From the Just One Bad Century website...
July 1, 1919
This is the way the beginning of Prohibition was described in the excellent Richard Lindberg book “Chicago Ragtime”…
Prohibition started in Chicago on July 1, 1919. People in Chicago really didn’t think it would last. Alderman Cermak (who later became the Mayor) said: “It may last two months, but no longer.”
Prohibition meant the loss of hotel revenues, jobs, and a source of entertainment for thousands. The Hotel Sherman raised room rates from 50 cents to a dollar to make up for the losses.
“We’ll reopen after July 2” a sign over one Chicago saloon read. Another said: “Eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we dry up.”
U.S. Attorney Charles Clyne vowed to support the Volstead Act (which is what it was called then). Speakers at Bughouse Square lamented “the end of our liberties.” Cars raced down Madison Street. Besotted revelers punched holes in straw boaters (hats)—as if it was New Years Eve.
State Street was a trail of broken bottles the next day. At Hinky Dink’s Workingman’s Exchange, men gathered to mourn the loss of the world’s biggest schooner. Bartenders lined up looking for work at the US Employment Service at 116 N. Dearborn.
Most bars didn’t close, they started serving other things. The Lasalle Hotel bar served a buttermilk frappe. Other bars introduced “Loganberry highballs,” phosphates and ice cream sundaes. It took 60-75 pounds of ice to freeze one gallon of ice cream, and Chicago consumed 5000 gallons of ice cream that summer—creating an ice shortage in a very hot summer. (It had already been a small harvest of ice the previous winter, and many warehouses were empty).
On July 6th, bars opened on Sunday for the first time in many years. Ladies who had never entered these bars before showed up and ordered the new sensation on the menu…sundaes. Of course, Prohibition ushered in the beginning of the Roaring 20s in Chicago; a time of unprecedented crime and vice. The people that pushed Prohibition through (while many of the young men that would have voted against it were serving overseas in World War I) never would have envisioned the detrimental toll it took on the country, and the city of Chicago in particular.
Al Capone became a celebrity in Chicago. Yes, he was a thug and a murderer, but he supplied the liquor to a town that had been one of the beer capitals of America. When Al attended a few games at Wrigley Field during Prohibition he was cheered.
Prohibition lasted for 13 years, and during those years the Cubs led the league in drunks. Rabbit Maranville, the manager of the Cubs for part of the 1925 season, played with a flask of whiskey in his pants. Pat Malone & Hack Wilson were wild partiers that were arrested after creating several disturbances. Both men died young thanks to the ravages of alcohol. Grover Cleveland Alexander actually passed out drunk in the Cubs dugout during a game. Catcher Rollie Hemsley was arrested for public drunkenness.
Ironically, Prohibition didn’t have much of an effect at Wrigley Field. The Cubs didn’t sell beer at Wrigley before Prohibition. Some of their biggest seasons at the box office were during the Prohibition years. They drew more than a million fans during a few of those seasons, something unheard of in the pre-night game era. It wasn’t until after Prohibition was repealed that they began selling beer.
They may still sell a pint or two to this day.
