Will This Be Our Year?
In 1919, a ban on alcohol exposed a cultural divide between urban and rural America and led to a spike in organized crime. Federal, state, and local governments struggled to adapt to the abrupt change in reality that came to be known as Prohibition. The task of enforcing new regulations initially fell to the Internal Revenue Service (thus the term “revenuers” for federal agents who hunted moonshiners) before being passed to the Department of Justice (DOJ). While enforcement was concentrated in rural areas and small towns—where some folks made decent livings by operating homemade stills—urban dwellers continued to enjoy alcohol courtesy of bootleggers and speakeasies. With the end of Prohibition in 1933, after the broken bottles, blood, and dust finally settled, an article in The United States News (now U.S. News & World Report) attempted to give the citizenry an idea of how the path forward might look. The open season for liquor-control laws is at hand. With repeal on December ...