WEBVTT - S3E2: Ready, Willing, and Mabel 0:00:00.960 --> 0:00:02.960 Hey there, it's your host ed helms. 0:00:02.960 --> 0:00:03.160 Here. 0:00:03.560 --> 0:00:06.360 Real quick, before we dive into this episode, I wanted 0:00:06.360 --> 0:00:09.480 to remind you that my brand new book is coming 0:00:09.480 --> 0:00:13.400 out on April twenty ninth. It's called Snaffo, The Definitive 0:00:13.400 --> 0:00:16.959 Guide to History's Greatest screw Ups, and you can pre 0:00:17.160 --> 0:00:21.840 order it right now at snaffoodashbook dot com. Trust me, 0:00:21.880 --> 0:00:24.560 if you like this show, you're gonna love this book. 0:00:24.600 --> 0:00:28.680 It's got all the wild disasters spectacular face plants we 0:00:28.800 --> 0:00:32.400 just couldn't squeeze into this podcast. And here's the kicker. 0:00:32.760 --> 0:00:36.840 I am also going on tour to celebrate that's right. 0:00:37.000 --> 0:00:40.559 I'm coming to New York, DC, Boston, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Chicago, 0:00:40.600 --> 0:00:44.520 San Francisco, and my hometown Los Angeles. So if you've 0:00:44.600 --> 0:00:46.760 ever wanted to see me stumble through a live Q 0:00:46.880 --> 0:00:49.560 and A or dramatically read about a kiddie cat getting 0:00:49.560 --> 0:00:53.960 turned into a CIA operative, now's your chance again. Head 0:00:53.960 --> 0:00:57.560 to snaffoo dashbook dot com to pre order the book 0:00:57.600 --> 0:01:01.080 and check out all the tour details in day, or 0:01:01.240 --> 0:01:04.240 just click the link in the show notes. That'll work too. Okay, 0:01:04.319 --> 0:01:08.040 that's it, on with the chaos. This is Snaffoo Season 0:01:08.080 --> 0:01:15.280 three Formula six previously on Snaffoo. In the nineteen twenties, 0:01:15.319 --> 0:01:18.759 New York City was facing a record number of unsolved murders. 0:01:19.400 --> 0:01:23.440 There are death certificates that literally say, could be diabetes 0:01:23.560 --> 0:01:25.160 or possibly an auto accident. 0:01:25.560 --> 0:01:30.200 You're just going seriously until unlikely. Duo Charles Norris and 0:01:30.280 --> 0:01:33.040 Alexander Getler teamed up to investigate. 0:01:33.520 --> 0:01:36.200 They're like a buddy cop movie of like these two 0:01:36.720 --> 0:01:38.480 scientists in the trenches together. 0:01:39.160 --> 0:01:42.960 And while America braced itself for the new normal of prohibition. 0:01:43.080 --> 0:01:46.600 Georgia becomes the thirteenth state to ratify the Eighteenth Amendment. 0:01:47.319 --> 0:01:50.680 Norris and Getler issued a warning to the public as 0:01:50.720 --> 0:02:01.360 the bodies kept stacking up at Bellevue Hospital. The winter 0:02:01.440 --> 0:02:04.880 of nineteen oh one in Topeka, Kansas was a cold one. 0:02:05.000 --> 0:02:08.320 Temperatures hovered in the single digits. I imagine the wind 0:02:08.400 --> 0:02:11.239 howling down the streets. Too much snow for a car, 0:02:11.480 --> 0:02:14.320 although someone might bust out a horse drawn slay or two. 0:02:15.360 --> 0:02:20.040 But inside one saloon, the Senate Bar, the regulars got cozy. 0:02:20.480 --> 0:02:23.840 This was a favorite haunt for elected officials, situated not 0:02:23.960 --> 0:02:26.920 far from the state capitol, equipped with enough booze for 0:02:26.960 --> 0:02:29.640 the local elite to forget all about the cold weather, 0:02:30.040 --> 0:02:33.440 and also the fact that many of them had recently 0:02:33.520 --> 0:02:37.400 voted to ban the sale of alcohol statewide. At least 0:02:37.520 --> 0:02:42.000 that's how it was on most nights, but one freezing 0:02:42.080 --> 0:02:46.120 called dawn. Before the place opened up, a silhouette fills 0:02:46.160 --> 0:02:49.440 the doorway. It's a woman six feet tall and easily 0:02:49.440 --> 0:02:51.840 able to stand eye to eye with any corn fed 0:02:51.919 --> 0:02:55.000 man in Topeka. She wears a black dress and black 0:02:55.080 --> 0:02:58.000 ribbons in her hair, like she's attending a funeral, and 0:02:58.080 --> 0:03:01.760 she peers into the darkened saloon her little oval shaped glasses. 