LIQUOR REGULATION

Befc the operation of the National Prohibit i Act in January, 1920, the Americ; liquor traffic was controlled by mai legal restrictions in those states that h: not already adopted laws prohibiting #) manufacture and sale of alcoholic liquoi High fees were charged for licensing saloon to conduct busine , the purpo being to curb an increase of su establishments by making the cost license serve as a prohibitory tax. Mai cities in the West exercised municip ordinances segregating the traffic certain areas and forbidding the sale liquor in specified residential districi Another restraining measure was limiting the number of saloons ai other places where Nquor was sold _ according to a fixed ratio of the popula_/ one to every 500 in Boston. A common i yon.was that liquor should not be sold within a prescribed distance of ne! churches, schools and like institutions, \ate ‘Saloons were also forbidden to open for ‘ trade on Sun days, and on certain other days, including Election Day. Women and children could not be employed in the sale of liquor, nor could minors, habitual drunkards or intoxicated per- “sons generally be served. A forerunner of prohibition was the application of the principle of local option, which allowed } counties, cities or towns to decide by 14 popular vote whether the sale of liquor or otherwise should be permitted within f their districts. Local option came into force in practically all the states that t had not adopted prohibition before ‘federal legislation authorized by the to the Constitution influenced them _ todoso. Regulation, however stringent, i had little effect in diminishing the traffic, # _ and became automatically superfluous as:: the liquor states were reduced in num_ bers through additions to the prohibition group. ' The movement for total prohibition of - the manufacture and sale of intoxicating 4 liquors went on side by side with liquor regulation. One by one the states decid_ ed eventually that the traffic could not be controlled effectively and that the _ only recourse was abolition. The first _ prohibitory laws were pa ed by Tenne ee, 1838 and Maine 1846. Vermont, Rhode Island and Ma achusetts in 1852, Connecticut in 1854 and New York and New Hampshire in 1855 adopted similar laws. These enactments did not prove operative, and in most cases i were repealed, local option taking their place. Another generation pa ed before ' prohibition acquired a firm footing as a social reform. It was stimulated to a ' vigorous life in the Middle West when Kansas in 1880 incorporated a prohibition amendment in its State constitution. Iowa adopted a like amendment in 1882, followed by Ohio, Maine, Rhode Island, South Dakota, and North Dakota. But in all these cases, except Maine and North Dakota, the prohibitory laws were repealed or annulled towards the close of the nineteenth century. * With the opening of the twentieth century the movement developed in the ‘South, with Oklahoma, Alabama, Georgia, Mi i ippi and North Carolina | becoming ‘dry in 1907 and 1908, West ] Virginia, Arkansas, South Carolina, and Virginia following a few years later, About the same period Idaho, Colorado; Oregon and Washington joined the prohibition states, 1915-16. The elections of the latter year made Michigan, Montana, Nebraska and South Dakota ‘dry.’ By July, 1917, prohibition was in force in twenty-three States, and its subsequent triumph was _ stimulated by the pa age of the federal legislation which forbade the production of alcoholic liquors for the duration of the World War, and which was strengthened by the Food Stimulation Act, enacting nation-wide prohibition from June 30, 1919, until the demobilization of the army. The movement for national prohibition received its first great impetus in the pa age by Congre in 1917 of a resolution asking the legislatures of the forty eight states to pa upon an amendment to the federal constitution forbidding the manufacture and sale of intoxicating liquors. The States must sanction such an amendment by two-thirds majority and it was then the province of Congre to carry out the will of the States. By the beginning of 1919 the nece ary thirty-six States had ratified the national prohibition amendment, and on January 29 it was proclaimed as a valid part of the Constitution. It went into effect on January 16,1920. War-time prohibition was in operation, and the ratification of the Eighteenth Amendment merely continued permanently the provisional prohibition earlier enacted. In October 1919, the Volstead, or National Prohibition Act had been pa ed by Congre , limiting the amount of alcohol permitted in any beverage to half of one per cent. President Wilson vetoed the measure; but both houses promptly pa ed it over his veto. Rhode Island and New Jersey before the Supreme Court, challenged the right of Congre to interfere with the police power of the State in liquor control, but without avail. The Court declared the act constitutional. Most of the States adopted enforcement measures which augmented national prohibition legislation. 'The result was that while outwardly the liquor busine became extinct, mainly by voluntary submi ion to the law and in no small part also through wholesale confiscation of liquor stores by government raids and by developed all over the country, and rum-smugglers conducted a thriving traffic acro the land and sea borders, especially from Canada and the West Indies. Repeated attempts to contest the validity of the prohibition law were negatived by the Supreme Court, which ruled in 1923 that its operation even extended to forbidding foreign els to have liquor on board Within the three-mile prio: ae ters. A recoil from the drastic tion of both federal and state prohibition laws came in New York, the State the Mullan-Gage law. ~ The effect of national sSebeen ic the liquor industry as rep or y Census Bureau, was that while in there were 434 establishments engaged in the manufacture of distilled liquors, only 33 plants were in operation in In that year distilled spirits were duced to the amount of gallons, manufactured mainly mola es, with Caiifornia and Nevada, land, including two counties in Virginia and Pennsylvania as the leading ducers. In the seven-year period 21 the establishments making liquors declined from 209 to 72, and making malt liquors from 1,204 to The results of prohibition were visible in the figures reporting the tinued manufacture of malt liquors, the reason that many breweries tinued in operation ‘as producers ‘near beer’ (containing only half of per cent of alcohol, as prescribed by Volstead act) and allied products. was a decline of 79 per cent. in the of the products of establishments} making liquors and a decrease of 72 cent in the number of persons employed. The surprising feature of the report was that in 1921 there were; “panes imately and reporting their output the Bureau. Some of the surviving breweries, though ostensibly producing non-alcoholic beverages, were suspected of selling beer containing a forbidden amount of alcohol and their detection proved to be one of the most difficult problems with which the prohibition Officials had to contend. The government accumulated store warehouses, which cou _ Withdrawn for legitimate uses as scribed by the prohibition act, especially for industrial purposes. In April, whiskey stocks amounted to 800,000 barrels and were concentrated in houses where they could be guarded| and their withdrawal supervised Prohibition officers. The precaution was taken to prevent thefts by orders or by physical force, both of means had been frequently used to liquor for sale through the agency bootleggers,