Enough, Enough, Enough, Enough, Enough, Enough!!!!

Today, to many people alcohol is considered a luxury usually used after a long hard day of stress and work and the one thing to settle all that is one 'nice cold refreshing beer right out of the bottle' and that's enough for one day or week.  To some, it's a necessity where a week or day or an hour cannot go by without it and 'the world will end god forbid it collapses.'  And to few, it's a temptation where one realizes he or she needs to stop drinking excessively but that evil soul inside is overpowering your body and your mind to keep drinking making it an addiction.  It happens to be a common problem here in America today.  However, if you think today it's a big problem, look at late 19th century - early 1930's.  This was a time when alcohol was basically a product sold everywhere on the street and in back to back stores.  It is exactly like buying a soda from a vending machine anywhere today.  This was going to tear our country apart if it wasn't dealt with immediately.  That's when activists grew awareness and started writing in newspapers and protesting the consumption of alcohol.  People like Amelia Bloomer and Neal Dow are known for starting the movement.  Bloomer started a newspaper called the Lily which raised awareness to the problem and ways to decrease it.  Dow had a different approach by using violence and his military tactics using force to prevent consumption.  He got it banned in Maine.  But, America had a constitution and was a very stable country when it came to general government.  This country could not have people using military force to prevent something that was 'legal'.  Then came a man named Henry Bowen who printed a paper called A Mirror for the Intemperate.  It raised awareness and to create prohibition like the Lily but it showed what life was like without alcohol how alcohol consumption lead to economic waste, polluted youth, poverty, crime, and domestic violence.  Imagine what America would be like if people were coming home drunk and beating on their families, children walking around looking of more alcohol disoriented, and crime everywhere you look, and to imagine it being all legal, it was time for a change and the act of prohibition to be put into place.  Prohibition banned the sale and manufacture of alcohol by law until the problems were fixed.  That's how Henry Bowen, Amelia Bloomer, Neal Dow, and all the people who raised awareness ended the crisis of alcohol.  If these people individually raised awareness and helped change America, so can you.  It is amazing what the power of just one can accomplish. 

Excerpt from Primary Source; The Mirror for the Intemperate

Parents into whose hands this my dying declaration may fall will perceive that I date the commencement of my departure from the paths of rectitude and virtue, from the moment when I become addicted to the habitual use of ardent spirits—and it is my sincere prayer that if they value the happiness of their children—if they desire their welfare here, and their eternal well being hereafter, that they early teach them the fatal consequences of Intemperance!



Source Citation:

Bowen, Henry. "A Mirror for the Intemperate, Ca. 1830." A Mirror for the Intemperate, Ca. 1830. January 1, 2009. Accessed January 12, 2015. https://www.gilderlehrman.org/history-by-era/first-age-reform/resources/mirror-for-intemperate-ca-1830.