Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Ethan Edelman, and this is Psychoactive, a production
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio and Protozoa Pictures. Psychoactive is the
Speaker 1: show where we talk about all things drugs. But any
Speaker 1: views expressed here do not represent those of I Heart Media,
Speaker 1: Protozoa Pictures, or their executives and employees. Indeed, heed, as
Speaker 1: an inveterate contrarian, I can tell you they may not
Speaker 1: even represent my own. And nothing contained in this show
Speaker 1: should be used as medical advice or encouragement to use
Speaker 1: any type of drugs. Hello, Psychoactive listeners. So today we're
Speaker 1: gonna talk about America's experience with alcohol prohibition, the eighteenth
Speaker 1: Amendment that passed in and where we had alcohol prohibition
Speaker 1: this country for thirteen years before it was repealed by
Speaker 1: the twenty first Amendment. The person I've asked to talk
Speaker 1: to us about is is Lisa mcgurre. She's a historian
Speaker 1: at Harvard. She first wrote an award winning book on
Speaker 1: the history of the New Right called Suburban Warriors, and
Speaker 1: then she wrote a book called The War on Alcohol
Speaker 1: subtitled Prohibition and the Rise of the American State. And
Speaker 1: I wanted to have lesa because for a few reasons. First,
Speaker 1: I think this book, if you're going to read one
Speaker 1: book about alcohol prohibition, its rise, it's enforcement, it's demise,
Speaker 1: this would be it. It's concise, it covers the field
Speaker 1: in the literature, but she also does a few other
Speaker 1: things in this book. She emphasizes the importance of alcohol
Speaker 1: prohibition in many ways with basically the evolution of American
Speaker 1: politics and only twentie century and the rise of the
Speaker 1: American state. And she brings a special attention to the
Speaker 1: ways that prohibition was enforced in ways that not only
Speaker 1: resemble the modern drug war, but that also really played
Speaker 1: an important role in transforming American politics. So, Lisa, thanks
Speaker 1: so much for joining me on Psychoactive, thanks so much
Speaker 1: or having me so listen. I mean, why did you
Speaker 1: write this book? Well, um, why did I write the book?
Speaker 1: I wrote the book partly because I had I was
Speaker 1: looking at an earlier period. My first book was on
Speaker 1: the right in the post World War two period, basically
Speaker 1: looking at the history of the conservative movement from the
Speaker 1: bottom up, trying to use social history to say something
Speaker 1: new about the right, uh and the conservative movement, and
Speaker 1: I felt that it had picked big payoffs to look
Speaker 1: at the right in a new way, basically trying to
Speaker 1: understand it from a grassroots perspective, from the perspective ordinary
Speaker 1: men and women. So I started to think about an
Speaker 1: earlier iteration or moment of the when the right was
Speaker 1: pretty powerful, uh, and began to delve into the nineteen twenties.
Speaker 1: And as I did, I worked a little bit on
Speaker 1: the Saco and Manzetti case and anti immigrant case. Kind
Speaker 1: of a moment of heightened nativism and prohibition was popping
Speaker 1: up all over the place. And it just struck me
Speaker 1: that his storians had not taken a serious enough look
Speaker 1: at the repercussions of prohibition. What happened once the Eighteenth Amendment,
Speaker 1: which was of course the amendment to the Constitution enacting
Speaker 1: national prohibition. What happened once it had passed. Stories have
Speaker 1: did a great job looking at the movement for national prohibition,
Speaker 1: how it came about. There was a hundred year old
Speaker 1: campaign for what was called temperance for sort of you know,
Speaker 1: basically trying to tamp down on alcohol consumption. But once
Speaker 1: we got to the Eighteenth Amendment, once it was passed,
Speaker 1: historians kind of had felt that, you know, this was
Speaker 1: a huge policy failure, and there wasn't much to say
Speaker 1: it was a great disaster, and as we well know,
Speaker 1: it was certainly somewhat disastrous, but there were huge implications
Speaker 1: that historians had not done enough to tease out. So
Speaker 1: I was really interested in looking at what happened after
Speaker 1: what was the unfolding of national prohibition. Of course, it
Speaker 1: was relatively short lived, right, It was rescinded by ninety
Speaker 1: three with the First Amendment, and that was partly one
Speaker 1: of the reasons why historians didn't pay that much attention
Speaker 1: to it. But you know, there was a lot more
Speaker 1: to say, as I uncovered through looking at it from
Speaker 1: a different angle, which was not to tell kind of
Speaker 1: a national story of speakeasies at rum runners, but to
Speaker 1: look at the experience of ordinary men and women with
Speaker 1: the Prohibition Amendment and the way prohibition was enforced um
Speaker 1: and how it affected politics. And so by looking at
Speaker 1: the kind of from the bottom up perspective and delving
Speaker 1: into different parts of the country, I was able to tell,
Speaker 1: I think, someone more consequential story of national Prohibition that
Speaker 1: had been told until the publication of the book, at least,
Speaker 1: I hope so. Okay, no, no, I think so, because
Speaker 1: you know what I thought about. But there's been a
Speaker 1: lot of great books about prohibition. I mean, it was
Speaker 1: a one by Daniel Oakrank Last Call, and I think
Speaker 1: that probably helped shape the docum menory that ken Burns
Speaker 1: did about prohibition a few years ago. But your book
Speaker 1: really does break this sort of new ground in terms
Speaker 1: of emphasizing the role in the sort of rise of
Speaker 1: the American state. But just to quickly go to the
Speaker 1: period that was led up to the eighteenth Amendment. As
Speaker 1: you point out, there's these temperance movements in America. There
Speaker 1: were states that are prohibited alcohol in the middle of
Speaker 1: the nineteenth century, and then repeal those things the temperance
Speaker 1: moment begins to rise again. And some of that history
Speaker 1: is quite familiar, right. We know that you know that
Speaker 1: there's an element of Protestant churches. We know there's the
Speaker 1: progressive movement that was bringing us all these good things
Speaker 1: like child labor protection and food and drug control and
Speaker 1: antitrust laws and women's right to vote and uh direct
Speaker 1: election of senators. So there was an active progressive movement.
Speaker 1: Alcohol prohibition gets caught up in all of that. There's
Speaker 1: also the concerns about industrialization. You know, workers having accidents
Speaker 1: and factories, automobiles emerging, people are driving drunk and dying
Speaker 1: on the rows. All of these things are going together.
Speaker 1: But you really hone in especially on sort of this
Speaker 1: particular marriage between progressivism, that progressive era that brought us
Speaker 1: all those good things and also embraces alcohol prohibition and
Speaker 1: then evangelical Protestanism. And you point, for example, with the
Speaker 1: starts of the Women's Christian Temperance Union back in the
Speaker 1: eighteen seventies. So talk about that marriage there, that that relationship,
Speaker 1: and how that distinctly marks you know, the u S
Speaker 1: experience and how the how we emerge evolve from a
Speaker 1: sort of temperance movement that's really focused on alcohol moderation
Speaker 1: and not total prohibition into a full throttle prohibition movement. Right. Well,
Speaker 1: it's really interesting because there was this hundred year old
Speaker 1: campaign for temperance that was very much focused on individual discipline,
Speaker 1: on taking a pledge to basically discipline oneself against the
Speaker 1: addiction and the problem of alcohol excessive alcohol consumption. By
Speaker 1: the late nineteenth century, with the emergence of the Women's
Speaker 1: Christians Temperance Union, the Anti Saloon League, there is a
Speaker 1: sense that individual abstinence is not going to be enough
Speaker 1: to solve the problem of the liquor issue, and there's
Speaker 1: a turn toward using you know, sort of policy, using
Speaker 1: the law at the state and local level. But with
Speaker 1: the rise of progressivism in the early twentieth century, there's
Speaker 1: a turn toward using the federal government to solve social
Speaker 1: and economic problems. And this is really a big moment
Speaker 1: in that period of constitutional activism. Right it's the moment
Speaker 1: when we get the direct election of senators, where we
Speaker 1: get the income tax amendment. It's the moment where we
Speaker 1: get four amendments within a period of less than a decade,
Speaker 1: including women's suffrage. So the turn towards constitutional activism and
Speaker 1: towards using the federal government to solve social and economic
Speaker 1: problems is one in which progressives are fundamentally aware of
Speaker 1: and interested in using to solve the alcohol problem. But
Speaker 1: it also intersects then with the absolutest crusade of these
Speaker 1: folks within the evangelical Christian move meant, those within the
Speaker 1: Anti Saloon League and the w c TU, the Women's
Speaker 1: Christian Temperance Union, that are far more stringent in their approach. Right,
Speaker 1: So they don't just want to get rid of regulate alcohol,
Speaker 1: which may have been a solution progressive reformers might have embraced.
