ABSTRACT
The United States’ “noble experiment” with the prohibition of alcohol is widely thought to have been a policy blunder of constitutional proportions. Many Americans see it as the one, the only, and the last American attempt to enforce temperance and police morality. From this perspective, Prohibition was the result of the peculiar spirit of the Progressive era and the democratic instability that occurred in the wake of World War I and the women’s suffrage movement. Prohibition, in other words, was the product of a misguided pub lic spirit.
