It Lasted for 14 Years
For most of us, who now live in a country of individual freedom, it’s really shocking to see how the world’s most prosperous and dynamic country started the Prohibition of alcohol. And it lasted for almost 14 years! Today, look back at it as a naïve experiment and associate the times with the image of Al Capone and other legendary crime bosses.
Dismantling A Bootleg Distillery In San Francisco During Prohibition, the 1920s. Photo By Granger/Shutterstock
But, the campaign to prohibit alcohol was deeply rooted in Anglo-American society for two centuries. Take the American Society for the Promotion of Temperance, for example, which was founded in 1826. About a decade later, as many as a million Americans found themselves belonging to an anti-alcohol group of some kind. And a large majority of them were high-minded middle-class women – aka the “do-gooders” of the day.