Perry County Republican article against prohibition
The Perry County Republican ran an article in its Oct. 24, 1918, issue asking Missouri voters to reject a state constitutional amendment that would enact prohibition. This was three months before the 18th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was passed, enacting prohibition at a national level.
This article takes up an entire page of the issue, signifying its importance to the editors of the paper, and how important those editors deemed this issue to be to society. The article criticizes prohibition on the grounds of individual liberty and self-determination, calling the amendment “un-democratic,” “anti-American” and “a serious invasion of the Bill of Rights.”
Many arguments for prohibition had roots in nativism, racism and xenophobia, according to an article by The Mob Museum, and linked alcohol consumption with Germans, among several other groups, as the United States was fighting Germany in World War I. An opinion column from The New York Times further supports that prohibition was a social movement based in anti-immigrant ideas.
However, these issues don’t seem to be present in the Perry County Republican’s rejection of prohibition. Had these been concerns present in Perry County, one could assume the bullet points would offer refutations for the xenophobic arguments in favor of prohibition. However, the Perry County Republican takes a more politics-based approach to rejecting prohibition, citing constitutional principles, political decisions other countries were making about prohibition, and economic reasons such as how taxes would be impacted if prohibition were enacted, rather than mentioning specifically social factors.
