IGCSE History

• Home
• Introduction to IGCSE
• The Road to Affluence: USA 1917 - 1941 (A9)
  • 1917 - 1929
    • The impact of the First World War
    • Immigration
    • Henry Ford and mass production
    • Farming in the 1920s
    • The Stock Market Boom
  • 1929 - 1941
    • The Wall Street Crash
    • The Depression
    • The policies of Hoover
    • Roosevelt and the New Deal
    • Reactions to the New Deal
• International Relations 1919-1939 (A8)
  • Collective Security
    • The Versailles Settlement
    • The Foundation of the League of Nations
    • Strengths and weaknesses of the League of Nations
    • Successes and failures of the League of Nations
    • Locarno and the Kellogg-Briand Pact
  • Appeasement
    • Manchuria
    • The Disarmament Conference
    • Abyssinia
    • Hitler and the League
    • Appeasement in action
• Revolution in China 1949 - 1996 (A14)
  • 1949 - 1976
    • China under Mao
    • Reform under Liu and Deng
    • The reasons for the Cultural Revolution
    • The impact of the Cultural Revolution
    • China 1971 - 1976
  • 1976 - 1996
    • The defeat of the Gang of Four
    • China under Deng Xiaoping
    • Reforms of the economy
    • The Democracy Movement
    • China in the 1990s
• South-East Asia 1945 - 1900 (A15)
  • Indo-China
    • The end of the French Empire
    • Vietnam 1954 - 1965
    • US involvement in Vietnam
    • The unification of Vietnam
    • Laos and Cambodia
  • South-East Asia
    • The struggle for control of Malaya
    • The creation of Malaysia
    • Singapore
    • Suharto and Indonesia
    • Sukarno and Pancasila
• Conflict and Crisis is the Middle East 1946 - 1996 (A16)
  • Unit overview
  • 1946 - 1967
    • The creation of Israel
    • The impact of the war of 1948 - 1949
    • The Suez Crisis
    • Superpower involvement in the Middle East
    • The Six Day War
  • 1967 - 1996
    • International terrorism
    • The war of Yom Kippur
    • The Palestinian Liberation Organisation
    • Lebanon and the occupied territories
    • Successes and failures from Camp David to Oslo
• The First World War (B4)
  • The Schlieffen Plan
  • Deadlock on the Western Front
  • Gallipoli
  • The Somme and Passchendaele
  • The War at Sea
  • The defeat of Germany
• The USA 1917-1929 (B7)
  • The Roaring Twenties
  • Advertising and consumerism
  • New forms of entertainment
  • Prohibition
  • Gangsterism
  • Hollywood
• China under Mao Zedong 1949 - 1959 (B10)
  • The creation of the Communist State
  • Land Reform
  • Communist society
  • The First Five Year Pan
  • The 100 Flowers
  • The Great Leap Forward
• The Changing Nature of Warfare (C3)
  • Unit overview
  • Warfare at the beginning of the 20th Century
  • Land warfare
  • Sea and aerial warfare
  • Atomic and nuclear weapons
  • Warfare at the end of the 20th Century
• Links

Prohibition

Prohibition ws introduced by the Volstead Act, which became the Eighteenth Amendment to the US Constitution. This banned the production, transporting and sale of alcoholic liquor. It did not, however, ban its consumption, as this would have infringed the Constitution. Alcoholic liquor was defined as any drink that had more than 0.5% of alcohol.

The campaign against alcohol began before the First World War. The Anti-Saloon League was founded in 1893 and carried on an extensive campaign against the slae of alcohol. It described the saloon as the 'Poor Man's Club'. many small towns and women's organisations campaigned against alcohol. This was mportant as 'small town America' was taken to be respresntative of traditional American values. Politicians were reluctant to disagree with campaingers because they could easily result in them losing elections.

Prohibition almost became a battle between American small towns and the countryside against the big cities. The cities were described as dens of iniquity, where alcohol and crime had undermined the true American virtues of hard work and self-reliance. This was an extreme form of the 'rugged individualism' that was preached by the Republican presidents of the 1920s.

Campaigners blamed alcohol for the break up of families. They claimed that it caused unemployment, ill health and suffering for women and children. They also claimed that it led to violence, the breakdown of marriages and crime. The Anti-Saloon League, and Women's Christian Temperance Union supported Prohibition and claimed that if alcohol was banned the USA would be a safer and healthier place. By 1919, thirteen states had already banned alcohol. But the remaining thirty-five states had all introduced some form of control.

Support for prohibition increased during the First World War. Supporters claimed that alcohol would mean that industry and the armed forces would function less efficiently. But more important was the fact that brewing in the USA was traditionally run by German immigrants. After the entry of the USA into the war in April 1917, there was a big increase in propaganda against the sale of alcohol. Campaigners were able to claim that it would be patriotic to close down their industry.

In the end there were few opponents of the Volstead Bill when it came before Congress in 1919. Even politicans who did not belive that it would work did not dare oppose it. But in fact it was probably the most unpopular law ever passed in the USA. It soon became clear that many people had no intention of obeying, including President Warren Harding (1921-23). During his presidency, the White House was full of alcohol and visitors were offered a large array of drinks. It was never, of course, illegal to drink alchohol, even during prohibition, but Harding never explained how he had come by it.

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