Prohibition and Temperance

Next to abolition, Temperance was one of the most powerful social reform movements of the 19th-early 20th centuries. In the 1800’s, Americans were drinking at least three times more than the average American today, largely in response to the displacing and disorienting speed of change spurred by the Industrial Revolution. 

Drunkenness led to a host of social problems, including high rates of domestic violence. Before women’s suffrage and the introduction of the social safety net in the early 20th century, the risk of a man (usually the sole breadwinner of the household) spending all of his limited pay at the saloon was a significant concern for his family, who would be left to go hungry.

As a result, the fight for Temperance coincided with the women’s suffrage and abolition movements as a vocal opposition to the three “social evils” of the day, culminating in the 18th Amendment, which ushered in the Prohibition era.

While Prohibition was in effect for 13 years (1920-1933) the lead up to this period coincided with a series of local victories for the Temperance Movement from the late 19th Century to the early 20th century. In his recollections of the Temperance Movement in 1880, David Wright said of Cayuga County: 

“Formerly in the County of Cayuga there were more distilleries than towns. Now, if there is one in the County I am not aware of it.”

The city of Auburn voted to “go dry” in 1918, ushering in a period of police raids and speakeasies in the cities. While popular entertainment depicting the time period often focuses on either big cities or the moonshiners in the Appalachians, small cities such as Auburn also experienced the boom in illegal liquor sales. One report from 1930 stated that there were at least 60 speakeasies in Auburn’s corporate limits!

Although Prohibition was eventually abolished as a response to the Great Depression, the long term effect was the near complete annihilation of New York’s alcohol production industry for decades.