Speaker 1: They want to go full hog and basically outlaw all imbibing.
Speaker 1: And there's a relationship between those two movements, and what
Speaker 1: ends up happening is that the solution proposed by those
Speaker 1: that are more along the evangelical Christian lines is the
Speaker 1: one that comes to fruition, which is a total ban
Speaker 1: on alcohol, which essentially far basically outruns many of the
Speaker 1: problems that were proposed in generating a whole new slew
Speaker 1: and setup problems in the nineties. As a result of
Speaker 1: this total absolute ban on all forms of liquor imbibing. Well,
Speaker 1: you also bring into sort of European dimensions here, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, one is the fact that part of what
Speaker 1: accelerates dramatically the progress towards the eighteenth Amendment and and
Speaker 1: the banning of alcohol, I mean to an extent that
Speaker 1: it goes much faster than even that, even faster than
Speaker 1: any of the advocates expect, is World War One. And
Speaker 1: that results in a kind of anti German sentiment. It
Speaker 1: results in, you know, people being opposed to the breweries
Speaker 1: which are German owned. It results in a serit of
Speaker 1: wartime self sacrifice, so that people are y ways grain
Speaker 1: on drinking when we should be getting it to the
Speaker 1: troops and for that sort of thing. But then there's
Speaker 1: another element to this, right, which is that the the
Speaker 1: temperance movement is also happening in Europe and other parts
Speaker 1: of the Anglophone world in the late nineteenth early twentieth century.
Speaker 1: They're placing restrictions on alcohol. They're doing time and place restrictions,
Speaker 1: they're limiting hard liquor, all these sorts of things. But
Speaker 1: almost nobody except sort of you know, Finland and Iceland
Speaker 1: are going for full alcohol prohibition. And the argument you make,
Speaker 1: as I understand it correctly, is that the reason, the
Speaker 1: key reason America, which initially is almost following in the
Speaker 1: footsteps of the Europeans, sort of leapfrogs them into total prohibition,
Speaker 1: is this event jelical Protestant dimension. That's right. You know,
Speaker 1: it's interesting because World War One is incredibly important for
Speaker 1: basically spiraling the Crusade to success, uh and without World One,
Speaker 1: it's possible that the prohibition Amendment would never have passed. Basically,
Speaker 1: it's during the war that because you see all of
Speaker 1: these kind of efforts across those nations were involved in
Speaker 1: the war to limit alcohol consumption, right, to provide food
Speaker 1: for the troops with hops and wheat, basically, to uh,
Speaker 1: you know, sort of to discipline the troops. Um, they're
Speaker 1: all sorts of partial prohibitionary measures that are passed. But
Speaker 1: the US, again, it's it's exactly what you say is
Speaker 1: correct that because of the evangelical Protestant crusaders kind of
Speaker 1: more absolutest approach, the United States does not go for
Speaker 1: a partial prohibitionary measure, rather for a total and complete ban.
Speaker 1: And of course, once the prohibition Amendment is passed, the
Speaker 1: way at the enforcement legislation defines alcohol consumption as point
Speaker 1: five percent of alcohol as an intoxicating beverage, means that
Speaker 1: all alcohol, wines, gears, and distilled liquors will be banned,
Speaker 1: uh in total. And that essentially is a very very
Speaker 1: different kind of experience than than it happened in many
Speaker 1: many other industrial countries that were during war time past
Speaker 1: these partial prohibitionary measures. So the US ends up in
Speaker 1: a unique position for a large industrial nation and with
Speaker 1: a unique set of problems in its wake, and also
Speaker 1: with a kind of unique form of state building that
Speaker 1: comes out of prohibition, which pushes the US state in
Speaker 1: a direction of policing and surveillance, a state that becomes
Speaker 1: more heavy on coercion, uh than on social provisioning in
Speaker 1: comparison to some other European states. Well, in that context,
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about Richard Hobson. Uh. Yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: Hobson was one of the what was called fathers of prohibition.
Speaker 1: He was the highest paid lecturer for the Anti Saloon League.
Speaker 1: He had been uh in the military, was a military
Speaker 1: figure who really sought to use the state. Two. Was
Speaker 1: sort of aggressive and using the state to solve what
Speaker 1: he saw as social and economic problems. He was a
Speaker 1: very strong anti liquor crusader. What's fascinating about him is that, uh,
Speaker 1: first he comes out with all sorts of exaggerated tropes
Speaker 1: about the problem and danger of alcohol. Uh. You know
Speaker 1: that basically then this is classic for the probition movement.
Speaker 1: More broadly, that alcohol consumption is responsible for half of poverty,
Speaker 1: for insane asylums, for you know, all sorts of problems. Basically,
Speaker 1: alcohol prohibition is seen as a panacea for many prohibitionists.
Speaker 1: Richmond Hopson. Was so interesting about him is during the
Speaker 1: nineteen twenties, he moved from the crusade against alcohol toward
Speaker 1: a crusade against other forms of narcotic drugs. And that's
Speaker 1: where I argue in my book that there's a kind
Speaker 1: of symbiotic relationship between the crusade against alcohol and the
Speaker 1: crusade against narcotic substances. More broadly, It's something that's pretty much,
Speaker 1: I think been neglected because we have a tendency to
Speaker 1: look at alcohol prohibition very very much as a different
Speaker 1: kind of crusade than the crusade against other narcotic drugs.
Speaker 1: But if you look at somebody like Richmond Hobson, you
Speaker 1: see the connections. It's almost a little more complicated in
Speaker 1: that because even before I think he gets involved alcohol prohibition,
Speaker 1: he has his own interaction with the prohibition of drugs
Speaker 1: and opium when the United States occupies the Philippines and
Speaker 1: they have an opium control system there that's left over
Speaker 1: working pretty well for elderly opium users and under pressure
Speaker 1: from within the US right from you know, oftentimes religious
Speaker 1: figures on Bishop Brent is one and I think Hobson
Speaker 1: is another. You know, they basically get their initial taste
Speaker 1: through a post you know, basically pushing for an arcotics
Speaker 1: control and bands on opium imports and a more international approach,
Speaker 1: which is not so much the story with alcohol prohibition,
Speaker 1: right it is it is in this case. So Hobson
Speaker 1: almost sort of wets his teeth on the narcotic piece,
Speaker 1: then dives into alcohol and then comes back out on
Speaker 1: narcotics here. So it's a great it's a great point
Speaker 1: to make, and I think that things. So there's you
Speaker 1: see the kind of building or the forging of a
Speaker 1: kind of incipient anti narcotic regime in the early twentieth century,
Speaker 1: particularly around opium. But until you get national prohibition, you
Speaker 1: do not see the kind of criminalization of addiction at
Speaker 1: the level you do in the in the wake of prohibition.
Speaker 1: So it's in the nineties twenties, um, that you get
Speaker 1: really sort of the end of addiction maintenance, a far
Speaker 1: more p approach toward users. And you know somebody like um,
Speaker 1: Harry Ansling or who basically says that, you know, you
Speaker 1: should lock him up and throw away the key approach
Speaker 1: to alcohol prohibition that he also sought to forge, but
Speaker 1: that was less successful. But towards drug use he was
Speaker 1: a far more successful in doing right, I mean, Harry answer,
Speaker 1: there is another crossover guy. Right. He spends the early
Speaker 1: nineteen thirties heading the Foreign Control section of the U s.
Speaker 1: National Bureau of Alcohol Probition Enforcement, and then in nineteen
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, in the late twenties, and then in becomes
Speaker 1: the first head of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics. So
Speaker 1: he's another person who transitions over as And we're sort
Speaker 1: of jumping ahead of our story here because you also
Speaker 1: get that with the Rich Women Christian Temperance Union when
Speaker 1: ultimately prohibition gets repealed and they make a shift over.
Speaker 1: But I want to dive into one more point before
Speaker 1: we get actually two the years of prohibition, which is
Speaker 1: you also point out that part of the transformation is
Speaker 1: happening only twentieth century. Is this massive immigration happening into America.
Speaker 1: Right that by fifteen percent of the American population is
Speaker 1: far and born in New York City, It's by nineteen
Speaker 1: twenty in Chicago, by two thirds of all people living
Speaker 1: there either far and born or the children of far
Speaker 1: and born parents. So there's this massive transformation with immigrants
Speaker 1: coming from southern and Eastern Europe and basically the older
Speaker 1: multi generation of white folks who had come from Western
Speaker 1: and Northern Europe and earlier generations freaking out, and for them,
Speaker 1: the association with alcohol is huge, and particularly the saloon culture.
