• Women’s Christian Temperance Union (1874)

• Stood for women’s rights, child labor laws, worker’s rights, prohibition, etc.

• 1911= 250,000 members (largest women’s group in nation’s history)

• Most successful and well known WCTU reformer was Carry Nation.

• She would march into a bar and sing and pray, while smashing bar fixtures and stock with a hatchet.

• Between 1900 and 1910 she was arrested some 30 times, and paid her jail fines from lecture-tour fees and sales of souvenir hatchets.

• Changed her name to Carry A. Nation and referred to herself as “A Home Defender”.

• Founded in 1895• Instead of focusing on

individuals, the Anti-Saloon League took a legal stance against alcohol

• 1900-1917= half of states were “dry”

• “Dry”- illegal to sell, produce, or use alcohol

• Went into effect in January of 1920

• Prohibition= illegalized sale, production and transportation of liquor…use?

• Initially, crime and drunkenness decreased

• Volstead Act- Created a gov. bureau to monitor and patrol alcohol but was under funded and ineffective

Al Capone• Chicago

bootlegger/gangster

• Ran largest crime racket during Prohibition era

• St. Valentine’s Day Massacre- (1929) Bloody shootout between North and South Siders

• Arrested for tax evasion and died of Syphillis

• Speakeasies- hidden saloons/ nightclubs used to consume alcohol in

• Ex) offices, tenements, stores, tea rooms, etc.

• Bootleggers- Smugglers of alcohol

• Ex) Canada, Cuba, West Indies, Mexico, etc.

•Enacted in 1933•Repealed Prohibition

•By late 1920’s only 19% of Americans supported Prohibition