Lisa McGirr on Alcohol Prohibition and the Rise of the American State

any type of drugs. Hello, Psychoactive listeners. So today we're gonna talk about America's experience with alcohol prohibition, the eighteenth Amendment that passed in and where we had alcohol prohibition this country for thirteen years before it was repealed by the twenty first Amendment. The person I've asked to talk to us about is is Lisa mcgurre. She's a historian

at Harvard. She first wrote an award winning book on the history of the New Right called Suburban Warriors, and then she wrote a book called The War on Alcohol subtitled Prohibition and the Rise of the American State. And I wanted to have lesa because for a few reasons. First, I think this book, if you're going to read one book about alcohol prohibition, its rise, it's enforcement, it's demise, this would be it. It's concise, it covers the field in the literature, but she also does a few other

things in this book. She emphasizes the importance of alcohol prohibition in many ways with basically the evolution of American politics and only twentie century and the rise of the American state. And she brings a special attention to the ways that prohibition was enforced in ways that not only resemble the modern drug war, but that also really played an important role in transforming American politics. So, Lisa, thanks so much for joining me on Psychoactive, thanks so much

or having me so listen. I mean, why did you write this book? Well, um, why did I write the book? I wrote the book partly because I had I was

looking at an earlier period. My first book was on the right in the post World War two period, basically looking at the history of the conservative movement from the bottom up, trying to use social history to say something new about the right, uh and the conservative movement, and I felt that it had picked big payoffs to look at the right in a new way, basically trying to understand it from a grassroots perspective, from the perspective ordinary

men and women. So I started to think about an earlier iteration or moment of the when the right was pretty powerful, uh, and began to delve into the nineteen twenties. And as I did, I worked a little bit on the Saco and Manzetti case and anti immigrant case. Kind of a moment of heightened nativism and prohibition was popping up all over the place. And it just struck me that his storians had not taken a serious enough look

at the repercussions of prohibition. What happened once the Eighteenth Amendment, which was of course the amendment to the Constitution enacting national prohibition. What happened once it had passed. Stories have did a great job looking at the movement for national prohibition, how it came about. There was a hundred year old campaign for what was called temperance for sort of you know,

basically trying to tamp down on alcohol consumption. But once we got to the Eighteenth Amendment, once it was passed, historians kind of had felt that, you know, this was a huge policy failure, and there wasn't much to say it was a great disaster, and as we well know, it was certainly somewhat disastrous, but there were huge implications that historians had not done enough to tease out. So I was really interested in looking at what happened after

what was the unfolding of national prohibition. Of course, it was relatively short lived, right, It was rescinded by ninety three with the First Amendment, and that was partly one of the reasons why historians didn't pay that much attention

to it. But you know, there was a lot more to say, as I uncovered through looking at it from a different angle, which was not to tell kind of a national story of speakeasies at rum runners, but to look at the experience of ordinary men and women with the Prohibition Amendment and the way prohibition was enforced um

and how it affected politics. And so by looking at the kind of from the bottom up perspective and delving into different parts of the country, I was able to tell, I think, someone more consequential story of national Prohibition that had been told until the publication of the book, at least, I hope so. Okay, no, no, I think so, because you know what I thought about. But there's been a

lot of great books about prohibition. I mean, it was a one by Daniel Oakrank Last Call, and I think that probably helped shape the docum menory that ken Burns did about prohibition a few years ago. But your book really does break this sort of new ground in terms of emphasizing the role in the sort of rise of the American state. But just to quickly go to the period that was led up to the eighteenth Amendment. As

you point out, there's these temperance movements in America. There were states that are prohibited alcohol in the middle of the nineteenth century, and then repeal those things the temperance moment begins to rise again. And some of that history is quite familiar, right. We know that you know that

there's an element of Protestant churches. We know there's the progressive movement that was bringing us all these good things like child labor protection and food and drug control and antitrust laws and women's right to vote and uh direct election of senators. So there was an active progressive movement. Alcohol prohibition gets caught up in all of that. There's

also the concerns about industrialization. You know, workers having accidents and factories, automobiles emerging, people are driving drunk and dying on the rows. All of these things are going together. But you really hone in especially on sort of this particular marriage between progressivism, that progressive era that brought us all those good things and also embraces alcohol prohibition and

then evangelical Protestanism. And you point, for example, with the starts of the Women's Christian Temperance Union back in the eighteen seventies. So talk about that marriage there, that that relationship, and how that distinctly marks you know, the u S experience and how the how we emerge evolve from a sort of temperance movement that's really focused on alcohol moderation

and not total prohibition into a full throttle prohibition movement. Right. Well, it's really interesting because there was this hundred year old campaign for temperance that was very much focused on individual discipline, on taking a pledge to basically discipline oneself against the

addiction and the problem of alcohol excessive alcohol consumption. By the late nineteenth century, with the emergence of the Women's Christians Temperance Union, the Anti Saloon League, there is a sense that individual abstinence is not going to be enough to solve the problem of the liquor issue, and there's a turn toward using you know, sort of policy, using

the law at the state and local level. But with the rise of progressivism in the early twentieth century, there's a turn toward using the federal government to solve social and economic problems. And this is really a big moment in that period of constitutional activism. Right it's the moment when we get the direct election of senators, where we get the income tax amendment. It's the moment where we get four amendments within a period of less than a decade,

including women's suffrage. So the turn towards constitutional activism and towards using the federal government to solve social and economic problems is one in which progressives are fundamentally aware of and interested in using to solve the alcohol problem. But it also intersects then with the absolutest crusade of these folks within the evangelical Christian move meant, those within the Anti Saloon League and the w c TU, the Women's

Christian Temperance Union, that are far more stringent in their approach. Right, So they don't just want to get rid of regulate alcohol, which may have been a solution progressive reformers might have embraced. They want to go full hog and basically outlaw all imbibing.