Speaker 1: So just elaborate upon why in many respects that you
Speaker 1: have this movement where the saloon culture really becomes the
Speaker 1: dominant element of the prohibition movement. Yeah, I mean, in
Speaker 1: a way, the salute, the problem of the saloon, of
Speaker 1: the saloon is what brought progressive reformers together with those evangelicals.
Speaker 1: So progressives were largely concerned about the problems faced by
Speaker 1: poor immigrants, the ways in which you know, there was
Speaker 1: great poverty in these cities, unpaved streets, and of course
Speaker 1: these this new institution of the saloon. There was actually
Speaker 1: a decline in the late nineteenth century of the use
Speaker 1: of hard liquors, but there was also a rise in
Speaker 1: beer consumption, and beer consumption was associated with the the
Speaker 1: imbibing in the kind of all male, boisterous public space
Speaker 1: of the saloon, and the balloons were ubiquitous in urban
Speaker 1: uh immigrant ethnic neighborhoods. Um they were also spaces where
Speaker 1: politics took place, and they were associated with big urban machines.
Speaker 1: Another issue for progressives who saw machines as extremely corrupt
Speaker 1: and sought to tamp down on the power of machines.
Speaker 1: So shutting down the saloon was a way of basically,
Speaker 1: in their eyes, solving the problem of those men who
Speaker 1: stopped in the saloon on the way home, solving a
Speaker 1: problem for women who were faced with more abusive husbands
Speaker 1: once they arrived home from the saloon. Um, and also
Speaker 1: solving the problem of the of the nature of the
Speaker 1: saloon is a political space. So those progressives linked up
Speaker 1: with these sort of uh evangelical Christian men and women
Speaker 1: basically forming a consensus around we need to eradicate the
Speaker 1: saloon problem. Uh, and that saloon problem became the kind
Speaker 1: of force that snowballed and basically helped to lead to uh,
Speaker 1: the National Prohibition Amendment. Okay, So basically this brings us
Speaker 1: up to nineteen twenty. All these variables in play. The
Speaker 1: fact that we had passed the sixteenth Amendment instituting an
Speaker 1: income tax meant that the federal government was not quite
Speaker 1: so dependent upon taxes and alcohol, which I think it
Speaker 1: counter for almost of the federal budget at that time.
Speaker 1: So that alleviate that you had the whole wartime period
Speaker 1: where the federal government, as during the Civil War, plays
Speaker 1: a bigger role in American society. You had some progressive
Speaker 1: era and stuff to having making that happen as well. Right,
Speaker 1: and so get national alcohol prohibition, and initially, right, there's
Speaker 1: a huge period of optimism that this thing can actually work,
Speaker 1: all sorts of surprising people's support, even people who had
Speaker 1: opposed alcohol prohibition said let's give it a try. You
Speaker 1: see a dramatic drop in alcohol consumption, alcohol ills in
Speaker 1: those early years, right, you know, things are looking good,
Speaker 1: but resistance is beginning to emerge. So talk about the
Speaker 1: early elements of that, well, I mean, you know, it
Speaker 1: has to realize in terms of this sort of optimism
Speaker 1: or feeling that one should even somebody like Felix Frankfort
Speaker 1: who had posed the passage of the amendment and said,
Speaker 1: let's give it a chance. Right, it was part of
Speaker 1: the constitution. No constitutional amendment had ever been rescinded. So
Speaker 1: it's certainly made sense it was now law of the land,
Speaker 1: that there would be efforts at enforcement, and that there
Speaker 1: was some sense of optimism in that early moment. But
Speaker 1: you know, many places were extremely quote unquote wet and sentiment,
Speaker 1: especially urban big cities with lots of immigrant populations, They
Speaker 1: had no inten of basically stopping their desire for what
Speaker 1: was important part of their leisure life and cultural habits
Speaker 1: and certain elements of of uh, you know, religious life.
Speaker 1: So basically there was efforts to continue consumption, and there were,
Speaker 1: of course, given the desire for Americans to continue in binding.
Speaker 1: Very soon there were those who already had been involved
Speaker 1: in other kinds of prostitution rings or gambling that saw
Speaker 1: an opportunity for a incredibly thriving possibility for a black
Speaker 1: market in alcohol training and as a result, of course,
Speaker 1: you know, organized criminal rings basically generated new forms of
Speaker 1: supply um and oiled their operations with forms of corruption
Speaker 1: up and down the federal enforcement chain. So even though
Speaker 1: there was there was tremendous amounts of effort to enforce
Speaker 1: prohibition and actually optimism and that this law would be
Speaker 1: enforced right the prohibition or it was established customs officers
Speaker 1: responsible for forcing the law, that border patrol got involved
Speaker 1: with enforcement, and of course at the state and local level,
Speaker 1: most states passed their own enforcement laws, and so there,
Speaker 1: you know, was some sense that this could potentially work
Speaker 1: and that quickly, however, fell apart because of the fact
Speaker 1: that many Americans still desired to continue to imbibe, and
Speaker 1: they did so, and and prohibition generated an entire new,
Speaker 1: subterranean kind of black market for alcohol. We'll be talking
Speaker 1: more after we hear this. Add So, there's one character
Speaker 1: that I didn't know about until I read your book,
Speaker 1: UM and just talk about his role and how he plays.
Speaker 1: It's not just he plays a huge I don't know
Speaker 1: if he plays a big national role, but it's his
Speaker 1: ways of thinking about it that really sort of shaped
Speaker 1: the evolution of the movement to repeal alcohol prohibition. And
Speaker 1: here I'm thinking about Anton Chernak. If I'm saying his
Speaker 1: name right, the Chicago based politician explain what was significant
Speaker 1: about him. Anton was a kind of significant figure in
Speaker 1: Chicago UM and basically became it was sort of an
Speaker 1: bohemian from Bohemia and ethnic immigrant who was really deeply
Speaker 1: opposed to prohibition. UM and mobilized essentially immigrant groups in
Speaker 1: Chicago at the local level to oppose prohibition and passing
Speaker 1: a series of sort of proposals at the local level
Speaker 1: in Chicago against prohibition that we're not going to have
Speaker 1: force at the national level, but showing this kind of
Speaker 1: staunch anti immigrant sentiment um and basically you know, argued that,
Speaker 1: you know, the the only way to get rid of
Speaker 1: organized crime was to get rid of Prohibition. So Anton
Speaker 1: Saramac basically was one of these local figures that I
Speaker 1: think showed the incredible opposition of ethnic immigrant working class
Speaker 1: men and women to Prohibition way before Al Smith came
Speaker 1: into the picture. Al Smith, of course, was a prominent
Speaker 1: Irish Catholic, multi term governor of New York who eventually
Speaker 1: ran for president in n But what long before that,
Speaker 1: somebody like Anton Saramac had been mobilizing within the Democratic
Speaker 1: Party at the local level and bringing ethnic working class
Speaker 1: men and women into the Democratic Party around Prohibition opposition.
Speaker 1: And that's really important because this is a moment where
Speaker 1: you see Prohibition generating a new politicization of men and
Speaker 1: women who had basically you have, not been part of
Speaker 1: certainly not part of national politics, who increasingly come to
Speaker 1: become an important part of the Democratic Party coalition in
Speaker 1: the twenties as a result of Prohibition opposition, right, I mean,
Speaker 1: part of what you get to right around n and
Speaker 1: al Smith. Al Smith is really the first Catholic to
Speaker 1: run for a major major party nomination for president, and
Speaker 1: he runs strongly on an anti repeal prohibition line. He
Speaker 1: gets obliterated in night in the election by Herbert Hoover,
Speaker 1: but nonetheless plays a major role in sort of shifting
Speaker 1: this coalition, right, one where you have basically where we're
Speaker 1: working class people in immigrants has sort of been divided
Speaker 1: between Democrats and Republicans, depending upon local politics, depending upon ethnicity,
Speaker 1: really begins to pull them all together. And this was
Speaker 1: also a group where you know, wine and beer was
Speaker 1: always very much part of the culture, so it sort
Speaker 1: of made sense that you would see this emergence happening
Speaker 1: out of places like Chicago. But the other group, of
Speaker 1: course a African Americans, right, And what's interesting there is
Speaker 1: a little bit different because African Americans have more of
Speaker 1: a temperance culture. They're not typically Catholic, they have more
Speaker 1: of a tradition, you know, ministers playing a very powerful role, right,
Speaker 1: many of them support alcohol prohibition, and then sort of
Speaker 1: alcohol prohibition kind of comes along and low and behold,
Speaker 1: they find just what this sort of working class whites
Speaker 1: do that when it comes to enforcing the prohibition laws,
Speaker 1: it's not you know, middle and upper middle class white
Speaker 1: families that are by and large getting you know, rested
Speaker 1: or having their houses raider, being thrown in jail. It's blacks,
Speaker 1: and it's poor whites in the South and in the
Speaker 1: and in the and the urban cities. Part of what
Speaker 1: I'm curious about, why did this occur or did it
Speaker 1: occur to basically leading black leaders the book or T.
