Posted on 07/08/2010 2:16:11 PM PDT by neverdem
The evening of Jan. 16, 1920, hours before Prohibition descended on America, while the young assistant secretary of the Navy, Franklin Roosevelt, drank champagne in Washington with other members of Harvard's Class of 1904, evangelist Billy Sunday preached to 10,000 celebrants in Norfolk, Va., : "The reign of tears is over. The slums will soon be only a memory. . . ." Not exactly.
Daniel Okrent's darkly hilarious "Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition" recounts how Americans abolished a widely exercised private right -- and condemned the nation's fifth-largest industry -- in order to make the nation more heavenly. Then all hell broke loose. Now that ambitious government is again hell-bent on improving Americans -- from how they use salt to what light bulbs they use -- Okrent's book is a timely tutorial on the law of unintended consequences.
The ship that carried John Winthrop to Massachusetts in 1630 also carried, Okrent reports, 10,000 gallons of wine and three times more beer than water. John Adams's morning eye-opener was a tankard of hard cider; James Madison drank a pint of whiskey daily; by 1830, adult per capita consumption was the equivalent of 90 bottles of 80-proof liquor annually.
Although whiskey often was a safer drink than water, Americans, particularly men, drank too much. Women's Prohibition sentiments fueled the movement for women's rights -- rights to hold property independent of drunken husbands; to divorce those husbands; to vote for politicians who...
--snip--
Women campaigning for sobriety did not intend to give rise to the income tax, plea bargaining, a nationwide crime syndicate, Las Vegas, NASCAR (country boys outrunning government agents), a redefined role for the federal government and a privacy right -- the "right to be let alone" -- that eventually was extended to abortion rights. But they did...
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Not just make them quicker, but the goal was to still look ‘stock’. I have seen an interesting documentary on it, really interesting. I wondered why it was called ‘stock car races’, when they are anything but ‘stock’. Just supposed to look that way, but the engines and shocks were 2 of the main upgrades. Engine to outrun and shocks to not give the appearance of a very heavy load of illegal goods...
The father of a friend from years past used to bootleg, bought directly from Jr. Johnson and delivered on a route like a milkman.
A good peach moonshine is a tasty distraction.
Thanks, interesting book referenced by Mr. Will. I’ll have to read it. Sounds like an Amity Shlaes uncovering of the historical truth that otherwise is buried under the sense that we already know something we actually don’t.
However, I am bugged at the first read of Will’s column and the linked book review about the consumption figure pre-prohibition. For I suspect that by the year of the referenced consumption rate most states already had state prohibitions.
What I have thought for about a dozen years now is that the prohibition did in fact break America’s near drunken daily life in the age of walking and horse drawn local transit. Horses will carry a drunk home, but a drunk in an automobile will cause deadly havoc.
In other words, we HAD to stop drinking so we could drive. The national prohibition was in that regard an act of Providence.
I also wonder as to the Kennedy rum-running legend. Was it really debunked in whole? I wonder ...
Woof! Pass the scotch...
good article, I’ll have to hunt down that book. last line from the WaPost article:
Americans then were, and let us hope still are, magnificently ungovernable by elected nuisances.
btt
In old movies there were men who said horrible things like: “women should NEVER vote”, but after reading history, they (and Ann Coulter!) may have been right. I may get flamed here, but women tend to: vote emotionally, do shallow research when they have an agenda, project their faults on mankind, and play the victim.
Women’s Suffrage attained their first victory: Prohibition, at a time when a large number of American men were fighting WWI, unable to vote. The resulting changes in elections and campaigns are obvious: ugly men have a harder time gaining office, campaigns purposefully play on emotions instead of linear logical thought, hateful gossip enters the political discourse.
and yes I know there are many exceptions to this rule, my mother, sisters and wife among them.
Sorry, I call em as I see em.
The Kennedys have been very good at controlling the “official” media.
It is common knowlege that Kennedy had an affair with Gloria Swanson which is white washed from most official information.
It is just as common knowlege that Kennedy was involved in getting whiskey to the United States illegally during prohibition, which made it very easy for him to come out in the open and import it legally when prohibition was repealed.
In other words he made money on alcohol illegally before he made money on it legally.
Told you so.
But, noooooo, women would do just fine with the vote.
Can you say, "Mmmmmm - mmmmm - mmmmm" or "Yes we can!"?
Old prohibition joke:
It’s mid-summer, a hot and sweathy day, and a man gives his son a nickle and says:”Little Johnny, grab that there bucket and go buy a bucket of beer.”
Johnny goes outside and looks up and down the street scratching his head about where to go.
Johnny’s friend Tommy comes along. “Hey, Johnny, whatcha doin?”
Johnny says, “Well, pop gave me a nickle and a bucket and told me to buy him some beer, but I don’t know where to go.”
Tommy says, “Well, look down the street. See all those houses with smoke pouring out of the chimney?”
Johnny looks. “Yeh, they all got smoke pouring out the chimney. Except that one at the end of the block.”
Tommy says, “Yeh, don’t go to that one.”
Really? Someone forgot to tell PBS! Oh, my!
I’m not sure that Joe Kennedy actually “made his fortune” by bootlegging”
I am pretty sure that old JOE made his first big money with having the exclusive rights to import Scotch Whiskey to the USA.
I cannot squeeze all this down to just a few words, but I will offer this:
The difference between ‘stock” cars & MODIFIED cars is quite a bit.
Hard to use just a few words here.
Try to find where the nearest “MODIFIED” cars are running near where you live & avail yourself of such an evening’s entertainment.
Just for starters—the exterior sheet metal is quite different. Tire stagger—lots of things.
Bump
James Madison drank a pint of whiskey daily
Wow — and wasn’t he about 4’11” and 100 pounds?
That would require a change of springs, not shocks.
Not that there's anything wrong with that.
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