Since we recently passed the 87th anniversary of passage of the Eighteenth Amendment and the start of the Prohibition period, I could not resist posting this picture that I spotted on the Internet. One wonders why the prohibition was not more successful.
For those who say that marketing is everything, this may be a cautionary photo.
I just could not go away your website prior to
suggesting that I really enjoyed the standard info an individual provide in your guests?
Is gonna be again frequently to check out new posts
Patty,
Thank you for the link and the info on Ms. Nation and prohibition. Alcoholism is a most s serious problem and I say that not as a teetotaler, nor a reformed (or unreformed) alcoholic. There are estimates that in the 1800’s almost 60% of the male population were alcoholics. Today alcohol abuse within this country is a pernicious problem and have worked in the addiction field I’ve found it one of the hardest addictions to deal with.
The conundrum is that prohibition was an abysmal failure and there is some valid evidence to show that it served to fund and expand organized crime. The War on Drugs to is a failure and has had the same result as prohibition. As someone wh in my Hippie youth did wide experimentation with drugs and never became addicted, except for cigarettes which took me many years to break, it is my observation that an Addictive Personality type exist in perhaps 10% (estimate)of the population. Whether the cause is genetic, psychological or a combination becomes moot as a decision on dealing with it takes precedence.
The tendency towards addiction to my mind is almost never drug specific. We see addiction to gambling, weight control, food, sex and what have you. My solution is to take part of the billion$ spent on the futile War on Drugs and put it into addiction research and treatment. As I’ve said elsewhere the “cure” rates by current methods are strikingly low and much more medical and psychological research is needed.
Ms. Nation seems to have had just cause, in her mind, for her crusade but easy solutions to major problems simply don’t exist. That some of the movement may have been unattractive females is no cause for humor. I’ve not been a man who looks down on women nor judges their worth by appearance and perhaps that is why I never had a problem getting dates or having good relationships with them. Truth be told, I’ve always suspected that they are in general the smarter sex.
Heres a ‘politically correct’ temperance poster. There are several at the site ‘photobasment’
http://www.photobasement.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/drunkard.jpg
Mike,
You missed the hissy fit over JT’s side by side photo comparison of flapper/silent film actress, Louise Brooks (LuLu / ‘Pandoras Box) and Carry Amelia Nation,
and his accompanying query why ‘bad’ girls are more ‘kissable’ with the suggestion being that the so called ‘good’ girls are often ‘ sour pusses’ and therefore
not very attractive, anyway. Not a big leap when it comes to human nature, in my view.
It was a crummy ad!
Carry A. (Moore) Nation’s rage over alcohol began with the Masonic Lodge where her first husband, a doctor, used to drink with his buddies-regularly and heavily. She never could get support from his fellow Masons with her husbands alcoholism. He died at age 29, only months after she left him. Her second husband was a lawyer, a preacher and a
ne’er-do-well. In addition to two failed marriages she and her daughter from her first marriage both had lifelong physical and mental problems which can be traced, interestingly enough, to Carry’s mother who was able to hand over her own job of child-rearing, including Carry, to the family slaves.
This woman had ‘problems’…
It’s also interesting to note that during Prohibition, most people put aside drinking easily and willingly . Of the 20% who could not or would not, there was
a lucrative market for moonshiners and rum runners which caused a host of other, often more sinister, social concerns.
Although democracy and freedom of speech and the (word) press took a hit here, in honor of math geeks everywhere, I must point out it is recenlty the 90th anniversary
of the 18th Amendment, ratified on January 16, 1919.
February 20 marked the 76th anniversary of the then proposed 21st Amendment to repeal Prohibition, which was not fully ratified until December 1933.
If my calculations are correct, we have a lot more celebrating to do!
Mike,
That was a beautiful play on words, you almost made me spit my coffee out.
Is it possible that I’m so dense that I took the whole thing differently? The “lips” quote was a catchphrase of the prohibitionists. It is also true that a huge percentage of Americans drank heavily. Yes, too many “drunks” are abusive.
Nevertheless, Temperance was always a religious-based movement to gain social control. Movements such as these always result in failure and the kind of hypocrisy that undermines societies.
I took the picture as a sly comment on the “War on Drugs.”
Mespo,
Your link gave me a belly laugh.