And there's a relationship between those two movements, and what ends up happening is that the solution proposed by those that are more along the evangelical Christian lines is the one that comes to fruition, which is a total ban on alcohol, which essentially far basically outruns many of the problems that were proposed in generating a whole new slew and setup problems in the nineties. As a result of

this total absolute ban on all forms of liquor imbibing. Well, you also bring into sort of European dimensions here, right, I mean, one is the fact that part of what accelerates dramatically the progress towards the eighteenth Amendment and and the banning of alcohol, I mean to an extent that it goes much faster than even that, even faster than any of the advocates expect, is World War One. And

that results in a kind of anti German sentiment. It results in, you know, people being opposed to the breweries which are German owned. It results in a serit of wartime self sacrifice, so that people are y ways grain on drinking when we should be getting it to the

troops and for that sort of thing. But then there's another element to this, right, which is that the the temperance movement is also happening in Europe and other parts of the Anglophone world in the late nineteenth early twentieth century. They're placing restrictions on alcohol. They're doing time and place restrictions, they're limiting hard liquor, all these sorts of things. But almost nobody except sort of you know, Finland and Iceland

are going for full alcohol prohibition. And the argument you make, as I understand it correctly, is that the reason, the key reason America, which initially is almost following in the footsteps of the Europeans, sort of leapfrogs them into total prohibition, is this event jelical Protestant dimension. That's right. You know, it's interesting because World War One is incredibly important for basically spiraling the Crusade to success, uh and without World One,

it's possible that the prohibition Amendment would never have passed. Basically, it's during the war that because you see all of these kind of efforts across those nations were involved in the war to limit alcohol consumption, right, to provide food for the troops with hops and wheat, basically, to uh, you know, sort of to discipline the troops. Um, they're

all sorts of partial prohibitionary measures that are passed. But the US, again, it's it's exactly what you say is correct that because of the evangelical Protestant crusaders kind of more absolutest approach, the United States does not go for a partial prohibitionary measure, rather for a total and complete ban.

And of course, once the prohibition Amendment is passed, the way at the enforcement legislation defines alcohol consumption as point five percent of alcohol as an intoxicating beverage, means that all alcohol, wines, gears, and distilled liquors will be banned, uh in total. And that essentially is a very very different kind of experience than than it happened in many many other industrial countries that were during war time past

these partial prohibitionary measures. So the US ends up in a unique position for a large industrial nation and with a unique set of problems in its wake, and also with a kind of unique form of state building that comes out of prohibition, which pushes the US state in a direction of policing and surveillance, a state that becomes more heavy on coercion, uh than on social provisioning in comparison to some other European states. Well, in that context,

talk a little bit about Richard Hobson. Uh. Yeah, Well, Hobson was one of the what was called fathers of prohibition. He was the highest paid lecturer for the Anti Saloon League. He had been uh in the military, was a military figure who really sought to use the state. Two. Was sort of aggressive and using the state to solve what he saw as social and economic problems. He was a

very strong anti liquor crusader. What's fascinating about him is that, uh, first he comes out with all sorts of exaggerated tropes about the problem and danger of alcohol. Uh. You know that basically then this is classic for the probition movement. More broadly, that alcohol consumption is responsible for half of poverty, for insane asylums, for you know, all sorts of problems. Basically, alcohol prohibition is seen as a panacea for many prohibitionists.

Richmond Hopson. Was so interesting about him is during the nineteen twenties, he moved from the crusade against alcohol toward a crusade against other forms of narcotic drugs. And that's where I argue in my book that there's a kind of symbiotic relationship between the crusade against alcohol and the

crusade against narcotic substances. More broadly, It's something that's pretty much, I think been neglected because we have a tendency to look at alcohol prohibition very very much as a different kind of crusade than the crusade against other narcotic drugs. But if you look at somebody like Richmond Hobson, you

see the connections. It's almost a little more complicated in that because even before I think he gets involved alcohol prohibition, he has his own interaction with the prohibition of drugs and opium when the United States occupies the Philippines and they have an opium control system there that's left over working pretty well for elderly opium users and under pressure from within the US right from you know, oftentimes religious figures on Bishop Brent is one and I think Hobson

is another. You know, they basically get their initial taste through a post you know, basically pushing for an arcotics control and bands on opium imports and a more international approach, which is not so much the story with alcohol prohibition, right it is it is in this case. So Hobson almost sort of wets his teeth on the narcotic piece, then dives into alcohol and then comes back out on narcotics here. So it's a great it's a great point

to make, and I think that things. So there's you see the kind of building or the forging of a kind of incipient anti narcotic regime in the early twentieth century, particularly around opium. But until you get national prohibition, you do not see the kind of criminalization of addiction at the level you do in the in the wake of prohibition. So it's in the nineties twenties, um, that you get really sort of the end of addiction maintenance, a far

more p approach toward users. And you know somebody like um, Harry Ansling or who basically says that, you know, you should lock him up and throw away the key approach to alcohol prohibition that he also sought to forge, but that was less successful. But towards drug use he was a far more successful in doing right, I mean, Harry answer,

there is another crossover guy. Right. He spends the early nineteen thirties heading the Foreign Control section of the U s. National Bureau of Alcohol Probition Enforcement, and then in nineteen I'm sorry, in the late twenties, and then in becomes

the first head of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics. So he's another person who transitions over as And we're sort of jumping ahead of our story here because you also get that with the Rich Women Christian Temperance Union when ultimately prohibition gets repealed and they make a shift over. But I want to dive into one more point before we get actually two the years of prohibition, which is you also point out that part of the transformation is

happening only twentieth century. Is this massive immigration happening into America. Right that by fifteen percent of the American population is far and born in New York City, It's by nineteen twenty in Chicago, by two thirds of all people living there either far and born or the children of far

and born parents. So there's this massive transformation with immigrants coming from southern and Eastern Europe and basically the older multi generation of white folks who had come from Western and Northern Europe and earlier generations freaking out, and for them, the association with alcohol is huge, and particularly the saloon culture. So just elaborate upon why in many respects that you have this movement where the saloon culture really becomes the

dominant element of the prohibition movement. Yeah, I mean, in a way, the salute, the problem of the saloon, of the saloon is what brought progressive reformers together with those evangelicals. So progressives were largely concerned about the problems faced by poor immigrants, the ways in which you know, there was great poverty in these cities, unpaved streets, and of course

these this new institution of the saloon. There was actually a decline in the late nineteenth century of the use of hard liquors, but there was also a rise in beer consumption, and beer consumption was associated with the the imbibing in the kind of all male, boisterous public space of the saloon, and the balloons were ubiquitous in urban uh immigrant ethnic neighborhoods. Um they were also spaces where politics took place, and they were associated with big urban machines.

