Episode 15 - Prohibition

“The reign of tears is over. The slums will soon be a memory. We will turn our prisons into factories and our jails into storehouses and corncribs. Men will walk upright now, women will smile, and children will laugh. Hell will be forever for rent.” - Reverend Billy Sunday


Reverend Billy Sunday was a proponent of the “Noble Experiment”, a anti-alcohol movement that gained steam throughout the nineteenth century and became a staple of the progressive movement at the start of the twentieth century. By 1900, Maine, Vermont, Kansas, Iowa, and North Dakota were already dry states with many scheduled to follow. The Prohibitionists believed that there was no way a person in a dry state could obtain liquor. However, they overlooked the postal service, which was run by the federal government, not the states. So alcohol could be purchased from a wet state and sent to a dry state. (More on the podcast)