Speaker 1: Washington's the others at that time in the early twentieth century.
Speaker 1: Why didn't they oppose prohibition anticipating that they would be
Speaker 1: the principal victims of its enforcements. I think it's important
Speaker 1: to look at a kind of class division, that there's
Speaker 1: a sort of politics of respect ability among the middle
Speaker 1: class African Americans who really, you know, sort of believe
Speaker 1: that there is a way that limiting alcohol consumption, just
Speaker 1: like progressive white progressive reformers did for the white working class,
Speaker 1: would uplift those others, right, poor others, poor African Americans. Um,
Speaker 1: but I think, what so, there is a kind of
Speaker 1: a way in which many of the sort of elite
Speaker 1: voices when in the African American community at the early
Speaker 1: edge of prohibition, are in fact supportive of prohibition. That
Speaker 1: falls apart pretty quickly when they see the repercussions um
Speaker 1: and why they didn't see it before. We prohibition is
Speaker 1: in a way, it's dramatically new, at least at the
Speaker 1: national level, and the the implications for black communities are
Speaker 1: very intense, and that it becomes quickly known in places
Speaker 1: like South Side of Chicago or Harlem in New York
Speaker 1: where police would allow vice, the vice districts deplour ish,
Speaker 1: right And as a result of that, it's not only
Speaker 1: that poor African Americans are being arrested thrown in jail
Speaker 1: for violating the law a disproportioned rates. It's also that
Speaker 1: the violence that's rained down through elicit markets occurse of
Speaker 1: course within African American communities, right, they're the most affected
Speaker 1: by the violence that happens in gang warfare in these
Speaker 1: illicit industries. Um. So, bombings take place in so outside
Speaker 1: of Chicago and Harlem and other places, and of course
Speaker 1: this is a place where you get slumming right where
Speaker 1: they're Whites in other parts of the city go for
Speaker 1: their entertainment uh and for imbibing and so all of that.
Speaker 1: Then African American leaders quickly see the problems of prohibition
Speaker 1: and somebody like Marcus Garvey actually had always been who's
Speaker 1: an outlier in a way, sort of the very well
Speaker 1: known black nationalist who was was initially opposed to prohibition.
Speaker 1: It comes out really forcefully against it, but pretty soon
Speaker 1: you get a lot of leaders African American leisure oppos
Speaker 1: is what basically they see unfolding with all the eighteenth Amendment.
Speaker 1: So now this gets us into the thick of prohibition
Speaker 1: where in the mid to late twenties now, right, and
Speaker 1: while you have on the one hand, this disproportioned enforcement,
Speaker 1: especially against blacks and other minorities working then oftentimes poor
Speaker 1: whites and sometimes working class whites in other areas, you
Speaker 1: also have the prohibition culture that emerges. Right. You have
Speaker 1: the Harlem renaissance, You have the jazz culture. You have
Speaker 1: white people going to hear jazz. You have all the
Speaker 1: excitement in New York and that emanating out to the
Speaker 1: rest of the country. You have blacks and whites interacting
Speaker 1: more and more in terms of on the bootlegging, right,
Speaker 1: oftentimes blacks working for white but more and more working
Speaker 1: together on this sort of stuff. And so there's a transformation.
Speaker 1: You know, women going because it's not saloons anymore. But
Speaker 1: now they're going to speak easies, and there's and and
Speaker 1: there's greater you know, gender not about equality, but sort
Speaker 1: of gender mixing in places where previously that would not
Speaker 1: have been accepted for quote unquote good women to go to.
Speaker 1: And obviously what happens is is the Women's Christian Temperance Union,
Speaker 1: the Evangelical Protestants are freaking out, The old Anti Saloon
Speaker 1: League is freaking out, and they find an ally in
Speaker 1: the ku Klux Klan, which had fallen on hard times
Speaker 1: and now sees alcohol prohibition and the potential to play
Speaker 1: a role as an enforcement arm of prohibition as their great,
Speaker 1: big opportunity. So tell us a little more about that,
Speaker 1: you know, sort of ugly partnership between these three major players. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, I think that it's exactly right to point
Speaker 1: out that prohibition really does despite all of the efforts
Speaker 1: and enforcement, and despite the fact that you know, prison
Speaker 1: numbers are rising, men and women are being incarce incarcerated
Speaker 1: selectively right working class men and women, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: white Ethnics, African Americans. Still there's this huge revolutionizing of
Speaker 1: nightlife and as you also point out, sort of this
Speaker 1: racial mixing as well as gender mixing, and the new
Speaker 1: subterranean kind of world of the saloon, or that what
Speaker 1: not the saloon, but now the kind of cocktail world
Speaker 1: of of these new drink spaces, And that generates a
Speaker 1: tremendous amount of anxiety among those men and women who
Speaker 1: had fought so hard to pass the law. Right the
Speaker 1: w c TU, the Anti Saloon League, and those men
Speaker 1: and women now see that this is prohibition, is the
Speaker 1: law of the land. So they're looking for ways to
Speaker 1: enforce it. Right there, w c TU comes up with
Speaker 1: the motto, work for enforcement where you are. The Anti
Speaker 1: Saloon League also seeks to work for enforcement. Well. When
Speaker 1: the Kool Klux Klan, which is of course a white supremacist,
Speaker 1: anti immigrant, anti Catholic organization, sells itself to white evangelical
Speaker 1: men and women who already anxious about the problem right
Speaker 1: the scandal of the lack of law enforcement, the clan
Speaker 1: sees an opportunity to basically use the problem of the
Speaker 1: lack of enforcement, the problem of the kind of of
Speaker 1: bootlegging of speakeasies and argue that we will clean up.
Speaker 1: We will going to clean up your community. Right, So
Speaker 1: they instrumentalize the law to recruit men and women into
Speaker 1: their ranks quite successfully. So you see, basically the clan
Speaker 1: was established in nineteen fifteen, but it's in nineteen twenty
Speaker 1: that they begin to really take off. They do so
Speaker 1: partly because it's the wake of World War One, there's
Speaker 1: a lot of anxiety about returning African American veterans, the
Speaker 1: kind of new militancy in the community. But they also
Speaker 1: do so because they have an opportunity with this new
Speaker 1: law of the land, to sell themselves to white Evangelical
Speaker 1: Protestants as a law enforcement organization. Right, So they recruit
Speaker 1: around the issue of bootlegging. We're gonna come in, we're
Speaker 1: gonna clean up your community. Of course, who they target
Speaker 1: in their enforcement raids is the drinking of not themselves
Speaker 1: because they're they're not totally tempered themselves, but off the
Speaker 1: drinking of others, right, Catholics, immigrants, African Americans. Um. So
Speaker 1: they use prohibition, they use the at the Amendment as
Speaker 1: a as a mechanism to basically, uh, you know, boost
Speaker 1: themselves and become incredibly powerful in the nineties. Right, you're
Speaker 1: leading out a little bit here the role the Jews too,
Speaker 1: I mean, the leading anti Semite of the day, Henry Ford.
Speaker 1: You quote his newspaper at one point saying, you know
Speaker 1: where his dearborn independence says that of all bootlegging is
Speaker 1: Jewish right and at KKK also being anti Semitic, although
Speaker 1: obviously the numbers of the Catholics are much much greater,
Speaker 1: and in a way some of this reminds me. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, you have them getting involved in the same
Speaker 1: way that sort of in vigilante groups and citizen armies,
Speaker 1: in the way that you had people in the southwestern
Speaker 1: more recent decades mobilizing to try to do something about
Speaker 1: illegal you know, immigration in the United States, or maybe
Speaker 1: there's even analogy to make, or recently with the recent
Speaker 1: changes in some of these laws to allow civilian lawsuits
Speaker 1: right against people involved in abortion once again trying to mobilize.
Speaker 1: Are sometimes arm sort of citizen groups that are welcomed
Speaker 1: by law enforce authorities, even federal law enforcement authorities, because
Speaker 1: they just feel understaffed overman like you know, billy putting
Speaker 1: their finger in the dike of you know, a widespread
Speaker 1: law violation. That's right. So basically the clan not only
Speaker 1: operates at the local level, as a kind of bolt
Speaker 1: to bolster local policing, but at certain points is deputized
Speaker 1: in fact, at one point by the Federal Prohibition Bureau
Speaker 1: to serve as kind of ground troops to help to
Speaker 1: clean up these communities. So in the case I look
Speaker 1: at in terms of the citizen enforcement Army in southern Illinois,
Speaker 1: you have clan members going to Washington, traveling to Washington
Speaker 1: to say, hey, we need your help cleaning up our communities.