0:03:02.320 --> 0:03:05.240 It's highly unusual for any woman to enter a saloon 0:03:05.360 --> 0:03:08.359 in this day and age, let alone at five point 0:03:08.360 --> 0:03:12.519 thirty in the morning. But this is a highly unusual woman. 0:03:12.960 --> 0:03:17.720 Her name is Carrie Nation. There's one employee inside the 0:03:17.760 --> 0:03:20.880 closed bar as Carrie forces the door open. Even if 0:03:20.919 --> 0:03:23.360 he doesn't know her, by the look of righteous fury 0:03:23.360 --> 0:03:27.000 in her eyes, he can probably guess her intentions from 0:03:27.040 --> 0:03:30.800 the hatchet she's wielding in her hand. Carrie Nation didn't 0:03:30.840 --> 0:03:33.080 come here to crack open a cold one with the boys, 0:03:33.639 --> 0:03:37.000 or at least not the way you'd think. This hatchet 0:03:37.160 --> 0:03:40.960 is her signature accessory, and before the barman can stop her, 0:03:41.440 --> 0:03:46.800 she starts putting it to use. Carrie jumps behind the 0:03:46.800 --> 0:03:51.880 bar and smashes the liquor bottles. Carrie, no, she smashes 0:03:51.920 --> 0:03:55.680 the glasses. She smashes the faucets, the cash register, the 0:03:55.720 --> 0:03:56.640 slot machine. 0:03:56.960 --> 0:03:58.119 Oh, my peavies. 0:03:58.680 --> 0:04:00.120 Well, at least I'm still looking down. 0:04:00.680 --> 0:04:02.559 Even the mirror on the wall. 0:04:03.760 --> 0:04:04.440 My reflection. 0:04:05.120 --> 0:04:08.200 But all of this is prelude, because finally Carrie Nation 0:04:08.360 --> 0:04:11.640 lays into her number one target, the kegs. 0:04:13.520 --> 0:04:14.640 It was beer o'clock. 0:04:15.680 --> 0:04:18.719 She drives her hatchet into the beer kegs, flooding the 0:04:18.760 --> 0:04:26.600 bar floor with the devil's elixir. By the time the 0:04:26.600 --> 0:04:30.960 sheriff arrives, Carrie is soaked to the bone. Her behavior 0:04:31.160 --> 0:04:35.200 was extreme, but Carrie Nation was nothing if not a zealot. 0:04:36.520 --> 0:04:39.159 By nineteen oh one, she had become the axe wielding 0:04:39.240 --> 0:04:42.400 face of the Temperance movement. The Senate Bar is just 0:04:42.520 --> 0:04:46.279 the latest stop in her crusade to destroy every last 0:04:46.440 --> 0:04:50.520 keg in America, and in that crusade, Carrie is far 0:04:50.560 --> 0:04:55.520 from alone. Before she started smashing stuff up, Carrie was 0:04:55.560 --> 0:04:58.520 a devout Christian and felt compelled by God to do 0:04:58.560 --> 0:05:01.680 things like making clothes for the poor or opening a 0:05:01.680 --> 0:05:05.760 shelter for the families of violent alcoholics. Her first husband 0:05:05.760 --> 0:05:09.240 had been a severe alcoholic himself, dying of drink in 0:05:09.279 --> 0:05:12.479 eighteen sixty nine and leaving Carrie with their infant daughter. 0:05:13.279 --> 0:05:16.479 Influenced by her own experience and that of others around her, 0:05:16.839 --> 0:05:19.800 Carrie would later say that she felt personally called by 0:05:19.800 --> 0:05:23.480 God to rid the country of alcohol. Her devoted service 0:05:23.520 --> 0:05:26.720 to the poor earned her the nickname Mother Nation. At 0:05:26.760 --> 0:05:29.680 the same time, her manic attacks on saloons earned her 0:05:29.720 --> 0:05:34.960 the nickname hatchet Granny. Carrie referred to herself as. 0:05:35.360 --> 0:05:38.680 A bull dog running along at the feet of Jesus, 0:05:38.960 --> 0:05:39.839 miking it way. 0:05:39.880 --> 0:05:40.760 He doesn't like you. 0:05:41.960 --> 0:05:44.720 Call her a bulldog, Call her hatchet Granny, call her 0:05:44.720 --> 0:05:49.240 whatever you like. Carrie Nation was an impassioned anti alcohol activist. 0:05:49.760 --> 0:05:53.280 She and people like her were determined to remake America 0:05:53.560 --> 0:06:07.560 by any means necessary. I'm at Helms and this is Snaffo, 0:06:08.000 --> 0:06:12.400 a show about history's greatest screw ups. This is season three, 0:06:12.720 --> 0:06:16.479 the story of Formula six. How prohibitions wore on alcohol 0:06:16.680 --> 0:06:20.720 went so off the rails the government wound up poisoning 0:06:21.040 --> 0:06:25.440 its own people. Today we're taking a look at the 0:06:25.480 --> 0:06:29.640 people responsible for prohibition. See, before the government set about 0:06:29.640 --> 0:06:33.279 watching the enforcement of dry laws, lone wolves like Carrie 0:06:33.360 --> 0:06:36.719 Nation had already been taking matters into their own hands 0:06:36.760 --> 0:06:37.479 for decades. 