Prohibition's medicine

Ninety years ago, a reform movement with roots deep in the 19th century claimed victory. By September 1920, the 18th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified, making it illegal to make, sell or transport intoxicating beverages.

The debate over alcohol had defined and divided families, neighborhoods, churches, and social clubs for decades. Politicians jumped on and off the bandwagons depending upon the shifting winds of public opinion.

World War I sounded the death knell for the American beer and liquor industries. Symbols of Hun militarism, out-of-control immigration, and the unchecked influence of the Roman Catholic Church, the German beer garden, Irish saloon and Italian organ grinder became targets of zealous reformers who wished to purge liquor from American life.

Hillsborough County became a battleground for "wet" and "dry" factions, the latter being led by ministers and housewives who decried the corrupting effects of drunken soldiers, sinister saloonkeepers, and Latin residents disobeying Sunday blue laws.

In 1886, a Women's Christian Temperance Union chapter formed in Tampa. Other women's volunteer groups championed the cause. The Anti-Saloon League preached a simple message: Reward virtuous politicians and punish the wicked.

Women pointed to a roster of villains and victims: sack-clothed children, blue-collar factory workers who squandered their pay at the corner bar, battered and bruised homemakers, prostitutes who preyed upon besotted customers, and rosy-cheeked politicians and libertine priests.

The Prohibition movement attracted Methodist, Presbyterian, Episcopalian and Baptist women: the so-called "Protestant nuns."

Women may have had the forces of righteousness behind them, but men had history. The tavern was as American as apple pie, and to set the record straight, Johnny Appleseed planted apple trees for the purpose of hard cider, not baked pies. Americans drank astonishing amounts of liquor. No respectable politician campaigned without jugs of hard cider.

In 1915, there were "officially" 71 taverns in the city of Tampa, although there were likely many more given the large numbers of fines imposed for individuals operating a bar without a liquor permit. The saloon was not only a place men went to drink beer, it was part workingman's club, part employment agency. It was a place many workers enjoyed their most nourishing, or at least satisfying, meal of the day. Publicans offered customers free lunches: wooden counters laden with head cheeses, Genoa salami, pigs feet and knuckles, red-beet eggs, salty crackers and breads.

Tampa's Germans and Latins were stupefied that anyone could question the sanctity of the corner saloon. The issue had created controversy as early as 1887, when Tampa annexed Ybor City. Vicente Martinez Ybor expressed concern that if temperance reformers outlawed liquor, Ybor City would become a ghost town. The notion of temperance was ludicrous, since Cubans and Spaniards had enjoyed "light wines from childhood," Ybor said.

By 1915, the swift sword of Prohibition was about to become national triumph. Florida had enacted a local option, leaving Hillsborough as one of the last wet counties. In 1916, Floridians elected Sidney Johnston Catts as governor. "The Cracker Messiah" ran on the third-party Prohibition ticket.

In 1919, states and Congress ratified the 18th Amendment, which banned the manufacture, sale and transportation of intoxicating liquors throughout the nation.

On April 3 of that year, Tampa bade farewell to alcohol. The city's Florida Brewing Co. drained eight casks of beer totaling 22,320 gallons. A ceremony for "mourners" was held at the brewery. Resourceful children ran to the nearest sewers to skim off some of the beer.

The so-called "noble experiment" lasted for 14 years, ending with the repeal of the 18th Amendment in 1933.