Speaker 1: Is that we have a wide open community in Williamson County, Illinois.
Speaker 1: And Roy Haynes at that time is the head of
Speaker 1: the Federal Prohibition Bureau says, you know what, we we
Speaker 1: don't have the band power, We don't have the people
Speaker 1: power to do it. But if you, if you will
Speaker 1: sort of as as sort of foot soldiers and find
Speaker 1: the evidence, you know, we will bring in federal uh.
Speaker 1: We we will deputize and bring in Federal Prohibition Bureau
Speaker 1: agents to help you. And basically the federal government deputizes
Speaker 1: essentially folks who are members of the clan to conduct
Speaker 1: a series of raids, and those raids at first target roadhouses,
Speaker 1: target bootleg facilities, and soon it devolves into an attack
Speaker 1: essentially on the what is largely an Italian Catholic presence
Speaker 1: in herren Uh and Marian in Williamson County, Illinois, where
Speaker 1: basically Catholic churches are rated UM and immigrant homes are
Speaker 1: also rated UM. And it becomes really almost a form
Speaker 1: of terrorism against the community which is leveraged or utilized
Speaker 1: and led by the clan deputized by the Prohibition Bureau.
Speaker 1: This becomes such a problem for the Bureau that by
Speaker 1: ninety six and twenty seven they're arguing, we cannot utilize
Speaker 1: any citizen ballvolunteers in our raids because they often turned
Speaker 1: so violent. But you see, it's not just in Williamson County,
Speaker 1: but in other parts of the country. The clan it
Speaker 1: backs and supports local police who are overwhelmed to conduct
Speaker 1: raids and to try to shut down drinking establishments. I mean,
Speaker 1: at least I'll tell you, I mean some of the
Speaker 1: analogies here and obviously because your other work on the
Speaker 1: new Right to the contemporary day, I mean, the KKK
Speaker 1: is not just fringe. Then it's electing senators, it's electing governors.
Speaker 1: It has real political power, and their extreme it also,
Speaker 1: you know, and it reminds me of what's a little
Speaker 1: bit what was going on today where you have a
Speaker 1: really radical kind of you know, trumpist right wing you know,
Speaker 1: element that's becoming more and more powerful, it seems in
Speaker 1: the United States, and even though they were sort of
Speaker 1: you know, just by the edge defeated in many places
Speaker 1: in the recent election, seems to be gaining traction among
Speaker 1: a growing on a number of Americans. And also the
Speaker 1: history of political violence. I mean, we think about America
Speaker 1: as not having had much political violence since the assassination's
Speaker 1: late sixties and some of the racial violence that happened then.
Speaker 1: But when you take us back to that era of
Speaker 1: the teams in the twenties, when you had literally fights
Speaker 1: over prohibition, political fights things like that, with people being killed,
Speaker 1: people being threatened. Um, I mean, it reminds us that,
Speaker 1: you know, America, you know, does have these levels, that
Speaker 1: has these histories of significant sort of social cultural political violence,
Speaker 1: and in some respects it at the times seems like
Speaker 1: we may be returning to some days like that. I mean,
Speaker 1: where you might even fear that you know, state you know,
Speaker 1: state police forces might begin to ally with civil arms,
Speaker 1: civilian military groups. I don't want to get too dramatic here,
Speaker 1: but I have to say one on bleak mornings, I
Speaker 1: sometimes wonder whether we might be returning to that period
Speaker 1: of a hundred years ago. Yeah, I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: history doesn't repeat itself, but it certainly has echoes and
Speaker 1: rhymes from the past. So um, you know, I think
Speaker 1: certainly in terms of the sort of paramilitary or vigilante
Speaker 1: forces that we see with Proud Boys or others, you know,
Speaker 1: there are sort of obviously it's quite reminiscent of some
Speaker 1: of the kind of paramilitary forces like the Clan. Although
Speaker 1: again the Clan was, as you point out, which is
Speaker 1: really important, not simply vigilante organization, right. I mean, it
Speaker 1: gained political power in several different states, um, and exercise
Speaker 1: tremendous amount of sway in the nineteen twenties, So I
Speaker 1: think that's really important to point out to You also
Speaker 1: make the point in the South and the enforcement it
Speaker 1: was obviously the targeting of black Americans, but also quite
Speaker 1: a fair bit of targeting of poor white Americans. And
Speaker 1: then sometimes that you know, in many of these states,
Speaker 1: even though blacks were substantial minority of the population, you
Speaker 1: still had poor whites in some states being a majority
Speaker 1: of those who are getting locked up, and it reminds
Speaker 1: me a bit of what we've seen in the last
Speaker 1: and fifteen years around the attacks on meth amphetamine, where
Speaker 1: that's large, by and large, not a black issue, especially
Speaker 1: in certain parts of the country. It's a white, poor
Speaker 1: white one, and where you see that racism is the
Speaker 1: driving force between behind modern outcome, behind modern drug prohibition.
Speaker 1: But that class element and that element of targeting poor
Speaker 1: whites involved in illicit trade, you know, was something that
Speaker 1: you know, the white establishment of the South and parts
Speaker 1: of the westerner are perfectly willing to engage in. Yeah. No,
Speaker 1: I think that there are parallels there as well. It
Speaker 1: was African Americans in New South cities, but it was
Speaker 1: also poor rural whites that ended up find jailed incarcerated
Speaker 1: for long terms. I mean, it was as long as
Speaker 1: you were a marginal really the marginal violators, right, so
Speaker 1: those who were kind of you know, having a back,
Speaker 1: uh sort of still, but not those who could afford
Speaker 1: the levels of protection that organized crime rings required, right,
Speaker 1: So that the problem essentially devolved on poor marginal violators, black, white,
Speaker 1: Mexican American whatever they might be, those who were identified
Speaker 1: already within public discourse with kind of criminality. Um, and
Speaker 1: I think you can see certainly parallels with today as well.
Speaker 1: So politically back then, I mean, the Republicans are sort
Speaker 1: of the dominant party from the late nineteenth century until
Speaker 1: roughly the nineteen thirty and the Democrats keep trying to
Speaker 1: break through. Both parties are appealing to working class voters
Speaker 1: as well as to the corporations. You know, Republicans are
Speaker 1: seen more as the world as the party of corporate America,
Speaker 1: but you know, they're also identified with Lincoln and abolition
Speaker 1: of slavery and things like that, and they're doing some
Speaker 1: stuff they're you know, they're claiming to do in terms
Speaker 1: of workers rights. But Al Smith, you point out in
Speaker 1: the eight really begins to organize and bring to the
Speaker 1: voting boost for the first time millions of ethnic, recently
Speaker 1: immigrant immigrant America's first and center generation Americans. In doing so,
Speaker 1: he lands up alienating not just through his anti prohibition
Speaker 1: centement beels because he's a Catholic. He lands up losing
Speaker 1: some of the kind of a grarian Democrat voters, the
Speaker 1: ones who have been more evangelical Protestant, the ones who
Speaker 1: had followed William Jennings Bryan, you know, the only only
Speaker 1: figure in American history ever to run for president and
Speaker 1: lose three times as head of a major national ticket.
Speaker 1: But then because of I guess really out the depression
Speaker 1: more than anything else, Holes just radically changes things. And
Speaker 1: when night as the election begins to approach in nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty two, you have party leadership in the Democrats wary
Speaker 1: of taking on this issue. Republicans are getting wary about
Speaker 1: being so associated with the support for prohibition. The Democrats
Speaker 1: were of taking it on because they still have that
Speaker 1: Southern base. But somehow this becomes a radical swing where
Speaker 1: millions and millions of people show up, um oftentimes motivated
Speaker 1: first and foremost by the desire to repeal alcohol approbition.
Speaker 1: And in thirty two though f DR, who's much more
Speaker 1: reluctant about repealing prohibition, finds he essentially has no choice
Speaker 1: but to embrace it. And you see basically a fundamental
Speaker 1: realignment happening and hardening in American politics. Um that you know,
Speaker 1: changes the composition of Republican and Democratic party. So at Leasta,
Speaker 1: just tell us more about that moment, what happened between
Speaker 1: twenty and thirty two, and with labor and others. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean that it is interesting at the Democratic Party
Speaker 1: convention because FDR was a reluctant anti prohibitionists. He didn't
Speaker 1: want really prohibition to be part of, you know, at
Speaker 1: the core issue. But ethnic white working classmen and women
Speaker 1: who had really joined the Democratic Party already by twenty
Speaker 1: eight with Al Smith at the at the front of
Speaker 1: a repeal platform, pressed the issue in thirty two, and
Speaker 1: basically Roosevelt in order to get the nomination, had to
Speaker 1: agree to repeal being a central issue for the Democratic Party.
