The weird controversy over Prohibition contributed to American disunity
and self-doubt. Prohibition had not been solely the achievement of frustrated
rural preachers, as H.L. Mencken & friends suggested. It had substantial
support among industrialists, social workers, educators. Harvard's Charles W.
Eliot at the age of 90 wrote in 1924: "I have become convinced that cheap
alcohol threatens the existence of the white race." He specially decried the
combination of alcohol and prostitution "resulting from the brothel or from the
newer method of telephone assignation." Probably, in 1920, a majority of
thoughtful Americans believed that Prohibition would work. It did, for a while.
Its success had been connected with the war-born idea that governments were
responsible for everything and could do everything; its failure came out of a
war-born loosening of discipline and a more feverish tempo of life.
F. Scott Fitzgerald and the newspaper moralists described the '20s as one
long drunken stagger. The actuality was considerably less lurid. The '20s
played golf, listened to the radio and sang When My Baby Smiles at Me, It Ain't
Gonna Rain No More, and I'm Sitting on Top of the World. More solid suburban
homes than silver hip flasks were sold in that decade. Even so, the fact that
millions of Americans believed that millions of others were living in
Babylonian depravity helped to undermine moral confidence.
In one sector--business--the American people thought they had nothing to
worry about. Henry Ford's mass production of automobiles had blossomed into the
economic wonder of all time. The industry produced 896,000 cars in 1915,
1,906,000 in 1920 and 5,358,000 in 1929. The rest of business tried to deep
pace, although home construction began to slip in 1926 and farm income lagged
behind.
By the mid-20s the American businessman had almost lived down the stigma
of selfishness attached to him in the early years of the century. He had
invented "service," had come honestly to believe that the justification for his
existence was what he contributed to the community. (In 1950 he still believed
it, and was ridiculed by his European brethren for his conviction.) Service and
rising living standards and more & more production seemed to be progressing
toward a materialist Nirvana. (Herbert Hoover, in lightsome vein, said that
"the aspirations of the American people seem to have advanced from two chickens
in every pot to two cars in every garage." Some Republicans adopted this as a
serious slogan. After the depression the phrase came home to roost as a bitter
joke. But it was no joke in 1949 when U.S. automobile registrations were
estimated at 35,750,000. California had 3,350,000 cars, about 20% more than the
number of families in the state.)
When the stock market broke, it was not just another panic, so familiar in
American history. The others had been more or less expected; this one was the
end of a dream.
Elsewhere other dreams were ending. In Britain the shame of the dole, the
misery of the depressed areas, settled, like coal dust, on the power and glory
and glitter of the empire. Churchill went back to the Tory Party in 1925. From
1924 to 1929 he served as Chancellor of the Exchequer. To this post he brought
his amazing administrative ability and his infirm grasp of the decimal system
("those damn little dots"). He put Britain back on the gold standard (1925) and
helped break the General Strike of 1926. It was not one of his better decades;
in 1922 he was even beaten for Parliament by a Mr. Scrimgeour, a Prohibitionist
and Christian Socialist who had unsuccessfully contested the seat at Dundee
against Churchill in five election since 1908.
