Prohibition During The 1920's

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What if you were told you were not allowed to drink something because it is illegal, would you listen? Would you be a law-abiding citizen or would you become a criminal because you drink alcohol? Prohibition occurred during the 1930s and it changed society very rapidly. The temperance movement, later known as Prohibition, was a clash between the early twentieth-century activists and the common people, and the effect prohibition had on everyone. As America got older, they started to change opinions of their favorite drink. Americans started to have a change of heart “Around 1900, however, the public attitude toward alcohol shifted dramatically. For one thing, medical science began to debunk the notion that alcohol was good for you.”(Manning …show more content…

Constitution took effect in January 1920”(Price 1). This describes the work of many activists and everything they have worked on. As prohibition was passed, many will go out of their way to get the illegal drink. Many people began to buy alcohol from bootleggers, brewing home alcohol, and illegal bars. According to Steven Manning: “the illegal speakeasy [bar] and a spirit of deliberate revolt, which in many communities make drinking a thing to do.”(Manning 1). This portrays how alcohol is taboo, people still want to get their hands on it. This highlights how it was even deemed a fun thing to do. “A pilot lands a cargo of eighteen cases of Canadian liquor at an airstrip near Des Moines, Iowa.” States W.J. Rorobraugh “Asking $250 per twelve bottle case, more than six times the pre-prohibition price, he sold out in two hours.”(Rorobraugh 61). This shows how alcohol is such a rare item that people would go out of their way and spend huge amounts of money on a little bit of alcohol. This demonstrates how many people are thirsty for the forbidden. According to Rorobraugh “A twenty-year-old farm labourer who was shocked to find that spirits cost $10 a