Speaker 1: So it was that group of ethnic working class men
Speaker 1: and women, these urban dwellers who were absolutely approsed to
Speaker 1: prohibition because they saw it as an affront to their culture.
Speaker 1: They were, you know, sort of angered by the extent
Speaker 1: to which they were the ones that were they felt
Speaker 1: were suffering under the law. Um, they saw it really
Speaker 1: as an attack on their communities, and they model when
Speaker 1: they came into politics and into the Democratic Party in
Speaker 1: twenty eight and again in thirty two. So you see,
Speaker 1: twenty eight is a moment really of realignment. It's the
Speaker 1: moment where these white working class men and women who
Speaker 1: have been divided between the Republican and Democratic parties move
Speaker 1: in to the Democratic Party in the big cities, and
Speaker 1: Roosevelt consolidates that in thirty two because of basically two issues.
Speaker 1: One is the Great Depression, so these people are suffering
Speaker 1: from massive unemployment. Labor is basically arguing that something needs
Speaker 1: to be done for the working classes. But Roosevelt's not
Speaker 1: yet embracing the New Deal. So what can he do.
Speaker 1: He can declare for repeal and open up an industry
Speaker 1: without increasing federal spending. He can attack the Republicans for
Speaker 1: the extravagant spending on prohibition. So repeal becomes a very
Speaker 1: important plank in a couple of ways. One is because
Speaker 1: it draws in those white working class men and women.
Speaker 1: But the second one it satisfies some concern of labor
Speaker 1: without going so far as to increase government spending, which
Speaker 1: Roosevelt well then do after he's elected. But it's not
Speaker 1: yet a central part of this platform. So there's a
Speaker 1: kind of transitional moment there. Repeal plays an important role
Speaker 1: in kind of consoliding that early New Deal coalition. Once
Speaker 1: those men and women are part of that coalition, Roosevelt
Speaker 1: increasingly answers some of their other concerns. Uh, and we
Speaker 1: get really the coming of the New Deal. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think you write that. At the thirty two convention, the
Speaker 1: issue repeal prohibition comes up and the party leaders are
Speaker 1: still hesitant, but it gets a standing ovation for like
Speaker 1: half an hour. It's like the number one issue, you know,
Speaker 1: motivating the Democratic faithful at that point. I mean, you
Speaker 1: have the depression going on, all of this, but somehow
Speaker 1: repeal national prohibition is the one that gets the most
Speaker 1: sustained applause of everything gets. It's an incredibly significant issue,
Speaker 1: and I think it's really been neglected at that moment.
Speaker 1: It's also really important. Hoover's in big trouble because of
Speaker 1: the Great Depression, but he's also in big troll because
Speaker 1: the Republican Party straddles the issue of repeal. They have
Speaker 1: basically a very muddled platform that's trying to satisfy both
Speaker 1: wings of the party. Those are increasingly seeing, hey, you
Speaker 1: know what, we're in a great depression. We can't afford
Speaker 1: to spend money on on enforcing prohibition. But the other
Speaker 1: wing of the party, these white evangelicals who are really
Speaker 1: pushing for prohibition still, and Hoover, who is himself is
Speaker 1: a big backer a prohibition really sort of those who
Speaker 1: leave that convention argue that basically the party is going
Speaker 1: to lose, if not on the depression, definitely on the
Speaker 1: issue of repeal, and repeal is big enough, uh, that
Speaker 1: the party is in big trouble. So there are Democrats
Speaker 1: really do consolidate their support and the Republicans waffle, and
Speaker 1: that matters. The Great Depression matters a good deal as well,
Speaker 1: and one cannot forget that, of course. But the neglect
Speaker 1: I think of prohibition issue is something that you know,
Speaker 1: my book really tries to remedy, to look at its
Speaker 1: significance at that critical moment. Let's take a break here
Speaker 1: and go to an ad. There's another point you maken hear,
Speaker 1: which is that the twenties becomes maybe the first decade
Speaker 1: in American history where Americans become obsessed with crime. Right,
Speaker 1: it's not just all the prohibition is violence and the
Speaker 1: owl component all that, but it's labor strikes, race riots, anarchists, bombings,
Speaker 1: automobile accidents, you know, bank robbery steps, all of this
Speaker 1: sort of stuff, and governments at the federal state level
Speaker 1: respond to it, not unlike they did under Nixon and
Speaker 1: even more so under Reagan and Bush. In the eighties
Speaker 1: and nineties with draconian legislation. So you have, on the
Speaker 1: one hand, both the working class people and others getting
Speaker 1: even more beaten up. Even as support for prohibition is declining,
Speaker 1: They're getting more beaten it up by tougher laws, tougher enforcement,
Speaker 1: last gas efforts. And as the other thing, which is
Speaker 1: a major focus of your book, is it really it's
Speaker 1: really about the growing empowerment of the federal state and
Speaker 1: the punitive state, and the and the federal criminal justice bureaucracy.
Speaker 1: So explain more about what was going on with all that. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, prior to prohibition, the federal government had a
Speaker 1: relatively tiny role in crime control. It was really a
Speaker 1: local issue, was a state issue. But in the nineties
Speaker 1: twenties it really becomes an issue of national concern, and
Speaker 1: the federal government takes on a new responsibility for crime
Speaker 1: control that it has yet to relinquish. So it's really
Speaker 1: basically federal officials leverage the kind of deep seated concerns
Speaker 1: and the overcrime, this sort of discourse of you know,
Speaker 1: the sort of rise and wave of criminality that happens,
Speaker 1: partly because there is a whole new class of crimes
Speaker 1: as a result of prohibition, because there are more arrests
Speaker 1: and there are more prosecutions, and there is this increasing
Speaker 1: crackdown and as you mentioned your Conean legislation, so there's
Speaker 1: a whole set of concerns and as a result, the
Speaker 1: federal government basically leverages those concerns to increase the bureaucracy,
Speaker 1: to gain increased knowledge of crime and crime control, to systematize,
Speaker 1: for example, federal crime statistics. This is the moment of
Speaker 1: the birth of the uniform crime reports. It's the moment
Speaker 1: of a new consolidation of power coming out of national
Speaker 1: Prohibition in thirty two and thirty four with the Bureau
Speaker 1: of Investigation, which becomes a federal Bureau of Investigation, increases
Speaker 1: its purview and muscle. It's the moment when the Bureau
Speaker 1: of Prisons is elevated to the Fed to a become
Speaker 1: the Federal Bureau of Prisons, and prisons are expanded and
Speaker 1: systematized and reformed at the federal level to to reduce overcrowding.
Speaker 1: It's a it's a whole moment of a kind of
Speaker 1: consolidation and building of the federal what I call the
Speaker 1: federal penal state. And this is something which of course,
Speaker 1: also links up to the issue that you're really concerned
Speaker 1: about around drugs, because it's also the moment of consolidation
Speaker 1: out of the Prohibition Bureau of a a new independent
Speaker 1: Bureau of Narcotics, right uh, and the federal government, you know,
Speaker 1: gets its first National Drugs Are with Harry annslinger Um,
Speaker 1: and out of that, uh comes a whole new host
Speaker 1: of legislation in the thirties, and of course the Marijuana
Speaker 1: Tacks Act in the criminalization of marijuana at the federal level.
Speaker 1: All of this kind of merges out of essentially the
Speaker 1: way that the fire government leveraged this host of concerns
Speaker 1: around crime and crime control, as well as the kind
Speaker 1: of demise increasing demise of alcohol prohibition turning it turning
Speaker 1: its muscle in a new direction toward this growing and
Speaker 1: far longer lasting war on drugs. Yeah, Lisa, when I
Speaker 1: think about the comparison to the modern day drug war,
Speaker 1: I mean you point out that probably proportionally the growth
Speaker 1: in the prison population is certainly the federal prison population
Speaker 1: between nineteen the early twenties and the mid thirties was
Speaker 1: probably a proportional growth comparable to what happened with the
Speaker 1: modern day war on crime and drugs, where we went
Speaker 1: from a half million people behind bars to you know,
Speaker 1: two point two million people behind bars. Now, of course,
Speaker 1: the percent of the population incarcerated back then was much
Speaker 1: smaller than it was in the modern day drug war, right,
Speaker 1: but you also make the point that something like thirty
Speaker 1: percent of all the people in federal prison plus an
Speaker 1: additional are there for alcohol prohibition violations by the time
Speaker 1: prohibitions ending, and another twenty percent for narcotics violations. So,
Speaker 1: you know, you think about the modern day you know,
Speaker 1: I think about the federal prisons with the drug war.
