When I read Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition,[*] I was on a semi-reading hiatus, although not necessarily by choice. My drunk-love affair with reading novels was temporarily on hold because I lacked the energy to immerse myself in these all-absorbing worlds.[†] While I felt a certain grief for this change (and still do), I re-routed my reading to shorter works of fiction, tried to carve out times when I could read novels, and contented myself with reading other writings ranging from the news and nonfiction.[‡]
Hence, I found the Last Call, a lengthy meditation on period of American history I never fully understood. How did religious and/or conservative groups manage to impinge on everyone else’s freedom to drink? Or ineffectively, considering the rumrunners and speakeasies that resulted.
How indeed.
Because nothing is so straightforward. The “drys” effectively represented what Okrent called “five distinct, if occasionally overlapping components made up this unspoken coalition: racists, progressives, suffragists, populists…and nativists” (42). Of these, the reasons many women had for supporting prohibition were all too sobering. Women often were the victim of husbands whom spent their paychecks on alcohol, frequented prostitutes—passing along diseases to their unknowing spouses—and abused their spouses and children. And so they protested, because it was the means to gain control of their lives (Okrent 12–19). It’s difficult to disparage teetotalism when faced with this suffering. Prejudice’s role against immigrants (characterized as drunken) was also tempered by the ideals of some progressives who wished to improve the life of immigrants—even if that meant repressing them. While I don’t condone the latter, I at least now appreciate that there were those who felt empathy for urban immigrants (48–50).
It’s a powerful lesson, examining the underpinnings of a puzzling era. There was no monolithic group who demanded the end of drinking alcohol so much as a series of actors doing what they thought best.
I’ve often thought of this book a great deal recently, marveling how many disparate threads were woven to limit the rights of the United States’ citizens and the consequences. In a time where we might angrily denounce other people’s political choices after a highly contentious election, it’s tempting to forget that people wanted change and chose what they thought was the right way forward.
We might benefit from examining what we learned, lost, and gained from Prohibition and other contentious eras—how we might protest for positive change and compassionately help those who need our assistance without trampling their rights. During these difficult days, we might not anticipate how our lives will change but we can choose how we handle those changes.
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NOTES:
[*] Okrent D. Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition. New York: Scribner, 2010.
[†] Results of the post-pregnancy period and raising of young tots vary among individuals. But prepare your reading time accordingly.
[‡] I remain uncertain as to why I was able to focus on nonfiction works versus fiction. The possibilities range being able to easily regain my spot in a narrative with which I had some familiarity (Prohibition) to the relevance of certain subjects (baby books). Either way, I’ve never read so slowly as I did then.
Rita E. Gould: An Artful Sequence of Words 
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