Rum Historian by Marco Pierini
With the term Prohibition we usually refer to the period from January 17, 1920 to December 5, 1933, when, under the terms of the Eighteenth Amendment, in the United States the production, importation, transportation and sale of alcoholic beverages were prohibited. It is one of the most famous and most controversial moments of American history. It is remembered for leading to a rise in bootlegging and speakeasies, as well as a period of gangsterism and violent conflicts between law enforcement officials and bootleggers and among the many criminal gangs. I reckon it is one of the most criminogenic laws in American history, and not only that. It had a great influence on the history of Cuba in general, and of its rum in particular.
Let us try to summarize what American Prohibition was, starting from its legal foundations: the Eighteenth Amendment and the Volstead Act.
The Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was ratified by the requisite number of states on January 16, 1919. It declared the production, transport and sale of intoxicating liquors illegal. It is less well known, but it is important to point out, that the Eighteenth Amendment did not outlaw the actual consumption of alcohol. The Amendment went into effect one year later, on January 16, 1920. The Volstead Act was the legal instrument in enforcing the Eighteenth Amendment.
Approved in 1919 and come into force in 1920, it defined intoxicating liquors and established penalties for their production. Moreover, it aimed to regulate the manufacture, production, use, and sale of high-proof spirits for purposes other than beverages.
The ratification of the Eighteenth Amendment certainly wasn’t a coup by some abstemious puritan, but the fruit of a long, tough struggle carried on for more than a century by the so-called temperance movements. The temperance movements, born in the late 1700s and become during the 1800s a central element of the political life of the US, were numerous and diverse, with many members and activists. Throughout their long history - which, however, is not over - they have known ups and downs, sometimes achieving partial victories followed by momentary defeats, and have managed to mobilize large masses of citizens with a great role of some Protestant churches and women. They made extensive use of propaganda, flooding the United States with millions of copies of books, pamphlets, prints, etc. They also used the law, sometimes succeeding, for some periods, in imposing prohibitionist rules at the local level. Last but not least, women in particular sometimes even resorted to naked violence against saloons and their unfortunate patrons.
There is a vast scholarly bibliography on the subject, which I have only merely touched upon. At first glance, and simplifying somewhat, it would seem to me that the temperance movements saw an alliance of modern medical science with traditional puritanism. I think we can see in the long battle against alcohol two constants of American history: the need to have an enemy, and the desire to impose good by force.
And yet, as early as 1840, Abraham Lincoln, in a speech to the Illinois House of Representatives, said: “Prohibition will work great injury to the cause of temperance. It is a species of intemperance within itself, for it goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control a man’s appetite by legislation, and makes a crime out of things that are not crimes. A Prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded.” Temperance movements started out preaching “temperance”, that is, drinking in moderation, often admitting fermented beverages and condemning only the Spirits. In a few decades, they became teetotalers, attacking all alcoholic beverages alike, whether distilled or fermented. For us rum enthusiasts, a singular characteristic of their campaigns is of particular interest: the relentless attack on rum, identified as the main enemy of public welfare and citizens’ health. As a matter of fact, the focus of their propaganda was not alcohol in general, but rum or rather, “Demon Rum”.
But, why rum? We know that Americans drank a lot of rum in the colonial era and at the beginning of the Republic (see my book American Rum, 2017). But by the 1830s they were drinking less and less rum and more and more whiskey and beer. In the second half of the 1800s, rum consumption continued to drop, until, by the end of the century, rum was taken only as a traditional remedy for colds, fevers and other illnesses. So why did the temperance movements attack “Demon Rum” rather than whiskey or beer?
In 1839, Thomas Sovereign in his famous “The American Temperance Spelling Book” defined rum as “A Spirit distilled from cane juice or molasses … a general term used to denote all kinds of intoxicating drinks”. “But it was much more than that. In cartoons, rum loomed as the alien other, invariably with a bottle neatly labeled ‘Rum’, which was convenient for cartoonists short of space. They could have used ‘Gin’, but most Americans didn’t and hadn’t, whereas rum was foreign and had a history. It represented Catholics, subhuman Irish, and similar non-native breeds. At the time when most Americans were drinking whiskey, it was rum that was evoked most frequently. It was more patriotic than attacking whiskey overtly.” (Ian Williams “RUM A Social and Sociable History” 2005).
In a huge number of books, pamphlets, cartoons, newspapers, etc. all along the 1800s the word rum was used as a synonym for alcohol, drunkenness and vice. The monosyllabic power of its name, which made it a favorite with poets and writers, certainly contributed to all this. But I think there was something more and deeper in American minds.
I am not an expert of American history, but it seems to me that in the 1800s drinking rum, was increasingly considered a habit characteristic of bad citizens, people like native Americans and immigrants, who did not match the traditional republican virtues and ought to be mistrusted. True Americans didn’t drink rum. The best-known phrases used in temperance campaigns include the famous alliteration “Rum, Romanism and Rebellion”, pronounced during the 1884 presidential election campaign by a member of the Republican Party, Rev. Samuel D. Burchard. With his famous alliteration, Burchard meant to attack the Democratic Party, exposing it as the party of Vice, of Irish Catholic immigrants and of Southern Secessionists, that is, as a bunch of very un-American mob, all of them. Besides, as a matter of fact, during Prohibition, the lines of ships loaded with alcoholic beverages anchored just outside American territorial waters were called Rum Rows, and the bootleggers were called Rum Runners.
