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- [00:02]
A
This episode of the Memory palace has been brought to you by Rocket Money. So Rocket Money is a personal finance app that helps you monitor your spending and find and cancel unwanted subscriptions and helps lower your bills so you can grow your savings. And that is great. Does all that. But what I didn't know until this week is it is also a terrific detective sidekick, a Watson to your homes. I will explain. So we have all these streaming services. We have like basically all of them and we like having them for the most part. But we keep having the sneaking suspicion that we were paying for more of them than we needed to because we keep getting these promotional things like renew your cell phone and get a year of your favorite movies free. You've seen those things. We've definitely earned those things. So many of that has been overwhelming and confusing. But thanks to my right hand, Rocket Money, I've gotten to the bottom of the mystery of the multiple payments because it's set up to make your financial transactions so clear and it has made it so clear which services we were paying for and when that I just a couple of customer service calls with the confusing on purpose companies away from what I am calling streaming service justice, which sounds like a terrible show on one of those streaming services I will no longer be paying for when I am not supposed to. Thanks to Rocket Money. Get your financial life in order. Maybe even find a new use case for the case of your wasted money. Let Rocket Money help you reach your financial goals faster. Join@RocketMoney.com Memory that's RocketMoney.com MemoryRocketMoney.com Memory MEMORY this episode of the Memory palace is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Fiscally responsible financial geniuses, monetary magicians. These are things people say about drivers who switch their car insurance to Progressive and save hundreds. Visit progressive.com to see if you could save Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states or situations foreign.
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B
Hey there. This is not Nate DiMeo and this is not the Memory Palace. My name is Jody Avrigan. I am a colleague of Nate's here at Radiotopia. I host a show called this Day with my pals and historians Nicole Hemmer and Kelly Carter Jackson. We are part of a little brotherhood of history shows here at Radiotopia. We are big fans and admirers of what Nate does on the Memory palace. And I am here and you are listening to my voice instead of Nate's for a reason that I am just about to find out. He reached out to me and said are you willing to do something for the memory palace, and I can't tell you what it is. And of course I said yes, because you say yes when one of the podcasting greats asks you to do something. But also, I will tell you that one of my overarching goals in life and something that I am recommitting to in 2026 is to do more cool shit with people I like. So this qualifies. I'm very excited, and my task is to read what I'm about to open now. Nate sent this to me in an email as an attachment. This feels like the kind of thing that should arrive delivered by an owl or a carrier pigeon, which the memory palace has done an episode about. So let's do a little theater of the mind here. Imagine that I'm opening an envelope. Maybe it has a wax seal on it, reaching inside, taking this out, and I'm reading it cold for the first time. Hi, Jody. I could use a favorite. I grind my teeth at night. I don't at all during the day. Wouldn't have had any idea I'd do it. Except one day, some years ago, I cracked a molar. Had to get it yanked. Got an implant. It was a bummer. So a while back, the same thing happened again. Cracked a tooth on the other side, couldn't be fixed, had to come out. So yesterday, I go to the dentist and take care of that. I am weirdly unfazed by dental stuff. So I opt out of anesthesia. Oh, Nate. I get a few shots of lidocaine. He goes to work, takes out the tooth. No problem. Again, unfazed. Then he says, oh, that's not good. He then asks me why I never got the impacted wisdom tooth. He's now seeing up in there out. I tell him that it's because when I got the other three out, the doctor told me that it was going to be so difficult to get out, and the odds were it wasn't ever going to cause me any trouble. Turns out it was causing me trouble. Turns out that it needed to come out right then and there. And it turns out at that hour of the day, with no advance notice, anesthesia or laughing gas wouldn't be an option. And so next thing, I'm getting my impacted wisdom tooth extracted while wide awake. It was bananas. My gosh. So anyway, it has been a weird week. Nate misspelled weird in this letter, but I think we can forgive him, given the circumstances. All right, here we go. And as a result, I am a bit behind on my current memory palace. Episode and as you might imagine, not exactly sounding like myself on mic. So I am hoping that you might share with my audience an episode of this day. I'm really into your New America 250 project and think that the Memory palace listeners will be into it as well. So how about you send me an episode and we can drop it into my feed? So the Memory palace aren't left without a dope box beat to step to. A dope beat to step to, I believe is a reference to Aaliyah's song try again from like 2000. I'm