importation, transportation and sale of alcohol is called Prohibition. Alcohol is classified as a
depressant, a substance that slows down the functions of the body and calms the nerves.
Therefore, consumption of alcohol alters the mind’s abilities to make rational decisions. In the
early portion of the twentieth century Prohibition was a nationwide movement to ban alcohol.
The nation was very divided on their opinions on alcohol, but it was still banned.This ban was
passed through the Eighteenth Amendment to the American Constitution in 1920 and lasted for
13 years, when the Twenty-First Amendment was passed as the first and only to repeal a
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More specifically, women had been fighting the abuse of alcohol since the reform movements during the Antebellum era. But, the temperance pledges people would take in the 1820s wouldn’t last very long. Alcohol proved to cause increased tensions in the households of many Americans due to alcoholic abuse. Women often supported the Prohibition movement to protect themselves and their children. When a man were to come home from a late night of drinking, he would often times beat his wife if an angry drunk. Another way in which women sought to protect their family is financially. Many of the hard-working men would waste away their savings on alcohol, leaving their wife and children to have to live in worse conditions than their already below the standard of living. Carry A. Nation, in The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation, says, “Truly does a saloon make a woman bare of all things!” [Doc A]. Nation describes that alcohol causes a woman to lose her husband, sons, home, food, and virtue. Many women were hurt by their husbands who spent all of their money on drinking while the family’s food and home couldn’t be paid for. As her husband was lost to her through alcohol, one day the woman’s son would be too. Nation, one of the many women to support prohibition provides reasoning behind why she and thousands of others put much effort into banning