Garrett Peck (historian)
Appearances
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E8: National Hangover
At this point, a really great newspaper at the time is the Evening Star. And the Post is just this, you know, smaller rival of the city, kind of a gossip newspaper. But they get this great scoop and they ask Cassidy to spill the beans on Congress. And he writes six front page articles.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E8: National Hangover
The Washington Post was a wet newspaper, and they knew exactly what they were doing, which was to embarrass the dry cause.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E8: National Hangover
It goes national. Other newspapers around the country are all reporting on this. This is a scandal.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E8: National Hangover
The last one of them was published one week before the midterm election in 1930.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E8: National Hangover
That frenzy sent a wrecking ball through the economy. You have the collapse of the stock market signaling the Great Depression. People are really getting cynical at this point. It was just the worst economic catastrophe in our nation's history. It was absolutely unreal. And the Democrats seized on this. They're like, look, let's create jobs again. Alcohol. Let's do it.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E8: National Hangover
You know, Cassidy had done a huge amount of damage here to the dries. And people were all just like, we're done with this. Let's elect some wets and let's end this thing because it's not working.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E8: National Hangover
As part of Cassie's plea agreement, he tells the judge he will stop bootlegging. And by the way, I got his FBI folder. He did not stop bootlegging.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E8: National Hangover
It goes right from Congress, right to the states for ratification. The first state that ratifies it is the proud state of Michigan, an excellent beer state, I might add. The Prohibition Amendment, the 18th Amendment, took 13 months to ratify. The 21st Amendment, the repeal amendment, took eight months. One state after the next, it's just like dominoes, they all just fell.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E2: Ready, Willing, and Mabel
The Anti-Saloon League, the main lobbyist organization for temperance, used this moment really to the umpteenth degree. That's historian Garrett Peck. They stigmatized alcohol, they turned beer drinking into treason, and they basically questioned the patriotism of every German American.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E4: Trust Issues
He had a whole closet full of alcohol there he'd sell to everyone. And also people could come down and play cards with him. Mind you, this is a guy with a third grade education. And yet he was enormously charming. That's Garrett Peck again. He was on a first name basis with all these different congressmen. And they liked him. He knew how to put all the congressmen at ease.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E4: Trust Issues
They didn't have to sit there and talk politics. They could just come down and shoot the breeze with him and play some poker.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E4: Trust Issues
Because he had bought up a whole bunch of huge rickhouses full of whiskey.
SNAFU with Ed Helms
S3E4: Trust Issues
And then he bribed people so he could have three or four times as much as that he could distribute than he was legally allowed to. So he made a fortune just by being able to sell alcohol without any taxes on it.