1981 First a Prize Barnum Competition Essay a CASE of NONCOMPLIANCE the PROHIBITION PERIOD in HUMBOLDT COUNTY 1919-1933 Stephan
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1981 First A Prize Barnum Competition Essay A CASE OF NONCOMPLIANCE THE PROHIBITION PERIOD IN HUMBOLDT COUNTY 1919-1933 by Stephan Seely A Case of Noncompliance The Prohibition Period in Humboldt County, 1919-1933 Stephan Seely At midnight January 16, 1920, millions of Americans said goodbye to legalized liquor. A new era of clean living, family harmony, full employment, and prosperity was envisioned in the not too distant future. "John is dead. Thank God"1 applauded B.B. Conner, pastor of the Arcata Methodist church, in reference to the death of one John Barleycorn, otherwise knows as corn whiskey. Conner's jubulation over the dry victory could hardly be contained: Virtue has conquered over vice: Truth has triumphed over error: righteousness has been lifted up above sin: justice has defeated wrong: liberty is exalted above tyranny and freedom has driven out oppression. A glad new day has come in the history of a great land and a Stainless Flag will float over a Saloonless Nation. Long may she wave!2 The temperance movement had certainly achieved a remarkable triumph. According to the Eighteenth Amendment, John Barleycorn's death seemed assured. If John ever really did die, even for a brief instant, his astounding recov- ery from that dreadful state is deserving of a place in the annals of medical history. It was, however, to take much more than legislative majorities, constitutional amendments, and idealistic dreams of a liquorless utopia to destroy the traffic in alcoholic beverages. Prohibition prophets, like Conner, were guilty of a fundamental misconception. The Eighteenth Amendment, they assumed, was a final peace treaty with the liquor traffic. They were wrong. The Volstead Act was, in fact, a declaration of war. Laws alone would never quench mankind's age-old thirst for intoxicating liquor. The war against liquor was fought by an insufficient number of govern- ment agents who sorely lacked the funds and resources to meet the onrushing tide of illicit spiritous beverages. Of course, had the enforcers of the 1The Arcata Union, January 15, 1920, p.1, Co1.4. Full names are not available where initials are used. 2 Ibid. 2 Eighteenth Amendment been above reproach their success could have been improved upon. However, these law enforcement agencies, in charge of enforcing the Volstead Act, were far from virtuous. The period from 1920- 1933 was an era of unprecedented graft and corruption within the forces of the law. Those opposing the law enforcement agencies were legion in number and unscrupulous in their methods. They used guerilla tactics; seldom coming out into the open, blending well with the general public. In the end, though, it was not the bootlegger, rum-runner, or blind pigger in search of easy money that defeated the Eighteenth Amendment, but the general public's unwillingness to relinquish its right to wet its palate with intoxicants. "These are the days of real sport," wrote Fred W. Georgeson, editor of the Humboldt Standard in 1920, and the funny thing about it is that proper and dignified citizens who never broke anything before outside the traffic laws are inclined toward a little home brew. All of which goes to show that man has an inborn desire for personal liberty and a hankering conviction that laws are thrust upon him rather than given him as a blessing. That admonition, 'Don't do that' so much hated in childhood is similarly distasteful in later years when the state does the admonishing.3 It was an attitude of widespread public dissent towards temperance legis- lation that doomed the law enforcement agencies to a losing battle from the very inception of the Volstead Act in 1920 to its repeal in late 1933. The purpose of this paper is to examine the course of noncompliance to the Eighteenth Amendment that was chosen by a great number of Humboldt County residents. First of all, the illicit liquor, it's source, it's distribution, and it's consumption will be dealt with in some detail. Secondly, the efforts of the law enforcement agencies in Humboldt County will also be a point of concentration. How effective were they in stemming the flow of intoxicants? 3Humboldt Standard, May 8, 1920, p.4, Col. 1. 