Why Is Prohibition Important In The 1920s

On January 16, 1920, America went dry. Along with the ratification of the 18th amendment on that day, the Prohibition Era of the United States began and lasted for 14 years long. The prohibition amendment ruled that the manufacture, transportation, imports, exports and sale of intoxicating liquor for beverage purposes were all restricted or considered illegal. This unprecedented degree of government interference in the private lives of Americans brought irrevocable impact to the country since alcohol was one of the most significant pastimes in human history. However, its promotion was utterly loud in the society back to the 1920s, supporters were those who believed in absolute morality and those who would benefit from the absence of drinks.

Beginning with the founding father of temperance Lyman Beecher who helped establish the American Temperance Society in 1826, regardless of the continuous replacement of leadership or the Protestants division afterward, Prohibition was probably the only cause that could unite most Protestants. As one of the major branch of forces promoting Prohibition, the evangelical and Protestant Christians campaigned to reduce the consumption of intoxicating substances because they associated drinking with evil. Starting at the several mentions of adverse impacts of alcohols in the Bible and catalyzed by the rise of prohibitionism, Protestant Christians proceeded movements to make temperance or even abstinence the object of education and legislation in order to develop moral reform of the

Likewise, the vote for the eighteenth amendment and the Hobson Resolution, a proposed Constitutional prohibition amendment, was a nonpartisan situation; it was on a sectional basis. According to data of the vote on Hobson Resolution, most of the members of the House who voted for it were from small cities or country villages, whereas most of those who opposed it were from large cities. Based on the tendency of village America againsting urban America, catalyzed by the War, the eighteenth amendment in the Senate was passed by a majority of more than three to one. Similar disproportion in both society and the government kept occurring on the issue of proposed prohibition law. In the words of Richard Hamm when speaking of the unprecedented situation in the