It’s probably no surprise to know that Prohibition wreaked havoc in our grape-and-wine producing region.  Grape juice, table grapes, and sacramental wines didn’t generate enough business to fill the void.  World War I ended at the same time, and the Curtiss plant in Hammondsport closed, laying off over 700 workers.  Then the soldiers came home, looking for jobs.

Now organizations such as the Finger Lakes Association (now Finger Lakes Tourism Alliance) tried to drum up business by boosting tourism, especially “fully independent traveler” tourism by car, and also spearheaded a push to improve the roads.

Prohibition was not just a “killjoy” thing.  Alcohol abuse was a staggering problem in America at the time, and few Constitutional amendments enjoyed more popular support, even popular demand — 46 states ratified the amendment, and only two rejected it.

Even in our area, Prohibition had a lot of support.  I identified 33 nineteenth-century temperance organizations just in Steuben County, and four temperance newspapers (including the Tribune and the Courier).  Two local railroads required total abstinence from their employees, and several Steuben municipalities permitted no liquor licenses.

Prohibition did not ban drinking.  It banned the manufacture, transport, and sale of alcohol.  Our local wineries put on big advertising pushes to sell their stock before the amendment kicked in.  The famous Taylor Wine Company “Wine-Type” marketing… selling juice, setups, and instructions so consumers could make their own wine… may have titillated buyers with the sense that they were being naughty, but it was perfectly legal.  Besides drinking up stock on hand, individuals could make up to 64 gallons a year for private use.

Enforcement was never staffed or funded at the needed levels.  Indeed, in Washington, D.C. the attorney-general and the director of the Bureau of Investigation (now F.B.I.) established standard rates, based on population, as to how much you would pay them to block enforcement in your community.  One elderly woman from a winery family told me about driving as a little girl by night with her father on what she later realized were bootlegging deliveries. 

Still, some local owners of restaurants and the like were arrested and fined for serving liquor, while White Top winery in Pulteney was raided with considerable damage resulting.  But many flouted the law, provoking the wrath of the Ku Klux Klan, who ran nighttime patrols on Long Island hoping to stop bootleggers, and descended upon a Corning roadhouse, burning a cross and threatening the owners.

It’s a legend that people drank even more during Prohibition, BECAUSE it was forbidden.  Considering that most of the bars, liquor stores, and manufacturers were closed, it’s clear that that’s not the case.  In fact, some scholars say that consumption not only went down — it STAYED down after Repeal, not getting back up to pre-Prohibition levels until the early 1970s.

But Prohibition did enrich organized crime, and over time even supporters had to admit that it wasn’t working.  By then, though, it had become the third rail of American politics — a public official supporting Repeal was quickly clobbered with the cry that he promoted drunkenness.

In 1932 the wily Franklin D. Roosevelt proposed Repeal as a jobs measure, to get more people working in the Great Depression.  That worked, giving people who needed it an excuse to support repeal, or at least an excuse to stand aside and let it happen.

A onetime-librarian told me that he had checked the records to see how rock-ribbed Republican Hammondsporters voted in 1932 and found that, like much of the rest of the country, they went strong for Roosevelt.  Repeal came nine months after F.D.R.’s inauguration but, according to the librarian, in 1936, eschewing gratitude, they went back to the Republicans, making Hammondsport one of those very rare communities that gave their votes to Alf Landon.  Roosevelt won anyhow.  And Prohibition stayed repealed.