Al Smith, said one dry leader, “is just the kind of man wanted by those who want that kind of man.” His presidential candidacy in 1928 was a critical turning point in the Prohibition saga. He may have been defeated by the anti-Catholic propaganda unleashed by the drys (46), but his public advocacy of the wet cause changed the terms of the political debate.
Aeromarine Airways, departing from Miami, was one of several exploiters of “liquor tourism.” Havana’s rise as a vacation spot for Americans was a product of Prohibition (the sign at Sloppy Joe’s Bar read where the wet begins), as was the entire cruise-ship industry.
The clothing industry developed a new specialty because of Prohibition, with garments designed both for smuggling and for partying. The vial embedded in this high-heel shoe could accommodate a full shot of whiskey.
Los Angeles bootleggers managed to hide seventy cases of scotch behind the camouflaged access door of this lumber truck. In Detroit, rum-running traffic across the frozen Detroit River was so lucrative that some overly enthusiastic smugglers kept at it a little too late in the season.
Al Capone’s intuitive feel for publicity enabled him to see the value in building a photo opportunity around a meeting with Chicago police captain John Stege, a famously honest cop. “Public service is my motto,” Capone said; he could as easily have said “public relations.”
By the late ’20s, New York’s attention to Prohibition was so halfhearted that few bothered to be terribly secretive about their drinking. This glittering event at the Puncheon Club on West Forty-ninth Street was a precursor of yet more glamorous nights at “21,” presided over by cofounder Jack Kriendler (second from right).
After the wealthy, elegant, and extremely able Pauline Morton Sabin (54) became the public face of Repeal, well-born American women (and those who aspired to the same social status) flocked to her cause. Her opposite number at the WCTU, Ella Boole, was opposite in countless ways.
Pierre S. du Pont (left) bankrolled the Repeal movement; his associate John J. Raskob was among its key strategists. They had many reasons to oppose Prohibition, but reinstating the excise tax on legal liquor (thereby enabling a reduction in the income tax) was foremost among them. At the time this picture was taken, three years after Repeal, both men had become principals in the right-wing, antitax, anti-Roosevelt organization known as the Liberty League.
In 1931, as the citadel of Prohibition began to crumble, forty thousand people jammed Military Park in downtown Newark, demanding legal beer. Pauline Sabin was among those who addressed the crowd.
Beer’s return was hurried along by the Depression. The nation’s desperate need for both jobs and tax revenue prompted this labor-sponsored parade in Detroit.
H. L. Mencken and friends celebrated the legalization of beer at the bar of the Rennert Hotel in Baltimore. After draining the first legal glass, Mencken declared it “pretty good—not bad at all.” Izzy Einstein and Moe Smith (60), the nation’s best-known Prohibition agents, celebrated Repeal by openly doing what they had long done under cover: having a drink.
Upon Repeal’s arrival in New York, a large crowd mobbed the liquor department at Macy’s. A substantially larger one, seeking newly available liquor licenses, lined up outside the city’s Board of Health.
Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition Page 70