The Art of Getting Drunk in 1920s America

By: Amishi Singhal 

Bathtub gin. Moonshine. Prohibition.

Today these words do not mean a lot. However, in 1920s America, these words were household names used in place of normal alcohol. This was due to the act of Prohibition which was enacted in 1920 in the USA and remained in place until 1933. As its name suggests, it prohibited the sale and transport of alcohol in the United States. 

Prohibition was an act established due to several reasons. One of the main causes of it was due to a popular temperance movement carried out by many women in the American South, known as Dixieland. Drinking was more prevalent in this region resulting in wives of men being unable to run their households when their husbands were in a drunken state most of the time. Such women were at the forefront of the temperance movement pushing for prohibition. Furthermore, many industrialists such as Henry Ford were against the consumption of alcohol as well. They believed that it kept men from working efficiently and delivering the labor productivity they were hired for. These two groups were both backed by large numbers and so, the Act of Prohibition was ultimately published. 

Nevertheless, there were many majority groups strongly opposed to this law. They believed that after a long war, they deserved to be able to celebrate and have a drink to relax. This created an underground black market which acted as a means to supply all those people who were willing and able to pay a much higher price for their alcohol. Such people even included the President of the United States himself, Warren Harding. With the very President unwilling to follow a law, corruption was inevitable. Bootleggers and speakeasies were born and soon took over many major cities in the States. Chicago boasted more than 7,000 speakeasies and some of them exist till today! 

Bootleggers were essentially gangs of young adults that transported illegal alcohol and sold it to speakeasies (underground bars). Alcohol in this case was not just illegally transported but also often brewed illegally in places such as bathtubs and toilets. Hence the name bathtub gin. As and when bootleggers were caught by government regulators, they gave them bribes in order to bypass the law. This gave birth to its own underground economy with unaccounted money flowing through many different groups of people. Such groups included many bureaucrats and ‘agents’ of the government who were in charge of enforcing prohibition, leading to a very uneven distribution of money across the economy. This system consequently caused many imbalances within the economy as well as a steep rise in crime, including a massacre which occurred on Valentine’s Day, a result of a gang war between two of the biggest criminals, Al Capone and Bugs Moran. 

Prohibition, to an extent, showed what Adam Smith’s idea of the ‘invisible hand’ stated. Despite the sale of alcohol being banned in the economy, buyers and sellers came together to form a new market where their forces of demand and supply would intersect and create a new equilibrium suited to a new underground economy. This shows how certain laws can have bigger economic effects on an economy than expected. 

To this day, there are countries all over the world (Pakistan, Kuwait, and the Maldives to name a few) that do not permit the sale, transportation, and therefore public consumption of alcohol. Such countries have underground markets of their own that remain to be studied in their entirety along with the effects they have on their respective economies. This article was a simple introduction to how one law voted in by popular opinion in the United States had lasting effects on its economy and people.