The Temperance Movement

Paper Summary:

This paper explains that the first call for the abolishment of liquor, which led to the formation of the temperance movement in the 1820s, can be traced backed to 1780 and the Quakers and the Methodists when alcohol began to become a widespread American problem. The author points out that the Anti-Saloon League, founded in 1893, provided the momentum to press individual states to adopt anti-liquor restrictions, which led to the Webb-Kenyon Act, in 1913, which was the catalyst for the Eighteenth Amendment, establishing the prohibition of alcohol in the United States. The paper concludes that the greatest factor in the downfall of the prohibition movement was its own success because by enacting a federal prohibition law, elected officials removed the liquor issue from the political arena and lessened the stronghold of the temperance movement over them.

From the Paper:

"By 1929, organizations were forming to call for the repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment. WONPR and the Association Against the Prohibition Amendment (AAPA) would be the most influential. Both of these organizations used the Depression to bolster their stance, much as the League had used World War I. They stressed the potential tax savings that would result from lifting the ban on alcohol. They also pointed to the lessening of organized crime and violence as benefits. Ironically then, the very issues that brought prohibitionists into power were also bringing them out of it."

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