Volstead Act Totalitarianism part 1

 

Rep. Andrew Volstead (R) Minnesota 

You have never seen the National Prohibition Act as it was written, passed, over Presidential veto and enforced at gunpoint by minions of the Methodist White Terror. Its text, never much bandied about after the Crash that began in 1920, was carefully hidden from view after the Increased Penalties Act of March 2, 1929 doomed the planned and coerced economy to total collapse into the Great Depression. Tiny print summaries were printed in the 20s and 30s, but only the Congressional version was actually legible. This is it.(link) If you have a copy of a State dry law, please get in touch and I'll convert and publish it here as illuminated text. Prohibition extended its tentacles into every area of national production, the economy, financial markets and the banking system. The scope and audacity of its fanatical controls are set forth here in plain language, illuminated by factual data from the real-life economy that existed at the time.

SIXTY-SIXTH CONGRESS. Sess. I. Chs. 81, 82, 85. 1919. 305

CHAP. 85.—An Act To prohibit intoxicating beverages, and to regulate the manufacture, production, use, and sale of high-proof spirits for other than beverage  purposes, and to insure an ample supply of alcohol and promote its use in scientific research and in the development of fuel, dye, and other lawful industries. [October 28, 1919. HR 6810; public, #66]

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That the short title of this  Act shall be the “National Prohibition Act.”

Title I.

TO PROVIDE FOR THE ENFORCEMENT OF WAR PROHIBITION.

The term “War Prohibition Act” used in this Act shall mean the provisions of any Act or Acts prohibiting the sale and manufacture of intoxicating liquors until the conclusion of the present war and thereafter until the termination of demobilization, the date of which shall be determined and proclaimed by the President of the United States. The words “beer, wine, or other intoxicating malt or vinous liquors” in the War Prohibition Act shall be hereafter  construed to mean any such beverages which contain one-half of 1 per centum or more of alcohol by volume: Provided, That the   foregoing definition shall not extend to dealcoholized wine nor to any  beverage or liquid produced by the process by which beer, ale, porter or wine is produced, if it contains less than one-half of 1 per centum of alcohol by volume, and is made as prescribed in section 37 of Title II of this Act, and is otherwise denominated than as beer, ale, or porter, and is contained and sold in, or from, such sealed and labeled bottles, casks, or containers as the commissioner may by regulation prescribe.

Sec. 2. The Commissioner of Internal Revenue, his assistants, agents, and inspectors shall investigate and report violations of the War Prohibition Act to the United States attorney for the district in which committed, who is hereby charged with the duty of prosecuting the offenders, subject to the direction of the Attorney General, as in the case of other offenses against the laws of the United States; and such Commissioner of Internal Revenue, his assistants, agents, and inspectors may swear out warrants before United States commissioners or other officers or courts authorized to issue the same for the apprehension of such offenders, and may, subject to the control of the said United States attorney, conduct the prosecution at the committing trial for the purpose of having the offenders held for the action of a grand jury. 

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(Plenty more will follow. The Volstead Act in its twenty pages established a dictatorial planned looter economy that was the envy of Russia's prohibitionist communist revolution just then taking shape.)

From the outset you see things not mentioned in your History class. Prohibition was enacted in June, 1919, at the close of Fiscal Year 1918, when Doughboys Over There throttled the accursed Hun. The Great War was fought--not to miraculously bring Franz Ferdinand back to life or avenge his assassination--but to block ratification of the Hague Opium Convention pressed for by These United States.(link) It was a continuation of the Balkan Wars that broke out in the Balkan States bounded by the Aegean, Adriatic and Black Sea. That region produces the strongest opium converted by Swiss, Dutch, German, Austro-Hungarian and French pharma labs into varieties of morphine. After three Opium Wars, prohibitionist China began boycotting American goods in 1903, in part over mislabeled narcotics. This led to the Pure Food and Drug Law which in turn caused the Panic of 1907.(link) The mounting American push for worldwide drug prohibitionism became impossible to ignore after Chinese rebels overthrew the Quing Dynasty, established a republic and put an end to opiate dumping there in 1911. All of this information is shuffled about and artlessly concealed.(link)

In the ensuing glut, some American saloon-keepers mixed morphine into whiskey for added punch, giving many the impression that alcohol was enslaving drinkers. Meanwhile, Southern European producers warred with each other amid plummeting prices and shrinking markets. American evangelicals and puritans had been funding the Prohibition Party since the onset of Reconstruction. With socialist cooperation they amended the Constitution to incorporate the Communist Manifesto income tax, proletarian election of the Senate and National Prohibition as Amendments 16, 17 and 18. The Harrison Act coerced doctors into tightly rationing narcotics and stimulants, and prices with taxes quadrupled after 1914. Liquor, wine and beer prices also tripled and quadrupled as Wartime Prohibition morphed into Constitutional National Prohibition on The Night of January 16th, 1920. 

Get the complete story in Prohibition and The Crash on Amazon Kindle in two languages. After this you’ll be able to explain to economists exactly how fanaticism and loss of freedom wrecked the U.S. economy.

Prohibition and The Crash, on Amazon Kindle

Brazilian Sci-fi from 1926 featuring the usual beautiful daughter of a scientist touting prohibition and racial collectivism in America’s Black President 2228 by Monteiro Lobato, translated by J Henry Phillips (link)

I also produce books and articles in Portuguese, using Brazilian historical sources at http://www.expatriotas.blogspot.com or amigra.us