Beer : Health and Nutrition

48 Chapter Two
US was in t state to ght a war, including legislation concerning the production and
distribution of food. A clause was inserted that outlawed the production and sale of
alcoholic beverages, so that grain could be conserved. There was disagreement from the
opponents of prohibition, and there was agreement to let the Senate vote on a separate
resolution calling for a prohibition amendment to the Constitution. Astonishing to many,
but the Eighteenth Amendment went speedily through Congress and it was rati ed by
36 State legislatures in little more than a year. Only Rhode Island and Connecticut held
out on ratifying the amendment. The amendment was of cially adopted on 16 January
1919, with national prohibition being effected one year later.
It’s perhaps not altogether strange that to deny people something that the majority
enjoy and don’t abuse will inevitably prove unsuccessful. In New York before prohibition
there were 15,000 bars. After prohibition there were 32,000 speakeasies. Women
and youngsters now decided that drinking was something they perhaps should entertain,
having not bothered much before. Booze was coming in illicitly from Canada and
Mexico and by ship from Cuba, the West Indies and Europe. And there was the illicitly
brewed stuff in the States, much of it dangerous through a lack of regulation. There was
plenty of corruption at high level and of course the making of some infamous criminal
reputations among the gangsters. Bootleggers collected $2 billion annually, amounting
to some 2% of the gross national product (Divine et al. 1987).
Bodies quickly sprang up, seeking to repeal the Volstead Act, including the Moderation
League. In 1930 the American Bar Association adopted a resolution that called for a
repeal of Volstead. They were supported by the Women’s Organization for National
Prohibition Reform. Those advocating ‘dryness’ were at risk of being perceived as
defending the gangster culture.
By the early 1930s the nation was in the midst of the Great Depression. Many argued
that it had been brought on by prohibition and that to repeal the Act would be to create
jobs and put much needed taxation income into the exchequer.
The 1932 presidential campaign was in substantial part fought on the alcohol issue.
Herbert Hoover said that prohibition had been an ‘experiment noble in purpose’ and he
promised to do what he could to correct whatever shortcomings there were. Franklin
Delano Roosevelt went a major step further: ‘I promise you that from this date on the
Eighteenth Amendment is doomed.’
Roosevelt was elected and nine days later he asked Congress to amend the Volstead
Act so that the alcohol content of beer could be raised from 0.5% to 3.2% by weight.
The law was passed. As he sat down to his evening meal on 12 March 1933, Roosevelt
is quoted as saying: ‘I think this would be a good time for a beer’ (Barone 1990).