Speaker 1: You know, we start off as the drug wars gaining
Speaker 1: speed in the late eighties or the nineties, it's roughly
Speaker 1: two thirds of the federal prison population of the hundred
Speaker 1: thousand people are there for drug law violations. You get
Speaker 1: up to today when it's half of over two hundred
Speaker 1: thousand people behind bars and drug love violations. So really,
Speaker 1: the I mean, the focus on crime is there. But
Speaker 1: as you point out, the Bureau of Prohibition Enforcement is
Speaker 1: dramatically bigger than jayker Hoover's new FBI. The FBI dosity
Speaker 1: from close to competing with it in size until probably
Speaker 1: World War two starts and FBI guess of ald encounter intelligence,
Speaker 1: so that that war on alcohol and then drugs really
Speaker 1: does drive the growth of a federal crime control establishment
Speaker 1: really more than anything in American history. Yeah, at this moment.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's really the birth of a fundamentally changed
Speaker 1: role for the federal government crime patrol and the sort
Speaker 1: of building of the initial edifice, let's say, of the
Speaker 1: federal penal state, which will enable that later and larger,
Speaker 1: longer lasting we're on drugs. So in some ways, the
Speaker 1: way I look at prohibition alcohol provision is to see
Speaker 1: it as a kind of dress rehearsal for the later again,
Speaker 1: larger and and far more let's say, quote unquote successful
Speaker 1: at least in terms of it's the way it has lasted,
Speaker 1: uh than alcohol prohibition. Um So, but they these absolutely,
Speaker 1: I mean I think that this is these are the
Speaker 1: legacies and consequences that come out of alcohol prohibition that
Speaker 1: have largely been neglected. And I think really by looking
Speaker 1: at that history it really helps us much better understand
Speaker 1: our current moment because you really see how so not
Speaker 1: not just the parallels, but the way the one led
Speaker 1: to the other, and also the problem of Once you
Speaker 1: have that edifice established, it's very difficult to go back
Speaker 1: to ground zero. Right, So federal prohibition increased, showed the
Speaker 1: muscle and power of the federal government, and we got
Speaker 1: rid of alcohol prohibition. But that muscle moved forward in
Speaker 1: different directions. But the federal government didn't just go back
Speaker 1: to where it was in nine by far not right.
Speaker 1: It grew and expanded in new directions in the way
Speaker 1: right I mean obviously, you know, a lot of the
Speaker 1: people of prohibition was driven by working class people who
Speaker 1: are people in their allies, and increasingly by middle class
Speaker 1: people who were you know, beginning to violate prohibition and
Speaker 1: just wanted the freedom to drink and that didn't have
Speaker 1: to want to be criminalized and live in fear, even
Speaker 1: though they were much less likely to be attacked by
Speaker 1: the police and anybody else. But you point out that
Speaker 1: among the wealthy business people who had traditionally aligned with
Speaker 1: the Republican Party, right, some of them, you know, begin
Speaker 1: increasing the line with the Democratic Party. They see prohibition
Speaker 1: as a threat, and for them, they hate all these
Speaker 1: things that everybody else hates about alcohol prohibition. But they're
Speaker 1: also wary about the way in which is creating the
Speaker 1: big state. You focus on John Raskob right, a wealthy
Speaker 1: businessman who becomes the chair of the Democratic Party I
Speaker 1: think in nineteen thirty or thirty two, and it sounds
Speaker 1: like that's their major fear, and ultimately, you know, they
Speaker 1: get pushed aside. Yes, So this is really I think
Speaker 1: it's quite fascinating that that many of the opponents of
Speaker 1: alcohol prohibition at the elite level are conservative men and
Speaker 1: women who believe that this is going to crack a
Speaker 1: kind of door open to providing new authority for the
Speaker 1: government to regulate all sorts of other things, not just
Speaker 1: alcohol prohibition. So that's their big concern, and overreaching federal
Speaker 1: government that could potentially regulate the economy. Well, it turns out,
Speaker 1: in fact they were right, because it did crack that
Speaker 1: door open. And while there was a great deal of
Speaker 1: hostility among those ethnic working class men and women toward prohibition,
Speaker 1: they saw that the fed that federal power was being misused,
Speaker 1: but they could they could turn it and hopefully use
Speaker 1: that same power in a different direction. That's precisely what
Speaker 1: they did. So essentially, those within the Democratic Party made
Speaker 1: the argument these men and women that hey, look, you
Speaker 1: know we have been able. We passed the eighteen Amendment.
Speaker 1: The federal government did all of this. You're gonna tell
Speaker 1: me that we can't pass a thirty hour a week bill.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's sort of a ways in which they
Speaker 1: saw we now have that power. We don't want it
Speaker 1: to regulate our private lives. We want to have be
Speaker 1: able to imbibe and to drink and have our leisure,
Speaker 1: but we want to use that power and turn it
Speaker 1: in a different direction. And that is precisely what happened
Speaker 1: with the New Deal. So those those years, that the
Speaker 1: whole decade of that debate over the scope of federal
Speaker 1: power and made the federal government visible in people's lives
Speaker 1: in a fundamentally new way. And as a result, I
Speaker 1: think that it contributed to the seeing the possibilities. Right,
Speaker 1: there's sort of problems, but also the possibilities of utilizing
Speaker 1: the federal government to regulate the Economy's at those folks
Speaker 1: on the elite level, like John Raskop and others. What
Speaker 1: happened once repeal happened. Alcohol provision didn't just return to
Speaker 1: localities right First, the idea was to regulate it, to
Speaker 1: use the federal government to regulated through the national Recovery Act,
Speaker 1: and at that moment, these conservs established the liberty lead
Speaker 1: because they're so threatened by this idea that the federal
Speaker 1: federal government is going to control the regulation of alcohol.
Speaker 1: And it's only when the Supreme Court declares the n
Speaker 1: r A illegal or unconstitutional that then you have the
Speaker 1: reversal of control of alcohol at the state level. But
Speaker 1: it's nowhere what it was before alcohol provision, because it's
Speaker 1: really systematized at the state level and there's far more
Speaker 1: kind of uh, sort of across the board forms of
Speaker 1: state regulation of alcohol control that had not really existed
Speaker 1: in the same way prior to prohibition. M know you. Um. Essentially,
Speaker 1: FDR kind of pulls a fast one on the businessman
Speaker 1: who support him, right, I mean, he's such a master
Speaker 1: at telling people what they want to hear. But ultimately
Speaker 1: he sides with those who are the little guy on
Speaker 1: his stuff, right, and the Rascods of the world and
Speaker 1: the other ones, you know, SEEFDR build the big state
Speaker 1: in a way that America had never had before with
Speaker 1: the exception of wartime. Yes, absolutely, yeah, so, I mean FDRs,
Speaker 1: I mean he's just a fascinating figure, of course, and
Speaker 1: he was an experiment or a doctor. And he you know,
Speaker 1: he came on board to repeal when he needed to
Speaker 1: to get that nomination um. And then when he had
Speaker 1: those ethnic men and women in the Democratic Party coalition,
Speaker 1: he listened to those voices. You know, he was willing
Speaker 1: to expand the size of the state and the scope
Speaker 1: of the state to provide some fundamental elements of security
Speaker 1: for those especially white working class men and women. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you talk about the ways in which working class folks,
Speaker 1: African American leaders and double a cp UH Clarence Darrow,
Speaker 1: the famous kind of civil liberties lawyer in early twentieth
Speaker 1: century America. You know, they're basically saying to the federal government, well,
Speaker 1: if you could put all these resources behind trying to
Speaker 1: enforce futilely the eighteenth Amendment, why can't you do the
Speaker 1: same with the fourth Amendment and the fourteenth Amendment and
Speaker 1: the ones that would benefit us little guys? Right exactly right.
Speaker 1: So again, there's the way in which that expansion of
Speaker 1: how er opens the door for all of these hosts
Speaker 1: of other questions of ways in which the federal government
Speaker 1: should essentially back rights that it had not been earlier. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So also, Lisa the Wickersham Commission. I mean, Hoover feel
Speaker 1: it feels obliged, in the face of this crime wave
Speaker 1: and discontent with prohibition to appoint this Wickersham Commission in
Speaker 1: early nine nine when he becomes president. UM. But it
Speaker 1: kind of blows up in his face, not unlike the
Speaker 1: way the Schaefer Commission blows up in Nixon's face UM
Speaker 1: on the drug issue forty years later. M hmm, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it certainly did blow up in a space
Speaker 1: in the sense that, uh, you know, he had hoped
Speaker 1: to appoint a commission which would show that there were
Speaker 1: all sorts of problems with law enforcement. But for Hoover,
Speaker 1: he had really wanted to improve enforcement. That was, he
Speaker 1: knew there were all sorts of problems, but his hope
Speaker 1: was better enforcement will result in the success of the law.
