75 years later, St. Charles and the repeal of Prohibition

By Craig Hilmer

Journalist H. L. Mencken wrote in 1925

“Five years of prohibition have had, at least, this one benign effect: they have completely disposed of all the favorite arguments of the Prohibitionists. None of the great boons and usufructs that were to follow the passage of the Eighteenth Amendment has come to pass. There is not less drunkenness in the Republic but more. There is not less crime, but more. There is not less insanity, but more. The cost of government is not smaller, but vastly greater. Respect for law has not increased, but diminished.”

So it happened then, that by 1933 the legislative bodies in the United States voted in the 21st Amendment which repealed the 18th Amendment. 75 years ago on December 5th, the 21st was fully ratified and it became legal again to purchase and sell alcohol in most of the United States. 

What was the mood like in St. Charles as the wildly unpopular 18th Amendment was repealed? There aren’t a lot of folks around from then who can pass on the sentiments, but there still exist second hand remembrances and the historic archive of newsprint for the area.

If one is to believe the history books Prohibition brought out the worst of the Nation. Crime increased, honest men and women found themselves on the wrong side of the law and opportunists made fortunes. The stories of St. Charles during Prohibition are numerous. Chicago and Minneapolis were hotbeds of illegal alcohol consumption. Like many a small rural community, stories abound that St. Charles and the area may have provided some of that alcohol to the big cities.

…”Each long faced brother solemnly assures us that unless his particular panacea for having the face shall be speedily adopted there is no hope. Modernism, flapperism, automobiles, hooch, movies, dancing, bridge, and cigarettes singly or in combination, constitute the outstanding menace, according to the view of the particular alarmist who happens to have the floor.

How many residents recall County Road 26 not as its official name, but as “Whiskey Hill?” The hill leading down into Whitewater State Park is rumored to have been dotted with numerous stills.

Whispering Hills subdivision is now home to houses with great vistas of the community below. In the “Roaring 20’s”  it made an excellent rendezvous to hand off illegal “hooch” as those excellent vistas provided a clear view of any Revenue agents who might be coming to break up the illegal transactions between local distillers and big city “rum runners.” So the legends say.

In the December 15, 1933 edition of the InterCounty Press, the first issue published after the ratification of the 21st Amendment, the lead article had a headline that read, “200 Learn How to Grow Barley for Malting Use.” Much Peat land barley was grown in Minnesota in the era, but this session was intended to boost quality of area barley production to “cash in on the quality business and get the premiums malters to pay for barley that meets their standards.”

In that same issue the Women’s Christian Temperance ran their bi-weekly column, with the slogan displayed at the article head, “Hold Fast That Which is Good.” Agitate, Educate, Organize, Live Dry, Buy Dry, Vote Dry, Advance Not Retreat finished out the header to the article.

Two weeks before, that slogan was “Observance and Enforcement, - not Repeal,” with the same Agitate… header.

Women, in fact, were a big part of the overturn on Prohibition. They recognized the dilatory effects of Prohibition on family life in the US. Where once they’d had hope that Prohibition would build stronger families they saw instead that families were torn further apart. Organizations such as the WCTU came to recognize that temperance was a personal decision.

According to the InterCounty Press article the Press Bureau of the WCTU sent the following message to chapters to remind them of their “real work,” 

“The point is not what the law allows. The point is not who wants to drink or who does not. The point is not whether the rich or the poor do the drinking. The point is not whether the drink is beer or wine or hard liquor. The point is that alcohol is a habit forming racial poison. The more you drink the more likely it is that your children will be handicapped for life. The point is, more liquor means more alcohol; more alcohol means more poison. It took one hundred years to educate intelligent America to realize that alcohol belongs in the class with other habit forming drugs. A hundred years to set an ideal of mind over appetite.”

And again - in the same paper, in the editorial section - this excerpt from The Herald in Florence Alabama:

Thus after listening to these apostles of doom, with more or less pronounced feelings of boredom, unregenerate humanity turns to the comic pages and smiles at the varying fortunes of Jiggs and Andy Jump.

This does not mean that the average person is indifferent to the evil in the world. It means that sensible people recognize the inherent weakness and folly of humanity, and refuse to become unduly excited about it. They realize the futility of trying to carry the world’s burden on their shoulders. They seek to be helpful in practical ways. They courageously face the things that are, while sanely striving for things that ought to be.”