sure every Memory palace listener will get that. Nate goes on. This is a good idea, right? I agree, Nate. It is a good idea. Okay, he writes, I'm going to go ice my face some more. Please tell the people whatever you want to introduce your show and the episode and thank them for their patience and understanding and let them know that there will be a new Memory palace story coming on schedule as usual on the first Thursday, Thursday of February. Sincerely, Nate well, well, Nate didn't tell me to react to this letter in real time, but I will say first off, while I like surprises and unexpected letters, this is unfortunate. Nate, I'm sorry about your tooth. I also grind my teeth and this has got me very worried about what might be going on. Although I do wear one of those mouth guards. Nate, maybe try that from now on. I've also had a scenario where I'm lying in a dentist chair and they are twisting and turning and yanking and it is not fun. In fact, I passed out because I'm very bad with doctors and needles and all. This also is the real lesson here to just like never opt out of anesthesia. I mean, you really kind of played yourself a little bit here, Nate. Nevertheless, I really appreciate this and I agree. I think that Memory palace listeners, if you don't know this day, you will enjoy hearing our show, you know, this Day and Memory palace and Radio Diaries. There's a lot of shows that do great history storytelling at Radiotopia, and we are proud to be part of that. So let me think about what episode I should run for you Memory palace listeners. And I'll be honest, the first thing that popped to mind and maybe because it involves a little bit of light torture, which it sounds like what Nate went through in the dentist chair. It's an episode we did a couple years ago about Dwight Eisenhower's war on the squirrels on the White House lawn, where he ended up actually doing like CIA level psychological torture on squirrels. That is a fun episode. A Weird. One feels memory palace esque. But as Nate mentioned, we are in this America250 moment. This is the 250th birthday of this country of ours and we at this day are doing a big year long series called 50 Weeks that Shaped America. And so I think given the opportunity, I would like to bring you the most recent episode we did about that. It is about the rise of prohibition. We'll play you part one of that. We're doing them all as two parters. But I'm very excited about the series. I think we'll do some collaborations with Nate down the line. So here's that episode. I really appreciate the offer, though I don't like the circumstances under which the offer arrived. Nate, you are one of the greats, even though you are now down a tooth. And I and others look forward to you getting healthy and coming back with a regularly scheduled episode. Thanks for listening to the Memory Palace. Thanks for listening to this day. And here we go. Hello and welcome to this day, a history show from Radiotopia. My name is Jody Avragan. It is week two in our year long series, 50 weeks that shaped America. A collection of stories that we think helped bring us to this moment in US history as the country marks 250 years, which is the semi quincentennial. Semi quincentennial is kind of a hard word to say. It's even harder to say if you've had a few. Which won't be an issue because this week we are headed to 1920 and the start of prohibition. The 18th amendment had been ratified one year earlier. And on January 16th of 1920, it all went into effect. Close up the bars, dump out the booze, or maybe hide the booze in a back room. We will get into that. We'll also get into why we think Prohibition was one of the 50 stories that helped shape this country. But suffice it to say, this story is a very American blend of social and cultural and political movements mixed with a dash of corruption. Shaken by law enforcement and poured over the rocks that are. I can't even finish this metaphor. I'm just gonna bail on it right here. But I tried. I tried.
- [09:04]
C
I got pretty far.
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B
I tried. Here, as always, Nicole Hammer of Vanderbilt and Kelly Carter Jackson of Wellesley. Won't they.
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C
Hello, Jody.
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D
Hey there.
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B
We've talked on this show about the melting pot and the stew, but has anyone compared the American experience to like a shaken or stirred cocktail?
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C
No. And I think it's time we start to change that.
- [09:25]
B
Okay, well, Maybe we will.
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C
A dash of bitterness.
- [09:28]
B
So, look, we're going to get into the deep roots of prohibition and how these kind of confluence of social and political movements led to this moment. I did point out that January 16th of 1919 is when the 18th Amendment is ratified. There's basically a year to prepare for January 16, 1920. I want to read a quote from the Sacramento Star describing the scenes on January 16, the day this goes into effect. But it basically says constitutional Prohibition, the dream of reformers for more than a century becomes a reality at the. At a minute after midnight tonight in every nook and corner of the US and its possessions. And, Kelly, no surprise, it was sort of chaos.
