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

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Towne, Charles Hanson, 1877-1949

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource : multiple file formats

Place of Publication:

Salt Lake City, UT : Project Gutenberg,

Summary:

"The Rise and Fall of Prohibition" by Charles Hanson Towne is a historical account written in the early 20th century. The book examines the impact of the Eighteenth Amendment and the Volstead Act on American society, highlighting the unexpected consequences and complexities of Prohibition. Towne delves into the cultural and social tensions related to restrictions on alcohol, emphasizing the ways in which they have reshaped behavior and attitudes among citizens. The opening of the work introduces the perplexing nature of Prohibition, describing how it caught the American public by surprise despite the long-standing efforts of temperance advocates. Towne reflects on the irony of voters dismissing Prohibition as a mere joke only to find it thrust upon them as law. He critiques the shift in national attitude towards alcohol, arguing that Prohibition has created a culture of lawlessness and hypocrisy, where violation of laws has become commonplace, and presents a call to recognize the discontent brewing in society. The author sets the stage for a deeper exploration of these themes as he discusses the contradictions and absurdities surrounding the enforcement of Prohibition laws. (This is an automatically generated summary.)

Contents:

The phenomenon of Prohibition

Our great unhappiness

Our endless chain of laws

Too much "Verboten"

Making the world safe for de-mockery-cy

The infamous Volstead Act

A triumvirate against Prohibition

"The fear for thee, my country"

Drying up the ocean

The Mullan-Gage Law, the Van Ness Act and the Hobert Act

Bootlegging and graft

"Don't joke about Prohibition"

How Canada has solved the liquor problem

Crime and drunkenness

The literary digest's canvass

Literature and Prohibition

America today

Other reforms

Is Europe going dry?

What are we going to do about it?

Credits:

Produced by ellinora, Charlie Howard, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)

Notes:

Reading ease score: 68.1 (8th & 9th grade). Neither easy nor difficult to read.

Release date is 2019-11-02