0:07:01.480 --> 0:07:03.880 Even in the years leading up to Prohibition. I think 0:07:04.200 --> 0:07:06.920 half the states were already going dry. It was already starting. 0:07:06.960 --> 0:07:08.040 It was this ground swell. 0:07:08.600 --> 0:07:12.840 That's Terence Winter, legendary TV writer and creator of Boardwalk Empire. 0:07:13.360 --> 0:07:16.480 His show like Ours, takes place in the twenties, but 0:07:16.560 --> 0:07:20.400 the full story of Prohibition begins a lot earlier. 0:07:20.880 --> 0:07:24.440 I got where it came from. Alcoholism was devastating. You know, 0:07:24.480 --> 0:07:26.600 if you had the cliche as the data got paid 0:07:26.600 --> 0:07:28.440 on Friday and then you didn't see him and spent 0:07:28.480 --> 0:07:30.640 all his money at the bar, and your family went 0:07:30.680 --> 0:07:33.400 destined to This is been days before social programs or 0:07:33.760 --> 0:07:36.160 even before AA was a thing. 0:07:37.000 --> 0:07:38.160 It was a real problem. 0:07:38.800 --> 0:07:42.040 Terry made himself an expert on this stuff for Boardwalk Empire, 0:07:42.360 --> 0:07:43.680 digging into the research. 0:07:44.080 --> 0:07:46.640 You know, at the time we created National Prohibition, sixty 0:07:46.680 --> 0:07:49.200 five percent of America already lived in a dry town. 0:07:49.560 --> 0:07:52.400 Sixty five percent of Americans already couldn't buy liquor in town. 0:07:52.840 --> 0:07:58.120 That's historian Paul Thompson anti alcohol sentiment, also called temperance, 0:07:58.600 --> 0:08:01.560 was a social movement. It eventually led to prohibition, the 0:08:01.560 --> 0:08:04.920 outright banning of alcohol, but it didn't start out that way. 0:08:05.560 --> 0:08:09.680 What is called the temperance movement lasted over a century. 0:08:10.160 --> 0:08:15.320 It started by meaning simply, individuals should avoid drunkenness, and 0:08:15.360 --> 0:08:19.600 so it was temperate use of alcoholic beverages, with a 0:08:19.640 --> 0:08:23.120 particular focus on distilled beverages, so you're whiskey and your 0:08:23.160 --> 0:08:24.280 gins and your brandies. 0:08:25.360 --> 0:08:29.120 Early temperance supporters urged people to abstain from drink, starting 0:08:29.120 --> 0:08:32.720 with liquor, but eventually also beer and wine. For them, 0:08:32.880 --> 0:08:35.199 it was a personal choice you could make to improve 0:08:35.280 --> 0:08:39.720 both yourself and society. Here's Tom Pegram, author of Battling 0:08:39.800 --> 0:08:42.760 demon Rum the Struggle for a Dry America. 0:08:42.920 --> 0:08:47.800 Temperance is a self control movement not tied to legal restrictions. 0:08:47.880 --> 0:08:50.880 Self control was all the rage in the early eighteen hundreds, 0:08:50.920 --> 0:08:54.120 and not just when it came to booze. Case in point, 0:08:54.360 --> 0:08:57.400 New England Presbyterian minister Sylvester Graham. 0:08:57.720 --> 0:09:02.079 Sylvester Graham was a diet and health reformer in the 0:09:02.160 --> 0:09:03.199 early nineteenth centuries. 0:09:03.240 --> 0:09:04.920 Also a temperance guy so Lester. 0:09:05.040 --> 0:09:09.720 Graham believed that meat was sexually stimulating, and in fact 0:09:10.120 --> 0:09:11.920 he led an attack I think. 0:09:11.720 --> 0:09:14.080 In somewhere in Massachusetts on Butcher's. 0:09:15.400 --> 0:09:18.480 Graham loved temperance in all its forms, you name it, 0:09:18.520 --> 0:09:21.160 he didn't want you to enjoy it. He encouraged a 0:09:21.240 --> 0:09:23.560 diet of vegetables and whole wheat in order to best 0:09:23.640 --> 0:09:27.400 suppress those bodily urges. Today, he's most famous for his 0:09:27.520 --> 0:09:31.560 cracker recipe. Yep, that's right, Graham. Crackers were designed to 0:09:31.679 --> 0:09:37.400 stop people from masturbating. But it wasn't all about self denial. 