Historian Reaction - Oversimplified's PROHIBITION

welcome back everybody to another reaction video and at long last i have heated the call we are going to take a look at oversimplified latest video which is their video on prohibition uh prohibition is something that i think a lot of people in america are very familiar with as a part of our history i was primarily that time from 1920 to the early 1930s when the sale and distribution of alcohol was banned in the united states the consumption of alcohol was not banned however you can't consume what you can't produce or distribute or sell uh and so the volstead act which was the um the the act passed in congress to enforce prohibition which was actually passed as a constitutional amendment uh is what eventually led to uh things like the uh the rise of the mafia uh people like joseph kennedy who was john f kennedy's father uh got rich because of the importation of alcohol people like al capone who you see right there were made famous by the events that happened during those days so i'm excited to dive into this one it's pretty long so my reaction video i expect will be pretty long as well and again this is a topic that i'm excited to learn more about i know some about it just from my study of american history but it's not a time that i've studied specifics uh so i'll be curious to see what some of you know so add your own comments your own uh thoughts on what we watch and what i respond to in the comment section below please don't forget to hit like and subscribe if you haven't already and don't forget to check out the original content i'll put a link in the description that can take you over to oversimplified video if you haven't already seen it let's dive in good morning honey what's for breakfast the usual two caskets of rum a mug of heart cider and a full bottle of wine oh boy oh i'm running late i'll have to take it with me don't forget your lunch it's a six pack of beer a flask of whiskey six shots of tequila and as a special treat a banana oh gee whiz i'm gonna be smashed today enjoy your day of operating sharp dangerous farm equipment i can't believe this is an acceptable way to live god bless america okay gotta go surprise my life [Music] america the land of beautiful strip malls top class infrastructure and wonderful urban sprawl ah yes beautiful america but what's the most american thing you can think of the statue of liberty mount rushmore a crazy lady in a mobility scooter yelling at a pigeon well what if i told you the answer is alcohol that's right when the puritans arrived on america's shores they brought a ship packed with beer george washington provided his men with a daily cup of whiskey andrew jackson's inauguration party left the white house so trashed that everybody had to be ordered outside so let's talk about all this for a second because remember this is not a time when there are a lot of options as far as what you're going to have to drink uh you know we didn't have things like pepsi and coke we didn't have um even a lot of the things like orange juice apple juice things like that and when you did have them they were really difficult and expensive to produce so by and large the average person has two choices when it comes to what they're gonna drink they're gonna drink water or they're going to drink some form of alcohol so one of the reasons why they the puritans brought over beer with them is because it was one of the few things that they had to drink they didn't have access to a lot of water and they didn't know where they'd be able to find fresh water when they came and uh you know so that doesn't excuse it but that's to understand that it was a different time and so the reason that people consumed a lot more alcohol at that time than maybe they do now has a lot to do with the accessibility of other things to drink at the time rick douglas said whiskey made him feel like a president me too frederick me too americans drink a breakfast doctors prescribe their patients hard liquor in the 19th century americans drink three times as much as their modern day counterparts that's a lot of whiskey hey jerry how's that so two gallons of pure alcohol a year on average now six to seven back then and again a lot of that goes back to you know we've got a lot of other options now as far as beverages that we can consume port coming along already done sir i've also organized your paperwork watered your flowers and been a father figure to your children wait a minute what's that smell have you been drinking at work no sir i would never well why not everyone else is doing it but i got all my work done you're fired americans drink at work they drink at barn raisins baptisms and public hangings heavy drinking was so normal that it was as american as apple pie hi everyone my name's ron and i'm an alcoholic get over yourself ron we're all alcoholics but more and more americans began to wonder whether all of this truly was a normal way to live were americans drinking perhaps a little too much well one group in particular thought the answer to that was yes you know him you love him woman true oh crap woman hang on we just want to talk come on fred you've got two kids and a wife at home yet here you are spending your entire paycheck on booze and you dr spanky you were on the cusp of discovering time travel but what did you discover instead the sweet sweet joys of whiskey so you know this is absolutely 100 true the temperance movement as it was called was kind of growing side by side with the woman's suffrage movement this is a time when women are starting to find their voice they're starting to realize the power that they have when they get together and start fighting for things and so these are the two things that they fought for the most the right to vote and the issue of alcohol and in my own family i've seen some of this uh my great great great grandmother whose husband actually grew up in a family who ran uh he had been an english immigrant uh who'd come over from glasgow scotland where his father had actually owned a pub and then came to america and started what they called a saloon there in cleveland and so he grew up around alcohol and he grew up where his family made a living with alcohol and he becomes of course an alcoholic then and and uh we actually found records where my great-great-great-grandmother actually took a case all the way to the supreme court of ohio because what happened was her husband was going to the local bar and he was getting drunk to the point where he couldn't care for his family he wasn't going to work and this is around 