Prohibition - Thirteen Years that Changed America essays

Prohibition - Thirteen Years that Changed America essays Alcohol has been around since the ancient time; the Egyptians drank wine and a type of barley malt. Beer was the staple drink for the Egyptians and many other early civilizations. In ancient Egypt a poor worker would have been paid in beer, because of alcohols age, it cannot easily be taken away. Prohibition is the forbiddance of alcohol production and consumption. In 1920 the American government passed the XVII amendment, which banned all alcohol, excluding alcohol meant for religious and medical purposes. The American citizens did not care, they opened bars and drank anyhow. During an era entitled the Roaring Twenties how can one even think of not having alcohol? The twenties were an exciting period, full of radical changes and a new generation called teenagers. Prohibition brought with it an increase of the very thing it was meant to outlaw, alcohol. Many factors led to the start of prohibition. The constant nagging by the Womens Christian Temperance Union, which is still around today, was one of the causes that brought on prohibition. Prohibition was aptly called the womens war, due to the fact that women were the ones who tried to get a bill, later the amendment, passed. The WCTU believes that alcohol causes bad things to happen.... Things such as divorce and spousal abuse we blame on alcohol and drunkeness. Another cause was the people of the twenties started to research the affects of alcoholism. They started to discover that alcohol and cigarettes were the cause of Sclerosis. Studies from the twenties also showed that laborers who would get drunk before work, would be the cause of many of the major accidents in factories and on work sites. Because of the recent war people believed that Americans should not support the central power countries, including Germany. Many people assumed that all the breweries were in Germany all their money flew to Germany, and thought, &quo...