Alcohol Prohibition In 1920s History Essay

Alcohol Prohibition In 1920s History Essay Women, the driving factor in prohibition, believed that prohibition would make alcohol’s presence in society go away this would resolve the majority of societal issues.. The prohibition movement only made the alcohol problem worse by increasing the percentage of alcohol in one drink, due to the new group of people it created. This group was coined with the name moonshiners or bootleggers, and these people were in the very profitable business of producing alcohol illegally. Not only did they make alcohol illegally, but the alcohol that they did make was a lot more potent than the alcohol that was sold prior to prohibition. They could not transport beer, or even wine very easily because of the sheer volume that it would take to intoxicate a person. Moonshiners had to resort to something that would be more profitable and easier to transport. â€Å"Well, one of the things that happen when you outlaw any product is that the product returns underground. Correct? But it returns und erground in a more concentrated form. And the problem with beer is it’s very difficult to hide. So, in most parts of the United States, beer actually was not available during Prohibition. Instead, you had to substitute bathtub gin.†(See Appendix 3) Alcohol sold before 1920 was usually low proof, but when moonshine came about it was up to 190 proof , or 95% alcohol. The picture â€Å"Still Diagram† shows a diagram of how moonshiners built their valuable stills that could produce very high proof alcohol. (See Appendix 1) This was something that women did not think about. They just believed that they alcohol would go away, not be transferred into a different more potent form. People would get a lot drunker a lot faster only making worse the problem that women saw before. This alone made prohibition a complete failure. Seeing that moonshine was illegal, this turned many citizens, who used to be good law abiding citizens, into criminals. These citizens were people who held respectable jobs, and were very capable members of society, and not just people who were the stereotypical criminals. With more people breaking laws, and a new underground business, this led to the ever rising crime rate, leaving the police outnumbered. â€Å"The most successful gangs became ever larger and more organized. With the money made from liquor they were able to branch out into a variety of other criminal enterprises, and eventually they used the money to take over legitimate business. The structure of what we now call organized crime was born during prohibition.† (Cohen 49) It was very hard for authorities to keep up with something so new that they had never had to combat before. What started out as a good idea was falling apart day by day. â€Å"The demand for alcohol was outweighing (and out-winning) the demand for sobriety.† (National Archives) This became such a profitable business that in most cases the ends would justify the means. After all, thi s was a tax free business, and the money that was coming into bootleggers from selling their moonshine was more that most of them have seen in their entire life. Women did not approve of this at all. This was not what they had intended when they posed the idea of prohibition. Creating more problems in a society that they had already deemed as corrupt was the last thing they want to do, but they did not realize their ideology was just fueling the issues they felt that were already bad enough in their society.