Because, in the end, Prohibition arrived. Its supporters called it “The Noble experiment”. Others, on the other hand, thought it was the watchful imposition of one-sided moral values which managed to become the Law for everybody. “Promulgating laws had already become an American remedy for the ills of society and the weaknesses of the Flesh”, the wise Charles W. Taussig apparently commented.
From now on, the quotes in this article are from “A Thousand Thirsty Beaches” by Lisa Lindquist Dorr, 2018. It’s really an excellent book: cultured, full of information, intelligent reflections, and well written.
For the sake of clarity, “Prohibition prohibited the manufacture, sale, transportation, importation, and export of intoxicating liquors. The law did not ban the actual consumption of alcohol; drafters of the law hoped consumers would be more willing to testify against those who provided their illegal liquor if they were not facing charges themselves. And it also did not ban the possession of alcoholic beverages in private homes or the manufacture of wine and hard cider for domestic consumption by homeowners, family members, and guests. This seeming contradiction neatly solved the problem of what to do with alcohol purchased legally before Prohibition went into effect, and Prohibitionists fully anticipated home consumption would disappear after existing supplies were consumed. Once alcohol was no longer available, they believed, Americans would lose their taste for it. … Proponents so fervently believed Americans would accept and obey the law that they also insisted the resources needed to enforce Prohibition would be minimal and would diminish as demand for alcohol disappeared. Thus, Congress allocated a paltry level of funding for enforcement, assuming that with the help of state Prohibition laws and local law enforcement, and a declining demand for alcohol, the task would be cheap and easy. Time soon proved their assumptions to be wildly off the mark.”
Clearly prohibitionists did not know their fellow citizens very well, because the fact that Americans would continue to drink alcohol even without the organized efforts of the liquor industry to promote it, took them entirely by surprise. And soon the lack of collaboration of the population in general and of many local authorities became evident. Actually, the enforcement of Prohibition entailed an unprecedented expansion of the federal government and of its intrusion into the private lives of citizens and local communities. Even the press often made fun of the efforts of the federal authorities, with headlines like this: “Hide and Seek Adds Comedy to Rum Game”. So, Federal government agencies and services like the Coast Guard faced an evident lack of support from the general public and an “uncertain assistance at the state and local levels when they caught suspected smugglers.”
To really enforce Prohibition was impossible. As a Montreal newspaper reported, as early as 1925, “Where there is supply on one side and a demand on the other, with an opportunity for large profits, … the dry fleet, however vigilant, cannot make a rum-proof coast unless it can first remove these three conditions, which is impossible”
A few years later, in the face of increasing crime and its obvious failure, public opinion turned against Prohibition, which was repelled by the Twenty First Amendment on December 5, 1933. And, in a clear example of the heterogenesis of ends, “One of the long-term consequences of Prohibition, scholars argue, was that it made public drinking and socializing with men acceptable for women. And while the saloon had been a largely male institution, speakeasies (and cafés, roadside stands, and the other new retail sites for liquor) welcomed the gentler sex.”
In the United States, moonshine, that is, the clandestine distillation of spirits, has always existed, and during Prohibition it grew a lot, putting various types of alcoholic beverages on the black market. Generally, they were of poor quality and too often also seriously harmful to the health of the unfortunate consumers. But above all, there was a massive increase in the smuggling of spirits, often called rum-running.
Yes, because the US went dry, but the rest of the world did not. Outside the US, producing, transporting and selling alcohol remained perfectly legal, it became a crime only when alcohol entered the territory or territorial waters of the United States. So, smuggling exploded. From Europe, from Canada, from the Caribbean, from Mexico, a river of alcohol poured into the United States. New distilleries were being built on the Canadian shore of the Great Lakes, while hundreds of ships of all kinds brought alcohol to the USA. Sometimes they arrived below shore, but more often they anchored just outside the territorial waters, where the American authorities could not pursue them, forming long lines of ships, the so-called Rum Row. From the ships cases of alcohol were sold to real fleets of fast boats that, defying the Coast Guard, took it ashore. From here, thanks in large part to organized crime networks, it reached Speakeasies and the homes of Americans. International law established the limit of territorial waters 3 miles from the coast, so the ships of the Rum Rows were clearly visible. Then the limit was raised to 12 miles, but without appreciable improvements in the enforcement of Prohibition. “As Rum Rows – the fleet of smuggling schooners hovering outside U.S. territorial waters selling their illegal wares to customers who traveled out from shore – became ever-more visible near metropolitan areas like New York City, Boston, New Orleans, and Mobile, the debate over the policies of enforcement against smuggling intensified.”
As we are going to see in the next article.
POST SCRIPTUM
Allow me a personal note. I may be wrong, but I think that the marks of Prohibition can still be seen in the oddities, rules and regulations of American legislation on alcoholic drinks, which quite astonish me, as an Italian. For example, the open container laws, the legal drinking age at 21 years, the three-tier system for the distribution of alcoholic beverages, and the fact that many craft rum producers cannot sell their bottles freely to those who visit their distilleries (or maybe could not, because it may be that things are changing), frankly do seem baffling to me.
Marco Pierini