Another issue for progressives who saw machines as extremely corrupt and sought to tamp down on the power of machines. So shutting down the saloon was a way of basically, in their eyes, solving the problem of those men who stopped in the saloon on the way home, solving a problem for women who were faced with more abusive husbands once they arrived home from the saloon. Um, and also solving the problem of the of the nature of the

saloon is a political space. So those progressives linked up with these sort of uh evangelical Christian men and women basically forming a consensus around we need to eradicate the saloon problem. Uh, and that saloon problem became the kind of force that snowballed and basically helped to lead to uh, the National Prohibition Amendment. Okay, So basically this brings us

up to nineteen twenty. All these variables in play. The fact that we had passed the sixteenth Amendment instituting an income tax meant that the federal government was not quite so dependent upon taxes and alcohol, which I think it counter for almost of the federal budget at that time. So that alleviate that you had the whole wartime period where the federal government, as during the Civil War, plays a bigger role in American society. You had some progressive

era and stuff to having making that happen as well. Right, and so get national alcohol prohibition, and initially, right, there's a huge period of optimism that this thing can actually work, all sorts of surprising people's support, even people who had opposed alcohol prohibition said let's give it a try. You see a dramatic drop in alcohol consumption, alcohol ills in those early years, right, you know, things are looking good,

but resistance is beginning to emerge. So talk about the early elements of that, well, I mean, you know, it has to realize in terms of this sort of optimism or feeling that one should even somebody like Felix Frankfort who had posed the passage of the amendment and said, let's give it a chance. Right, it was part of

the constitution. No constitutional amendment had ever been rescinded. So it's certainly made sense it was now law of the land, that there would be efforts at enforcement, and that there

was some sense of optimism in that early moment. But you know, many places were extremely quote unquote wet and sentiment, especially urban big cities with lots of immigrant populations, They had no inten of basically stopping their desire for what was important part of their leisure life and cultural habits and certain elements of of uh, you know, religious life.

So basically there was efforts to continue consumption, and there were, of course, given the desire for Americans to continue in binding.

Very soon there were those who already had been involved in other kinds of prostitution rings or gambling that saw an opportunity for a incredibly thriving possibility for a black market in alcohol training and as a result, of course, you know, organized criminal rings basically generated new forms of supply um and oiled their operations with forms of corruption

up and down the federal enforcement chain. So even though there was there was tremendous amounts of effort to enforce prohibition and actually optimism and that this law would be enforced right the prohibition or it was established customs officers responsible for forcing the law, that border patrol got involved with enforcement, and of course at the state and local level, most states passed their own enforcement laws, and so there, you know, was some sense that this could potentially work

and that quickly, however, fell apart because of the fact that many Americans still desired to continue to imbibe, and they did so, and and prohibition generated an entire new, subterranean kind of black market for alcohol. We'll be talking more after we hear this. Add So, there's one character that I didn't know about until I read your book, UM and just talk about his role and how he plays.

It's not just he plays a huge I don't know if he plays a big national role, but it's his ways of thinking about it that really sort of shaped the evolution of the movement to repeal alcohol prohibition. And here I'm thinking about Anton Chernak. If I'm saying his name right, the Chicago based politician explain what was significant

about him. Anton was a kind of significant figure in Chicago UM and basically became it was sort of an bohemian from Bohemia and ethnic immigrant who was really deeply

opposed to prohibition. UM and mobilized essentially immigrant groups in Chicago at the local level to oppose prohibition and passing a series of sort of proposals at the local level in Chicago against prohibition that we're not going to have force at the national level, but showing this kind of staunch anti immigrant sentiment um and basically you know, argued that, you know, the the only way to get rid of

organized crime was to get rid of Prohibition. So Anton Saramac basically was one of these local figures that I think showed the incredible opposition of ethnic immigrant working class men and women to Prohibition way before Al Smith came

into the picture. Al Smith, of course, was a prominent Irish Catholic, multi term governor of New York who eventually ran for president in n But what long before that, somebody like Anton Saramac had been mobilizing within the Democratic Party at the local level and bringing ethnic working class men and women into the Democratic Party around Prohibition opposition.

And that's really important because this is a moment where you see Prohibition generating a new politicization of men and women who had basically you have, not been part of certainly not part of national politics, who increasingly come to become an important part of the Democratic Party coalition in the twenties as a result of Prohibition opposition, right, I mean, part of what you get to right around n and

al Smith. Al Smith is really the first Catholic to run for a major major party nomination for president, and he runs strongly on an anti repeal prohibition line. He gets obliterated in night in the election by Herbert Hoover, but nonetheless plays a major role in sort of shifting this coalition, right, one where you have basically where we're working class people in immigrants has sort of been divided between Democrats and Republicans, depending upon local politics, depending upon ethnicity,

really begins to pull them all together. And this was also a group where you know, wine and beer was always very much part of the culture, so it sort of made sense that you would see this emergence happening out of places like Chicago. But the other group, of course a African Americans, right, And what's interesting there is a little bit different because African Americans have more of

a temperance culture. They're not typically Catholic, they have more of a tradition, you know, ministers playing a very powerful role, right, many of them support alcohol prohibition, and then sort of alcohol prohibition kind of comes along and low and behold, they find just what this sort of working class whites do that when it comes to enforcing the prohibition laws, it's not you know, middle and upper middle class white families that are by and large getting you know, rested

or having their houses raider, being thrown in jail. It's blacks, and it's poor whites in the South and in the and in the and the urban cities. Part of what I'm curious about, why did this occur or did it occur to basically leading black leaders the book or T. Washington's the others at that time in the early twentieth century. Why didn't they oppose prohibition anticipating that they would be

