Today, the country is two years into a pandemic and struggling with the impacts of people who refuse to get vaccinated. A hundred years ago, the country was beginning its second year of Prohibition and struggling with the consequences for people who would not curtail their consumption of alcohol. Fortunately, our attitude toward the unvaccinated, who are contracting the virus in great numbers and straining our already taxed health care system, is more charitable than the attitude toward "booze drinkers" expressed in this news item, which appeared on the front page of the Columbia Republican on January 17, 1922.
The Anti-Saloon League, founded in 1893 in Oberlin, Ohio, was a major force in American politics from 1893 to 1933. By 1895, it had become a national organization and soon was the most powerful prohibition lobby in America. The Lord's Day Alliance, founded in 1888, lobbied for the passage of "Sunday-rest laws," or blue laws, that restricted or banned certain commercial and secular activities on Sundays.
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