3 This writer will also attempt, throughout the course of this discussion, to compare and contrast Humboldt County with the nation as a whole. As a back- drop to these topics, it is essential to a full discussion of the prohibition period to consider the temperance movement in the county that was active prior to national prohibition and during its visitation. Temperance came to Humboldt County as a result of a national movement rather than a local one. This is contrary to the situation in many areas of the country. The state of Maine went dry as early as 1847, and by 1913, fifty percent of the country had followed Maine's lead under local options. The Anti-Saloon League and the Womens Christian Temperance Union (W.C.T.U.) with the support of a myriad of state and local temperance societies, as well as the churches and outspoken evangelists, as Billy Sunday, were largely responsible for the victories in those areas. Gilman Ostrander in his book, The Prohibition Movement in California, claims that Humboldt County had reached some degree of abstemiousness in 1894. "The movement reached a peak of success in 1894, when prohibitory ordinances were in force outside the municipalities in Riverside, Sutter, Humboldt, Lassen, and Lake counties."4 The ordinance that was issued in Humboldt County seems to contradict Ostrander's assertion. It stipulates that liquor licenses be filed by dispensers of alcohol including a one thousand dollar fee to the county. Although this exhorbitant fee must certainly have had the effect of reducing the number of saloons in the county, it was not prohibitory. The liquor licensing ordinance may simply have been an attempt by the county to bring money into the county coffers rather than an action to make the county out- side the municipalities a temperate zone. The fact is that the temperance movement in Humboldt County was always 4 Gilman Ostrander, The Prohibition Movement in California (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1957), p. 72. 14 relatively weak and ineffectual. What little that can be gathered about temperance societies in the county prior to the twentieth century is capsulized in Elliot's History of Humboldt County. What might have been the first temperance organization was an order started in Arcata in 1857 called the Reformed Drunkards. In 1858, another organization was formed with a division in Eureka called the Morning Star. The purposes and the successes of these two groups are somewhat of a mystery. Susie Baker Fountain asserts that another group called the Sons of Temperance flourished for a time before 1900 but go on to say that peak membership was a meager forty men. The Good Templars, a group active in the 1880's achieved the greatest success in numbers of any temperance organization prior to the twentieth century. They sported seven separate branches with a total membership of almost three hundred. According to Elliot, "The Good Templars in Humboldt are banded together for the purpose of combating the fell - destroyer - intoxicating liquors - together with all its concomitant baleful evils and influences".5 The organization, for obscure reasons, folded not long after this 1882 census. They had amassed a truly substantial following for such a small area. Nevertheless, if the accomplishments of the Good Templars, as well as the other aforementioned temperance groups, are measured according to the degree of "aridity" that the county experienced during their presence here, they were a dismal failure. The area continued in its imbibing ways and by the turn of the century was one of the "wettest" territories in the state. The Women's Christian Temperance Union, or W.C.T.U., was active throughout the county just prior to and during the prohibition period. The W.C.T.U. was a national organization that played a prominent role in temperance activity throughout the country. Records of the local chapter 5Elliots History of Humboldt County, California (Elliot, pub., San Francisco, 1882) p. 212. 5 have either been lost or are no longer extant. Their name can still be read on a plaque indicating their participation in erecting the statue of McKinley on the Arcata Plaza and is also mentioned infrequently in the news- paper reports during the period. Local auxiliaries were organized in Eureka, Arcata, and Fortuna. Each held monthly meetings in churches in their respective municipalities that were often, especially in the early twenties, well attended. "A large and appreciative audience nearly filled the Christian church (Fortuna) Sunday evening to hear the program prepared by the W.C.T.U.."6 The programs given by the organization regularly included an address by a local minister on a subject dealingwiththe "drink evil" in one form or another. The minister's speech was often supplemented by a wide array of songs either sung by a soloist, a quartet, or by the congregation itself. "Temperance Glee," "Sound the Battle Cry," "From the Hill and From the Valleys," are just a few titles of the impassioned melodies heard at the meetings. The distribution of temperance literature was one tangible activity the W.C.T.U. used to convince the local residents of the baneful effect of unrestricted consumption of alcoholic beverages. Vick Peterson, whose mother was a member of the Union, recalls the contents of some of this literature. They had pictures of stomachs that were full of sores and ulcers and bleeding, livers that were yellow and black and green, and kidneys that looked like prunes - all wrinkled up, and livers that were sometimes three times their size.? These pictures apparently had a remarkable effect upon Peterson's young and impressionable mind as he remains a teetotaler to this day.