the principal victims of its enforcements. I think it's important to look at a kind of class division, that there's a sort of politics of respect ability among the middle class African Americans who really, you know, sort of believe that there is a way that limiting alcohol consumption, just like progressive white progressive reformers did for the white working class,

would uplift those others, right, poor others, poor African Americans. Um, but I think, what so, there is a kind of a way in which many of the sort of elite voices when in the African American community at the early edge of prohibition, are in fact supportive of prohibition. That falls apart pretty quickly when they see the repercussions um

and why they didn't see it before. We prohibition is in a way, it's dramatically new, at least at the national level, and the the implications for black communities are very intense, and that it becomes quickly known in places like South Side of Chicago or Harlem in New York where police would allow vice, the vice districts deplour ish, right And as a result of that, it's not only that poor African Americans are being arrested thrown in jail

for violating the law a disproportioned rates. It's also that the violence that's rained down through elicit markets occurse of course within African American communities, right, they're the most affected by the violence that happens in gang warfare in these

illicit industries. Um. So, bombings take place in so outside of Chicago and Harlem and other places, and of course this is a place where you get slumming right where they're Whites in other parts of the city go for their entertainment uh and for imbibing and so all of that.

Then African American leaders quickly see the problems of prohibition and somebody like Marcus Garvey actually had always been who's an outlier in a way, sort of the very well known black nationalist who was was initially opposed to prohibition. It comes out really forcefully against it, but pretty soon you get a lot of leaders African American leisure oppos is what basically they see unfolding with all the eighteenth Amendment.

So now this gets us into the thick of prohibition where in the mid to late twenties now, right, and while you have on the one hand, this disproportioned enforcement, especially against blacks and other minorities working then oftentimes poor whites and sometimes working class whites in other areas, you also have the prohibition culture that emerges. Right. You have the Harlem renaissance, You have the jazz culture. You have

white people going to hear jazz. You have all the excitement in New York and that emanating out to the rest of the country. You have blacks and whites interacting more and more in terms of on the bootlegging, right, oftentimes blacks working for white but more and more working together on this sort of stuff. And so there's a transformation.

You know, women going because it's not saloons anymore. But now they're going to speak easies, and there's and and there's greater you know, gender not about equality, but sort of gender mixing in places where previously that would not have been accepted for quote unquote good women to go to.

And obviously what happens is is the Women's Christian Temperance Union, the Evangelical Protestants are freaking out, The old Anti Saloon League is freaking out, and they find an ally in the ku Klux Klan, which had fallen on hard times and now sees alcohol prohibition and the potential to play a role as an enforcement arm of prohibition as their great, big opportunity. So tell us a little more about that,

you know, sort of ugly partnership between these three major players. Well, you know, I think that it's exactly right to point out that prohibition really does despite all of the efforts and enforcement, and despite the fact that you know, prison numbers are rising, men and women are being incarce incarcerated selectively right working class men and women, uh, you know,

white Ethnics, African Americans. Still there's this huge revolutionizing of nightlife and as you also point out, sort of this racial mixing as well as gender mixing, and the new subterranean kind of world of the saloon, or that what not the saloon, but now the kind of cocktail world of of these new drink spaces, And that generates a tremendous amount of anxiety among those men and women who

had fought so hard to pass the law. Right the w c TU, the Anti Saloon League, and those men and women now see that this is prohibition, is the law of the land. So they're looking for ways to enforce it. Right there, w c TU comes up with the motto, work for enforcement where you are. The Anti

Saloon League also seeks to work for enforcement. Well. When the Kool Klux Klan, which is of course a white supremacist, anti immigrant, anti Catholic organization, sells itself to white evangelical men and women who already anxious about the problem right the scandal of the lack of law enforcement, the clan sees an opportunity to basically use the problem of the lack of enforcement, the problem of the kind of of bootlegging of speakeasies and argue that we will clean up.

We will going to clean up your community. Right, So they instrumentalize the law to recruit men and women into their ranks quite successfully. So you see, basically the clan was established in nineteen fifteen, but it's in nineteen twenty that they begin to really take off. They do so partly because it's the wake of World War One, there's a lot of anxiety about returning African American veterans, the

kind of new militancy in the community. But they also do so because they have an opportunity with this new law of the land, to sell themselves to white Evangelical Protestants as a law enforcement organization. Right, So they recruit around the issue of bootlegging. We're gonna come in, we're gonna clean up your community. Of course, who they target in their enforcement raids is the drinking of not themselves because they're they're not totally tempered themselves, but off the

drinking of others, right, Catholics, immigrants, African Americans. Um. So they use prohibition, they use the at the Amendment as a as a mechanism to basically, uh, you know, boost themselves and become incredibly powerful in the nineties. Right, you're leading out a little bit here the role the Jews too, I mean, the leading anti Semite of the day, Henry Ford.

You quote his newspaper at one point saying, you know where his dearborn independence says that of all bootlegging is Jewish right and at KKK also being anti Semitic, although obviously the numbers of the Catholics are much much greater,

and in a way some of this reminds me. I mean, you know, you have them getting involved in the same way that sort of in vigilante groups and citizen armies, in the way that you had people in the southwestern more recent decades mobilizing to try to do something about illegal you know, immigration in the United States, or maybe there's even analogy to make, or recently with the recent changes in some of these laws to allow civilian lawsuits

right against people involved in abortion once again trying to mobilize. Are sometimes arm sort of citizen groups that are welcomed by law enforce authorities, even federal law enforcement authorities, because they just feel understaffed overman like you know, billy putting their finger in the dike of you know, a widespread

law violation. That's right. So basically the clan not only operates at the local level, as a kind of bolt to bolster local policing, but at certain points is deputized in fact, at one point by the Federal Prohibition Bureau to serve as kind of ground troops to help to

clean up these communities. So in the case I look at in terms of the citizen enforcement Army in southern Illinois, you have clan members going to Washington, traveling to Washington to say, hey, we need your help cleaning up our communities. Is that we have a wide open community in Williamson County, Illinois. And Roy Haynes at that time is the head of the Federal Prohibition Bureau says, you know what, we we don't have the band power, We don't have the people

