Strange Barmates 0
Last Friday’s Fresh Air explored the history of Prohibition.
A confluence of twisted events led to the passage of the Volstead Act. A tidbit, from the transcript:
Mr. OKRENT: Well, going back as far as the Whiskey Rebellion of the 1790s and then the beer tax that was brought in during the Civil War to finance the Civil War, the federal government had been dependent upon the excise tax on alcohol to operate.
In some years, domestic revenue, as much as 50 percent of it came from excise taxes. So the Prohibitionists realized that they couldn’t get rid of liquor so long as the federal government was dependent upon liquor to get its revenue and to operate. So they supported the income tax movement, and in exchange, many of the populists who were behind the income tax movement supported Prohibition.
In 1913, the 16th Amendment is passed. The income tax comes in. The federal government has another means of supporting itself. And at that point, the Prohibitionists who had been operating state by state by state decided we can now have an amendment to the federal Constitution because the government is no longer dependent. There’s another source of revenue.
Also, the state of Maryland had an official state bootlegger.
Follow the link to listen to the show or read the transcript. It’s worth it.
