1. This ppt originally appeared on the Langley Secondary School website at This site went down in July 2010, so I have copied it here.

2. Prohibition
The 18th Amendment

3. What was ‘Prohibition’?
A law called the Volstead Act introduced in the USA in January 1920.
It banned the manufacture, sale and transport of alcohol.
The federal government had the power to enforce this law.
It theory the USA became ‘dry’.
It has since become known as the ‘noble experiment’.

4. Why was prohibition introduced?
It already existed in many states
Moral reasons
Campaigners like the Anti-Saloon League of America
The First World War

5. Reasons why prohibition was introduced?
National mood - when America entered the war in 1917 the national mood also turned against drinking alcohol. The Anti-Saloon League argued that drinking alcohol was damaging American society.
Practical - a ban on alcohol would boost supplies of important grains such as barley.
Religious - the consumption of alcohol went against God's will.
Moral - many agreed that it was wrong for some Americans to enjoy alcohol while the country's young men were at war.

6. What were the effects of prohibition?
Speakeasies
Moonshine
Smuggling
Organised crime

7. Speakeasies Secret saloon bars opened up in cellars and back rooms.
They had names like the ‘Dizzy Club’ and drinkers had to give a password or knock at the door in code to be let in.
Speakeasies sold ‘bootleg’ alcohol, smuggled into America from abroad.
Before Prohibition there were 15,000 bars in New York. By 1926 there were 30,000 speakeasies!

8. Moonshine A spirit made secretly in home made stills.
Several hundred people a year died from this during the 1920s.
In 1929 it is estimated that 700 million gallons of beer were produced in American homes.

9. ‘Bootleggers’
Smugglers called ‘Bootleggers’ made thousands of dollars bringing in illegal alcohol to America.
America has thousands of miles of frontiers so it proved easy.
Famous smugglers like William McCoy made fortunes by bringing alcohol from the West Indies and Canada.

10. Organised Crime
The enormous profits to b made attracted gangsters who started to take control of many cities.
They bribed the police, judges and politicians.
They controlled the speakeasies and the distilleries, and ruthlessly exterminated their rivals.

11. Al Capone
By 1927 he was earning some $60 million a year from bootlegging.
His gang was like a private army. He had 700 men under his control.
He was responsible for over 500 murders.
On 14th February 1929, Capone’s men dressed as police officers murdered 7 members of a rival gang. This became known as the ‘Valentine’s Day Massacre.’

12. Why did prohibition fail?
There weren't enough Prohibition agents to enforce the law - only 1,500 in 1920.
The size of America's boundaries made it hard for these agents to control smuggling by bootleggers.
The low salary paid to the agents made it easy to bribe them.
Many Americans never gave their support to Prohibition and were willing to drink in speakeasies - bars that claimed to sell soft drinks, but served alcohol behind the scenes.
Gangsters such as Al Capone made money from organised crime.
Protection rackets, organised crime and gangland murders were more common during Prohibition than when alcohol could be bought legally.