Why did the U.S. repeal prohibition?

Transcription

1 Document A Source: Cartoonist Winsor McKay, Early 1930s Please use the questions below to HELP you understand McKay s cartoon. 1. Who is the man in the picture supposed to represent? 2. What is the man in the middle doing? 3. What does this tell you about why prohibition did not work?

2 Document B In 1920 there were 105,000,000 Americans. There were only 3,500 agents assigned to stop the smuggling of moonshiners and bootleggers. One [bootlegger] still operated successfully for months in a house adjacent (touching) a police station. The moonshiners had cut through the wall. So that the smoke and fumes of the still for making alcohol escaped up the chimney of the police station *moonshine is a homemade alcohol Source: Frederic J. Haskin, The American Government, Washington DC, Why did the U.S. repeal prohibition? Document C In 1920 there were 105,000,000 Americans. There were only 3,500 agents assigned to stop the smuggling of moonshiners and bootleggers. Source: Frederic J. Haskin, The American Government, Washington DC, Smuggling from Mexico and Canada had been successful on a large scale because it is [impossible] to patrol the thousands of miles of border Bootleggers maintain large fleets of trucks and automobiles running on regular schedules between Mexican and Canadian points and cities such as St. Louis, Kansas City and Denver. (Yes, those are pigs who were cut open so they could smuggle alcohol into the U.S.)

3 Document D Homicides (Murders) per 100,000 people in the United States from 1900 to 1953 Please use the questions below to HELP you understand the graph. Don t write on this document! 1. What was the homicide (murder) rate per 100,000 Americans in 1919? 2. What was the homicide (murder) rate per 100,000 Americans in 1933? 3. What happened to the murder rate during Prohibition? 4. Did prohibition increase or decrease crime? Source: US Census and FBI Uniform Crime Reports in Drug War Facts, 2008

4 Document E (These are wet Congressman drinking during Prohibition) The very men who made the Prohibition law are violating (breaking) it How can you have the heart to prosecute (punish) a bootlegger, send a man to jail for six months or a year for selling, a pint or a quart of whiskey, when you know for a fact that the men who make the laws are themselves patronizing (buying from) bootleggers? I have not lived in Washington all these years without becoming well acquainted with the fact that many Congressmen and Senators are persistent violators of the Volstead Act. Senators and Congressmen have appeared on the floors in a drunken condition Source: Mabel Walker Willebrandt. Deputy U.S. Attorney general for Prohibition Enforcement, Inside Prohibition (book), 1929

5 Document F The budgets of local and national governments must be balanced. If the liquor now sold by bootleggers was legally sold, regulated and taxed, the (tax) income would pay the interest on the entire local and national (debt) and leave more than $200,000,000 (two-hundred million) for urgently needed purposes. Source: Leslie Gordon, The New Crusade, 1932 Think: Why didn t the federal government collect tax on alcohol during Prohibition? Please use the questions below to HELP you understand Leslie Gordon s point. 1. When anything is bought people also have to pay a tax. Who collects the tax money? 2. If people are allowed to sell alcohol than what will the government get? 3. So, how does the legal sale of alcohol help the government?

6 Document G In 1920 there were 105,000,000 Americans. There were only 3,500 agents assigned to stop the smuggling of moonshiners and bootleggers. On the Atlantic Coast the smugglers are so numerous and so active that there is at all times a rum fleet (boats full of barrels of rum) anchored outside the 3-mile limit near New York and New Jersey. as long as they remain outside the 3-mile limit this Government cannot interfere (arrest) with them and they are able to make their deliveries to bootleggers that slip out to them under cover of darkness in motor speed boats. Source: Frederic J. Haskin, The American Government, Washington DC, 1923