power to do it. But if you, if you will sort of as as sort of foot soldiers and find the evidence, you know, we will bring in federal uh. We we will deputize and bring in Federal Prohibition Bureau

agents to help you. And basically the federal government deputizes essentially folks who are members of the clan to conduct a series of raids, and those raids at first target roadhouses, target bootleg facilities, and soon it devolves into an attack essentially on the what is largely an Italian Catholic presence in herren Uh and Marian in Williamson County, Illinois, where basically Catholic churches are rated UM and immigrant homes are

also rated UM. And it becomes really almost a form of terrorism against the community which is leveraged or utilized and led by the clan deputized by the Prohibition Bureau. This becomes such a problem for the Bureau that by ninety six and twenty seven they're arguing, we cannot utilize any citizen ballvolunteers in our raids because they often turned so violent. But you see, it's not just in Williamson County,

but in other parts of the country. The clan it backs and supports local police who are overwhelmed to conduct raids and to try to shut down drinking establishments. I mean, at least I'll tell you, I mean some of the analogies here and obviously because your other work on the new Right to the contemporary day, I mean, the KKK is not just fringe. Then it's electing senators, it's electing governors.

It has real political power, and their extreme it also, you know, and it reminds me of what's a little bit what was going on today where you have a really radical kind of you know, trumpist right wing you know, element that's becoming more and more powerful, it seems in the United States, and even though they were sort of you know, just by the edge defeated in many places in the recent election, seems to be gaining traction among a growing on a number of Americans. And also the

history of political violence. I mean, we think about America as not having had much political violence since the assassination's late sixties and some of the racial violence that happened then. But when you take us back to that era of the teams in the twenties, when you had literally fights over prohibition, political fights things like that, with people being killed,

people being threatened. Um, I mean, it reminds us that, you know, America, you know, does have these levels, that has these histories of significant sort of social cultural political violence, and in some respects it at the times seems like we may be returning to some days like that. I mean, where you might even fear that you know, state you know, state police forces might begin to ally with civil arms,

civilian military groups. I don't want to get too dramatic here, but I have to say one on bleak mornings, I sometimes wonder whether we might be returning to that period of a hundred years ago. Yeah, I mean, you know, history doesn't repeat itself, but it certainly has echoes and

rhymes from the past. So um, you know, I think certainly in terms of the sort of paramilitary or vigilante forces that we see with Proud Boys or others, you know, there are sort of obviously it's quite reminiscent of some of the kind of paramilitary forces like the Clan. Although again the Clan was, as you point out, which is

really important, not simply vigilante organization, right. I mean, it gained political power in several different states, um, and exercise tremendous amount of sway in the nineteen twenties, So I think that's really important to point out to You also make the point in the South and the enforcement it was obviously the targeting of black Americans, but also quite

a fair bit of targeting of poor white Americans. And then sometimes that you know, in many of these states, even though blacks were substantial minority of the population, you still had poor whites in some states being a majority of those who are getting locked up, and it reminds me a bit of what we've seen in the last and fifteen years around the attacks on meth amphetamine, where that's large, by and large, not a black issue, especially

in certain parts of the country. It's a white, poor white one, and where you see that racism is the driving force between behind modern outcome, behind modern drug prohibition. But that class element and that element of targeting poor whites involved in illicit trade, you know, was something that you know, the white establishment of the South and parts of the westerner are perfectly willing to engage in. Yeah. No,

I think that there are parallels there as well. It was African Americans in New South cities, but it was also poor rural whites that ended up find jailed incarcerated

for long terms. I mean, it was as long as you were a marginal really the marginal violators, right, so those who were kind of you know, having a back, uh sort of still, but not those who could afford the levels of protection that organized crime rings required, right, So that the problem essentially devolved on poor marginal violators, black, white, Mexican American whatever they might be, those who were identified

already within public discourse with kind of criminality. Um, and I think you can see certainly parallels with today as well. So politically back then, I mean, the Republicans are sort of the dominant party from the late nineteenth century until roughly the nineteen thirty and the Democrats keep trying to break through. Both parties are appealing to working class voters

as well as to the corporations. You know, Republicans are seen more as the world as the party of corporate America, but you know, they're also identified with Lincoln and abolition of slavery and things like that, and they're doing some stuff they're you know, they're claiming to do in terms of workers rights. But Al Smith, you point out in the eight really begins to organize and bring to the voting boost for the first time millions of ethnic, recently

immigrant immigrant America's first and center generation Americans. In doing so, he lands up alienating not just through his anti prohibition centement beels because he's a Catholic. He lands up losing some of the kind of a grarian Democrat voters, the ones who have been more evangelical Protestant, the ones who had followed William Jennings Bryan, you know, the only only figure in American history ever to run for president and lose three times as head of a major national ticket.

But then because of I guess really out the depression more than anything else, Holes just radically changes things. And when night as the election begins to approach in nineteen thirty two, you have party leadership in the Democrats wary of taking on this issue. Republicans are getting wary about being so associated with the support for prohibition. The Democrats were of taking it on because they still have that

Southern base. But somehow this becomes a radical swing where millions and millions of people show up, um oftentimes motivated first and foremost by the desire to repeal alcohol approbition. And in thirty two though f DR, who's much more reluctant about repealing prohibition, finds he essentially has no choice but to embrace it. And you see basically a fundamental realignment happening and hardening in American politics. Um that you know,

changes the composition of Republican and Democratic party. So at Leasta, just tell us more about that moment, what happened between twenty and thirty two, and with labor and others. Well, I mean that it is interesting at the Democratic Party convention because FDR was a reluctant anti prohibitionists. He didn't want really prohibition to be part of, you know, at

the core issue. But ethnic white working classmen and women who had really joined the Democratic Party already by twenty eight with Al Smith at the at the front of a repeal platform, pressed the issue in thirty two, and basically Roosevelt in order to get the nomination, had to agree to repeal being a central issue for the Democratic Party.

