Drought Report

The process of going dry, locally and nationally, was a whole lot more complicated than I thought before I started this historical adventure.

As we know, by this time (autumn of 1918) Indiana was a dry state, and had been since April.

National prohibition, in the form of the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution, was going through the process of ratification by the states since its passage through Congress on December 18, 1917.

So I was puzzled to come across this headline in the Hobart News of November 21: "Bone Dry United States Now Up to President Wilson." What on earth was that about? So I had to take the time to look into it. Turns out the article was talking about the War-Time Prohibition Act, which was indeed signed by President Wilson that very day. The Act prohibited the sale of distilled spirits "for beverage purposes" from June 30, 1919 until the conclusion of the war and the completion of demobilization, citing the need to conserve man power and increase efficiency in the production of munitions, food, clothing, etc.

OK, mildly interesting, but June 30, 1919 is a long way off.

Next I come across a little random item in a "General Interest" column in the News of December 5:

Brewing of beer and malt beverages stopped Saturday at midnight throughout the United States. The special committee, which recommended the presidential proclamation prohibiting brewing as a conservation measure, decided to make no recommendation to Wilson on suggestions that the proclamation be rescinded in view of the armistice.

Huh? What? Research time again!

Turns out the "presidential proclamation" was issued September 16, 1918 and prohibited, after December 1, 1918, the production of malt liquors for beverage purposes, whether or not such malt liquors contained alcohol (thus expanding a similar proclamation from December 1917 which had allowed "near-beer"). Its stated intent was to conserve foodstuffs.

I am now superficially better informed about a couple of incidents that are, in the grand scheme of things, pretty trivial. My attention was diverted by those two little items, and the next thing you know, between Google searches, waiting for PDFs to load, paging through stupid PDFs with no tables of contents, reading and comprehending what I've read (both of which I'm extraordinarily slow at), I have wasted two or three hours that I could ill spare.

And after I spent all that time researching the topic, if you think I'm going to spare you a boring blog post about it, you are sadly mistaken.


Sources:
♦ "Bone Dry United States Now Up to President Wilson." Hobart News 21 Nov. 1918.
♦ Hamilton v. Kentucky Distilleries & Warehouse Co., 251 U.S. 146 (1919). http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/cgi-bin/getcase.pl?court=us&vol=251&invol=146.
♦ "Of General Interest." Hobart News 5 Dec. 1918.
♦ The Constitution of the United States of America Analysis and Interpretation Analysis of Cases Decided by the Supreme Court of the United States to June 28, 2008, United States Senate doc. no. 108-17, at 35 n.10. Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 2002. http://origin.www.gpoaccess.gov/constitution/pdf2002/007.pdf
♦ Wilson, Woodrow, and Albert Shaw. President Wilson's State Papers and Addresses. New York: George H. Doran, 1918. http://books.google.com/books?id=rFwvAAAAYAAJ&.