December 18 - Booze Goes Underground

On this day in labor history, the year was 1917. 

That was the day that Congress passed the Eighteenth Amendment, which outlawed the transportation, manufacture and sale of alcohol. 

The amendment went into effect thirteen months later. 

According to John Rumbarger, author of Profits, Power and Prohibition, the temperance movement centered on tightening social control of working people. 

Workers often met in bars and saloons to unwind after work and to socialize.

But in the days before union halls, the saloon doubled as a headquarters where workers could talk about problems on the job like mistreatment and poor working conditions.

They used the saloon as place to plan and organize strikes. 

It also served as a site for workers to talk politics and organize around political parties. 

Many prominent industrialists complained that saloons were breeding grounds for labor unrest and radical politics. 

They also feared a growing immigrant working class that tied its fate to powerful political machines in cities like Chicago, New York and Boston. 

The Anti-Saloon movement brought a strange mix into its coalition. 

It included the KKK who worried of the growing power of immigrant workers. 

But it also included Progressives who worked for labor harmony and sobriety as a means of public health.

The anti-Saloon movement also targeted German Brewers.

The United States had just entered World War I and Anti-German sentiment was so high that many considered German Brewers to be working for the Kaiser, their product a sap on the energies of servicemen and grain production to feed the US troops.

But alcohol flowed freely throughout the 20s, creating both the Jazz speakeasy and bootlegging syndicates.

It would ultimately be repealed by 1933.