So it was that group of ethnic working class men and women, these urban dwellers who were absolutely approsed to prohibition because they saw it as an affront to their culture. They were, you know, sort of angered by the extent to which they were the ones that were they felt were suffering under the law. Um, they saw it really as an attack on their communities, and they model when they came into politics and into the Democratic Party in twenty eight and again in thirty two. So you see,

twenty eight is a moment really of realignment. It's the moment where these white working class men and women who have been divided between the Republican and Democratic parties move in to the Democratic Party in the big cities, and Roosevelt consolidates that in thirty two because of basically two issues. One is the Great Depression, so these people are suffering from massive unemployment. Labor is basically arguing that something needs to be done for the working classes. But Roosevelt's not

yet embracing the New Deal. So what can he do. He can declare for repeal and open up an industry without increasing federal spending. He can attack the Republicans for the extravagant spending on prohibition. So repeal becomes a very important plank in a couple of ways. One is because it draws in those white working class men and women. But the second one it satisfies some concern of labor without going so far as to increase government spending, which

Roosevelt well then do after he's elected. But it's not yet a central part of this platform. So there's a kind of transitional moment there. Repeal plays an important role in kind of consoliding that early New Deal coalition. Once those men and women are part of that coalition, Roosevelt increasingly answers some of their other concerns. Uh, and we get really the coming of the New Deal. Yeah, I

think you write that. At the thirty two convention, the issue repeal prohibition comes up and the party leaders are still hesitant, but it gets a standing ovation for like half an hour. It's like the number one issue, you know, motivating the Democratic faithful at that point. I mean, you have the depression going on, all of this, but somehow repeal national prohibition is the one that gets the most

sustained applause of everything gets. It's an incredibly significant issue, and I think it's really been neglected at that moment. It's also really important. Hoover's in big trouble because of the Great Depression, but he's also in big troll because the Republican Party straddles the issue of repeal. They have basically a very muddled platform that's trying to satisfy both wings of the party. Those are increasingly seeing, hey, you know what, we're in a great depression. We can't afford

to spend money on on enforcing prohibition. But the other wing of the party, these white evangelicals who are really pushing for prohibition still, and Hoover, who is himself is a big backer a prohibition really sort of those who leave that convention argue that basically the party is going to lose, if not on the depression, definitely on the issue of repeal, and repeal is big enough, uh, that

the party is in big trouble. So there are Democrats really do consolidate their support and the Republicans waffle, and that matters. The Great Depression matters a good deal as well, and one cannot forget that, of course. But the neglect I think of prohibition issue is something that you know, my book really tries to remedy, to look at its significance at that critical moment. Let's take a break here

and go to an ad. There's another point you maken hear, which is that the twenties becomes maybe the first decade in American history where Americans become obsessed with crime. Right, it's not just all the prohibition is violence and the owl component all that, but it's labor strikes, race riots, anarchists, bombings, automobile accidents, you know, bank robbery steps, all of this sort of stuff, and governments at the federal state level respond to it, not unlike they did under Nixon and

even more so under Reagan and Bush. In the eighties and nineties with draconian legislation. So you have, on the one hand, both the working class people and others getting even more beaten up. Even as support for prohibition is declining, They're getting more beaten it up by tougher laws, tougher enforcement,

last gas efforts. And as the other thing, which is a major focus of your book, is it really it's really about the growing empowerment of the federal state and the punitive state, and the and the federal criminal justice bureaucracy. So explain more about what was going on with all that. Well, I mean, prior to prohibition, the federal government had a relatively tiny role in crime control. It was really a

local issue, was a state issue. But in the nineties twenties it really becomes an issue of national concern, and the federal government takes on a new responsibility for crime

control that it has yet to relinquish. So it's really basically federal officials leverage the kind of deep seated concerns and the overcrime, this sort of discourse of you know, the sort of rise and wave of criminality that happens, partly because there is a whole new class of crimes as a result of prohibition, because there are more arrests and there are more prosecutions, and there is this increasing crackdown and as you mentioned your Conean legislation, so there's

a whole set of concerns and as a result, the federal government basically leverages those concerns to increase the bureaucracy, to gain increased knowledge of crime and crime control, to systematize, for example, federal crime statistics. This is the moment of

the birth of the uniform crime reports. It's the moment of a new consolidation of power coming out of national Prohibition in thirty two and thirty four with the Bureau of Investigation, which becomes a federal Bureau of Investigation, increases its purview and muscle. It's the moment when the Bureau of Prisons is elevated to the Fed to a become the Federal Bureau of Prisons, and prisons are expanded and systematized and reformed at the federal level to to reduce overcrowding.

It's a it's a whole moment of a kind of consolidation and building of the federal what I call the

federal penal state. And this is something which of course, also links up to the issue that you're really concerned about around drugs, because it's also the moment of consolidation out of the Prohibition Bureau of a a new independent Bureau of Narcotics, right uh, and the federal government, you know, gets its first National Drugs Are with Harry annslinger Um, and out of that, uh comes a whole new host of legislation in the thirties, and of course the Marijuana

Tacks Act in the criminalization of marijuana at the federal level. All of this kind of merges out of essentially the way that the fire government leveraged this host of concerns around crime and crime control, as well as the kind of demise increasing demise of alcohol prohibition turning it turning its muscle in a new direction toward this growing and

far longer lasting war on drugs. Yeah, Lisa, when I think about the comparison to the modern day drug war, I mean you point out that probably proportionally the growth in the prison population is certainly the federal prison population between nineteen the early twenties and the mid thirties was probably a proportional growth comparable to what happened with the modern day war on crime and drugs, where we went from a half million people behind bars to you know,

two point two million people behind bars. Now, of course, the percent of the population incarcerated back then was much smaller than it was in the modern day drug war, right, but you also make the point that something like thirty percent of all the people in federal prison plus an additional are there for alcohol prohibition violations by the time

prohibitions ending, and another twenty percent for narcotics violations. So, you know, you think about the modern day you know, I think about the federal prisons with the drug war. You know, we start off as the drug wars gaining speed in the late eighties or the nineties, it's roughly two thirds of the federal prison population of the hundred thousand people are there for drug law violations. You get up to today when it's half of over two hundred