Speaker 1: Let's give it time, let's give it a chance. Like
Speaker 1: many progressives, including Jane Adams who back Toober and twenty
Speaker 1: eight precisely because he was in favor of prohibition. But
Speaker 1: you know, he appoints all sorts of really very prominent
Speaker 1: legal figures, uh and academics to this commission. It's a
Speaker 1: very large scale study, UM, which points out not just
Speaker 1: the problems of prohibition, but many, many different aspects of
Speaker 1: the problems of the criminal justice system more broadly. That
Speaker 1: Hoover was really not expecting and it was really disappoint him.
Speaker 1: It was a really disappointing commission. They come out and
Speaker 1: basically argue that prohibition is pretty much unenforceable. That you know,
Speaker 1: they give it because it's within his purview his administration.
Speaker 1: They say, let's give it some chance, but if it
Speaker 1: doesn't work out, we should repeal this. And he is
Speaker 1: totally opposed to this. Um. And basically, you know, that's
Speaker 1: another that's sort of another kind of nail in the coffin, uh,
Speaker 1: that that that helps to seal partially the fate of prohibition,
Speaker 1: because the recommendations are fully contradictory with a little report
Speaker 1: that Hoover puts out about the commission, it becomes a
Speaker 1: disastrous kind of public relations uh, you know, campaign for
Speaker 1: the administration and for prohibition as well. UM. And so this,
Speaker 1: you know, this moment between twenty nine and thirty two
Speaker 1: is really significant for eroding the support for prohibition across
Speaker 1: the Board Commission. Right, they do come under pressure from
Speaker 1: whom and others not to outright come out for repeal, right,
Speaker 1: so they sort of pull their punches on it. In fact,
Speaker 1: it came across a funny ditty that was written by
Speaker 1: Franklin Adams in New York World, where he summed up
Speaker 1: summed up the wicker Sham's commissions about prohibition, and it
Speaker 1: goes like this prohibition is an awful flop. We like it.
Speaker 1: It can't stop, it's meant to stop. We like it.
Speaker 1: It's left the trail of grafton slime. It don't prohibit
Speaker 1: worth the dime. It's filled our land with vice and crime. Nevertheless,
Speaker 1: we're for it, you know so. But I guess it
Speaker 1: was just reflected the politics at the moment, you know.
Speaker 1: So at Lisa, I'll tell you something. I mean, I'll
Speaker 1: tell you there's one other. I mean, obviously the connections
Speaker 1: and I this is just just sharing with you, my
Speaker 1: and the audience my own sort of personal um, you know, engagement.
Speaker 1: All of this is that as I was, um, you know,
Speaker 1: finishing my PhD at Harvard on international drug control and
Speaker 1: starting to teach at Princeton, just as the drug war
Speaker 1: was heating up, and I began speaking out and for me,
Speaker 1: the prohibition analogy was central. It was something that I
Speaker 1: used as a way to relate to audiences when people
Speaker 1: were you know, entirely seized by the craziness of the
Speaker 1: war on drugs and using that as the fundamental um
Speaker 1: you know framework. Now, we didn't have an eighteenth Amendment
Speaker 1: to mobilize against right, but in fact that was the
Speaker 1: key analogy, and it was one that you know, continue
Speaker 1: to resonate with people. We had to jump over the
Speaker 1: hoop where people would say alcohol is different, alcohols different
Speaker 1: arcotics are fundamentally different. But in that case we could
Speaker 1: use marijuana as an example of something that was actually
Speaker 1: less dangerous in alcohol. And in that case, in fact,
Speaker 1: that model of repealing alcohol prohibition was the one that
Speaker 1: played out very powerfully for us in the movement that
Speaker 1: we built at least repeal marijuana prohibition and to begin
Speaker 1: to roll back other aspects of the drug war. Well,
Speaker 1: and I think I think it's a it's a really
Speaker 1: um it's it's different, and yet there are so many
Speaker 1: similarities in parallels and in terms of you're right, I mean,
Speaker 1: certainly with marijuana. Um. I think the campaign has obviously
Speaker 1: been it took a long time, but it has been
Speaker 1: somewhat successful, but clearly still not at the at the
Speaker 1: federal level. Uh, at least in terms of, yes, we've
Speaker 1: got Joe Biden pardoning, but not in terms of you know,
Speaker 1: sort of decriminalizing um. But yeah, but at least I'll
Speaker 1: tell you marijuana though the notion just twenty years ago
Speaker 1: that you know, there were some quotes, you had, one
Speaker 1: quote I had. I've seen a quote by Morris Shepherd,
Speaker 1: the pro Prohibition Center from Texas, who said in nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty that the chances of eighteenth Amendment being repealed were
Speaker 1: about the same as a humming boon, you know, you know,
Speaker 1: flying to the moon, you know, with a skyscraper on
Speaker 1: its back, and three years later in fall. And so
Speaker 1: now we tend to say, oh, ho ham, well, we
Speaker 1: haven't quite legalized it nationally. But in fact, the notion
Speaker 1: of repealing marijuana prohibition was regarded as absolutely quixotic and
Speaker 1: almost absurd really until about twelve years ago. So it
Speaker 1: was a really very It wasn't quite the rapidity with
Speaker 1: which the twenty first Amendment was passed. I mean that
Speaker 1: happened so quickly in those last years, but it actually
Speaker 1: did happen very very quickly. And through building together coalitions
Speaker 1: as well. Mm hmm. No, it's an excellent point, um.
Speaker 1: And but that was successful for so many years, and
Speaker 1: it's coming apart the seems because so many of these
Speaker 1: countries that are deeply affected by you know, the sort
Speaker 1: of war on drugs are are really speaking out forcefully. Um.
Speaker 1: And that also is you know, sort of part of
Speaker 1: an important transnational coalition building to dismantle the that war
Speaker 1: on drugs as well. Yeah, I mean, the U S
Speaker 1: did try infect It was part of Harry Anslinker's job
Speaker 1: in the late twenties. His heead of the Foreign Control
Speaker 1: section of the Bureau Prohibition to try to create some
Speaker 1: sort of nascent international arrangement, and he was successful in
Speaker 1: getting treaties with about a dozen countries in the mostly
Speaker 1: in the western hemisphere of the Caribbean and elsewhere. But
Speaker 1: ultimately it was a futile, failed effort. But obviously he
Speaker 1: was a lot more successful in playing a key leading
Speaker 1: role in building the global drug prohibition regime between nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty and when he finally left office in the early
Speaker 1: nineteen sixties. Right. Well, listen, Lisa, I've loved this conversation
Speaker 1: with you. I loved your book for our listeners. Lisa
Speaker 1: mcgurre Harvard is story in the book The War on Alcohol.
Speaker 1: If you want the one go to book to read
Speaker 1: about alcohol prohibition, that's the one to get. So, Lisa,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for taking us time to speak
Speaker 1: with me and my listeners, and uh, best of luck
Speaker 1: on your future endeavors. Thanks so much, it's been a
Speaker 1: real pleasure and a great conversation. Take care, Ethan. Thanks again.
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Speaker 1: at protozoa dot com, or find me on Twitter at
Speaker 1: Ethan natal Man. You can also find contact information in
Speaker 1: our show notes. Psychoactive is a production of I Heart
Speaker 1: Radio and Protozoa Pictures. It's hosted by me Ethan Naedelman.
Speaker 1: It's produced by Noam Osband and Josh Stain. The executive
Speaker 1: producers are Dylan Golden, Ari Handel, Elizabeth Geesus and Darren
Speaker 1: Aronofsky from Protozoma Pictures, Alex Williams and Matt Frederick from
Speaker 1: My Heart Radio, and me Ethan Naedelman. Our music is
Speaker 1: by Ari Blucien and a special thanks to Avi Brios,
Speaker 1: f Bianca Grimshaw and Robert Deep. Next week we'll be
Speaker 1: bringing you a bonus episode. It's me being interviewed by
Speaker 1: my friend gian Carlo conna Vestio about my own psychedelic experiences.
Speaker 1: It's for his podcast on Mango TV, in a series
Speaker 1: called Psychedelic Confessions. Subscribe to Psychoactive now see it, don't
Speaker 1: miss it.