The Rise and Fall of Prohibition / The Human Side of What the Eighteenth Amendment and the Volstead Act Have Done to the United States

Chapter 2: AUTHOR’S NOTE

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Drugs/Alcohol/Pharmacology History - American History - Modern (1750+)

About This Book

The author surveys the origins and implementation of national alcohol prohibition, tracing its legal architecture and the Volstead Act and related statutes, and assessing their social and political consequences. He argues that sweeping bans produced an expanding web of laws, enforcement difficulties, bootlegging, corruption, and unintended social unhappiness, while altering public habits, literature, and civic life. Comparative chapters examine Canadian and European approaches, and contemporary debates among reformers, clergy, and journalists. The book combines reportage, legal critique, statistical canvass, and cultural commentary to weigh prohibition's practical effects and to pose questions about possible remedies or repeal.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

The chapter from Mr. John J. Leary, Jr’s, book, “Talks with T. R.,” entitled “On Prohibition,” is used in this volume by permission of, and by special arrangement with, Houghton Mifflin Company, the authorized publishers.

Thanks are also due the editor of Harper’s Magazine, for his kind permission to include portions of E. S. Martin’s article, and to the Rev. W. A. Crawford-Frost, for his consent to reprint extracts from his sermon.

Messrs. Funk & Wagnalls have been most helpful in permitting the use of their files of The Literary Digest; and Mr. William L. Fish, Mr. Frederic J. Faulks, Mr. Thomas K. Finletter and Mr. Herbert B. Shonk rendered much assistance in the preparation of this volume.

Two chapters are reprints of articles which originally appeared in the New York Times.

I must also thank Mr. Markham, Mr. Le Gallienne and Mr. Montague for the use of their poems.