0:09:37.720 --> 0:09:40.920 Temperance advocates tended to believe in other types of social change, 0:09:41.000 --> 0:09:44.240 things which, even if they sound like basic human rights today, 0:09:44.720 --> 0:09:47.319 were actually quite radical in eighteen hundreds of America. 0:09:48.200 --> 0:09:50.720 Guess what else they wanted. The people that wanted a 0:09:50.760 --> 0:09:53.320 prohibition party wanted to give women the right to vote. 0:09:53.640 --> 0:09:56.720 This is eighteen sixty nine, and that should tell you 0:09:56.800 --> 0:09:59.439 how radical these people were. Because women didn't get the 0:09:59.480 --> 0:10:04.079 right to vote nineteen nineteen, so these people are decades 0:10:04.080 --> 0:10:08.319 ahead of the nation on women. There was a lot 0:10:08.360 --> 0:10:12.000 of temperance people that were not abolitionists, but every abolitionist 0:10:12.240 --> 0:10:14.040 was a teetotal. 0:10:15.320 --> 0:10:18.679 Temperance could easily go hand in hand with blatant racism. 0:10:19.040 --> 0:10:21.480 In fact, put a pin in that for later. But 0:10:21.679 --> 0:10:24.319 in the eighteen hundreds, the likes of Frederick Douglass and 0:10:24.440 --> 0:10:27.680 sojourn her Truth were prominent figures in the temperance movement. 0:10:28.200 --> 0:10:31.280 The people fighting hardest for causes like racial equality and 0:10:31.520 --> 0:10:35.559 women's rights were often supporters of temperance as well. 0:10:35.640 --> 0:10:37.760 It's very hard for people in the late twentieth and 0:10:37.800 --> 0:10:43.079 twenty first century to understand that temperance and prohibition advocates 0:10:43.120 --> 0:10:44.240 were progressives. 0:10:45.120 --> 0:10:47.480 Here's author Dan Okrant on what it meant to be 0:10:47.520 --> 0:10:49.640 a progressive back in the eighteen hundreds. 0:10:50.000 --> 0:10:52.800 You believe in the betterment of society through government action 0:10:53.400 --> 0:10:56.200 and an expertise and turning things over to the people 0:10:56.200 --> 0:10:58.040 who really knew what they were doing. It was kind 0:10:58.080 --> 0:11:01.480 of an anti democratic impulse. It's not related really to 0:11:01.559 --> 0:11:04.240 the progressivism that we know today. 0:11:04.520 --> 0:11:07.720 But the dries, as the temperance advocates came to be known, 0:11:08.120 --> 0:11:11.719 didn't arise in a vacuum. In fact, Temperance started to 0:11:11.760 --> 0:11:15.160 gain steam at precisely the same time as immigrants from 0:11:15.160 --> 0:11:20.800 Europe streamed into American cities. In record numbers, packed into 0:11:20.920 --> 0:11:25.040 unsafe tenement buildings. Compelled to work exhausting and often dangerous jobs, 0:11:25.440 --> 0:11:28.000 these newcomers were in desperate need of a place to 0:11:28.080 --> 0:11:30.680 unwind and throw back a few beers. 0:11:31.240 --> 0:11:34.440 There were public houses, there were taverns, and colonial and 0:11:34.520 --> 0:11:37.680 Revolutionary America in the early part of the nineteenth century 0:11:38.080 --> 0:11:42.240 in rural areas, often servingo's hotels as well. But the 0:11:42.280 --> 0:11:47.280 saloon was tied to urbanization and also tied to beer 0:11:47.320 --> 0:11:50.080 culture and the Germans, you know, as the Germans came in, 0:11:50.400 --> 0:11:54.120 they brought in lager beer. Americans had English type ales, 0:11:54.360 --> 0:11:58.600 but the lager beer revolution really switched American drinking practices. 0:12:00.760 --> 0:12:04.400 Who wanted to improve society that they had their ideas 0:12:04.400 --> 0:12:07.720 of how to improve it, tended to associate the evils 0:12:07.720 --> 0:12:12.720 of urbanization, the evils of industrialization, with immigration, because all 0:12:12.760 --> 0:12:14.600 of those things come together. 