1890 or so when the women's temperance movement was really taken off and had really grown a lot by this point and she sued the bar owner uh the guy who ran the bar saying listen it's your fault that my husband's drinking all of this and you need to stop letting him in here and the case went all the way to the supreme court uh over this fight so women were finding their voice and they were realizing the power they had and this was one way in which they fought for it that's right alcohol it's destroying our families our jobs and our homes hang on men don't let them get to you this saloon is our safe space where our wives and children can't annoy us with reality where we're free to be real men all right and what is it real men do take care of their families i don't know what she's talking about do you take care of your family no we drink beer we shoot guns and we mud wrestle now all of that's an exaggeration but that's a really good way of illustrating the competing interests that were going on here uh and and of course when you're a man in this time and you're doing what you want and you've got these places you can go that women can't go and the women don't have certain rights like voting and things like that then when women start to speak out like this it's going to be re received really poorly and the backlash against this was was pretty severe as america's heavy drinking ruined more and more lives moral resistance began to arise and women were at the forefront taking matters into their own hands at a time when a woman doing just about anything was shocking they had enough of being victim to their husband's heavy drinking and they were gonna do something unprecedented you're going to what i'm going to protest oh sweetie women can't protest they did starting in ohio before spreading nationwide a woman began a crusade against alcohol now one of the things that happened was that these just like it was the temperance movement and the um the suffrage movement hand-in-hand with the women speaking out on both things there was also a strong religious component to this as you might expect a lot of the temperance movements grew out of religious movements uh mormonism for example one of the very early temperance movements all the way back in the 1830s in kirkland ohio which is up near cleveland grew out of mormonism and uh evangelical protestantism also was a birthplace for some of these temperance movements and you even had towns growing up like uh outside of pittsburgh there was actually once a town called temperanceville uh so you you know this began to be a really strong part of the culture but it started with women primarily marched through towns and cities singing hymns gathering outside saloons and praying on their knees woman praying was so terrifying that in some towns schools were shut and business stagnated on one occasion firemen were called out to hose down the dangerous praying woman on another the owner of a beer garden reportedly held a cannon outside and threatened to reduce the savage woman to dust nevertheless they persisted they formed the wctu in 1874 and they organized they set up homes for inebriate women they installed water fountains in public parks and see the water fountain seems like not a big deal but again there's access to water gives you another option as far as what you drink instead of just drinking alcohol all the time it was just a practical way of trying to deal with the problem but textbooks for school children that contain some interesting claims about drinking alcohol here's a little timmy uh-oh looks like timmy's going to have his first drink he's taking a small sip of whiskey and timmy has spontaneously combusted the woman's efforts weren't in vain in small towns across america drugstores agreed to stop fulfilling prescriptions for alcohol men committed themselves to giving up drink inspired by the woman's moral fervor some saloon owners closed their doors the woman's crusade and other temperance movements were forcing people to reconsider alcohol's role in society and more people began to side with the growing temperance movement many states had even begun enacting their own dry laws that restricted the sale and use of alcohol one of them was kansas and to this day there are actually some states that have what are called dry counties i know kentucky's one of them uh where certain counties to this day you have a very difficult time being able to buy most alcohol alcohol had been outlawed since 1881. despite this many illegal saloons remained open and authorities had done just about nothing to stop them one woman disgusted by what she saw decided she would take the law into her own hands and not just any woman a terrifying hatchet-wielding sweet old lady named carrie nation armed with her trusty hatchet and a bag of what she called smashers she traveled from town to town visiting saloons but she wasn't there to get smashed she was there to smash the men could do nothing but cower as sweet little carrie hooked out and tore the place to shreds she went to kiowa and smashed she smashed wichita smashy smash topeka smashy smashed on a couple of occasions she was arrested but each time they were like okay carrie we're going to let you go so long as you promised don't do it again girl and not smash up any more saloons okay screw you pig yeah i think she's gonna be all right smack so carrie nation's interesting obviously she's kind of gone down down in history as one of these bigger than life persona she's actually from kentucky um as i was talking about kentucky and um you know she didn't actually live to see prohibition but it was something she fought for her whole life and she actually uh inspired a phrase where a lot of bars would put up these signs that say all nations welcome except carrie but she she again was motivated by her faith and i think at one point she described herself as like a bulldog that was doing the business of jesus and and going after anything that he didn't like and so i thought i always thought that was kind of interesting but she very much took the more aggressive approach to this smash smash kerry's tactics shocked the other members of the woman's christian temperance union but she assured them and this is a quote ladies you do not know how much joy you will have until you smash smash smash harry became a household name and she hoped her unusual tactics would spread across the country but unfortunately many of the women's movements eventually slowed down why well because of this kind of thing thelma i ripped my pants again ugh well you'll have to sew them