Prohibition


 * Do Now**

"The Federal government has decided to prohibit the manufacture, sale, transportation and consumption of all candy and soda throughout the United States."
 * Do you think the government has the right to do this?
 * How will the government enforce this?
 * How would people react?


 * Opener**
 * What was the 18th Amendment? (Who? What? When? Where? Why?)


 * Lesson**
 * Use the following passage taken from our online textbook to help you take brief notes on the effects of prohibition - Use two column note format - with a Main Idea

"Prohibition in practice. Supporters of Prohibition believed it would have many positive effects on American society. To be sure, Prohibition did reduce the amount of alcohol Americans consumed. Enforcing the new law, however, proved to be virtually impossible.

While making, transporting, and selling alcohol was illegal, drinking it was not. Many people continued to drink liquor during Prohibition—and those who wanted alcohol had little trouble getting it.

Prohibition gave rise to huge smuggling operations. Large amounts of alcohol slipped into the country through seaports and across the border from Canada. It was said that in Detroit, Michigan, located on the Canadian border, liquor smuggling was the second largest industry after automobile manufacturing. Newspaper headlines followed the high drama of the hunt for **bootleggers**, or liquor smugglers. **Bootleggers**—from the slang term for smuggling items inside boots—were highly skilled at avoiding capture. Government officials estimated in 1925 that they had stopped only 5 percent of all the liquor entering the country illegally.

In addition to smuggled liquor, many people simply made their own illegal alcohol using homemade equipment. Others drank alcohol that was intended for use in medicines or other products. At the time, doctors were allowed to prescribe alcohol to their patients for medical reasons.

The illegal liquor business also became the foundation of great criminal empires. The most notorious Prohibition-era gangster was Chicago’s Al Capone. After brutally destroying his competition, he used the alcohol trade to build a business that earned tens of millions of dollars a year. With these resources, Capone and other gangsters were able to frighten off and pay off the law-enforcement agents who threatened them. The federal government, which never had more than 3,000 Prohibition agents working nationwide, found it difficult to compete with the criminals. Still, many agents worked diligently to enforce the law. They shut down **speakeasies**, the illegal bars where alcohol was served. They destroyed barrels of captured liquor and the equipment that gangsters used to make alcohol. Yet they could not keep up with the criminals.

In spite of its problems, Prohibition continued through the 1920s. More and more people, however, questioned whether this experiment was succeeding.

1920’s Glossary.
 * Summary/Assessment**

Based on the your notes from the reading above, write a short letter, short story, or journal entry from the perspective of somebody living in the 1920’s. Your writing piece should include at least 10 of the terms below. Your writing should focus on something that occurred during the prohibition era. Extra Credit can be achieved.


 * Applesauce: an expletive.
 * Bank's closed: no kissing or making out.
 * Bee's knees: an extraordinary person, thing, idea.
 * Beef: to complain or a complaint.
 * Bimbo: a tough guy.
 * Blind date: going out with someone you don't know.
 * Butt me: I'll take a cigarette.
 * Cash or check: kiss now or later?
 * Cat's meow: something splendid or stylish. The best or greatest.
 * Ciggy: cigarette.
 * Daddy: a young woman's boyfriend/lover, especially if he is rich.
 * Dapper: a Flapper's dad
 * Dolled up: dressed up
 * Double cross: to cheat, stab in the back.
 * Flapper: a stylish, brash hedonistic young woman with short skits and short hair..
 * Gams: nice legs
 * Glad rags: going out on the town clothes.
 * Gold digger: a woman who associates with or marries a man for his wealth.
 * Hair of the dog: a shot or liquor.
 * Hooch: bootleg liquor.
 * Jalopy: old car that needs work
 * Java/Joe: coffee
 * Joint: a club, usually selling alcohol.
 * Moll: a gangster's girl.
 * Neck: kissing with passion
 * Ossified/spifflicated: a drunken person. Also, canned, corked, tanked, primed, jazzed, plastered, lit, fried to the hat,
 * Pill: a teacher or an unlikable person.
 * Take for a ride: to drive off with someone in order to bump them off; kill them.
 * Tomato: a female.
 * Upchuck: to vomit when you have drunk too much.
 * Whoopee: to have a good time.