0:12:15.320 --> 0:12:18.840 That's Annie polland the president of the Tenement Museum. In 0:12:18.880 --> 0:12:21.920 the heart of New York City's Lower East Side. 0:12:21.600 --> 0:12:24.360 There were five hundred and twenty six lagger beer saloons 0:12:24.360 --> 0:12:27.400 in the neighborhood then known as kleindoutsch Lund. Now we 0:12:27.559 --> 0:12:29.640 think of the Lower east Side and the East Village 0:12:29.800 --> 0:12:36.240 and so saloons were everywhere, and saloons were the living 0:12:36.320 --> 0:12:37.640 rooms of the community. 0:12:38.360 --> 0:12:39.840 Take us inside, Annie. 0:12:40.400 --> 0:12:42.920 You would take a few steps down from the street 0:12:43.400 --> 0:12:47.160 into a lower level opening an all wooden door. It 0:12:47.200 --> 0:12:52.040 would probably be lit very well, with beautiful lanterns and lamps, 0:12:52.520 --> 0:12:57.640 wooden tables filled with different foods, pretzels, hard biled eggs, cheeses, 0:12:58.360 --> 0:13:02.359 sauer kraut, different kinds of meat. Do you'd have musicians 0:13:02.400 --> 0:13:05.200 there because it was a place for musicians together. 0:13:06.400 --> 0:13:09.680 Welcome to yummytown. That almost makes all the turn of 0:13:09.720 --> 0:13:13.320 the century typhoid and dysentery worth it. 0:13:13.320 --> 0:13:16.600 It would be noisy, lots of the sounds of people 0:13:16.679 --> 0:13:20.200 singing or talking. Maybe there'd be newspapers out, maybe there'd 0:13:20.240 --> 0:13:24.520 be different games out. You'd probably see children coming downstairs 0:13:24.520 --> 0:13:26.720 with a growler to fill to bring back upstairs to 0:13:26.760 --> 0:13:27.280 the family. 0:13:27.840 --> 0:13:32.320 Our man Alexander Gettler, chief toxicologist at Bellevue Hospital, and 0:13:32.440 --> 0:13:35.520 himself an immigrant, would have been quite familiar with places 0:13:35.600 --> 0:13:38.480 like this. His family actually brewed their own beer in 0:13:38.520 --> 0:13:41.559 their bathroom, and their social lives would have been intimately 0:13:41.600 --> 0:13:43.320 tied to the saloons around them. 0:13:43.440 --> 0:13:46.520 Of Course, the smell of beer but also the smell 0:13:46.600 --> 0:13:50.040 of cooking and the smell of tobacco. You might also 0:13:50.080 --> 0:13:52.840 have people conducting business in a saloon. One of the 0:13:52.880 --> 0:13:56.199 things that the Germans and the Germans speaking immigrants did 0:13:56.200 --> 0:14:01.040 a lot was form associations, mutual aid associations, political associations, 0:14:01.080 --> 0:14:06.760 associations for singing, for dancing, for gymnastics, like you name it. 0:14:08.320 --> 0:14:11.560 Hitler was more workaholic than an alcoholic, and there's no 0:14:11.640 --> 0:14:15.440 record of him joining any associations for singing, dancing, or gymnastics. 0:14:15.880 --> 0:14:19.840 But this was his world. People like Getler worked their 0:14:19.960 --> 0:14:22.320 asses off to make a life for themselves and their 0:14:22.360 --> 0:14:25.560 families in the US, but as they did, they faced 0:14:25.640 --> 0:14:29.640 discrimination from the blue blooded Protestants of this country. Ironically, 0:14:29.680 --> 0:14:33.240 people quite similar to Getler's partner Charles Norris, who were 0:14:33.240 --> 0:14:37.520 fed up with immigrants, their foreign cultures, and their pernicious booze. 0:14:37.800 --> 0:14:42.960 The native born white middle class by late eighteen hundreds 0:14:42.960 --> 0:14:47.920 that's already bought into abstinence sees these what they called 0:14:48.160 --> 0:14:52.040 hordes state of Jews and Catholics coming in, who are 0:14:52.080 --> 0:14:54.960 also a lot of times halfway literate in English, and 0:14:55.040 --> 0:14:57.600 living conditions aren't great. And somebody called it the working 0:14:57.680 --> 0:15:01.480 man's palace, and these places are elaborate. By the turn 0:15:01.520 --> 0:15:03.720 of the century, saloons. 0:15:03.200 --> 0:15:06.360 Became the primary targets for the carry nations of the world, 0:15:06.800 --> 0:15:10.680 as did the immigrants who frequented them. Even though prohibition 0:15:10.880 --> 0:15:13.640 was not technically an anti immigrant policy. 0:15:13.560 --> 0:15:17.800 Prohibition developed as a movement to change laws to prevent 0:15:18.320 --> 0:15:20.080 access to alcohol. 