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D
It's chaos. I mean, the only thing I can sort of equate it to is like a Black Friday sort of situation in which it's like people are going crazy for the latest, I don't know, toy that everybody wants. But you had to get your booze in as fast as you possibly could before the law changed. And so stores are, like, setting out boxes and boxes of liquor, like $1 a bottle. You know, like, everyone is trying to scramble. There are a frenzy of cars lined up everywhere, people with trucks, wagons, whatever you can get, whatever form of transportation you can get to carry as much booze as you possibly can is what is happening. And it's a mad dash. And yeah, it's chaos because essentially, once the law goes into effect, the federal government has hired 1400 special prohibition agents to go after people who are in violation of the law, and they have sort of weaponized other government officials, local government officials, to go after anybody who is breaking the law. And they are not playing around.
- [11:18]
C
Kelly, I like the. The Black Friday comparison. It's also kind of like, remember that moment in the early weeks of COVID when everybody was rushing to get toilet paper? And it's like, what if they had just said, we are not making any toilet paper after this? So whatever you get your hands on, that's it. And that's basically how people were when it came to booze.
- [11:38]
B
Yeah, I mean, people were kind of like that with booze during COVID too. They were.
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D
They were. They were.
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B
These scenes are a little reminiscent, but, yeah, so, you know, Interior Secretary Franklin Lane, he wrote in a letter on January 19, the whole world is skewgy, awry, distorted, and altogether perverse. All. All goes merry as a dance in hell. And I mean, some of the scenes, yeah, the scenes were kind of wild, people going a little crazy as the clock started to strike, which, you know, I suppose maybe provided proof to those who were in favor of prohibition and the sins of alcohol to be like, look, look, this is how the people behave. This is why we have been fighting for centuries to clamp down on this, on this vice.
- [12:21]
D
I mean, the New York Herald called it the fifth horse of the apocalypse.
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C
Amazing.
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D
Not too hyperbolic. But I mean, like, people really did see this as the end of an era. And I don't think people were fully prepared for how things were going to play out, especially in terms of enforcement, you know, because I think if you think that this is going to be lax or if you think they're cracking skulls, you know, it's going to have a huge impact on the way that you sort of interact with the law.
- [12:54]
B
Yeah. And we're gonna do a sort of deep dive into the enforcement and then the evasion of enforcement in part two of this two parter. But I do wanna kind of take half a step back and then a big step back and look at one like, what is the larger political social context of this era in American history? And then I think really fascinating the like decades. And I said, you know, centuries long road to Prohibition as a sort of culmination of a really long movement. But, you know, obviously the 1920s, a reform era. It's really important to think of Prohibition as one in a kind of number of other progressive era reforms. What else is going on that we need to have in mind as we try and understand this moment before we then talk about the deeper history.
- [13:42]
C
It really is a confluence of all of these different streams of American history coming together in this one moment. Like you said, Jodi, there's the progressive reforms, which, you know, some of these reforms were things like minimum wage and safer work conditions. But a lot of them were about vice regulation that you could use the government to sort of ban all the bad things that made society worse. So alcohol was part of that. World War I plays a big role in it as well, because, you know, there's a big strand of nativism that runs through Prohibition, this idea that it's actually those awful immigrants who are bringing all of this alcohol and alcohol culture to the United States. And In World War I, the US is fighting against the Germans and they're purveyors of beer. And so World War I leads to that as well as like a stronger government that can crack down on what people do in ways that they weren't usually able to outside of wartime. And I think another big factor in this is the growth of cities in the United States. When you suddenly have so many people packed into one place, vices that could be seen as private, and the matter, like held within a family suddenly become a public problem. Right. Suddenly you have people packing into saloons, and when they, they're drunk, they don't just go home, right. They go out into the streets. And reformers really believed that alcohol was kind of the root of all evil. So that once you had drunkenness, then you had fights in the streets, you had more prostitution, you had filth, you had all of these other problems that were associated with drinking. And so all of those come together to make prohibition possible.
- [15:25]
B
I mean, if you make a list of, like, defining fault lines in American history, they're all kind of reflected in this story, right, that you said urban versus rural, native versus foreign born. There's obviously a Catholic versus Protestant around here. There's a racial dimension to all of this. So, you know, we will tease all that stuff out as we go. But let's, I don't know, let's. Let's go from the 1920s back, I don't know, 100 years, more than 100 years, and just sort of like, yeah, temperance does seem to be kind of part of the. This country's DNA, basically from the jump.
