prohibition
... movement were greatly concerned that the fine image of there country was being shot down by alcohol. They believed the cause of the uproar in creating a culture of drinking was immigrants coming from Europe. There goal was create a “clean society”, and they believed the best way of doing this was by taken away the main source of problems, however little did they know alcohol was only a small part of the problem and unfortunity they had to learn the hard way. Even though consumption of alcohol fell at the beginning of Prohibition, it increased rapidly. Alcohol became more dangerous to drink, crime increased and became "organized"; the courts and prisons were packed to a maximum and corruption of public officials was extremely out of control. Prohibition removed a important source of tax revenue and government spending was higher then ever before. It led many drinkers to switch to drugs like opium, marijuana, patent medicines, cocaine,and other drugs that many have not even heard of until prohibition. There were many other causes of prohibition, and a lot of them were caused a sort of arms race. During this time, the brewing industries were the most popular of the beverage alcohol industries. Due to the competitiveness of brewing, the brewers entered the retail business. Americans called selling beer and whiskey by the glass “saloons”. Brewers expanded the number of saloons to expand the sale of beer. It got to the point where it was not uncommon to find one saloon for every 150 or 200 Americans, including those who did not drink. With profits being tight, saloonkeepers sometimes introduced things such as gambling and prostitution into their establishments to try to earn more profits. Many Americans however found these saloons offensive, noxious institutions. The prohibition leaders also believed that once license to do business was remove from the liquor traffic, the churches and reform organizations would enjoy the chance to persuade Americans to give up drinking. This surprisingly proved to be unchallenged by many of the organizations who once encouraged drinking in the past. The popularity of saloons would disappear, and saloonkeepers were no longer allowed to encourage people to drink, especially underage children, which was slowly becoming a problem. Another technique that the prohibition leaders used t...