A People’s History of American Prohibition

Abstract

Chapter 16 examines the predations of the parasitic Gilded Age “liquor trusts”--akin to the big railroad, steel, and financial trusts--including the United States Brewers’ Association and the Liquor Dealers’ Association, which corrupted law enforcement and government representatives. Unlike these trusts, the Anti-Saloon League (ASL) could not buy off politicians, but relied on agitation and publicity—ensuring that constituents were fully informed as to their elected representatives’ voting records on temperance. Progressive prohibitionists made common cause with good-governance “muckrakers” like Pussyfoot Johnson and Upton Sinclair. The chapter turns to the wave of state-level prohibitions, beginning with the Oklahoma’s prohibition statehood in 1907, drawing on the long-standing prohibitionism of Native Americans. From there, the “dry wave” swept the American South, where the liquor traffic was more diffused and less organized, and temperance sentiment was strong among both white and black communities.