thousand people behind bars and drug love violations. So really, the I mean, the focus on crime is there. But as you point out, the Bureau of Prohibition Enforcement is dramatically bigger than jayker Hoover's new FBI. The FBI dosity from close to competing with it in size until probably World War two starts and FBI guess of ald encounter intelligence, so that that war on alcohol and then drugs really does drive the growth of a federal crime control establishment

really more than anything in American history. Yeah, at this moment. I mean, it's really the birth of a fundamentally changed role for the federal government crime patrol and the sort of building of the initial edifice, let's say, of the federal penal state, which will enable that later and larger,

longer lasting we're on drugs. So in some ways, the way I look at prohibition alcohol provision is to see it as a kind of dress rehearsal for the later again, larger and and far more let's say, quote unquote successful at least in terms of it's the way it has lasted, uh than alcohol prohibition. Um So, but they these absolutely, I mean I think that this is these are the legacies and consequences that come out of alcohol prohibition that

have largely been neglected. And I think really by looking at that history it really helps us much better understand our current moment because you really see how so not not just the parallels, but the way the one led to the other, and also the problem of Once you have that edifice established, it's very difficult to go back to ground zero. Right, So federal prohibition increased, showed the muscle and power of the federal government, and we got

rid of alcohol prohibition. But that muscle moved forward in different directions. But the federal government didn't just go back to where it was in nine by far not right.

It grew and expanded in new directions in the way right I mean obviously, you know, a lot of the people of prohibition was driven by working class people who are people in their allies, and increasingly by middle class people who were you know, beginning to violate prohibition and just wanted the freedom to drink and that didn't have to want to be criminalized and live in fear, even though they were much less likely to be attacked by

the police and anybody else. But you point out that among the wealthy business people who had traditionally aligned with the Republican Party, right, some of them, you know, begin increasing the line with the Democratic Party. They see prohibition as a threat, and for them, they hate all these things that everybody else hates about alcohol prohibition. But they're also wary about the way in which is creating the

big state. You focus on John Raskob right, a wealthy businessman who becomes the chair of the Democratic Party I think in nineteen thirty or thirty two, and it sounds like that's their major fear, and ultimately, you know, they

get pushed aside. Yes, So this is really I think it's quite fascinating that that many of the opponents of alcohol prohibition at the elite level are conservative men and women who believe that this is going to crack a kind of door open to providing new authority for the government to regulate all sorts of other things, not just alcohol prohibition. So that's their big concern, and overreaching federal

government that could potentially regulate the economy. Well, it turns out, in fact they were right, because it did crack that door open. And while there was a great deal of hostility among those ethnic working class men and women toward prohibition, they saw that the fed that federal power was being misused, but they could they could turn it and hopefully use that same power in a different direction. That's precisely what

they did. So essentially, those within the Democratic Party made the argument these men and women that hey, look, you know we have been able. We passed the eighteen Amendment. The federal government did all of this. You're gonna tell me that we can't pass a thirty hour a week bill. I mean, there's sort of a ways in which they saw we now have that power. We don't want it

to regulate our private lives. We want to have be able to imbibe and to drink and have our leisure, but we want to use that power and turn it in a different direction. And that is precisely what happened with the New Deal. So those those years, that the whole decade of that debate over the scope of federal power and made the federal government visible in people's lives in a fundamentally new way. And as a result, I

think that it contributed to the seeing the possibilities. Right, there's sort of problems, but also the possibilities of utilizing the federal government to regulate the Economy's at those folks on the elite level, like John Raskop and others. What

happened once repeal happened. Alcohol provision didn't just return to localities right First, the idea was to regulate it, to use the federal government to regulated through the national Recovery Act, and at that moment, these conservs established the liberty lead because they're so threatened by this idea that the federal federal government is going to control the regulation of alcohol. And it's only when the Supreme Court declares the n r A illegal or unconstitutional that then you have the

reversal of control of alcohol at the state level. But it's nowhere what it was before alcohol provision, because it's really systematized at the state level and there's far more kind of uh, sort of across the board forms of state regulation of alcohol control that had not really existed in the same way prior to prohibition. M know you. Um. Essentially, FDR kind of pulls a fast one on the businessman who support him, right, I mean, he's such a master

at telling people what they want to hear. But ultimately he sides with those who are the little guy on his stuff, right, and the Rascods of the world and the other ones, you know, SEEFDR build the big state in a way that America had never had before with the exception of wartime. Yes, absolutely, yeah, so, I mean FDRs, I mean he's just a fascinating figure, of course, and he was an experiment or a doctor. And he you know, he came on board to repeal when he needed to

to get that nomination um. And then when he had those ethnic men and women in the Democratic Party coalition, he listened to those voices. You know, he was willing to expand the size of the state and the scope of the state to provide some fundamental elements of security

for those especially white working class men and women. Yeah, and you talk about the ways in which working class folks, African American leaders and double a cp UH Clarence Darrow, the famous kind of civil liberties lawyer in early twentieth

century America. You know, they're basically saying to the federal government, well, if you could put all these resources behind trying to enforce futilely the eighteenth Amendment, why can't you do the same with the fourth Amendment and the fourteenth Amendment and the ones that would benefit us little guys? Right exactly right. So again, there's the way in which that expansion of how er opens the door for all of these hosts of other questions of ways in which the federal government

should essentially back rights that it had not been earlier. Yeah. So also, Lisa the Wickersham Commission. I mean, Hoover feel it feels obliged, in the face of this crime wave and discontent with prohibition to appoint this Wickersham Commission in early nine nine when he becomes president. UM. But it kind of blows up in his face, not unlike the way the Schaefer Commission blows up in Nixon's face UM

on the drug issue forty years later. M hmm, Yeah, I mean it certainly did blow up in a space in the sense that, uh, you know, he had hoped to appoint a commission which would show that there were all sorts of problems with law enforcement. But for Hoover, he had really wanted to improve enforcement. That was, he knew there were all sorts of problems, but his hope was better enforcement will result in the success of the law.