yourself because i'm going out protesting what i don't know how to sew what if i burn the house down and get eaten by alligators wha don't be stupid mitch look i've gotta go [Music] hey thelma look who's stupid now see while the woman were out protesting there was nobody to do the cooking and cleaning and being seen and not heard and they gradually had to return to their duties at home but where the woman had got the ball rolling a new movement was about to take that ball all the way to washington dc i'm talking about the anti-saloon league the anti-saloon league was a political pressure group run by a very sweet looking old man but don't let that deceive you this guy was an evil genius while the women's movements were interested in a whole range of issues wayne wheeler and the anti-saloon league only cared about enemy number one mr al kahol and as a result they were extremely effective they were able to exploit the fears of the american people and i mean everyone's fears here's how they did it hello sir welcome to the liberal progressive rally why don't you introduce yourself well i'm patty and i'm an immigrant from ireland and tell me patty do you drink oh yes i drink a lot see folks people like patty come here looking for a better life only to end up drunk in the gutter don't worry sir we're gonna help you hey man you're doing great i just need you for one more thing hey christian conservatives this is patty he's a dirty catholic irish immigrant who's come to destroy america with his alcohol fuel debauchery workers were told alcohol was a capitalist ploy to keep them subjugated factory owners were told alcohol was making their irresponsible workers lazy so they're basically just spinning the argument to fit the hearer uh that's something you know that still gets done today you see paul this happened in politics all the time you speak to your audience if you're you know in virginia you speak to what virginians want to hear if you go to another part of the country and you're speaking to a different group you speak to what they want to hear and so this was not an uncommon thing it was just specific to the issue of alcohol black community was warned alcohol was hindering its progress while racists were warned alcohol would turn black men into brutes in one of the most confusing eras of american politics totally opposing groups found themselves agreeing on the same thing alcohol was bad the anti-saloon league also made great use of propaganda something prohibitionists have been doing for decades take this specimen for example that once what will happen to you if you start drinking let's see first you take a drink you get a little rowdy okay you make some new friends nice then you become homeless you turn to crime and oh but the most effective tactic wheeler used to force prohibition on america was pressure politics in any election he could wheeler very successfully rounded up support against any politician who was in favor of alcohol in ohio alone he had 70 state representatives and the popular republican governor ousted from office and replaced with prohibitionists so you have to see that this was not you know you get to the period just after world war one and all of a sudden they ban alcohol this was a movement that had been going for the better part of a century and they had been slowly building toward this uh and it got to the point where it was overwhelming the number of people who were in favor of think of it it's not easy to get a constitutional amendment passed in this country you have to get i think two-thirds of each house of congress and then you have to get three-fourths of the states so to get that wide array of people in favor of something is not something that happens overnight and it was it was a long time coming suddenly every politician in america was afraid of wayne wheeler even those who enjoyed alcohol in private began pretending to be against it in public alcohol is delicious uh i mean malicious sorry wayne i'm really drunk right now then it really hit the fan in 1917 when america found itself fighting in the first world war against germany anti-german sentiment exploded sauerkraut became liberty german measles became liberty measles and dachshunds became the embodiment of evil so before you think that silly um you may remember back when uh we were in the uh beginnings of the war on terror after 9 11 which was 20 years ago now and there there were a lot of people in this country when when france for example decided not to uh join us in going to war in afghanistan well in um specifically in iraq there were a lot of people in this country who didn't want to even use the term french fries it happens like that sometimes here in the area where i live in northeast ohio the town i grew up in had a a street called dutch lane well dutch even though we think of dutch as being the netherlands um dutch had german connotations because when we talk about the term pennsylvania dutch it's actually from deutsche uh which is german and so they changed the name of dutch lane to liberty street uh in the town i grew up in the royal house of uh the uk was called the house of saxa coburg and gota they were german they're very much a german royal family and they changed it to the house of windsor to get rid of that german sounding name see america you've always been this way the biggest brewers in america were german and wheeler saw to it that drinking alcohol became akin to pro that's true uh anheuser-busch uh you know these brewers they are the the folks who were making all the alcohol they were very much german families german treason the german brewers desperately tried to fight back creating their own propaganda presenting piers a healthy beverage one that you could even give to your kids as you can imagine it didn't go down well president wilson instituted some temporary wartime prohibition measures to save grain for food and with many in the country now in support of prohibition all that was left was to make it law one problem was that taxes on alcohol made up nearly 40 percent of the us government's annual revenue and that goes all the way back to the washington administration when you have to remember there's uh at the beginning stages of our country there's no income tax there's no uh there's no real property tax to speak of the primary way that the government made money was from imports um you know taxes on on things coming into the country and then on alcohol and it was such a big deal that we passed a whiskey tax that we ended up having a whiskey rebellion uh these rebellions because uh the people in