“America hails return of beer”

The “dry era” was not yet com­pletely over – only 19 states and Wash­ing­ton DC had pro­claimed liquor legal – but the “great thirst”, as this news­pa­per branded it, was about to be legally quenched after 14 years of Pro­hi­bi­tion. Thou­sands of bar­rels of beer were wait­ing for the first sec­ond after mid­night on April 6 to be opened and start a cel­e­bra­tion that was a mix­ture of Mardi Gras, the fourth of July and even Armistice Day back in 1918. And with these, Amer­i­cans could start say­ing good­bye to all the years of ma­chine gun mur­ders, pro­hi­bi­tion bribery, and poi­so­nous booze. Gangs had taken con­trol of the trade shortly after the ban started in 1920; the state was de­prived of an im­por­tant source of rev­enue as­so­ci­ated with the legal im­port and sale of al­co­hol, and so­ci­ety as a whole saw lit­tle im­prove­ment in ill­nesses, ac­ci­dents and fam­ily vi­o­lence as­so­ci­ate with con­sump­tion. Over­all, the at­tempt to erase al­co­hol in Amer­ica went bloody wrong.

State by state, leg­is­la­tors were sup­port­ing the 21st amend­ment of the Con­sti­tu­tion that over­ruled the 18th, which es­tab­lished Pro­hi­bi­tion. Chicago news­pa­pers from a city so much as­so­ci­ated with the gangs and the vi­o­lence which the “dry era” pro­duced, were re­port­ing on the sup­ply sit­u­a­tion: “Boun­ti­ful stocks of do­mes­tic wines, a fair sup­ply, par­tic­u­larly in hotel stocks, of im­ported wines, more than enough of do­mes­tic gin and blended bour­bon, and ’ad­e­quate’ stocks of bonded bour­bon and im­ported scotch are re­ported in the city. It will re­quire sev­eral weeks for im­porters of Eu­ro­pean beer of more than 3.2 strength to catch up with or­ders.”

And con­cern­ing prices, only a slight in­crease in com­par­i­son with pre-pro­hi­bi­tion fig­ures but much cheaper than the boot­leg stuff dur­ing Pro­hi­bi­tion. A bot­tle of Cham­pagne, for in­stance, which fetched 4.50 dol­lars be­fore Pro­hi­bi­tion, and which rose to 15 dol­lars dur­ing the “dry era”, was ex­pected to be sold at be­tween 5 and 9 dol­lars now. A glass of Scotch whisky would sell for 25 to 50 cents, com­pared with just 15 cents be­fore and 75 cents dur­ing Pro­hi­bi­tion.

And among the new reg­u­la­tions for sell­ing liquor, the new law said that “no re­tail liquor es­tab­lish­ment is al­lowed within 100 feet (30 me­tres) of any church, school, hos­pi­tal, home for the aged or in­di­gent, or vet­er­ans, or mil­i­tary or naval sta­tion”.

But the city was big enough to ac­com­mo­date bars and sa­loons where booze was fi­nally legal.

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Chicago Daily Tri­bune