Prohibition - The Noble Experiment :: American America History

obstruction - The Noble ExperimentIn 1920 congress began what was called The Noble Experiment. This prove began with the signing of the ordinal amendment of the constitution into rectitude. It was titled by society as Prohibition. Websters dictionary defines prohibition as A prohibiting, the forbidding by jurisprudence of the manufacture or sale of alcoholic liquors. Prohibition can cut across to mean the foreboding of any number of substances. I define it as a social injustice to the human race as we pick out it. Prohibition was designed to rid the country of businesses that manufactured, sold, and or distributed alcoholic beverages. The eighteenth amendment made it a violation of the constitution to do and of the ahead mentioned. This was a criminal offence punishable up to the Supreme Court. The original idea was that Americans as a whole were unhealthy, there was too much crime and corruption, and that sight were cosmos burdened by excess taxes that poorhouses and pris ons were creating. What happened? The cheap alcohol being illegally produced killed more Americans, crime and corruption went up, taxes were raised to fund the law enforcement needed to enforce prohibition, and the prisons became overcrowded. Some would have you believe that crime decrease during prohibition. Well, it did. Crime decreased, as a whole, by 37.7% during prohibition. as yet violent crime and other serious crimes were up. Theft of property was up 13.2%, homicide was up m16.1%, and robbery was up 83.3%. Minor crimes had decreased though- by 50%. Crimes such as malicious mischief, public swearing, vagrancy, etc. (Dr. Fairburn pg 75-80) The prohibition movement did have its bonny share of supporters however. The most active in the movement was the Womens Christian gravity Union. They worked laboured in campaigning towards this amendment and gathered, what is now believed today, as to be dark statistics. For example one area that the WCTU attacked was the saloons and in particular the sale of distilled spirits, hard alcohol. The WCTU claimed drinking during prohibition was down 30% as opposed to pre-prohibition. However as a percentage to total alcohol sales the function of distilled spirits was up from 50% (pre-prohibition) to an astonishing 89% during prohibition. Most estimates situation the potency of prohibition-era products at 150+ percent of the potency of products produced either before or after prohibition (qtd. In Henry Lee 202) Prohibition did not succeed at all. In order for prohibition to earn what it was set to do it had to meet four specific guidelines.