0:15:20.600 --> 0:15:23.800 As its proponents began trying to force it on the country, 0:15:24.120 --> 0:15:27.640 the battle lines became clear. On the dry side was 0:15:27.680 --> 0:15:31.120 the Temperance movement, zealous and all too willing to throw 0:15:31.160 --> 0:15:34.720 in their lot with outright racists. On the other side 0:15:34.760 --> 0:15:38.560 a whole lot of German, Italian, Irish and Jewish immigrants. 0:15:38.880 --> 0:15:41.080 Here's historian David Goldberg Well. 0:15:41.120 --> 0:15:44.600 Prohibition played a huge role in what you might call 0:15:44.680 --> 0:15:46.440 the culture the nineteen twenties. 0:15:46.520 --> 0:15:48.440 We can only get in touch with David over the phone, 0:15:48.480 --> 0:15:50.960 which is why it kind of sounds like he's calling. 0:15:51.040 --> 0:15:52.240 From the nineteen twenties. 0:15:52.360 --> 0:15:56.600 Prohibition had been favored by those who were Protestants, and 0:15:56.640 --> 0:16:00.760 the major organization that had pushed the Prohibition Amendment, the 0:16:00.840 --> 0:16:05.600 Anti Saloon League, was tied to the Protestant churches, and 0:16:05.720 --> 0:16:09.280 prohibitions had been motivated by a great deal of anti 0:16:09.440 --> 0:16:12.960 immigrant sentiment because many of those who were members of 0:16:13.000 --> 0:16:17.800 this organization, the Anti Saloon League, were specially hostile the immigrants, 0:16:18.040 --> 0:16:20.600 specially immigrants from Catholic backgrounds. 0:16:21.360 --> 0:16:25.320 David's not exaggerating in the slightest. Before long, Catholics across 0:16:25.320 --> 0:16:28.960 America were being smeared as not only drunkards, but traders 0:16:29.000 --> 0:16:33.160 as well. Alexander Getler was born Jewish but married an 0:16:33.200 --> 0:16:36.680 Irish Catholic girl and then converted. That means he left 0:16:36.720 --> 0:16:40.680 one faith targeted by the dry movement, only to join another. 0:16:41.680 --> 0:16:44.600 The Anti Saloon League's efforts were one of the first 0:16:44.720 --> 0:16:49.320 instances of single issue lobbying to dramatically influence American politics. 0:16:49.920 --> 0:16:53.320 They drafted model legislation and said, you support what we do, 0:16:53.560 --> 0:16:55.800 here's a sample law. Maybe you could write a law 0:16:55.920 --> 0:16:59.440 like this that still goes on With interest groups. They 0:16:59.480 --> 0:17:02.240 created me bill lists of people they knew who would 0:17:02.280 --> 0:17:05.520 vote for dry candidates. People do that today, Every interest 0:17:05.520 --> 0:17:06.399 group does that today. 0:17:07.080 --> 0:17:09.719 Your position, if you were a politician on other issues 0:17:09.880 --> 0:17:12.439 was meaningless to them if you were okay on the 0:17:12.440 --> 0:17:13.480 prohibition issue. 0:17:13.840 --> 0:17:17.240 The Women's Christian Temperance Union and the Anti Saloon League 0:17:17.400 --> 0:17:20.800 were the two main organizations carrying the torch and or 0:17:20.920 --> 0:17:25.479 occasionally hatchet for prohibition. They were the definition of single 0:17:25.480 --> 0:17:28.040 issue voters, and when they found a candidate willing to 0:17:28.119 --> 0:17:30.800 vote for prohibition, they would go all in to get 0:17:30.840 --> 0:17:31.720 their guy elected. 0:17:32.040 --> 0:17:33.600 I think one of the key things that one has 0:17:33.640 --> 0:17:35.960 to know about prohibition there was never any education that 0:17:36.040 --> 0:17:37.760 a majority of Americans believed in it. 0:17:37.920 --> 0:17:41.520 In other words, when dry candidate's won, it didn't necessarily 0:17:41.560 --> 0:17:44.400 mean they'd won a majority of voters' hearts and minds. 0:17:44.680 --> 0:17:48.720 It just meant that the WCTU had an influential group 0:17:48.760 --> 0:17:53.080 of voters who could swing elections, and it worked time 0:17:53.280 --> 0:17:56.440 and time again. State after state went dry. 0:17:57.280 --> 0:18:00.960 The Anti Saloon League, the main lobbyist organization for temperance, 0:18:01.760 --> 0:18:04.640 use this moment really to the emptyent degree. 