Many effects of Prohibition felt in Southeast Missouri

Liquor, women and jazz -- that combination set the country on a tilt in 1920.

In 1920 women were given the right to vote. A new form of music called jazz was sweeping through the country, capturing the attention of young people the way rock 'n' roll would some 35 years later.

And in 1920 a federal law went into effect prohibiting the manufacture and sale of liquor -- Prohibition.

Throughout the 1920s, the three would become linked.

The decade became known as the "roaring 20s." Dr. Frank Nickell, director of the Center for Regional History at Southeast Missouri State University, said the decade "roared because of a conflict between old and new values."

When women got the right to vote, Nickell said, "one way they could demonstrate their equality and independence was to drink just like the men. They got caught up in that and began to smoke in public and go to speakeasies. Women's rights got entangled with Prohibition."

Temperance crusader

Temperance crusader Carrie Nation came to Cape Girrdeau in 1907 to speak against alcohol. On her first morning in town, she followed a working man into a saloon near the corner of Main Street and Broadway and "began a quiet denunciation of the proprietor, who was serving drinks at the time," according to a report in The Daily Republican, ancestor of the Southeast Missourian.

When the customer was given a beer, she lectured while he drank.

When Prohibition became law, people who wanted to drink had to find ways to have their liquor without arousing suspicion. Bars were closed, but dance halls replaced them -- and anyone with the right connections could easily buy alcohol behind the building.

Also at that time, young people were dancing to jazz at speakeasies where they would periodically slip outside to have a drink. Nickell said in Cape Girardeau there were a number of places in what was then known as the Haarig area, now Good Hope Street, where people would go to dance and drink illegal liquor.

Dancing, jazz and liquor

Dancing became popular, jazz became popular, and "one of the things that enhanced dancing and parties was liquor," Nickell said. "Women who would never have considered drinking at a bar playing wild and raucous new music took their first drinks of alcohol in their lives."

One place young men were sure to find liquor was in a house of prostitution. Nickell said that in the 1920s, what is now Mac's Tavern at Frederick and Independence streets was a brothel, and was also a popular place to buy liquor, despite its being diagonally across the street from the police station.

"People would be lined up around the corner at the back door," Nickell said.

Alcohol came into Cape Girardeau either north on U.S. 61, or up the river from Memphis, Tenn., Nickell said. It would be unloaded downtown and would find its way into the brothels along Water and Independence streets.

"The St. Abbott building across from Mollie's Cafe and Bar had rooms upstairs that were quite small," Nickell said. "It was a meat market for a while and a little grocery store downstairs, but the upstairs rooms were rented to women who sold alcohol and themselves."

Another way people got around the law, Nickell said, was to have outdoor dances in remote rural areas. Revelers would find a place in the country near some woods where someone would drag out a concrete slab for a makeshift dance floor and hire a jazz band to come out and play music.

The groups would hide their liquor in the woods and slip away from the party to drink. If they were partying near a church that had a nearby cemetery, they would hide their bottles near tombstones, remembering where they hid their liquor by remembering the name on the headstone.

Nickell recalled a musician friend of his, Raymond Meyer, who had a band and often played at outdoor parties.

"There was a place by Friedhiem that became known as 'Mother's Worry,'" Nickell said.

Most of the time, police looked the other way, Nickell said, but would crack down on revelers just often enough to prove that they were upholding the law.

Another way to acquire liquor was to find a doctor who would prescribe it for "medicinal purposes."

In files stored in the Cape Girardeau County Archive Center are records that pharmacies were required to submit monthly to the county clerk. Records from September 1923 show one pharmacist reported filling 224 prescriptions for whiskey, usually a pint at a time. That same pharmacy reported that it also used 28 gallons of wine that month, dispensing wine in fifths.

Many of those were repeat customers from one month to another. They came from Caruthersville, Sikeston, Oklahoma City, Kansas City, Chicago, Memphis, St. Louis, Des Moines, and Decatur, Ill., as well as from Cape Girardeau, Jackson, Wappapello, Puxico and Bell City.

Occasionally, some who made their own or brought it in from other areas were arrested. A glance through the court records found in the archive center shows that attorneys were vigorous in defending their clients.

The defendants in a case of unlawfully transporting liquor in Scott County, William Strain and P.M. Britt, alleged in August 1924 that Strain, who was driving the day they were arrested, didn't know what was in the packages Britt, a passenger, had put in his car. Further, the document reads, the officers did not have a search warrant and seized the packages illegally -- a violation of the Constitutional right protecting citizens from unlawful search and seizure.

An attorney for A.J. Cook, accused in Cape Girardeau County court of possession of liquor, used his disdain for the vernacular of the day to promote his defense: "... it appears upon the face of this petition that the petition of the plaintiff fails to contain sufficient information and belief to constitute a cause of action against the defendant for the reason that it contains the words 'moonshine' [and] 'hootch' which words are unintelligible and which words are not used in the English language and the language of this court...."

Not everyone flaunted Prohibition. The Women's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) was as active in Cape Girardeau as it was across the country. And there were other women's groups that worked to support Prohibition.

Nickell said that hospitals at the time reported a decrease in the number of people admitted for alcoholism and liver disease. Replacing one habit with another, some people turned to coffee instead of alcohol, and the amount of coffee consumption increased, he said.

"Many people began to use marijuana," Nickell said. "One of the lessons human beings are inclined to learn is that if you can't get one thing there is something else."

President Herbert Hoover called Prohibition a noble experiment. Nickell calls it an "interesting experiment." Regardless of definition, the experiment didn't work and was repealed in 1933.

"It was part of the Progressive Era," Nickell said. "People believed they could legislate social conditions and benefit mankind. Many people believed sincerely in Prohibition. We were the only big industrial nation in the world that tried to totally abolish alcohol. No one had ever done that before."

lredeffer@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 160