Today is National Prohibition Remembrance Day. This day is when the 18th amendment was ratified. The Volstead Act would begin the next day. The temperance movement has been around for a long time. I have picked a few books on both sides of that argument.
I have two old books on Temperance. The first is “The Temperance Reform and Its great Reformers” by Rev. W.H. Daniels 1878. It is a very interesting book discussing the role of alcohol temperance from colonial days to the present (being 1878). Explained early state laws and regulations, along with societies, crusades, and leaders. It is quite a detailed book, 612 pages long. The second is “Gathered Pearls, for Girls and Boys”, 1883. It is a book of poems about Temperance. A notable poem is titled “The Rum Seller” by Susie McNeal.
The poem goes that a man walks out of his house, waving back at his little daughter. It is cold and snowy, a storm underway. After he walks awhile, he sees a small crying, shivering little girl. He asks her why she is not at home and she replied that her father had sent her out for liquor, and she lost the pail on the way back. She cannot go home “for his anger will be too great”. As the man leads the girl back into her home, he sees the father “a drunken beast” on the floor, and hears the dying mother’s prayer that “God have mercy on the man who sold the rum… that had blighted her life.” The poem ends with the man anguishing that he sold the rum to the father on the floor, and it was because of him, this family was ruined. While dramatic, is was quite the poem.
Then there is the book “A Text Book of True Temperance: For All Who Love Liberty Too Well to Abuse It” by M. Monahan, 1911. He states that “true temperance” should be “right use, not abuse”. He then goes on the history of beer and wine and strong alcohols in history, along with the value of the brewing industry. He has chapters on failures of prohibitions in America, and in individual states. This too, is an interesting and informative read. It was also published by the United States Brewers Association.
The last two books are also about wine. The first “Old Time Recipes for Home Made Wines” by Helen S. Wright was first published in 1909. It was then again printed twice in 1919, and again in 1922 (my copy). By 1933, had gone through 6 printings. It is an entire book on how to make wines, cordials, and liqueurs from fruits, flowers, vegetables, and shrubs. Prohibition had made the book a very popular.
The last book is “Are You Wine-Wise? Here is the book of the hour…it tells you how to buy, keep, serve, and enjoy good wine” by Horatio F. Stoll, 1933 (sometime after November 15.) The author states that he is to “dispel misconception of the many well-meaning temperance advocates who confuse wine with all kinds of alcoholic beverages and liqueurs, good and bad, and lump them all on der the opprobrious term of rum.” It was published just when prohibition was repealed, December 1933.
I shall quote Captain Jack Sparrow “Rum gets you through times of no money, better than money gets you through times of no rum.” Let’s just have a toast to keep on reading.
Librarytomes 