Alice Roosevelt Longworth.  Crowded Hours: Reminiscences of Alice Roosevelt Longworth. 
New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1933.  Pages 313-318.

                “Prohibition, which of course began under the previous administration, only got under way under Harding.  When one looks back, the marvel is that nay one thought that it would work, that any one ever thought it possible to legislate an appetite that is part of human nature out of existence.  At the start, many politicians took it seriously, believed that it was an attainable ideal, and set an example by conforming to its provisions. [End page 313]

                “But even in the beginning the men who voted dry and drank wet were with us in large numbers.

                “If any group of men out to have lived up to the law, it should have been the members of the official family, the Cabinet and private secretaries, yet during the Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover administrations the Cabinet member who did not take a drink when it was offered to him was an exception.  Of course at their official entertainments they served nothing and there were individuals who had always been dry from conviction, and others who, in spite of their personal beliefs, made their houses and themselves completely dry.  Generally speaking there was a greater degree of observance by the members of the Hoover Cabinet than by any of the other.

                “Outside of the official houses Prohibition in Washington was ignored from the start.  When it first came in we grumbled, shrugged our shoulders, decided to use the stock we had, and when that was gone turn our attention to wine making and distilling ‘in the home,’ thinking that undoubtedly supplies would trickle in from one source or another.  I don’t think that we foresaw in the slightest degree the great bootlegging industry that was to develop, the complete and organized violation of law and order.  In order not to deplete the stock of one’s friends, it was suggested that hostesses should put on their cards of invitation, B.Y.O. (Bring your own).  But that semi-serious thought was never really carried out, the stream of easy illicit liquor began to flow too soon. [End page 314]

                “Nick [Alice’s husband Speaker of the House, 1925-1931], who came from a wet district [Cincinnati], not only represented the sentiments of his constituency, but had the deepest conviction of the folly, futility, and unfairness of trying to eradicate all drink.  He believed fully in regulation and in elimination by law of the sinister aspects of the liquor trade and the saloons.  He was in favor of local option under which a community unit could decide to abolish, if they wished, establishments where drink would be sold to be consumed on the premises.  The idea that people could be prevented from purchasing alcoholic liquor for use in their own homes seemed to him an intolerable denial of the rights of the individual.  He, and many others who felt likewise, did not have the slightest intention of complying with the Eighteenth Amendment and never even pretended to.  We bought pounds of grapes and experimented with wine making, and I recollect that we had a small still with which our butler managed to concoct a very passable gin from oranges.

                “All of this was by way of experimenting against the future as our pre-prohibition supply was sufficient for the needs of ourselves and our friends until the flow of bootleg had come in such volume that there was no necessity to bother about home brewing.  We also, in the cellar, succeeded in manufacturing really good beer.  I recollect during the Disarmament Conference that Mr. Balfour complimented us highly on its excellence.  He said that beer brewed on the premises was always so much better than that which came from a brewery.  For a while I entered gaily into these law- [End page 315] breaking practices, but as time went on and I saw my friends and acquaintances awash in bootleg liquor, from month to month thinking more concentratedly on the next drink, moreover drinking more, I had a revulsion; I become completely ‘stuffy’ and turned for a period into what I suppose one would call a Constitutional dry.  That is, one who said, ‘It’s in the Constitution and we ought to try to live up to it, at least give it a chance for a generation.’

                “I was pompous–I was noble–I don’t think my attitude was based on any remote degree of conviction of the worth or desirability of total abstinence.  It was largely personal and emotional.  I saw a great deal of drunkenness and it disgusted and angered me.  I did not care for drinking myself, and even to go without the claret and white wine that I liked was no deprivation.  If the people I knew got drunk, I did not really mind, I merely did not wish to see them and associate with them when they were in that condition.  I had no sense of any great moral issue about it.  It was to me merely a question of taste and tipsy people bored me, they irritated and exasperated me, and I wished to do the same to them, and I soon found that the easiest way of so doing was to discourse on the sanctity of the Constitution and the iniquity of drinking in general.  But I was quite as apt to take the reverse position when I discussed the question with a dry.  The fanatics on both sides were just about equally distasteful to me.  Anyway we never even at the beginning thought that Prohibition had come to stay. [End page 316]

                “One idea that we had was that the law would be so increasingly ignored that after a lapse of time it would amount to nullification, unless in the meantime it were repealed.

                “It is amazing that hardly any one realized until very recently that repeal was just around the corner.  Two or three years ago I think we began to believe it actually was coming some time, that we should see it accomplished, that about 1936 or 1940 there would be a real chance of getting rid of prohibition.  We had no hope for an earlier date.  I recollect making a bet three years ago with an ardent wet friend that it would not be out of the Constitution before 1938, a bet of a case of burgundy that I shall enjoy paying.  I do not believe that even the wet leaders foresaw the rush of the States to extricate themselves from the great mistake.

                “One explanation of what has brought it about so quickly is the 2,000,000 of new voters who come of age every year, the young men and women who have no recollection or knowledge of the evils of the saloon and liquor traffic, but who do know the disintegrating effect of speakeasies and pocket flasks.  I doubt if the old convinced drys are ever converted.  These 20,000,000 or so of young people saw with their own eyes the spectacle that Prohibition has made of the country.  They determined to change it and they have.  The curious thing is that so many of the politicians did not see the swing was here.  Another school believes that the argument of increased revenue from taxes on liq- [End page 317] our made a telling appeal to many.  Still another thinks the repeal was accelerated by the desire of a large number to ‘swat’ anything that was associated in their minds with the administration which they considered responsible for the depression.  Few politicians were trying to think for themselves on the subject, they were quite openly trying to guess what the voters wanted and in 1932 the Republican politicians who had the drafting of the Republican policy most certainly guessed wrong.”