Twenty-First Amendment, Section 1:

The eighteenth article of amendment to the Constitution of the United States is hereby repealed.

The Wickersham Commission’s 1931 report, which identified numerous problems with Prohibition,1 helped to encourage public support for the Eighteenth Amendment’s repeal. Various social reform groups advocated for an end to Prohibition, including the Association Against the Prohibition Amendment and the Women’s Organization for National Prohibition Reform.2 Pro-repeal advocates maintained that Prohibition intruded upon individual liberty, interfered with state sovereignty, and encouraged the growth of crime, among other objections.3

Several influential business leaders also supported the Eighteenth Amendment’s repeal in the late 1920s and early 1930s. These included newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst, who viewed Prohibition as a failure,4 and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller, Jr.5 A longtime supporter of the Anti-Saloon League, Rockefeller revealed his opposition to Prohibition in a June 1932 letter to educator and philosopher Nicholas Murray Butler.6 Rockefeller wrote that Prohibition’s benefits were “more than outweighed by the evils that have developed and flourished since its adoption, evils which, unless promptly checked, are likely to lead to conditions unspeakably worse than those which prevailed before.” 7

Despite growing public opposition to the Eighteenth Amendment, incumbent President Herbert Hoover and the Republican Party adopted an equivocal approach toward Prohibition during the 1932 presidential campaign. The Republican Party platform attempted to appease both “dry” and “wet” supporters by opposing the Eighteenth Amendment’s repeal while supporting Congress’s proposal of a new amendment to the Constitution that would allow each state to decide whether to prohibit liquor or saloons within its jurisdiction.8

By contrast, President Hoover’s challenger, Democratic Party candidate Franklin D. Roosevelt, openly supported the Eighteenth Amendment’s repeal.9 Speaking at a campaign event in August 1932, Roosevelt referred to Prohibition as a “complete and tragic failure” in many parts of the country that encouraged corruption and crime.10 He argued that vesting the state governments with primary regulatory authority over alcoholic beverages would better promote temperance goals if federal law protected dry states from illegal liquor imports.11 Campaigning during the depths of the Great Depression, Roosevelt contended that repealing the Eighteenth Amendment would also provide a much needed source of tax revenue to the federal government.12 On November 8, 1932, Roosevelt won a landslide victory in the presidential election, signaling a potential end to Prohibition.13

Footnotes

1

See Amdt21.S1.2.2 Problems with the Eighteenth Amendment and Prohibition.

2

Daniel Okrent, Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition 184–85, 193 (2010).

3

Id.

4

Id. at 317–18.

5

Letter from John D. Rockefeller, Jr. to Nicholas Murray Butler (June 6, 1932), https://ia800408.us.archive.org/10/items/355897-1932-rockefeller-to-buttler-letter/355897-1932-rockefeller-to-buttler-letter.pdf.

6

Id.

7

Id. at 4.

8

Republican Party Platform of 1932

, Am. Presidency Project, >https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/republican-party-platform-1932; Arthur Krock, Hoover Approves Dry-Wet Prohibition Plank; His Steam Roller Crushes Threatened Revolt; Convention Receives Keynote Speech Coolly, N.Y. Times (June 15, 1932), https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/library/politics/camp/320615convention-gop-ra.html.

9

Franklin D. Roosevelt, Campaign Address on Prohibition in Sea Girt, New Jersey (Aug. 27, 1932), https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/campaign-address-prohibition-sea-girt-new-jersey. In 1928, the Democratic Party nominated Al Smith, the governor of New York, for president. Smith was the first major national party candidate to support Prohibition’s repeal. Okrent, supra note 2, at 302, 306. Smith lost to Republican Herbert Hoover, who supported Prohibition. Id. at 308.

10

Franklin D. Roosevelt, Campaign Address on Prohibition in Sea Girt, New Jersey (Aug. 27, 1932), https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/campaign-address-prohibition-sea-girt-new-jersey.

11

Id.

12

Id. ( “Unquestionably our tax burden would not be so heavy nor the forms that it takes so objectionable if some reasonable proportion of the uncounted millions now paid to those whose business has been reared upon this stupendous blunder could be made available for the expenses of Government.” ).

13

Senate Stories: Beer by Christmas

, U.S. Senate, https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/senate-stories/beer-by-christmas.htm.