western pennsylvania who were making their own alcohol and selling it rebelled against the idea that they were going to be taxed on it but it was it was it was one of the few things that the government made money on and i think so i think this is around the time that the federal government also passed the first national income tax uh permanent national income tax and the government wasn't just about to give that up no problem the anti-saloon league helped lobby for the creation of a new income tax on the american people and just like that the government was no longer reliant on alcohol prohibition was finally introduced to congress in 1913 not just as a law but a constitutional amendment in 1917 as the house held their final vote on the prohibition amendment wheeler was watching from the gallery you spineless cowards i know half of you drink yet here you are bowing down to ned flanders up there look at him like he's some kind of caesar ugh don't be so dramatic i obviously don't think i'm caesar now release the lion in the end prohibition passed the house easily 282 votes to 128 and the states ratified the new amendment by 1919 america a nation obsessed with liberty and freedom had just voluntarily given up its private right to choose whether or not to drink alcohol we did it folks we fixed everything america will be perfect forever you just dissolved america's fifth largest industry and lost tens of thousands of jobs for us immigrants no you idiot you don't get it we helped you idiot ugh i could really go for a beer oh no immediately after prohibition went into effect alcohol consumption in america decreased as americans followed the law and tried not drinking man if we're gonna be law abiding good boys we need something else to fill the dark lonely void that delicious beer once did well how about we crack open a nice cold can of water hell yeah toss it over nah this isn't doing it for me let's try knitting this isn't filling the dark void at all want to play some kites ah screw it let's go get some illegal beer while it seemed like many americans supported prohibition after the law went into effect it seemed like just as many americans intended to keep on drinking and they would go on to find a variety of ways to break the new law now where were we oh yeah punching paddy passing prohibition and procuring pints pretty soon after the new law went into effect the failures of prohibition were already beginning to rear their ugly heads for starters the details of the new prohibition law written by none other than wayne wheeler himself turned out to be more draconian than expected many prohibition supporters only wanted to outlaw hard liquor and hoped beer would remain legal but the volstead act outlawed anything over 0.5 percent that would make liberty cabbage illegal secondly the new law was full of loopholes that americans very quickly began to exploit for example while the sale and manufacture of liquor was illegal drinking it wasn't and you could also keep any alcohol you had before the law went into effect so many private clubs hoarded huge amounts of alcohol that saw them through the entire prohibition period whiskey intended for medicinal purposes was also allowed and doctors basically became bartenders it looked as though a full-on epidemic had broken out so what you have there is you have a very similar situation to what happened in the last several years in this country with medicinal marijuana where you could start getting prescriptions for something that otherwise might have been illegal and slowly it kind of became more and more accepted in general so you got people prescribing alcohol as a way to get around the volstead act there was a sudden surge in prescriptions for whiskey sacramental wines used by churches and synagogues were also permitted orders for communion wine suspiciously skyrocketed by millions of gallons and as rabbis had access to religious wine suddenly everyone was becoming but this is also the time when welch's develops grape juice uh because uh at this point and it was even before prohibition i think but that was for the people who were against alcohol being consumed even in church and so uh rather you know some churches started using grape juice instead of wine because of the issue of alcohol becoming a rabbi you had rabbi pat o'leary rabbi ll cool j rabbi fluffy but don't worry i'm sure all these definitely legitimate religious figures couldn't possibly be selling wine in the back alley after mass yep definitely nothing strange going on here new products also hit the shelves in stores such as vine glow a brick of dehydrated grape juice itself not alcoholic and therefore perfectly legal but the packaging did contain a strangely specific warning after dissolving the brick in a gallon of water do not place the liquid in a jug in the cupboard for 20 days because then it would turn into a wine i'll take a thousand yes sir now at this point i want you to think back for me if you will to the year 2005. you're the coolest kid around and you convince your parents to rent the greatest movie of all time from your local blockbuster but the movie starts with a strange message something about not downloading a car you immediately disregard that and hop on kazak to download the greatest song of all time and in the process drain your dad's bank account with copious amounts of ransomware you were breaking the law you bad boy or girl but did anyone come to arrest you no that's my point if no one's enforcing a law while everyone's breaking it is it really a law and so it was with prohibition see the conservative-led governments of the decade were also the kind of people who believed in small government spending so they'd passed a lot that would be extremely difficult to enforce but also didn't want to spend any of the money required to enforce it the newly created bureau of prohibition only had 1500 agents to cover the entire country that's one agent for every 70 666 americans in a massive country with 12 000 miles of coastline and one gigantic land border with canada good luck schmuckos yeah so it's not like the uh the rank and file policemen in every town were enforcing this law this was a law that was being enforced at the federal level so it was really the federal government who was uh responsible for enforcing it and so by and large you know at least at this early point uh in prohibition it wasn't being enforced all that much and all these clever little loopholes people were using to score illegal booze were only just the beginning america was about to devolve into alcohol-fueled criminal