Prohibition is the act or practice of forbidding something by law; more particularly the term refers to the banning of the manufacture, storage, transportation, sale, possession, and consumption of alcoholic beverages. The word is also used to refer to a period of time during which such bans are enforced.
The Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution established the prohibition of alcohol in the United States. The amendment was proposed by Congress on December 18, 1917, and ratified by the requisite number of states on January 16, 1919. The Eighteenth Amendment was repealed by the Twenty-first Amendment on December 5, 1933—it is the only constitutional amendment in American history to be repealed.
The temperance movement is a social movement promoting temperance or complete abstinence from consumption of alcoholic beverages. Participants in the movement typically criticize alcohol intoxication or promote teetotalism, and its leaders emphasize alcohol's negative effects on people's health, personalities and family lives. Typically the movement promotes alcohol education and it also demands the passage of new laws against the sale of alcohol, either regulations on the availability of alcohol, or the complete prohibition of it. During the 19th and early 20th centuries, the temperance movement became prominent in many countries, particularly in English-speaking, Scandinavian, and majority Protestant ones, and it eventually led to national prohibitions in Canada, Norway, Finland, and the United States, as well as provincial prohibition in India. A number of temperance organizations exist that promote temperance and teetotalism as a virtue.
The Anti-Saloon League, now known the American Council on Addiction and Alcohol Problems, is an organization of the temperance movement in the United States.
A local option is the ability of local political jurisdictions, typically counties or municipalities, to allow decisions on certain controversial issues within their borders, usually referring to a popular vote. It usually relates to the issue of alcoholic beverage, marijuana sales, and now mask wearing.
Ernest Hurst Cherrington was a leading temperance journalist. He became active in the Anti-Saloon League and was appointed editor of the organization's publishing house, the American Issue Publishing Company. He edited and contributed to the writing of The Standard Encyclopedia of the Alcohol Problem, a comprehensive six-volume work. In addition, he was active in establishing the World League Against Alcoholism.
Howard Hyde Russell was an American lawyer and clergyman, the founder of the Anti-Saloon League.
The American Issue Publishing Company, incorporated in 1909, was the holding company of the Anti-Saloon League of America. Its printing presses operated 24 hours a day and it employed 200 people in the small town of Westerville, Ohio, where the company had its headquarters. Within the first three years of its existence the publishing house was producing about 250,000,000 book pages per month, and the quantity increased yearly. This dwarfed the output of the National Temperance Society and Publishing House, which took over half a century to print one billion pages.
In the United States, the nationwide ban on alcoholic beverages, was repealed by the passage of the Twenty-first Amendment to the United States Constitution on December 5, 1933.
The American Temperance Society (ATS), also known as the American Society for the Promotion of Temperance, was a society established on February 13, 1826, in Boston, Massachusetts. Within five years there were 2,220 local chapters in the U.S. with 170,000 members who had taken a pledge to abstain from drinking distilled beverages, though not including wine and beer; it permitted the medicinal use of alcohol as well. Within ten years, there were over 8,000 local groups and more than 1,250,000 members who had taken the pledge.
William Eugene "Pussyfoot" Johnson was an American Prohibition advocate and law enforcement officer. In pursuit of his campaign to outlaw intoxicating beverages, he went undercover, posing as an habitué of saloons and collecting information against their owners.
Wayne Bidwell Wheeler was an American attorney and longtime leader of the Anti-Saloon League. The leading advocate of the prohibitionist movement in the late 1800s and early 1900s, he played a major role in the passage of the Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which outlawed the manufacture, distribution, and sale of alcoholic beverages.
Purley Albert Baker (1858—1924) was an ordained Methodist minister who strongly opposed any consumption of alcoholic beverages and was superintendent of the Ohio Anti-Saloon League.
The Prohibition era was the period from 1920 to 1933 when the United States prohibited the production, importation, transportation and sale of alcoholic beverages. The alcohol industry was curtailed by a succession of state legislatures, and finally ended nationwide under the Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, ratified on January 16, 1919. Prohibition ended with the ratification of the Twenty-first Amendment, which repealed the Eighteenth Amendment on December 5, 1933.
In the United States, the temperance movement, which sought to curb the consumption of alcohol, had a large influence on American politics and American society in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, culminating in the prohibition of alcohol, through the Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, from 1920 to 1933. Today, there are organizations that continue to promote the cause of temperance.
Suessa Baldridge Blaine was an American writer of temperance pageants. She was connected with the Federated Woman's Clubs and organizations.
Lella A. Dillard was an American temperance leader. She served as president of the Georgia State Woman's Christian Temperance Union (W.C.T.U.), and afterwards as National Director of the W.C.T.U.'s Peace Department.
Fillmore Condit was an American inventor, temperance activist and local politician serving New Jersey and later Long Beach, California.
Deborah Knox Livingston was a Scottish-born American lecturer associated with temperance and suffrage movements. She spent much of her life in service to the National and World's Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), as well as the Young Women's Christian Association (YWCA), Federation of Women's Clubs, League of Women Voters, and World League Against Alcoholism (WLAA). In Maine, she served as the chair of the state's Suffrage Campaign Committee, while in Rhode Island, she was President of the state's WCTU. In addition to the textbook, Studies in Government (1921), Livingston was the author of several treatises and articles.
Adrianna Hungerford was an American temperance activist who served as President of the Colorado State Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), 1904–42.
