Cultural Conflict.

The Eighteenth Amendment, outlawing the sale of liquor, was the culmination of the campaigns of the Anti-Saloon League and the Women's Christian Temperance Union to dry up the United States. Forty-six states ratified the amendment, which went into effect in January 1920. The fight for Prohibition was a cultural conflict between white, native, Protestant Americans and new immigrants, as well as a conflict between women and men. Mainstream Protestants associated the saloon with the working-class and immigrant cultures they wished to bring in line with their own values. Women fought for Prohibition to protect their homes and families, recognizing that drunken husbands used up a family's income on liquor and often physically or sexually abused their wives and children.

A Fool's Errand.

Resistance to Prohibition had been fierce: 1919 New Jersey Democratic gubernatorial candidate Edward I. Edwards pledged to "make New...