anti-prohibition rally 

One hundred years ago today … Some thousands of people gathered in Madison Square Garden and spilled over into Madison Square Park, to rally against prohibition.

Historians Hugh Ambrose and John Schuttler describe the event:

On May 3, 1922, anti-Prohibitionists, led by several labor organizations, held a rally at Madison Square Garden calling for modification of the Volstead Act, barely two years old. Some ten thousand people came, undeterred by a downpour outside. Senator James Wadsworth, unable to attend, sent a letter, read to the assemblage, describing Prohibition as a “terrible mistake” aggravated by “an enforcement act so severe in its provisions that it is proving impossible of enforcement.” Without providing details, he urged "that the whole Prohibition situation should be revised and a sane effort made to place it upon a respectable basis.” Other speakers claimed the Eighteenth Amendment never would have passed if politicians had not gone "to sleep,” refusing to believe a sufficient number of states would make it the law of the land. Loud cheers echoed through the arena when speakers claimed the right to drink alcohol as inalienable or a “physiological necessity.” Even if all the country's drinkers could magically be exterminated and replaced with “Simonpure Prohibitionists," "within two weeks the Mexicans would be on the Hudson with a flock of mudscows and capture New York City,” so weak was America’s fiber without liquor.” (77-78)

The Herald’s contemporary coverage offered some specifics, including news of a jazz band and the WWI veterans’ protests.

The Fifteenth Infantry band was present to dispense jazz music–the sort that, to quote one speaker, ought to be accompanied by beer. Delegations from thirty-five labor unions arrived in groups and in small processions. Social and athletic clubs bearing aloft banners that left no doubt about their feelings where beer is concerned, came in parade formation behind a somewhat sad band that played "How Dry I Am" with all the pathos at their command. Their banners bore the legends "We Want Beer" "Our Platform Beer," "They slipped it over on us while we were in France" and others of similar tenor. They sang of "Brown October Ale" and "The Little Brown Jug." They howled the good old Vin Rouge songs of the A. E. F. and howled with delight every time William H. Anderson and Andrew Volstead were knocked for a row of growlers by the speakers.

They groaned dismally when Mr. [Samuel] Gompers told them of the twenty New York Representatives who were absent when the vote on the Eighteenth Amendment was taken in the House.

References/Further reading:

Ambrose, Hugh, and John Schuttler. Liberated Spirits: Two Women Who Battled Over Prohibition. New YorK; Penguin, 2018.

– Jonathan Goldman, May 3, 2022

TAGS: prohibition, alcohol, demonstration, politics, activism