chaos yep by outlawing it prohibition had made alcohol a precious commodity and millions of americans would become outlaws as they found a variety of ways to score illegal booze for example many americans began making their own liquor illegal stills from making moonshine were found by prohibition agents from the hills of kentucky and the caves of arizona to park and this is where you get uh the rise of what eventually became nascar because you've got all these guys in the south in particular north carolina and eastern kentucky western virginia uh places like that who became uh alcohol runners i mean they were they were driving and they were they were learning how to drive effectively to where they could get away from uh the people who were chasing them parking lots in major cities and even in the homes of prohibition supporting politicians oh come on now fellas i voted for prohibition i'm not gonna have an illegal still what's this that's my son freddy say hi freddie sir this is obviously an illegal still how dare you hey what's this in the bathtub that's bath water why does it taste like alcohol uh here's a better question why are you tasting my bath water come on freddy let's get away from these perverts to discourage moonshining the government began adding extra toxins to many of the products moonshiners were using which resulted in many cases of severe illness and death but alcohol wasn't just being made at home along america's vast coastlines rum runners smuggled alcohol into the country by sea a floating supermarket known as rum row extended and this is where joseph kennedy makes his millions uh is through the rum running along the east coast just beyond america's maritime limit and bootleggers frequently sailed out in small boats to pick up shipments of booze these bootleggers could then be found selling their illegal products everywhere even in the halls of congress wow pop one day i want to work here well son if you work hard and never give up one day even you could be a massive hypocrite even president harding was known to serve as cabinet bootlegged whiskey and some bootleggers were so successful they became bazillionaires such as roy olmsted an ex-cop who became one of the biggest employers in the seattle area from smuggling booze unfortunately all of his whiskey came from canada yuck all of this criminality was being made possible by copious amounts of corruption across the country armies of government officials were persuaded to turn a blind eye bootleggers became so rich it was no problem to stuff a couple thousand dollars into the front pocket of the police chief or the mayor or their disapproving mother and some cops were getting almost as rich as the bootleggers alright men everyone gather in i've received word that one of you has been taking bribes from bootleggers any ideas who kevin perhaps got any thoughts no sir many police officers came from the same communities that drank a lot and they weren't about to arrest their own granddads for knocking back some homemade gin but all this isn't to say there was no enforcement plenty of government officials were doing their best to enforce the new laws and some unlucky individuals received very harsh penalties such as a michigan mother who is sentenced to life in prison for small-scale moonshine cases like these were widely reported in the media and only served to make prohibition even more unpopular but not just that the media also left to cover the exploits of the most famous bootleggers turning them into national icons so this is interesting because if you think about this there's been plenty of times in history where there's been a groundswell of support for something to happen but everybody has this kind of idealized version of what it's going to look like when it happens and when it when it finally happens what they wanted and they find out it didn't really do what they thought it would then you start to see how it all turns you know perfect example would be communism you have a great this groundswell of support for communism in a place and then when they actu actually get what they want and realize that corruption takes hold and and things aren't the perfect world they thought it was going to be then they start to turn against it and that's what happens here with prohibition prohibition looked nothing like the people thought it would and they very quickly turned against it that's why it lasted barely more than 10 years one of the biggest bootleggers was a man named george remus originally a lawyer he watched as his bootlegger clients paid off enormous fines like it was nothing and proclaimed bootleggins the business for me but unlike most bootleggers remus had big brain and he came up with a pretty clever system see there were millions of gallons of liquor produced before prohibition that were sitting in distillery warehouses and it could only be sold with government permission to drug companies so remus set up his own drug company and borrowed the liquor then he set up his own transport company to transport the liquor and then he would send his own man out with guns to intercept his own transport vehicles and this would happen hey man this is a stick up oh no please don't hurt me i won't hesitate to shoot please i have a wife and kids hand over all the whiskey fatty hey fatty isn't in this jerk after stealing all the whiskey from himself he could then sell it for big bucks the perfect crime unfortunately remus was eventually caught by a goody two-shoes prohibition director in indiana who wouldn't take remus bribes and the government found remus guilty of violating the bolstered act three thousand times for two years as remus sat in prison his wife promised to take care of all of his money and by take care of his money she might have an affair with a prohibition agent sell off everything remus owned and filed for divorce when remus finally got out and found his big fancy mansion empty with his wife gone he reportedly broke down in tears a few months later during their divorce trial he spotted his wife in a car in cincinnati remus hopped in a cab and asked the driver to run her off the road the driver was like okay then remus got out of the cap and shot his wife dead oh wow immediately handed himself into the police and his next trial this time for murder became a national sensation remus defended himself claiming insanity occasionally carrying out skillful questioning occasionally crying in the corner but the nation felt bad for him his wife had screwed him over and so when after just 19 minutes of deliberation the jury returned and declared