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D
Yeah. You know, it's interesting though, when we think about, like the colonial period, I would say, and even throughout history, like access to clean drinking water and the ability to have alternatives for hydration. Like, alcohol was a big part of people's diet. It was a big part of how they consumed liquid, be it wine or beer or whiskey. I mean, even when you think about the American Revolution and the taxes on whiskey, like, it's a big part of American culture. So it's, it's difficult to sort of separate out the two when people see it as so much a part of.
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C
Their diet, as a big part of preserving crops as well.
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D
Right.
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C
This is a way that you could take things like corn and barley and grapes and things and give them a much longer life by turning them into these things. And so they're, they're economically important. But people also realize, like, drunkenness was a problem. Benjamin Rush, who was a famous doctor in the revolutionary period, talked about how drunkenness was a disease. There were calls for moderation. And then when you get in like the 1820s and 1830s and there's a massive sort of religious uprising, it's in that moment of religious fermented fervor that you begin to get all of these people moving into social movements, more organized abolitionist movement. The beginnings of Women's suffrage, and also the beginnings of temperance, because people believe that if you could change kind of the moral actions of people, you could build a better society, and maybe you could use government to do that. So it's really in those moments that you get things like the Women's Christian Temperance Union, which is one of the big prohibition organizations of its time. It uses the word temperance because they weren't always calling for an outright ban, but they just wanted to, like, create a culture where people drank a lot less.
- [17:47]
D
It's interesting. You know, I forgot that, like, when you think about, especially the slave trade, a lot of what's being traded also is, like, rum and whiskey. And so people have also connected, like, those distilleries and that production and that sort of sector of economic growth alongside slavery. Like, it's a big part of the slave trade and how people are even purchasing enslaved people with bottles of rum or whiskey or what have you. And so it's a huge industry in New England, for sure. You could say, okay, there's not a lot of slavery, but there's a ton of distilleries, and that's fueling the slave trade as well.
- [18:24]
B
I've never fully been able to get my head around this kind of central question. I always have when I look at the history of alcohol in this country of whether the stuff was more potent back in the day or less potent, you know, And I think, like, there was definitely, like, moonshine and, like, hard liquor, you know, for forever. But I do think, like, when we talk about, like, George Washington drank a ton, or we've done episodes about the Revolutionary War era where they do the, like, 17 different toasts over the course of a dinner, I think they are drinking pretty weak alcohol. And I think, Kelly, to your point, like, a lot of times alcohol was seen as, like, a safer alternative sometimes to water, but. So I don't know. But there were also, like, people who were definitely, like, very drunk all the time.
- [19:06]
D
Yeah.
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B
So I don't know. I think people. I think, like, more people were a little drunk, but maybe the, like, really hard alcohol wasn't as potent as maybe it started to become. And maybe the fact that alcohol was getting more potent was part of the sort of push towards Prohibition as well.
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D
Yeah. You always have a few bad apples that ruin it for the bunch, a few drunks that ruin it for everyone.
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C
And there was enough of a, like, organized movement against it that at least at the state level, by, you know, the post Civil War period, you do start to get states regulating and localities Regulating against alcohol. So the idea that you could ban alcohol or at least put some constraints on it, that was there even before prohibition comes around.
- [19:50]
B
Yeah. And if we're talking about that kind of post Civil War ERA and the 50 years, 60 years leading up to the 18th Amendment, it really is also the case that a lot of racial and cultural fault lines start to be reflected in this fight. And, you know, at some basic level, it was like German immigrants were opening beer halls, and so the sort of culture of drinking around that was seen being used as a wedge. But like, all those fault lines we discussed earlier really start to come into focus as this movement picks up steam.
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D
Yeah. I would even say not just Germans, but also the Irish. You know, when you think about this religious divide and when you think about like the holy sacred sacrament of communion, you know, that's done with wine. And so the idea of, like curtailing someone's religious sacraments are a big part of that as well too.
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C
And so when we're, when we're talking about the big surge in prohibition that starts around the 1880s and 1890s, it is not a coincidence that that, that coincides with a surge in immigration to the United States, a surge in the growth of cities in the United States. Like, all of these things begin to come together and become sort of part of the coalition that is going to be against alcohol.
