Herbert Hoover Essay -- History

Herbert HooverHerbert Hoover cal direct it a noble experiment. Organized crime strand it to be the opportunity of a lifetime. Millions of the Statesns denounced it as an infringement of their rights. For nearly 14 yearsfrom Jan. 29, 1920, until Dec. 5, 1933--the manufacture, transportation, and sale of dry beverages was illegal in the United States. The 18th, or bar era, Amendment to the Constitution was passed by Congress and submitted to the states in 1917. By Jan. 29, 1919, it had been ratified. Enforcement legislation authorize the National rampart Act (or more popularly, the Volstead act, after Representative Andrew J. Volstead of Minnesota) was passed on Oct. 28, 1919, over President Woodrow Wilsons veto. The 18th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States non only prohibitedthe manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating spiritss, but their moment and exportation also. It was adopted after a nationwide crusade by temperance groups, notably the Womens C hristian Temperance Union, or WCTU. The amendment was oblige and defined by Congress in the Volstead Act. One result of the amendment was that the doing and sale of alcoholic beverages became the province of organized crime. Americans did not stop drinking, and their demands for liquor were met by wide-scale smuggling and bootlegging, much of which was controlled by such gangs as that led by Al Capone in Chicago. The era of prohibition ended in 1933 when the 18th Amendment was repealed by the twenty-first Amendment. The stage was set for more than a decade of combat between the wets and the drysthose stubborn to keep drinking and those determined to enforce the law. In retrospect, the layover has been called the Roaring Twenties and the Jazz Age. stark naked music appeared along with bran-new dances, a new feminism, and a widely distributed relaxation of standards after the rigorous years of World War I. The new mood was in complete contrast to the moral earnestness of some Americans who were determined to remain the ideal Victorians. Organized efforts to limit the use of alcoholic beverages began in the United States during the 1820s. A by-product of the religious revivalism sweeping the nation, Prohibition soon became part of the whole social reform movement that preceded the elegant War. The earliest reformers called for moderation, not total abstinence, but as ... ...bition did not reach its goals. Instead, it added many problems to those that it intended to solve. It came along in a social period where it was just simply unrealistic to have any success. The only beneficiaries to that of Prohibition were bootleggers, crime bosses, and the forces of big government in all of its corrupt forms. though it failed to improve health, welfare, or America as a whole, the experiment with prohibition affords some valuable lessons. With this learning experience as part of the past, America should be able to confront its modern remnants in all of their affi liate varieties. Bibliography Coffey, Thomas M. The Long Thirst Prohibition in America, 1920-1933 sore York W. W. Norton & Co., 1975. Krout, J. A. The Origins of Prohibition, unseasoned York City Russell & Russell, 1996. Lee, Henry. How Dry We Were, Enlewood Cliffs, NJ Prentice Hall, 1963. Rorabaugh, W. J. The Alcoholic Republic- An American Tradition, New York Oxford University Press, 1979. Turner, George Kibbe. The City of Chicago, A Study of Great Immoralities, McClures Magazine, April 1927 (vol. 28). Warburton, Clark. The Results of Prohibition, Auburn Press, 1996.