Students at Slippery Rock University got a lesson in history this week as it marked the 100th anniversary of the start of the Prohibition era.
History Professor Aaron Cowan says some students are shocked when he brings up the topic of Prohibition in class and shows propaganda decrying alcohol consumption. He says he also thinks it’s a topic students enjoy because many can relate to the drinking culture, and how it functions beyond just drinking alcohol to a social meaning.
It was 100 years ago on Wednesday (Jan. 16, 1919) that the 18th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified prohibiting the manufacture, sale or transportation of intoxicating liquors. Prohibition was repealed in 1933.
Cowan teaches students that Prohibition was a lot more than just a religious fundamentalist movement, but rather there was a culture war going on and it a lot of ways, alcohol was a proxy for it.
“That’s always a topic that students enjoy,” Cowan said. “It’s something they can relate to because we can talk about the drinking culture, then and now, and how it functions beyond just drinking alcohol. It has this social meaning.”
Cowan credits a temperance movement led by organizations such as the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union as one of the catalysts for Prohibition. The WCTU, the largest organization of women at the time, was also part of the women’s suffrage movement, which pushed for women’s right to vote that soon followed with the passing of the 19th Amendment Aug. 18, 1920.
“Women were involved with this alcohol reform effort because they were often the most vulnerable to husbands who abused alcohol and became physically violent or lost their jobs,” Cowan said. “They were becoming part of the voting bloc, which helped push (Prohibition) over the top.”
Immigration and urbanization were also key factors. The decade leading up to Prohibition was the peak time of immigration in the U.S., and with a larger and more diverse pool of ethnic groups living in close quarters in the cities, this resulted in many immigrants congregating and sharing ideas in saloons that seemed to exist on every street corner.
“It’s not just a bar; you’re talking about a community center and centers of political power,” said Cowan, who explained that talk about politics and the forming of labor unions didn’t occur in homes but in the saloons, along with political campaigning. “Traditional, middle-class Americans had a lot of anxiety about immigrants and how they perceived they were corrupting American society. The one way they could prevent this, they figured, was to get rid of the saloons.”
Cowan, the author of “A Nice Place to Visit: Tourism and Urban Revitalization in the Postwar Rustbelt,” conducted research when he was in graduate school at the University of Cincinnati about the urbanization of American in the early 20th century. Part of his research was reading farm journals from rural areas of Indiana, and what was prevalent at the time was a growing resentment of young people leaving rural areas to pursue jobs in the cities.
“There’s this rural-urban tension where people in the rural areas were thinking that cities were corrupting the young people,” Cowan said. “The thinking was that young people were going there and drinking at these saloons and these places were corrupting their morals. Part of (Prohibition) was reasserting control over society, which people think was getting out of hand.”
Control was also sought in the South, where most African-Americans lived at the time, and, like anti-immigrant sentiment, white Anglo-Saxon Protestant citizens of the upper and middle classes felt threatened.
“If you were a white, middle-class person in America and had access to a bottle of wine, no one was busting in your door and arresting you,” Cowan said. “A lot of this comes down to power, who gets to have power and who gets to determine who is prosecuted.”
Additionally, World War I was ending and there was negative resentment toward German immigrants as well, many of whom operated breweries in the United States.
“There was a culture war going on and in a lot of ways alcohol was a proxy for it,” said Cowan, who added that Prohibition was a lot more than just a religious fundamentalist movement that college students often perceive. “This was only partially about people worrying about the consumption of alcohol. You had all these things coming together.”
Another misconception by students in Cowan’s classes, he said, is that Prohibition failed. Although the 21st Amendment was passed and ratified in 1933, repealing Prohibition, the movement was effective as research shows that it reduced overall alcohol consumption in America by half during the 1920s, and consumption remained below pre-Prohibition levels until the 1940s.
Cowan will be teaching a 200-level history class, U.S. History Since 1920, when the spring semester begins at SRU next week. Although most of the Prohibition era will be covered early in the semester, what happened in 1919, and the many contributing factors which led into the last 100 years of American history, will be anything but a “dry” topic.