him not guilty the court erupted that's that's surprising and can we not go through this scene without talking about the fact that batman's hanging on the wall in the courtroom okay let's continue celebration and just to remind you this guy bluntly admitted to murdering his wife the american justice system as alcohol poured into the nation a lot of it was going to a new type of drinking establishment that had been booming in popularity a secret drinking establishment so secret that from the outside they often look like ordinary speakeasies so secret that you usually needed a password to get in so secret that everybody knew about them speakeasy and once you were in the party went all night long scantily clad flappers snake ladies jazz it was a roaring time to be alive some publications even posted reviews of these illegal clubs and bribes galore kept the party going it seemed like half the police officers and federal agents in cities like new york were receiving kickbacks from speakeasy owners hey what the kevin costner is going on here officer oh hannity so kevin costner is obviously a reference to the film the untouchables which is a highly fictionalized version of how elliot ness and others went after al capone eventually what they end up doing and i'm sure he hasn't gotten to this yet but he's going to talk about the rise of organized crime and all of this but the way they ended up taking people down was that they went after them for tax evasion because they were making all this money off this illegal liquor and then not paying taxes on it um but eliot ness the the store the version that is told of that story and the untouchables is nowhere near how things actually went down taking bribes why am i not surprised prohibition director simmons for shame mom what would dad say ask him yourself dad would say quit being such a wet blanket and let daddy earn his tips any time a speakeasy was shut down by authorities it seemed like three more would just pop up elsewhere and some neighborhoods were so full of them that one resident began hanging a sign to try to keep partyguards from constantly knocking on her door it really seemed like the new laws regarding alcohol in some places were simply being ignored and one prohibition agent who traveled the country liked to see which city was the most defiant by timing how long it took for him to be offered a beer after he arrived his winner new orleans where a cab driver offered him a drink after just 35 seconds wow bravo many voices in congress were already speaking out against prohibition and its failures to display how ridiculous the whole thing was one republican congressman gathered the media to all come and watch him drink a homemade beer when he asked a passing police officer if he'd like to arrest him the officer said no hey wayne is all this what you had in mind i thought we were gonna make the country better but it almost seems like it's worse what do you mean alcohol consumption is down well that may be true in your small town world but it says here drinking in some areas is up as our arrest for public intoxication drunk driving an incidence of liver cirrhosis the general chaos has turned america into a nation of criminals with no respect for the law and all these attempts at enforcement are just costing the economy valuable money and eating up judicial time and resources release the line all right so you have to understand it when people that's a good point when people start to ignore some laws it makes it much easier to ignore other laws and people who might have been otherwise respectful of the law when they felt that the ban on alcohol was a bridge too far so to speak they started breaking that law and then they felt much more comfortable with ignoring other laws that they thought were unjust or worth ignoring and um you know they're realizing very quickly that this is not having the desired effect and uh by the middle of the 1920s there's already a pretty strong movement to overturn it but you got to remember this there's got to be time for um some kind of uh turnover in terms of the people in congress to vote to pass another amendment to repeal the first amendment uh that they passed and so you know you've got to get new people elected or enough people to change their mind about what has already been done the social change and corruption that wheeler and the anti-saloon league had been so eager to prevent in the cities at least was surging see when something's legal you can usually regulate and control it but make that thing illegal and often anything becomes fair game legal drinking age gone mandatory closing hours for clubs and bars gone other unspoken socio-cultural rules surrounding alcohol gone gone gone in speakeasies different genders and ethnicities were beginning to mingle in a way they hadn't done before the roaring twenties saw a monumental shift in culture not least of all because now men and women could flirt in public without being damned for eternity yeah and this is also right after women got the right to vote right uh the right to vote for women happens you know within a couple years of the uh prohibition act as well and uh so yeah this is a changing time part of what made the roaring 20s the roaring 20s is now all of a sudden you have women and men co-mingling uh and you have women starting to make that that increasing leap toward equality with men in terms of the things that they're able to do an outraged wayne wheeler did his best to make sure that anyone breaking the law was punished he had even stricter legislation put in place in new york but all this did was clog up the justice system with petty drinking violations and judges began letting everyone off with light fines so the judges could get back to dealing with things that actually mattered you know things like murder and there was plenty of murder because bootleggers and moonshiners were one thing but prohibition had given another kind of criminal an opportunity to make a fortune mobsters and gangsters hey fat tony big news hey fat joey what's up i just got word from fat louis here that the government's outlawing alcohol you know what that means that means we're gonna be rich quick call fat polion let's go hijack a liquor truck now all right hang on let me tell my wife first hey fat susan no pizza for fat joey tonight capiche stop calling me fat susan rival gangs began to battle in america's cities raiding each other's transports assassinating rivals and trying to take control of their city's illicit boost and they weren't all sicilian yeah mobsters from italy there were plenty