0:18:04.760 --> 0:18:06.240 That's historian Garrett Peck. 0:18:06.680 --> 0:18:11.320 They stigmatize alcohol, they turn beer drinking into treason, and 0:18:11.359 --> 0:18:14.320 they basically question the patriotism of every German American. 0:18:14.840 --> 0:18:17.719 Here are a few actual lines from the Anti Saloon 0:18:17.800 --> 0:18:19.880 League's propaganda. 0:18:20.040 --> 0:18:22.719 The breweries and the saloons of the country continue to 0:18:22.720 --> 0:18:24.640 waste foodstuffs, fuel. 0:18:24.359 --> 0:18:26.200 And manpower to impair. 0:18:25.840 --> 0:18:29.000 The efficiency of labors and the maniance factories and even 0:18:29.000 --> 0:18:34.200 immunitions plants near which saloons are located. German brewers in 0:18:34.240 --> 0:18:37.800 this country have rendered thousands of men inefficient and thus 0:18:37.920 --> 0:18:41.120 crippling the Republic in its war on the Prussian militarism. 0:18:41.320 --> 0:18:43.760 How can any loyal citizens vote for a trade that 0:18:43.880 --> 0:18:47.960 is aidy a pro German alliance. Everything that is pro 0:18:48.080 --> 0:18:52.160 German is anti American. Everything that is pro German. 0:18:52.160 --> 0:18:52.840 Must go. 0:18:57.240 --> 0:18:59.200 To me. This is starting to sound like just good 0:18:59.200 --> 0:19:03.800 old fashioned prejudice and alcohol just the latest convenient issue 0:19:03.800 --> 0:19:08.280 to inflame people's fears. The war unleashed a tidal wave 0:19:08.400 --> 0:19:12.000 of immigrant and ethnic hatred, all dauled up in red, 0:19:12.000 --> 0:19:15.480 white and blue. As one Wisconsin politician put it, we 0:19:15.600 --> 0:19:17.639 have German enemies across the water. 0:19:17.880 --> 0:19:20.560 We have German enemies in this country too, and worst 0:19:20.560 --> 0:19:24.360 of all, our German enemies, the most treacherous, the most menacing. 0:19:25.200 --> 0:19:29.120 Perhaps Schlitz Blats and Miller turns out. 0:19:29.160 --> 0:19:32.320 Fear mongering beer boycotts are as American as hot dogs, 0:19:32.600 --> 0:19:35.800 which incidentally got their name around this time too, because 0:19:35.840 --> 0:19:40.160 Frankfurter sounded a little too German. I'm assuming sauerkrowd also 0:19:40.240 --> 0:19:44.720 became liberty cabbage and German breweries became targets. 0:19:45.000 --> 0:19:48.439 Caps, twits, blats, and killer. 0:19:49.040 --> 0:19:50.920 Watch your glass. 0:19:50.880 --> 0:19:55.960 The ug killer, don't eat that brat, don't drink those 0:19:56.119 --> 0:19:57.880 such or don't check. 0:19:57.720 --> 0:20:00.200 You out in fu Oh. 0:20:02.640 --> 0:20:05.800 In nineteen seventeen, the US entered the war. That year, 0:20:05.920 --> 0:20:09.760 Congress passed the Eighteenth Amendment, which gave the government the 0:20:09.800 --> 0:20:13.280 power to ban alcohol sales. All that was left was 0:20:13.320 --> 0:20:17.600 for Congress to actually use its new power. Finally, after 0:20:17.680 --> 0:20:22.480 almost a century of organizing, sloganeering, and hectoring, the dryes 0:20:22.640 --> 0:20:27.160 got their way. Prohibition became law with the Volstead Act. 0:20:27.800 --> 0:20:31.399 But that raises a very critical question. Who the hell's 0:20:31.480 --> 0:20:34.760 going to enforce it? Will meet them after the break. 0:20:43.880 --> 0:20:47.240 In a nondescript office building somewhere in the nation's capital, 0:20:47.520 --> 0:20:50.639 a man stands over a beaker of liquid. He's white, 0:20:50.800 --> 0:20:55.199 middle aged hair starting to thin, heavy circular glasses peering 0:20:55.240 --> 0:20:58.600 over his experiment like the eyes of doctor tj Eckelberg. 0:20:59.119 --> 0:21:01.199 And not to get all middle school English teacher on 0:21:01.240 --> 0:21:03.639 you here, but just like those famous eyes from The 0:21:03.680 --> 0:21:07.639 Great Gatsby, James Duran was looking down on nineteen twenties 0:21:07.680 --> 0:21:12.840 America with more than a little bit of judgment. Duran 0:21:13.160 --> 0:21:16.240 is a chemist and an avid supporter of the dry movement. 