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The image of Prohibition got fixed by Richard Hofstadter, who summed it up as a "rural-evangelical virus," "a pinched, parochial substitute for reform." Prohibition has remained exactly that in the popular imagination, like a freak preserved in formaldehyde, useful for editorialists and pundits as a standing lesson against "legislating morality." (Why does it never occur to them that virtually all laws "legislate morality"?) Historians have long since moved on, citing Hofstadter only when they want to make the point of how wrong he was about Prohibition. Nevertheless his and others' visceral reaction has effectively kept the real and more interesting story out of public view.
Perhaps that is for good reason: Prohibition is full of awkward facts, and it would be convenient to pretend that it was purely the product of puritanical rubes who temporarily seized power in a moment of American weakness. In truth, no reform movement had deeper roots in American values. Prohibition was the culmination of a century of agitation which swept over the nation in repeated waves. Its support was wide and deep, including people as thoughtful and diverse as Jane Addams, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Carrie Chapman Catt. If Prohibition was "pinched and parochial," then certainly the same indictment should be applied to other movements that culminated in the progressive era of reform—the movements for industrial safety, electoral reform, world peace, fair labor laws, food regulation, urban planning, good government, and (nearest cousin of all) woman suffrage. Almost invariably the same set of progressive people supported all these, with the hopeful expectation that rational and humane measures could make America a happier place.
Catherine Gilbert Murdock's Domesticating Drink looks at Prohibition from the interesting angle of male- female relations, and in doing so has to confront awkward facts about women in politics. For Prohibition was very much a progressive women's cause. Murdock makes the fairly obvious point that woman suffrage and Prohibition were close cousins. Both came to fruition through amendments to the Constitution, the Eighteenth and the Nineteenth, ratified within a year of each other. The great majority of suffragists favored prohibition, and the prohibition movement stood steadfastly for woman suffrage. Arguably the Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) did more to promote woman suffrage than any other organization, being by far the largest and most active of all women's movements.
Prohibition and suffrage shared an organized enemy in the liquor industry, for the simple reason that those who made a living selling alcoholic drinks were sure that woman voters were against them. Drinking in America was highly gendered, taking place primarily in saloons, where the only women would ordinarily be prostitutes. Alcoholism was a public spectacle—every town had its drunkards—and criminal violence was often linked very closely to the masculine environment of the saloon.
So was political corruption. The political machines bought votes through the saloons. They could always round up men who would vote correctly for the price of a drink, and saloons conveniently often doubled as polling places. Political officials got illicit funds through the saloons, too, because they needed to bribe to stay open on Sundays or to escape police crackdowns. "Politics, masculinity and alcohol were a powerful triumvirate in the early years of the twentieth century," Murdock says.
If men had the saloons, women had the home. Women were the virtuous sex, restricted to the home but also protectors of the home. Women campaigned to get the vote largely on the basis of their claim to bring a superior morality into public life. Frances Willard, inspiring leader of the WCTU, referred to the vote as the "home protection ballot." Women did not enter saloons, they were incorruptible and non-violent, they did not drink.
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