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The National Prohibition Act, known informally as the Volstead Act, was an act of the 66th United States Congress designed to execute the 18th Amendment (ratified January 1919) which established the prohibition of alcoholic drinks.
The National Committee for Moderation of the Volstead Act was an organization established in January 1931 by the American Federation of Labor. Headed by AFL vice-president Matthew Woll , he testified before a Congressional committee that workers and organized labor opposed prohibition in the United States .
The Prohibition era was the period from 1920 to 1933 when the United States prohibited the production, importation, transportation, and sale of alcoholic beverages. [1] The alcohol industry was curtailed by a succession of state legislatures, and Prohibition was formally introduced nationwide under the Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, ratified on January 16, 1919.
The Jones Law affects primarily the punishment provision of the Volstead Law, and might as a matter of technique have been made an amendment thereof. Its legal consequences are very considerable, since it materially changes the substantive nature of liquor law violations, and the procedural problems of those charged with punishment thereof.
Mabel Walker Willebrandt (May 23, 1889 – April 6, 1963), popularly known to her contemporaries as the First Lady of Law, was an American lawyer who served as the United States Assistant Attorney General from 1921 to 1929, handling cases concerning violations of the Volstead Act, federal taxation, and the Bureau of Federal Prisons during the Prohibition era.
The Bureau of Prohibition (or Prohibition Unit) was the United States federal law enforcement agency with the responsibility of investigating the possession, distribution, consumption, and trafficking of alcohol and alcoholic beverages in the United States of America during the Prohibition era. [1]
The federal government was incapable of stemming the tide: enforcement of the Volstead Act proved to be a nearly impossible task and corruption was rife among law enforcement agencies. [1] In 1932, wealthy industrialist John D. Rockefeller Jr. stated in a letter:
The law was strongly supported by the powerful Minnesota Republican congressman Andrew Volstead, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, whose name came to be informally associated with the act. The act laid the groundwork for Prohibition, defining the procedures for banning the distribution of alcohol, including production and distribution.