The start of Prohibition: Departed Spirits float, 1917 Winter Carnival. Courtesy of John Van Anden 
Return of legal beer, April 7, 1933. Courtesy of John Van Anden
Prohibition of alcohol in the United States was enacted in 1919 by the Volstead Act and by the 18th Amendment. It was largely unsuccessful, and in 1933, both the Volstead Act and the 18th Amendment were repealed.
Prohibition followed a decades-long period of activism by groups such as the American Temperance Society and the Women's Christian Temperance Union. Prior to nationwide prohibition, many smaller-scale efforts resulted in town and county-wide bans on the sale of alcohol. The issue locally was fought between the "license" and "no license" forces, the licenses in question being liquor excise licenses.
Plattsburgh Sentinel, May 25, 1888
SARANAC LAKE.
May 21.—We quite agree with "S. A. M." that it is time something was done to check the tide now setting in so strongly. A good stout dyke of prohibition is wanted to keep it out, and, if a plank gives away now and then let it be replaced by a more solid one, instead of giving it up as a useless precaution and letting the sea of intemperance sweep away our youth, and the honored and useful of more mature years.
Malone Farmer, November 4, 1903
The returns received from the county on the canal proposition are very incomplete, but indicate that Franklin's majority against the proposition will go from 3,000 to 3,300 and possibly more. Only one town recorded itself in favor of the canal, so far as heard from, and that was a surprise to everybody. Harrietstown, which contains the village of Saranac Lake, evidently believes in canals, for the proposition was carried there by 27 votes. Perhaps it is due to the presence of so many former New Yorkers, who still have property interests in the metropolis, and perhaps to the contiguity of Saranac Lake to Essex county, which is a canal county on account Lake Champlain traffic. All of the strictly farming towns voted against the proposition almost unanimously, but the fact that many electors failed to vote on the proposition at all is apparent.
Malone Farmer, November 11, 1903
The reason that Harrietstown gave the barge canal a majority has been explained by a resident of Saranac Lake. The excise contest there was spirited and the license men, that there might be no mistake about a victory, instructed their followers to vote yes on everything. Ballot machines were used, and so Harrietstown went, not only for plenty of liquor, but for over a hundred million dollars' worth of water. [...] Though Harrietstown voted license by a considerable majority last week, both the license and no-license men opposed the saloon provision and it was overwhelmingly defeated. Santa Clara is reported to have voted only in favor of hotel and pharmacists' licenses by about 25 majority, defeating both saloon and store licenses.
Malone Farmer, October 12, 1910
Up to October 5th County Treasurer Reynolds had issued 97 liquor tax certificates in this county. The largest number, 30, are in Malone. Harrietstown comes next with 26 and Altamont next with 19. Waverly has six, Bombay 5, Brighton and Franklin each 4 and Santa Clara 3, only 8 of the 19 towns of the county being license towns.
Malone Farmer, February 21, 1917
Rev. J. R. Duffield exchanged pulpits with Rev. Roy Chamberlain, of Saranac Lake, Sunday and addressed a no-license meeting for men in the Colonial Theatre in the afternoon and mass meeting in the Methodist church there in the evening. —— Malone Farmer, February 21, 1917
Malone Farmer, February 21, 1917
PLEADING FOR THE BOYS.
Excellent Addresses for No-License at the Court House Sunday Afternoon. George Elder, of the Rutland R. . R. Shops Presided.—Rev. Chamberlain, of Saranac Lake, and Rev. Bowler, of Canton, Were the Speakers.
