No Prohibition/Volstead Act

I was thinking how Prohibition kind of in many ways defined the course of American history. It lead to the rise of organized crime as a force and helped give rise to the Kennedy dynasty and defined later American laws and attitudes to substance abuse like the War on Drugs and the marijuana legalization debate. So lets say because of some change in World War I, the 18th Amendment doesn't get passed.

The Roaring 20s might be less intense and the resulting crash less harsh, just a recession. The Mafia and other organized crime groups would lose most of the wind in their sails without bootlegging rackets. The Mafia would probably remain small Black Hand extortion groups in Italian neighborhoods and not become a nationwide force. The Kennedys may not rise to power without bootlegging money and connections.

What does everybody else think?
 

marathag

Banned
Even without national Prohibition of 18thA, a number of mostly Southern mid Atlantic and Great Plains states would be 'Dry', while other stay 'Wet'.
So you would see alcohol flows that way, rather than from Canada and Caribbean.
 
Even without national Prohibition of 18thA, a number of mostly Southern mid Atlantic and Great Plains states would be 'Dry', while other stay 'Wet'.
So you would see alcohol flows that way, rather than from Canada and Caribbean.
No 18th amendment means no 21st amendment either and that raises a question when I the dry states, frustrated as alcohol flows across state lines, tries to restrict the flow. The Supreme court is going to run into the issue of just how far they can go under the interstate commerce clause, which unlike OTL, has not been overruled by the 21st amendment. Is anyone aware of any cases related to this OTL. I don't know why but somehow I just cannot see the Supreme court striking down statutes like that. If they did overturn them however, then you have a more interesting timeline.
 
The Kennedys would've been fine either way....since they had nothing to do with bootlegging.

The Kennedys were rich well before Prohibition. JFK's great-grandfather owned some bars in the 1800s, but JFK's grandfather and father were long out of the alcohol business by the time Prohibition started.

Joseph Kennedy made his money in investment banking, and in forms of insider trading before they had been made illegal. He also brokered the deal that formed the RKO movie studio and invested heavily in the company which made him a fortune. At the tail end of Prohibition, after the 1932 election when an overwhelmingly "wet" majority was about to come in to Congress the following year, he invested in a company that owned the import rights to some well-known British liquor brands. But he did not actually profit from it until 1933, after Prohibition had been repealed. He, like a lot of other wealthy investors of the time, saw a windfall in the legitimate liquor business on the horizon and took advantage of it.

The Kennedys never invested in alcohol when it was illegal. They were already really rich and out of the alcohol business by 1919. It would have been stupid to get involved, because it would have risked the fortune they'd already built. The rum runners and bootleggers were gangsters who hadn't been wealthy before Prohibition was enacted, and only got rich after the fact. Joe grew up rich. He just made the family fortune bigger.
 
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I was thinking how Prohibition kind of in many ways defined the course of American history. It lead to the rise of organized crime as a force and helped give rise to the Kennedy dynasty and defined later American laws and attitudes to substance abuse like the War on Drugs and the marijuana legalization debate. So lets say because of some change in World War I, the 18th Amendment doesn't get passed.

The Roaring 20s might be less intense and the resulting crash less harsh, just a recession. The Mafia and other organized crime groups would lose most of the wind in their sails without bootlegging rackets. The Mafia would probably remain small Black Hand extortion groups in Italian neighborhoods and not become a nationwide force. The Kennedys may not rise to power without bootlegging money and connections.

What does everybody else think?
What's the rationale behind the highlighted part? Is there a link between Prohibition and the Great Depression?
 
The US wouldn't have had such a poor reputation for beer for the next sixty-odd years until smaller craft beer breweries started up again. There will likely still be consolidation in the industry but I think you'd see a larger number of companies survive, and with it a larger range of styles.
 
IIRC - aren't cocktails at least in part a product of the prohibition era. Would they take longer to be invented, as more people take their drinks neat instead?
 
Since I took the USA out of the First World War that means this questions is part of the tangled web of butterflies taking flight thereafter. So I have even more impacts to the cultural landscape. And my initial thought is that would potentially derail the national level prohibition but as other point out it leaves the state and local efforts to control or ban alcohol. The USA, as far as I can tell, had licensing laws, prohibition "dry" or almost no control "wet".

My observation is that it would be mostly rural, mostly protestant (tending towards what we can call evangelical) counties and states that pass more restrictive or prohibition laws. This would cover much of the South, some portion of the Great Plains, tending into the Midwest, touching the West and New England. Most of the USA was already under some form of local prohibition and few places already dry up to state-wide. That trend might continue so we see more jurisdictions going dry or tightening licensing and a few states might go outright dry. For a lot of America it might not change, and for cities they attract more people and we hasten the decline of farm life. And it might cycle back to be a renewed fight from a yet more militant and oddly distinct rural dry culture versus the wet urban city folk. And who knows how it alters the vague Republicans are dry (boring/conservative) and Democrats are wet (fun/liberal) dynamic where FDR does not repeal what does not exist.

