after Capone had his hired guns-- disguised as policemen-- ruthlessly murder, seven members of the rival “Bugs” Moran Gang on February 14th, 1929. The infamous St. Valentine’s Day massacre brought national attention to America's gang problem and many people were quick to point the finger at Prohibition for causing all the violence.

The law finally caught up with Capone in 1933 when he was sentenced to eleven years in Alcatraz (the allegedly escape-proof prison). Ironically, Capone wasn’t convicted of racketeering, murder, bootlegging, or extortion–but tax evasion.

After nine years people were fed up with prohibition. The law was seen as an unenforceable failure. Even its supporters called it the noble experiment. To its opponents, it was an example of unwanted government involvement in people’s private lives and the cause for rising gang violence. Then in 1929, the Roaring Twenties came to a grinding halt as the Stock Market crashed and the country was thrown into the Great Depression. The new president, Franklin D. Roosevelt had no love for prohibition and, with the economy in the dumps, taxing liquor was a great way to raise badly needed funds. On December 5, 1933, the Twenty-First Amendment became the first time a constitutional amendment had ever been repealed.

Why it Matters

The Temperance Movement highlights the power of grassroots activism and the complex relationship between personal freedom, public health, and morality in shaping laws. It shows how social movements can mobilize diverse groups—such as women advocating for family stability and businesses promoting workplace efficiency—to bring about sweeping changes like Prohibition. At the same time, it serves as a cautionary tale about unintended consequences, as the ban on alcohol sparked widespread defiance, fueled organized crime, and ultimately led to its repeal. The moral being that sometimes you can't fix societal problems by simply passing a law.

Digging Deeper

Use the article to answer the questions below.

What was the temperance movement, and how did it lead to Prohibition in the United States?
What did the 18th Amendment do?
What was the Volstead Act, and how did it help enforce Prohibition?
Name three methods Americans used to break Prohibition laws.
What were speakeasies and bootlegging during Prohibition?
Why was Prohibition eventually repealed with the 21st Amendment?

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