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D
Right.
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C
The prohibition coalition is going to turn into this massive coalition that includes, like nativist, but also religious reformers and like women reformers who are trying to modernize society. But this big, eclectic group of people who come together around this issue.
- [21:21]
B
Yeah, there's one little interesting data point, census data point, from like the 1860s or 70s after the Civil War war, where the vast majority of the 300,000 saloons in the US were owned by first generation Americans. And I guess there were many more first generation Americans back then than there are now, just because it's a newer country. But still, I think it's really important to point out how much the saloon and alcohol, the culture around alcohol started to feel like it was aligned with these central questions of kind of, what is American? How are new people assimilating? You know, saloons were where people were gathering to share political ideas. And so it just was this perfect space for all of these central questions about, like, what is this country set to be?
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D
And even, you know, I think about the fact that, like, a lot of the prohibitions were prohibitionists, I should say, were also African American, like prominent African Americans. And I would not have thought that Black people would have been big on Prohibition. But if you think about the. The moment, sort of the turn of the century, it makes a lot of sense. When you have people like Sojourner Truth or Booker T. Washington or Ida B. Wells or Frederick Douglass, Du Bois, they're also pushing an agenda not just for, like, full black citizenship, but acceptance that I think goes alongside, like, respectability politics. And so the idea of drunkenness does not play well into how they want black people to be perceived. And so there's a lot of, like, how you get acceptance into American society and drunkenness, ain't it? So people are pushing those ideas along. Respectability politics, too.
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C
Yeah. And I think it speaks to the variety of these reform movements as we were talking about earlier, like abolition and temperance marched side by side for a while. This idea that. That alcohol was being used to sort of repress the working class or to repress black people in the South.
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D
Right.
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C
This idea that there was a kind of a problem with alcohol that was preventing people from reaching these larger social and political goals, that was. That it was possible to make a case. But then it creates these really odd alliances because as we'll talk about, like, the people who are supporting Prohibition are black reformers and the Ku Klux Klan.
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D
Which never go hand in hand.
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C
It's like, what doesn't go well?
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B
Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's strange. There's strange alliances. And I want to get to some of these characters for sure. But I don't know, Kelly, your point about, you know, the respectability politics is taken, but I also think. Nikki, are you kind of saying that, like, it seems to me, like if you can build political ties and allegiances and flex that political networking muscle around, say, temperance, maybe then some of those ties will pour it over towards abolition. You know, like, there's just different political spaces in which you're creating, you know, and it's just like there's a sort of flourishing of people operating in political spaces and moving between all of these issues that are flowing together. And so I wonder if, you know, for black activists, there was even just a sort of strategy of like, well, I'm not gonna find an ally if I just start talking to them about abolition, but I can go to meetings about these other issues and start to build coalitions. Yeah.
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C
I really do believe that political coalitions form this way.
- [24:42]
D
Right.
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C
We talk a lot about single issue politics, and single issue politics are absolutely a point of coalition building, and they bring different groups into politics who may not have been politically active before, but really smart reform Movements are really smart political movements broadly. They then attach those really potent single issues to a whole suite of other political policies into a political program. So when a person enters through that narrow door, they then find themselves sort of oriented toward a whole set of related politics.
- [25:15]
D
Yeah, yeah. And along those lines, it does make sense that the Ku Klux Klan would actually have a prohibitionist stance. If you think about the fact that they are anti immigrant, if you think about the fact that they are anti Catholic, if you think about the fact that they are also trying to push their own agenda of what American citizenship, white American citizenship should look like, it makes sense that they would be in support of something like Prohibition. They want these sort of, like, fundamentalist ideas around Christianity to proliferate, and that's one of those tenets.
- [25:47]
C
So we should start to introduce some of the people who are part of this movement. And the funny thing about Prohibition is it's often presented. It's often presented as a woman's movement. Right, that there are these women reformers who are going around handing out handbills.
- [26:02]
B
And pamphlets, like those long black dresses and the heavy coats and the hats.
- [26:07]
C
Speaking of respectability, politics. And then there are some men who, like, bring sort of the policy teeth to it. But then you encounter somebody like Carrie Nation who is there to rebut all of those arguments. She is 6ft tall, built like a brick house. She is also somebody who thinks that the best form of persuasion is a hatchet. It does have the benefit of motivating people. She goes through. She's from Kansas, and she goes through to these different saloons, and she just starts destroying them. She'll, like, run in with her hatchet. She'll say, men, I have come to save you from a drunkard's fate, and then starts smashing bottles and opening kegs. And there's a lot of hatchets.