In this era the Supreme Court was rather reluctant to let Congress exercise its ambiguous powers under the Commerce Clause so I think the 18th Amendment was the result, only an amendment could assure Congress and the federal government could enact prohibition. So on the obverse Congress can do little to effect the wet versus dry states. We know that alcohol content was higher since transport was longer and not refrigerated, something for say beer might change on its own. If Whisky can still be imported we don't see the gutting of Irish and Scottish distilleries, mitigating the economic impacts in those places. We see more federal liquor tax revenue so less need for tariffs so another straw withdrawn from the Depression economics. Start pulling at the strings and I think we underestimate how far the changes could go.

We know that beer and wine are bigger in the catholic German and Italian communities, spirits big with the Irish, all groups targeted as not being White, Anglo-Saxon or Protestant enough. With no prohibition the white washing of those communities might be less, it should be under my scenario, so we see German, Italian and Irish cities still have beer, wine and whisk(e)y, along with language, cuisine and cultural influences. That sets America up for a more diverse "white" cultural and who knows how much more diverse overall. For example with a more distinct catholic Italian community, would the Spanish speaking catholic populace be less "foreign" or viewed as a bigger minority of South European? We might see the Irish community even less Anglophile and favorable to London, impacting foreign affairs.

Without the gangland violence we have less need for the FBI, let alone ATF, we have smaller federal police or responses to problems. We do not get Great Gatsby or the modern mixed cocktail or more! Jazz was popular, black musicians played it in Speakeasies, this puts them and blues into the wider culture, that alters country, folk and bluegrass/gospel to beget rock-and-roll. Prohibition everywhere impacts the women's liberation thread, homosexual rights thread, race-relations, music, literature, cinema, and so many more threads as these interact upon one another.

At the end I have slowly come to see America in far grayer trends, impressions of its culture, such that in the America I think of post-First World War, without Prohibition, and even more knock-ons. America becomes only barely familiar to me, some familiar rocks in the shifting different unfamiliar sands. I would not underestimate that given 50 or 100 years, this paradigm shift does not erase so much we think we think we are that even my thoughts here are really not weird enough.
 
IIRC - aren't cocktails at least in part a product of the prohibition era. Would they take longer to be invented, as more people take their drinks neat instead?
I drink several pre-Prohibition cocktails, they did exist, but I drink several Prohibition ones too, and I do not see the "need" where you have quality spirits. Consider the Vieux Carre, still Prohibition era but no fruit juices or sodas or non-alcohol mixes. That might be the evolution without Prohibition, more complex than Bourbon on the rocks, Scotch with water or rot-gut neat. But even the Old Fashioned had some soda so the notion to add them still exists. In fact many "mixed" cocktails pre-date Prohibition. But do we get the Jack and Coke? Basically water down bad alcohol with anything to conceal it with another flavor? That might be where we stay the course with complex mixology and eschew the "cheap booze poured over with sugary syrup or bubbles call it a day". I am hopeful the bar scene is in fact better as we all know how to drink like classy adults!
 
Without Prohibition, auto racing in America is affected. No NASCAR, but I'm sure a weaker, less federated organization(s) arises in pockets of dry areas. Maybe various regional tours (SouthCAR and New England Weekly Touring Series?) spring up. IndyCar is #1 most likely, Formula 1 may be more popular. Less ovals in America and more European type circuits. This will affect the automobile industry significantly. No 'Race on Sunday, Sell on Monday' mindset. Vehicle technology such as aerodynamics, safety, and tire compound development might be set back. No Dodge Daytona, Monte Carlo Aero Coupes, or many of the recognizable 80s smaller body productions due to the loss of the 'Aero Wars.'

No Pixar's Cars, Will Ferrell in Talladega Nights, or Days of Thunder. The Pixar one is interesting as despite the Cars movies being...meh...the toy line absolutely takes in the money. So Disney loses a tentacle on its media absorbing Kraken. Probably doesn't hurt Disney all that much in the big picture, unless that income helped finance some of the earlier franchise acquisitions (Pixar itself, Star Wars, Marvel).
 
No Prohibition doesn't mean those you want it enacted will suddenly stop wanting it on the day Prohibition happened in OTL. There'll still be a mass movement of progressive puritans campaigning for it. Meaning that even if it never is a lot of people will be spending their time, money, etc campaigning for Prohibition, that they did in OTL on other issues.
For how long? Wellllll I don't want to risk getting into current politics, so I'll just phrase it like this: Both parties have one big issue they want the gouvernment to be much more restrictive about than it is. Neither side has seen much success in the past DECADES and yet neither side seems interested in dropping the matter any time soon.
 
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