Prohibition didn’t mean constraint in Green Bay

GREEN BAY – Under the terms of the 18th Amendment and the Volstead Act, the manufacture, sale and transportation of alcoholic beverages was legally put to a stop in 1920.

“From 1900 until 1915—five years before the 18th Amendment passed—the average adult drank about 2.5 gallons of pure alcohol a year, which is about 13 standard drinks per week,” an article from Boston University stated.

The societal problems which resulted from alcohol consumption became a concern for those involved in the temperance movement, as well as religious clergy.

However, prohibition did not stop alcohol consumption around the state completely, and in particularly, places such as Green Bay.

From 1920 to 1933, Prohibition gave way to bootlegging — illegal production of liquor — and speakeasies — illegal drinking establishments.

Wisconsin breweries began to make “near beer” while others produced soda, ice cream and cheese, to stay afloat during those 13 years.

In February 1920, Green Bay had over 125 bars, and many of them converted to soda shops and continued selling illegally obtained alcohol.

When that supply ran dry, moonshine stills and home brew produced the needed product to keep the “soda shops” supplied.

Newspapers all over the state are peppered with details of raids; however, with the bootlegged being so lucrative and no loss to the bootlegger’s reputation, their sales went uninhibited.

That coupled with a coordinated warning system in Brown County, gave the greater Green Bay community an upper hand in thwarting the raids.

A large raid in the fall of 1928, however, led to the arrest of 100 individuals and the closing of over 50 establishments.

“On the night of Oct. 17, 1928, the council passed a resolution that pretty well reflected the sentiment of the community but also gave the city nationwide publicity,” Green Bay Historian Jack Rudolph wrote in a January 1969 Press Gazette article.

“The resolution, an involved sentence in itself, protested the [closure of the establishments] on several grounds, among them that it would be detrimental to the city’s tax base, would interfere with business, and anyway prohibition was unpopular to begin with. Furthermore, the resolution said, the police knew where all the sports were and could control them, but now everything would go underground.”

The council expunged the resolution from record at the following meeting, but it remained easy to get alcohol and beer in the city through a mix of longtime storefront establishments and well-concealed “speakeasies.”

“Football historians have written — and there’s certainly evidence to suggest — that Green Bay’s blatant disregard of the Volstad Act, which allowed for the enforcement of the 18th Amendment, played a part in the Packers’ survival,” Cliff Christl wrote in Volume I of The Greatest Story in Sports. “Maybe even a big part.”

The nearby town of Preble also offered many roadhouses and houses of ill repute for travelers’ entertainment.

In 1926, Wisconsin voters approved a referendum amending the Volsted Act, allowing the manufacture and sale of beer with 2.75% alcohol.

In March 1929, ads ran in the Green Bay Press-Gazette asking Green Bay to vote “yes” to a referendum on the April 2 ballot asking “Shall the state Prohibition Enforcement Act, generally known as the Severson Act, be repealed?”

The ad argued that state prohibition laws meant “easy days for real criminals.”

“Our Wisconsin police, if kept busy chasing bootleggers and raiding speakeasies, have no time to spend on murderers and burglars,” the ad, paid by the Wisconsin Division Association Against the Prohibition Amendment, stated.

Voters in the city of Green Bay voted “yes” to repeal the law 3 to 1, in Brown County 4 to 1 and statewide 2 to 1.

In 1929, Wisconsin’s prohibition enforcement law was repealed.
In December 1932, Wisconsin U.S. Sen. John J. Blaine proposed a constitutional amendment for the national repeal of prohibition.

Prohibition ended with ratifying of the 21st Amendment on Dec. 5, 1933.