- [26:54]
B
Throughout this story, listeners should just prepare themselves.
- [26:57]
C
Yeah, it's a hatchet heavy. It's a hatchet heavy politics for sure. And because in Kansas there was a constitutional amendment that banned liquors, she was like, well, the police can't arrest me for smashing up the saloon because the saloon shouldn't exist in the first place. So, I mean, we'll talk about how that space between the law and practice creates room for a lot of violence when it comes to Prohibition. But this was true pretty early on with Nation, who would. She would also sing and pray and do those kinds of things. But she was wielding a hatchet. She called her attacks hatchitations, agitations, maybe.
- [27:38]
B
Like, obviously at the time she was seen as an outsized character. And there's a sort of like wild eyed, crazy version of her story that I think has lingered throughout the years. But I think there's been some really interesting kind of like reframing of her as like a genuine impassioned activist and even a feminist and someone who kind of was using her agency in the way that she could at that time. But yeah, a lot of times I think when you read about her, hear about her, it's like this crazy woman who was running around, you know, breaking.
- [28:06]
D
Up bars and stuff, unhinged with a hatchet.
- [28:11]
C
It's a tough combination, but I think that she purposely cultivated that image too. It was like a media savvy move. Her newsletter, because, you know, even in the days before Substack, everybody had a newsletter. She was publishing the Smasher's Mail. Her newspaper was called the Hatchet. Like she, she knew what she was doing. She called herself a bulldog, running along at the feet of Jesus, barking at what he doesn't.
- [28:33]
D
Like, oh my God, this just kills me. I mean, she's, she is relentless. She's arrested over 30 times. I mean, so even though it's hard to enforce what she's doing, she's still held accountable in some ways, but it, she's undeterred. I mean, she continues on this mission to create a dry country.
- [28:53]
B
So if that's kind of an activist at one end of the spectrum, you know, rabble rousing and wielding a hatchet, maybe at the other end of the spectrum is this guy, Wayne Wheeler, who is, I think, embodies the kind of very concerted, very legalistic, very moralistic approach and strain to this movement. You know, he's from Ohio. I think by all accounts he kind of had a real religious awakening in the 1890s, as did a lot of other people. That's a huge part of this story. And he is the one, I think, who is kind of really turns to the sort of hard nuts and bolts politics of this movement. And he's the one who founds things like the Anti Saloon League, which then has chapters around the country. He starts to work electoral politics. Wheeler is often credited with coining the term pressure group. Right. I mean, this is where a lot of these kind of tactics come into play. So, you know, very quickly, or maybe, yeah, I was gonna say, like it transitions from this kind of religious, social driven movement to the sort of electoral hard edge politics. But I think maybe the story is, it's just all of these things are happening at the Same time. Right. There's many fronts, fronts of this battle.
- [30:09]
C
Yeah.
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D
And it's very easy for this to become politicized as well. I mean, I think what Kerry is doing with the hatchet Wheeler is sort of doing with politics. I mean, he has the ability to push out the governor of Ohio. I mean, he is taking his group and really coming after anybody that he sees in opposition of prohibition. And he's doing it with great effect. And I think that's where people become a little shook up. It's one thing to sort of close down these saloons here and there. It's another thing to use politics to shape policy in terms of how this plays out.
- [30:44]
C
And I think, Jodi, what you said about coining pressure groups, he was doing something different. It wasn't a partisan campaign. He was focused on both parties at a time of pretty high partisanship in the country. And he believed that, okay, I have this group of the, this part of the electorate that's maybe like 10 to 15%, not enough for a party, not enough to win an election outright, but enough in a close election. And there are a lot of close elections in the 1900s and 19 teens. Enough in a close election to make a difference. So Kelly mentioned that he helps to organize the ouster of the governor of Ohio. That's really the first time they really, really flex their muscle. And then in elections, local elections going forward in the 19 teens, time and time again, the so called dry is the people who want to put in place Prohibition are the margin of victory for a lot of politicians. And so they use these tactics of like campaign endorsements and financing opponents and blackmailing their political opponents into supporting their cause. And it works pretty well.