of jewish mobsters there were irish mobsters uh you know there were a lot of groups of people i know there's this this kind of stereotype of the sicilian mobster um but you know even just look at the war for chicago uh with capone's group and with dion o'banion and all these other people there were a lot of different backgrounds at play this trade every city had its top dog detroit had the purple gang new england had charles king solomon but no city was as infamous for gang violence and murder as chicago the city had multiple gang factions and at first they agreed to stay in their own neighborhoods but the thing about criminals is that they're criminals and the agreements inevitably broke down one day the leader of the italian southside gang was walking along the street when this happened and he was like you know i think i'm done with this and left for new york leaving his crime empire to his chief enforcer none other than al capone having been knifed in the face in his younger years capone earned himself the name scarface although interestingly he hated that nickname and preferred to be called snorky snorky was ruthless just like any other gang leader in america but what set him apart from others the reason he's become synonymous with 1920s gang warfare is this most other gang leaders would try to keep a low profile because you know they're killing and murdering and stuff but capone lived for the fame and kept an extremely high public profile frequently speaking with the media about his exploits and presenting himself as a gracious host providing chicago with good times no need to thank me fellas i just provide the city with a valuable commodity while doing away with the competition you mean you murder people whoa who said anything about murder i just you know forced my rivals underground when you do the thing with the hands it seems like you're talking about murder whoa look at you with the brains no no i just help people retire there there comes a turning point though uh in what's called the saint valentine's day massacre where it's kind of when public views of capone are like okay you went a little too far this time and i'm sure he'll probably talk about that from life so murder whoa al snorky capone was somewhat of an enigma brutal in how he dealt with enemies but in front of the camera he was all smiles one day he'd be ordering hit after hit the next he'd be signing autographs in wrigley field one day he'd be bludgeoning members of his own gang with a baseball bat conspiring against him the next he'd be playing santa at a nearby parochial school and no murder could ever be traced back to him just like every other criminal he stuffed the pockets of city officials with cold hard cash and any who did try to oppose him sometimes found themselves being thrown down the steps of city hall in broad daylight problem solved the public couldn't get enough of capone he quickly became a household name as people romanticized the gang life he lived and this became a source of concern for the people at the very top uh president hoover ugh what is it now miles i'm busy well it's just there's a lot of crime sir crime how long's that been happening well since the dawn of man sir what would you like me to blame it on the democrats again no miles i want you to blame it on squirrels yes the democrats now stop wasting my time since having a crime lord controlling public officials and winning the hearts of the people probably wasn't a good thing hoover personally ordered that something be done about this capone fellow but before he knew it president hoover was also dealing with another major problem impression you know him you love him woman oh prohibition error had been going on for nearly a decade and anyone with a brain could see that it really wasn't going very well one person with a brain was pauline saban an extremely influential and rich woman who served on the republican national committee fundraised for republican presidents and had a secret wine room in her giant mansion she initially supported prohibition but was now disgusted at the chaos it had created and she began a new woman's movement this time not for prohibition but against it being the extremely influential woman she was her new organization gained nearly 1.5 million members within two years think about this women were the primary motivators behind the prohibition movement and now you've got 1.5 million women suddenly rising up against it it's fascinating to see how quickly public perception can change on a topic after a century of movement in one direction five times out of the woman's christian temperance union she hated that the wctu claimed to speak for all women and she began calling for the repeal of the 18th amendment president hoover i helped fund your campaign and now i want you to end prohibition miles what is it i say when i'm not going to do anything you'll look into it sir oh yeah that's right pauline i'll look into it saban gave speeches on the steps of congress and helped start a growing push among the american people against prohibition but hoover a prohibitionist himself wasn't budging then on the 14th of february 1929 something happened that shocked the nation men thought to be working for al capone tricked some irish mobsters into meeting them at a garage in chicago thinking they were there to purchase hijacked whiskey instead the mobsters were lined up against the wall by men dressed as police and they were shot the valentine's day massacre had people outraged it was cruel and almost felt like american mobsters had finally crossed the line people were sick of the violence and in part they blamed prohibition for helping to create it the pressure on hoover to do something was steadily increasing fine miles i want you to put a report together to see if this whole thing is working you mean the thing where mobsters are becoming increasingly powerful and massacring each other in the streets and everyone is disregarding the law and half our public officials are corrupt and taking bribes that thing yeah i want to know if it's working or not miles stop wasting my time hoover continued to drag his feet on prohibition but after the valentine's day massacre he was still determined to do one thing he wanted al capone in prison since capone had been so careful the fbi were having a hard time charging him with anything but eventually they got him capone we know you supplying chicago with alcohol and you've been involved in countless murders whoa look at you at the crazy talk i ain't done none of that stuff but you're rich right you're damn right i