Prohibition's broader effect

[TAPrice]

I'm doing some research for an article about the prohibition era in New Orleans. Hopefully some of you could help me out with some general background on the period throughout the country or references to works on the subject.

Here are some questions that I have:

How much alcohol was actually flowing during this era? Was it really that hard to get a drink?

How did it change drinking habits both during and after prohibition?

And what was the impact of prohibition on restaurants in the U.S.? I can't put my hands on it at the moment, but I believe Williams Grimes said in his history of cocktails that it devastated fine dining in America.

[feedmec00kies]

Are you focusing on liquor? I did a paper as an undergraduate on beer and discovered that prohibition had an effect on it as well, but I don't know if that's getting too broad for you.

[chiantiglace]

I will say this, it really shaped the cocktail's history. The need to mask the flavor of poorly or quickly produced alcohols without much aging (or any at all) helped create most of the classic cocktails we know today.

It was also estimated that people (when they could) were drinking far more whenever they could because they didn't know how long it would be before they had another drink.

I am sure it had a substantial effect on food because wine is so important for many sauces. It probably had an effect on some commonly preserved foods. Since there was little to no refrigeration at the time pastry/dessert wasn't really too common so alcohol wasn't missed too much there except for in cooking fruits like cherries jubilee and banana's fosters.

I do know this, when prohibition was lifted it actually helped bring the economy out of the depression. Finally people were aloud to drink without punishment and the government was able to tax alcohol. They were losing a lot of taxes from illegally bootlegged alcohol. In fact it was they opposite, they were spending loads of money trying to stop it, so the what was a cost flipped to a profit.

Another interesting observation was that prior to prohibition men and women rarely had a drink together. Men would drink in saloons/taverns/bars while women mainly had their drinks at home. Due to the fact it was hard for and singular person to get a hold of their own alcohol, women had to pack into speakeasies along side men, thus the first "clubs" were born and probably how the dance age came about (charleston, bopper).