- [31:51]
B
That's a really important point about that kind of where is the tipping point and the wedge point. And you can find a lot of political purchase in there. And that also there's a very savvy media strategy behind that too. And this is, I think has come to be known as Wheeler ism. But it is the kind of idea that he sort of brought into the, into the process where like he had this 10, 15%, but through the media he was able to make that feel like a much, much bigger force than actually maybe it was because of its outsized impact and because it sat right there on the kind of tipping point of close elections. But there's very much a media story here too where the general public, you know, yeah, because of spinning this tale that the general public really is in on Prohibition. And as we kind of tell the Story about how the amendment actually passed. I think this is a really important thing to keep in mind because I think like time and time again in the march from like up to 1916 to 1920, I think people get surprised, you know, and caught off guard, like, oh, wait a minute, this is really happening. This is really happening. And it's because a little bit they had sort of like been deluded themselves into thinking like, well, I may not want this, but it seems like everyone else wants it, so I guess it'll happen. And then before you know it, it actually happens. And I think that's kind of Wheeler ism in action. So let's turn to kind of how we get the March towards the 18th amendment. And I will point out that one little, like, overlooked element to this, to the passage of the 18th Amendment, is the passage of the 16th Amendment. And so the 16th Amendment, which is passed in 1913, is what implements a federal income tax, but that replaces a federal alcohol tax. And so it basically just takes alcohol kind of to the backseat of playing a really critical function in the federal government. And I think that just sets the stage. It sort of like, you know, creates a little crack and instability and really sets the stage then over the next three years for this movement to really, you know, pass this amendment.
- [33:45]
C
Yeah, you think about it as like a necessary condition for prohibition to pass because that was always going to be a huge roadblock because if, if that's what the federal government is funded on.
- [33:55]
D
Yeah, I know it's alcohol tax taking away your base.
- [34:00]
C
So, yeah, you do have the passage of that amendment and then you have just a sea change that's happening. So in 1916, neither party takes a position on prohibition, but because of all of that, like state and local level work that Wheeler has been doing, suddenly dries out number wets in Congress, like 2 to 1, 2 to 1 in both parties. And that actually does set the stage for a prohibition amendment because it's really hard to pass an amendment to the constitution. But two to one, those are the kinds of numbers you need for a constitutional amendment. And so things are in the works pretty quickly after the 1916 election.
- [34:41]
D
Yeah, matters get even worse when war begins. And you have all of this, as you mentioned before, Nikki, like anti German sentiment. I feel like you could make the argument that it also, it felt somewhat un American to be fighting in a war and trying to pursue like alcohol at the same time. Like there was a clear sort of like agenda about how people felt about prohibition and the war. And you kind of had to Tether those things together in order to get buy in.
- [35:12]
C
And you had an excuse too, right, Kelly? Like there were all of these new rations that were put in place or not. They didn't quite have rations at the time, but like new ways of the government commanding the economy. So they could tell factories to create something different or put in place quotas, or put in place limits on sales or redirect. Like how where grain went, like grain should go to the war effort, it shouldn't go to making whiskey or making beer. And that actually led to passage of legislation in Congress that you wouldn't, I don't think, have seen in non wartime where they're like, okay, you can't have beer that's more than 2.75% alcohol, pretty low alcohol beer. And then a year later they pass an even lower limit. So then it's down to like 1.8%. And now you're getting, I mean we're starting to get into nearly non intoxicating.
- [36:05]
D
Yeah, you're getting juice. That's juice, happy juice. Give moscato at that point.
- [36:13]
B
So now we're kind of going 1917 to 1918 to 1919, 1920. But we're starting to really get some push towards the actual what would become the 18th amendment. And it's basically like a year that they have to spend to wrangle all of the support for the amendment itself. And then as I said, the amendment passes and then it' year before they then implement the enforcement of it. Which is all to say that this process is pretty fast. And you can kind of tell by the way the 18th Amendment is actually written. It's pretty like, like, okay, so basically it forbids three things involving, quote, intoxicating liquors. It, it forbids the manufacture, sale and transportation. But it does not say what counts as, as intoxicating. It doesn't really say how enforcement should work. It doesn't really even say that drinking alcohol is illegal. Right. The manufacturer sale and transportation is, but not the actual consumption. And there's like no thought about like exemptions and so forth. So it's just kind of, you know, I don't know, it's like a political document, not a legal document. Right. Which I know the Constitution often is. And like lo and behold, people then start to fight about what the meaning of a constitutional amendment is.