am and so where'd all the money come from capone alright i'll let you in a little secret but you gotta promise not to tell anyone okay i don't pay my taxes [Music] the irs finally got capone on tax evasion at his trial he didn't seem too concerned though and spent most of his time having a laugh with his lawyers hey capone i gotta know why are you so confident you're gonna win here well your honor because i'm an honest man with a big heart who's passionate about working for the good of the people and also because i've threatened the entire jury's families luckily at the last minute the judge respects the jury jury pool with a new one that capone's men hadn't yet got to and capone was found guilty he was sentenced to 11 years in federal prison the harshest penalty ever given to a tax evader now i don't think he spent that long in prison because he had uh advanced syphilis and it was starting to really affect his health and toward the end of his life he he lost a lot of his mental faculties and i think there's a movie that just came out about that time in his life i want to say tom hardy's playing um playing al capone in that but but even with capone locked away the violence in chicago and other cities continue and in response the movement against prohibition continued to grow and the final nail in prohibition's coffin came in 1929 after a decade of booming economic growth under three republican presidents the stock market plummeted and america was thrown into the grips of the great depression it was an awful time one out of every five workers 15 million people would lose their jobs half the nation's banks failed temporary shantytowns were built for the broken homeless in public parks suddenly very few people had time to care about prohibition expensive enforcement of an unenforceable law didn't seem like that big of a priority when people were having their homes repossessed and losing their life savings and many began to argue that repealing prohibition would create vital jobs and tax revenue for the government yet president hoover doubled down here's that report you asked for sir give me prohibition is great fantastic news sir it says your prohibition is great at undermining the rule of law in america miles it says the word great that means good now stop wasting my time the public increasingly shocked at the violence they saw on the streets the corruption they saw in the government the general disregard for the law and now an economic calamity had had enough for his re-election hoover faced a democratic candidate who promised to finally do something about prohibition franklin d roosevelt crowds cheered as fdr made his campaign speeches promising to modify the volstead act and pauline saban a lifelong republican along with her 1.5 million supporters endorsed roosevelt and on election and don't underestimate the difference that that made i mean this was a big big deal and think of how different the country went in terms of direction uh woodrow wilson when he served his two terms from 1913 to 1921 was the first back-to-back uh the first eight years of democrat uh presidency since andrew jackson uh you had had grover cleveland who served two non-consecutive terms but this is the first time you had an extended democrat since andrew jackson and then you get that followed by harding coolidge and then herbert hoover and so now along comes the democrat administration of franklin roosevelt and the country goes in a very different direction than it might have otherwise gone today it was a landslide before fdr had even taken office republicans in congress began the process of passing the 21st amendment to repeal prohibition one of fdr's first acts as president was to pass the beer permit act which made beer legal while the new amendment was being ratified in 1933 with the passage of the 21st amendment prohibition was finally over and the people celebrated like they just won a world war bars and taverns were packed the wctu were inconsolable wayne wheeler was dead and the celebration particularly in america's cities was intense heading into the mid-1930s the effects of prohibition were clear to see from now on culture around drinking had changed with men and women drinking together not in saloons but in bars and taverns the crime syndicates that had been given so much power through prohibition remained powerful as they moved on to other things some states opted to remain dry with oklahoma only repealing its prohibition laws in 1959 to this day there are still counties in america with some form of prohibition so what did we learn today kids what's the big lesson here what's the moral of this story that we can all take away and apply to our day-to-day lives maybe that you shouldn't force your own morals on others who don't share them maybe that if you tell americans not to do something that's the one thing they'll definitely do yeah or maybe there is no lesson maybe we're all just a bunch of dumb stinky idiots and we're all doomed the end so that was really good there's a lot there it's a fascinating time in american history and obviously that's showed by the fact that we've had so many movies so many portrayals of that time period in our culture we love to to see the things about the gangsters and the roaring 20s and and all of that that was going on and and it gave rise to so many things in our culture um so it's interesting to see a little bit more of that background and it's important for us to understand just like with the world war one series that i've started reacting to that events that happen don't really start with those events there's always this long build up to it and in some cases more than a hundred years or more uh you know world war one had its roots all the way back a hundred years earlier with the end of the napoleonic wars uh the prohibition period has its roots a hundred years earlier in the beginning of the temperance movement and the rise of women finding their voice that it's fascinating to see how all of history ties together so let me know what else uh you think about all that use the comment section below make sure you check out the original content uh creator and give them a like as well thanks for watching we'll see you again soon

Channel: Vlogging Through History

Views: 943,958

Keywords: oversimplified reaction, al capone, oversimplified prohibition, prohibition oversimplified, reaction video, ww2 - oversimplified, oversimplified prohibition reaction, history reaction, historian reacts

Id: KQtd2NzZWPo

Length: 49min 59sec (2999 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 13 2021