Let's give it time, let's give it a chance. Like many progressives, including Jane Adams who back Toober and twenty eight precisely because he was in favor of prohibition. But you know, he appoints all sorts of really very prominent legal figures, uh and academics to this commission. It's a very large scale study, UM, which points out not just the problems of prohibition, but many, many different aspects of

the problems of the criminal justice system more broadly. That Hoover was really not expecting and it was really disappoint him. It was a really disappointing commission. They come out and basically argue that prohibition is pretty much unenforceable. That you know, they give it because it's within his purview his administration. They say, let's give it some chance, but if it doesn't work out, we should repeal this. And he is

totally opposed to this. Um. And basically, you know, that's another that's sort of another kind of nail in the coffin, uh, that that that helps to seal partially the fate of prohibition, because the recommendations are fully contradictory with a little report that Hoover puts out about the commission, it becomes a disastrous kind of public relations uh, you know, campaign for

the administration and for prohibition as well. UM. And so this, you know, this moment between twenty nine and thirty two is really significant for eroding the support for prohibition across the Board Commission. Right, they do come under pressure from whom and others not to outright come out for repeal, right,

so they sort of pull their punches on it. In fact, it came across a funny ditty that was written by Franklin Adams in New York World, where he summed up summed up the wicker Sham's commissions about prohibition, and it goes like this prohibition is an awful flop. We like it. It can't stop, it's meant to stop. We like it. It's left the trail of grafton slime. It don't prohibit worth the dime. It's filled our land with vice and crime. Nevertheless,

we're for it, you know so. But I guess it was just reflected the politics at the moment, you know. So at Lisa, I'll tell you something. I mean, I'll tell you there's one other. I mean, obviously the connections and I this is just just sharing with you, my and the audience my own sort of personal um, you know, engagement.

All of this is that as I was, um, you know, finishing my PhD at Harvard on international drug control and starting to teach at Princeton, just as the drug war was heating up, and I began speaking out and for me, the prohibition analogy was central. It was something that I used as a way to relate to audiences when people were you know, entirely seized by the craziness of the war on drugs and using that as the fundamental um

you know framework. Now, we didn't have an eighteenth Amendment to mobilize against right, but in fact that was the key analogy, and it was one that you know, continue to resonate with people. We had to jump over the hoop where people would say alcohol is different, alcohols different arcotics are fundamentally different. But in that case we could use marijuana as an example of something that was actually

less dangerous in alcohol. And in that case, in fact, that model of repealing alcohol prohibition was the one that played out very powerfully for us in the movement that we built at least repeal marijuana prohibition and to begin to roll back other aspects of the drug war. Well, and I think I think it's a it's a really um it's it's different, and yet there are so many similarities in parallels and in terms of you're right, I mean,

certainly with marijuana. Um. I think the campaign has obviously been it took a long time, but it has been somewhat successful, but clearly still not at the at the federal level. Uh, at least in terms of, yes, we've got Joe Biden pardoning, but not in terms of you know, sort of decriminalizing um. But yeah, but at least I'll tell you marijuana though the notion just twenty years ago that you know, there were some quotes, you had, one

quote I had. I've seen a quote by Morris Shepherd, the pro Prohibition Center from Texas, who said in nineteen thirty that the chances of eighteenth Amendment being repealed were about the same as a humming boon, you know, you know, flying to the moon, you know, with a skyscraper on its back, and three years later in fall. And so now we tend to say, oh, ho ham, well, we

haven't quite legalized it nationally. But in fact, the notion of repealing marijuana prohibition was regarded as absolutely quixotic and almost absurd really until about twelve years ago. So it was a really very It wasn't quite the rapidity with which the twenty first Amendment was passed. I mean that happened so quickly in those last years, but it actually did happen very very quickly. And through building together coalitions as well. Mm hmm. No, it's an excellent point, um.

And but that was successful for so many years, and it's coming apart the seems because so many of these countries that are deeply affected by you know, the sort of war on drugs are are really speaking out forcefully. Um. And that also is you know, sort of part of an important transnational coalition building to dismantle the that war on drugs as well. Yeah, I mean, the U S did try infect It was part of Harry Anslinker's job

in the late twenties. His heead of the Foreign Control section of the Bureau Prohibition to try to create some sort of nascent international arrangement, and he was successful in getting treaties with about a dozen countries in the mostly in the western hemisphere of the Caribbean and elsewhere. But

ultimately it was a futile, failed effort. But obviously he was a lot more successful in playing a key leading role in building the global drug prohibition regime between nineteen thirty and when he finally left office in the early nineteen sixties. Right. Well, listen, Lisa, I've loved this conversation with you. I loved your book for our listeners. Lisa mcgurre Harvard is story in the book The War on Alcohol. If you want the one go to book to read

about alcohol prohibition, that's the one to get. So, Lisa, thank you so much for taking us time to speak with me and my listeners, and uh, best of luck on your future endeavors. Thanks so much, it's been a real pleasure and a great conversation. Take care, Ethan. Thanks again. If you're enjoying Psychoactive, please tell your friends about it, or you can write us a review at Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. We love to hear

from our listeners. If you'd like to share your own stories, comments and ideas, then leave us a message at one eight three three seven seven nine sixty that's eight three three psycho zero, or you can email us at Psychoactive at protozoa dot com, or find me on Twitter at Ethan natal Man. You can also find contact information in our show notes. Psychoactive is a production of I Heart Radio and Protozoa Pictures. It's hosted by me Ethan Naedelman.

It's produced by Noam Osband and Josh Stain. The executive producers are Dylan Golden, Ari Handel, Elizabeth Geesus and Darren Aronofsky from Protozoma Pictures, Alex Williams and Matt Frederick from My Heart Radio, and me Ethan Naedelman. Our music is by Ari Blucien and a special thanks to Avi Brios, f Bianca Grimshaw and Robert Deep. Next week we'll be bringing you a bonus episode. It's me being interviewed by my friend gian Carlo conna Vestio about my own psychedelic experiences.

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