Tuesday; January 2
The other day I was watching a documentary on the gangsters of the 1920s and 1930s where they described what they called the failure of Prohibition. According to these folks, the Volstead Act was directly responsible for the rise in crime and the violence of the criminals during this time in our nation’s history. At some point it might be interesting to debate that philosophy, but that isn’t my point today. The thing that got my attention was the rationale they cited for the beginning of the prohibition of the manufacture and sale of alcohol. According to the show’s producers, the late 19 th and early 20 th Centuries were times of western expansion fueled in part by cattle drives and mining discoveries. These industries often employed young men who were away from their families. They worked hard, so when they had a break from their labor, they had a lot of money and little self-control. Many Midwestern and West Coast towns sprang up to provide these miners and cowboys with pl