Alcohol and Teetotalism: Twentieth-Century Prohibition and Repeal

The emphasis on individual and family temperance became political in the early 1900s with the collection of tens of thousands of circulating pledge cards on which young people signed an oath never to drink. The numbers of these pledge cards were communicated to politicians, and candidates found themselves polarized between “wets” and “dries.” Among the wets were working-class immigrants, especially German and Irish Americans for whom the saloon or pub was a community institution.

National prohibition did not take effect until 1919 and was repealed in 1933. “Near beer” with 0.5 percent alcohol was permitted, as was home brewing and limited commercial wine making for religious use. Prohibition also marked the introduction of oversalted cooking wine. Cookbooks of the 1920s have alcohol-free recipes for drinks, often with a winking reference to how much wine or bourbon had been used in former times. Illegal imported liquor turned American tastes to blended Scotch and Canadian whiskeys. Cocktails, blending often crude spirits with wines, juices, and flavorings, proliferated and remained part of American taste through the 1960s. Many local breweries never reopened after Prohibition, and numerous American vineyards were replanted with fruit trees. American wines did not again become nationally popular until the 1970s. This was followed by a revival of craft brewing in the mid-1980s and a revival of retro-cocktail drinking in the 1990s.