Prohibition...

[boone]

This photo is from the Library of Congress...It was taken during prohibition. This was (in my opinion) a staged photo. Look at all of the men there. In suits and ties. Just two of em working. The rest just standing in the backgroud. The one's on the wagon show no faces just a set of hands and boots. The ditch on side is empty, no previous dump there. They are out in the middle of nowhere and a town is in the distant background. I wonder... none of the bottles are opened or busted, but there is pieces of the cases in the ditch. Did they carefully lay them all out like that, just to destroy them?.

Seems to me that a quick pitch off the wagon would have destroyed a lot? Saved a lot of time too!

This kind of stuff was going on all the time. I would love to find a diary of a government man of that era. One that told "the rest of the story"...

Now I WONDER...how many of the bottles were really destroyed in this new stupid law of the land? Did they know the lives that were being destroyed?.

The government just walked right in and destroyed everthing. My family was told that it is illegal to do what they have been doing for a 100 years?...They are out of a job?...Poof...It's all gone...

Look at the registered distilleries before prohibition...then look at the numbers years afterward...It's a sad situation that this happened in our country.

You don't hear "much" about what was "created" during Prohibition...Far worse happend "underground" (during prohibition) than all things combined in a lifetime of goings on in a legal distillery...

The majority of you in the forum know what I am talking about. For those of you who don't...Well that's another book someone should write about...

Bettye Jo

[bourbonv]

I agree this photo was probably staged for the newspapers. The government had a hard sell to the people that prohibition was working. The U.D. archive had several such photographs in their collection but even more photographs of the things that went wrong with prohibition. There were several photographs of the gangland murders and of people who died drinking alcohol that was poisonous. These photos were usually police evidence photographs that never made the newspapers.
Mike Veach

[Gemini_Rose]

I just wanted to say thank you for the history aspect of bourbon. I am curious and like learning new and different perspectives of this 'beverage' we are all connected to and not just once a year in Bardstown. It makes it all the worthwhile! I especially like viewing the "old time" photographs you submit.

[boone]

You are Very, Very Welcome, Stacy

I like doing it ...It's my hobby ...I don't mind sharin' when I know that folks like seeing some of the amazing stuff that I have...

I spend time in the "records" of the Nelson County court house...Let me tell you...I can "Live" down there...I have learned alot...but my main reason was to clarify some of the "history" that is being "Left out" or just flat out wrong...There is a "legal trail" to nearly all of the distilleries in this famous distilling county of mine...

I remember when I found my great-grandfather's name (Joseph L. Beam) in the records for the first time ...He was a "lost man" for a very long time...I am changing that...I made a special promise to someone, that I would "carry the torch" for him...and I'm gonna keep it ...

Bettye Jo

[Jessica]

Omigosh Bettye Jo! I just adore history; and you give the most important perspective on it, the POV of a person who was "there" or at least familialy involved . It seems almost impossible these days to get an honest opinion from a reliable source, espcially on controversial subjects (even with "evidence" like you have here) such as Prohibition. American history has been a great facination of mine for a long while now, but it seems we have lost touch and respect for the past as a whole. I'm terribly glad and thankful that there are smart, dilligent women like yourself digging out our past!

Thanks for sharing!
~ Jessica

[boone]

You are Welcome Jess

I've been known to "Shoot it Straight" a time or two

Beam's and Bourbon...can't be a "Historically Correct" em

Bettye Jo

[AmeliaC]

I agree with my (3) favorite girls. Can't wait for the rest of the story.

[boone]

Hi Amelia

The best part about doing this is that it's my family heritage ...

The sad part was not knowing enough about this heritage of mine (when I was young) to ask him (Pop-Harry Beam-my grandfather) lots of questions before he passed...

Bettye Jo

[Marvin]

Bettye Jo,

Usually I can think of something to reply, but in this case there is nothing to say!! You have said it all!!! I could not have worded it any better than you have and I know not nearly as good!! Just keep typing away, Bettye Jo, as I enjoy every minute of it!!!!

Cheers,
Marvin

[boone]

One more time...

I should have included this in my first post...

From Encarta encyclopedia...

The era inspired an extensive body of colorful literature, most of it alleging that the period was one of moral decay and social disorder precisely because of "Volsteadism," which came to mean the intolerable searches, seisures, and shootings by police who with their token enforcement seemed to threaten intrusion into the private lives of law-respecting persons. It also alleged that Prohibition distorted the role of alcohol in American life, causing people to drink more rather than less: that it promoted disrespect for the law" that it generated a wave of organized criminal activity, during which the bootlegger (one who sold liquor illegally) the "speakeasy" (an illegal saloon) and the gangster became popular institutions and that the profits available to criminals from illegal alcohol corrupted almost every level of government. Historians, however, believe that in the beginning of the era, and at least until the middle of the decade most Americans respected the law, hoped that it would endure and regarded its passage as directly responsible for the reduced incidence of public drunkenness and of alcohol related crime, imprisonments and hospitalizations.

--------INTERMPERANCE---------

"The Patriots Prayer" by Arthur Lippman

Now I lay me down to sleep--
My Life and limb may Hoover keep

And may no Coast Guard cutter shell
This little house I love so well.

May no dry agent shooting wild
Molest my wife and infant child.

Or searching out some secret still
Bombard my home to maim and kill.

When dawn succeeds to gleaming stars,
May we devoid of wounds and scars.

Give thanks we didn't fall before
the shots in "Prohibition War"

--------------------
Bettye Jo