- [37:21]
D
Yeah, yeah. Really?
- [37:22]
C
Yeah. And rightfully so. I mean, part of the reason you saw that mad rush that Kelly described at the beginning of the episode is they didn't, they didn't make drinking alcohol illegal. Yeah, you could still do it. And so the alcohol you had in your possession at the time the prohibition started, you could still drink.
- [37:39]
D
Yeah.
- [37:40]
C
And so that leads to a kind of rush. And it also means that it requires enacting legislation. There has to be some kind of legislation that describes all of those things you're talking about, Jody, because people have to know, you could say that alcohol is illegal, but people have to know the enforcement structures. They have to know, like, what counts as alcohol. And that's what the Volstead act, which we'll talk about is.
- [38:01]
B
Yeah, so we'll, we'll sort of really dig into the Volstead act and its enforcement in next episode. But just to give you a taste, I mean, it runs 17 single spaced pages. It tries to provide some specifics to this. You know, it defines intoxicating liquors as any beverage over 0.5% alcohol. Obviously, the manufacturer, sale and transport of these beverages. It. We'll really get into this. It kind of designates enforcement of this with the irs, which is an interesting choice. It doesn't, again, prohibit the drinking of alcohol. It doesn't prohibit alcohol that you possessed pre prohibition. And there are all sorts of exceptions. Exceptions, a gentle word for medicinal liquor. Medicinal alcohol. People were making a lot of air quotes in 1920 in the same way that Kelly is making air quotes right now. But yes, for instance, personal stockpiles, medicinal alcohol, religious and sacramental wine, homemade cider and wine, and even alcohol that was being used for industrial purposes. There were all kind of loopholes around there. And so, yes, we will get into the wild and woolly ways in which those loopholes were exploited. Next episode. As we wrap up here, though, I do want to kind of read something from the cocktail historian David Wondrich, which is. Great title, great name, cocktail historian David Wondrich. But he wrote about the passage of the 18th Amendment. He said nobody believed it would happen. Prohibition was a small town rural movement and people in the cities resented it. They really thought up until the very end that there was going to be a way out. And then suddenly it became clear that there wasn't. And I will just say that so much of this country's history is about social and political movements that feel that way to people. Oh, we just thought it was this small regional thing. And now, whoa, here it is.
- [39:54]
C
But yeah, the rural divisions are going to be a theme of the 20th and 21st century. You hear about them today, you hear about them then and in the 1920s. These are the kind of culture wars of the decade. And we'll talk about that more in the next episode. But there really is a regional and rural urban divide that is shaping Prohibition.
- [40:17]
D
Yeah, I think you could make the claim it's the first culture war, but we'll get into that.
- [40:21]
B
Yeah, maybe. And war is the right word because it gets pretty violent and pretty crazy. Air machines, there are tanks. But we've circled back now to where we started that night of January 16, 1920, that scene that Kelly described, the people running around and hiding and drinking as much booze as possible. And next episode we will look at whatever counts as the new normal as this country settles into prohibition. And it is, to put it mildly, not normal. There are speakeasies, bootleggers, corrupt enforcement, all sorts of unintended consequences, not to mention all sorts of legal battles that would eventually overturn this amendment. Basically, America is about to wake up on somebody's couch on January 17, 1920 and be like, wait a minute, what? What did I get up to last night? Oh my God. Anyway, that is all. Next episode. Nicole Hemmer, thanks to you as always. Thank you Jody and Kelly Carter Jackson, thanks to you.
- [41:14]
D
My pleasure.
- [41:20]
B
This day is a proud member of Radiotopia, a network of independent artist produced podcasts. Don't forget to sign up for our America 250 Watch newsletter every Thursday. Members get exclusive access to analysis and information about the semi quincentennial commentary from our team and a list of fascinating things that happened that week throughout history. Join in, find out lots more@thisdaypod.com you can also follow this Day Pod on Instagram, Bluesky and YouTube. Jacob Feldman is our researcher. Brittany Brown is our editor. My name is Jody Avergan. See you soon.
- [42:30]
A
Radiotopia.
- [42:33]
D
From prx.