Prohibition

I'm reading a book about Prohibition. That has always interested me. As much as people seem to love alcohol, how did they get the country to buy into doing without it? The author of the book says there were three reasons:

1. The women's movement - It wasn't coincidence that women were mobilizing and getting the right to vote at the same time as Prohibition was being ushered in. Men on their own probably wouldn't have come up with this.

2. The income tax - A huge amount of the government's tax receipts before the 1920's was from the tax on alcohol. Congress couldn't afford to get rid of that without something else to replace it. A big reason the income tax came to be was because those that wanted Prohibition knew they would have to get a new revenue source for the government.

3. World War I - We were fighting Germany, so anything remotely German was thought to be a bad thing. Almost all of the beer manufacturers were, and still are, from Germany. I hadn't really thought about that before. Pabst, Schlitz, Busch, etc. - All immigrated from Germany.

Interesting, right? I think so. There are a lot of other cool stories about smuggling, Al Capone, etc. The book is called "Last Call" - I got it on the discount table at Barnes and Noble. Some of my favorite books have been from the discount table.