0:21:16.760 --> 0:21:20.800 Mild mannered, methodical, a hard worker with a keen scientific mind. 0:21:21.160 --> 0:21:24.360 He busies himself with government work, while his wife dedicates 0:21:24.359 --> 0:21:27.800 her time to the Women's Christian Temperance Union. In fact, 0:21:28.280 --> 0:21:30.879 she'll go on to author a book of non alcoholic 0:21:30.920 --> 0:21:35.320 cocktail recipes. There are even substitutes for baking recipes that 0:21:35.400 --> 0:21:36.840 happen to involve alcohol. 0:21:37.640 --> 0:21:42.000 Mince pie is delicious without brandy if made properly. 0:21:43.640 --> 0:21:46.960 Not to nitpick here, missus Duran, but the alcohol bakes away. 0:21:47.400 --> 0:21:50.560 People aren't out here getting drunk off pie. But in 0:21:50.560 --> 0:21:53.040 the Duran's defense, people in nineteen twenty can find a 0:21:53.080 --> 0:21:56.840 way to get drunk off just about anything. In fact, 0:21:56.960 --> 0:22:00.959 that's precisely James Durant's problem. See James is a chemist 0:22:00.960 --> 0:22:04.359 for the Bureau of Internal Revenue, the predecessor to the IRS. 0:22:05.080 --> 0:22:08.919 If you're wondering why the IRS needs chemists, you're not alone. 0:22:09.320 --> 0:22:12.399 But as Thomas Pegram says, it's something that still happens today. 0:22:12.600 --> 0:22:14.480 You see evidence of it. Anytime you walk into a 0:22:14.480 --> 0:22:15.080 liquor store. 0:22:15.320 --> 0:22:18.120 You go get your rum or risky, and it's got 0:22:18.119 --> 0:22:20.000 that tape on it at the top that that's a 0:22:20.080 --> 0:22:22.919 sign that the Federal Excise Text has been passed. So 0:22:23.200 --> 0:22:27.320 there's a tradition of internal revenue regulating alcohol. 0:22:27.680 --> 0:22:31.560 The thing is, alcohol has a lot of different uses. 0:22:32.080 --> 0:22:36.040 In addition to being a wonderful social lubricant, it's commonly 0:22:36.160 --> 0:22:40.160 used as a solvent in industrial chemistry, a medical disinfectant, 0:22:40.520 --> 0:22:43.760 and as fuel. But I bet you've never been offered 0:22:43.760 --> 0:22:47.240 a medical alcohol swab as an apparitive, at least I 0:22:47.280 --> 0:22:49.880 hope not. And there's a really good reason for that. 0:22:50.560 --> 0:22:54.200 It's not the same stuff. Alcohol you're not supposed to 0:22:54.280 --> 0:22:58.480 drink gets denatured. In other words, it's made unnatural by 0:22:58.520 --> 0:23:01.640 adding a lot of really bad chemtmicals. These chemicals don't 0:23:01.640 --> 0:23:05.760 diminish the alcohol's industrial value, but they make it really 0:23:06.119 --> 0:23:09.879 hard to drink, which is the whole point you're not 0:23:10.000 --> 0:23:13.360 supposed to drink it. All of this allows the IRS 0:23:13.400 --> 0:23:18.080 to draw a chemical distinction between industrial alcohol and all 0:23:18.119 --> 0:23:21.040 that other yummy stuff you're supposed to drink. And the 0:23:21.080 --> 0:23:24.399 reason all this matters to the IRS is because different 0:23:24.480 --> 0:23:28.600 types of alcohol get taxed differently, and Uncle Sam needs 0:23:28.640 --> 0:23:31.400 a way to ensure nobody skirts the tax code by 0:23:31.400 --> 0:23:34.520 making drinking alcohol out of the stuff you're supposed to 0:23:34.600 --> 0:23:38.520 be using to sterilize needles. Since nineteen oh seven, James 0:23:38.600 --> 0:23:43.199 duran has been proudly polluting, sorry, denaturing, industrial alcohol in 0:23:43.280 --> 0:23:47.480 service of our nation's tax code. But with the passage 0:23:47.480 --> 0:23:50.679 of the Volstead Act, James job suddenly becomes crucial not 0:23:50.800 --> 0:23:54.520 only to tax enforcement, but to enforcement of the new 0:23:54.640 --> 0:23:56.320 nationwide dry law. 0:23:56.640 --> 0:23:58.800 And so you had this prohibition unit. 0:23:58.840 --> 0:24:02.560 It was originally called tied to the Internal Revenue Service 0:24:02.960 --> 0:24:06.320 in the Treasury Department, you know, not Justice, you know, 0:24:06.359 --> 0:24:08.320 which usually enforces the laws. 0:24:08.640 --> 0:24:11.600