“Everybody stay calm!” In the first days of December 1933, politicians all sounded like stewards on a foundering ship. It was evident that the repeal of Prohibition was mere days away from being ratified, and visions of unbridled havoc and drunken runamokery gripped the nation's leaders.
Among those with deeply furrowed brows was President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. On December 5, when Utah became the 36th state to ratify the 21st Amendment and Prohibition was formally repealed, FDR quickly issued a proclamation urging “greater temperance” across the land. “I trust in the good sense of the...
Read more ...