There was a feeling of buoyance and encouragement; at the no-license meeting at the court house Sunday afternoon on account of the splendid victories of the temperance forces in St. Lawrence county last week. George Elder, of the Rutland R. R. shops here, presided handsomely and made a few significant remarks at both the opening and closing of the meeting. At the close, prompted by remarks of Rev. Mr. Bowler, who had just been through the St. Law. Co. campaign, Mr. Elder said he had seven .children, five girls and two boys, and he exhorted his hearers for their sakes and other people's children to vote out the liquor traffic. He said he didn't want any of his girls to be hitched to a drunkard and he had rather his boy would be brought home dead than brought home drunk. Rev. Mr. Bowler had just urged his hearers in behalf of his own seven boys to do their duty on this question. Education, he declared, will not save men from the ruin of drink and that nothing in the world had done such damage to educated men as alcohol.
Rev. Roy Chamberlain, of Saranac Lake, was the first speaker. He said that Saranac Lake was in a no-license fight as well as Malone, and that these were joyful weeks to him because the fight appealed to him. We like to fight, he declared, even if we lose, but it is the better fight to win. He discussed at some length the function of law. Some say, he added, that no-license will not make men good and that they do not believe in making laws on this question, though nothing good could be said of the traffic. Why not? he continued. In Saranac Lake there is a law to prevent expectorating on the streets. People believe in that and in regulating drug stores and school attendance, but some draw the line on the liquor traffic. All laws, he declared, depend on public opinion and there must be sentiment to enforce them, but public opinion must have law to make it effective. Law is the expression of public opinion. Sometimes, he said, laws have brought public opinion up to their standard. He cited the anti-trust law and dry laws in Washington and Colorado— how these were before voting dry and how they are now. It is up to you people in Malone, he declared, to make public opinion what it ought to be.
An objection made to no-license is that laws are not obeyed. That, he declared, is no test of the value of a law. If the community is made better law is a blessing to us. Because there is a law against expectorating on the streets don't mean that men are doing it more. Because law enforces school attendance don't mean that the children are staying away any more. It doesn't drive men to drink more because the sale is prohibited. Much of the drinking now is because liquor is right under their nose. Everything is so organized under license that it tends to make men drink. That is the case in the present situation. Let's change it. The law as it is now is making people bad right along and a young man has to be a hero to get by. What chance, he exclaimed, has a boy in Saranac Lake or Malone to get through safely? We call those who fall weaklings, he said, but this is not so. It is more a matter of luck. We are making an environment which is pulling them down right along. We are doing things by law all the time, he continued, to make people good physically—why not morally? We ask our young men to walk in a path so narrow that a single false step will send them into the ditch. What we plead for is law to create an environment that will give them half a chance. An investigation of an expert in Saranac Lake and vicinity, made some time ago, said Mr. Chamberlain, had revealed vicious conditions there such as the investigator had not found before in a place of its size. The place exists to make people well and yet is pushing some of them into perdition. Vice, he declared, goes hand in hand with the liquor traffic. Without liquor it does not have the food on which to thrive.
Mr. Chamberlain took up the question of personal liberty and quoted a decision of the U. S. supreme court that there is no inherent right in the citizen to sell liquor at retail. Government is to protect, he said. What we care about is not to have it sold in such an attractive way as to make it difficult to get by. Haven't good people as much right to personal liberty as bad people. Haven't boys the right to be defended against temptation placed in their path? Haven't citizens personal rights not to have taxes increased and the morality of a community assailed? Many reformatory measures, he said, are put through without much of a fight, but the reason we have such a fight on this question is that so much money is behind the business. The man who votes, Mr. Chamberlain said, is equally guilty for all the trouble that comes of the traffic with the man who sells and the man who drinks. If we vote for it we are legal partners in the business. The government revenues, Mr. Chamberlain said, could easily be collected on other things in their nature luxuries that do not do such harm and the people would be .glad to pay them. At Saranac, he said, they had a window display in a grocery store showing what could be bought for the family in a year for two five cent drinks of beer a day. He said the window was full of substantial things and it is proving a most effective argument. […]
Malone Farmer, June 13, 1917
Louis Kernochan, H. Ray Williams and W. A. Lawrence, of Saranac Lake, have been appointed by the town board of Harrietstown as a commission to determine the places within the town where liquors may be sold the coming year beginning October 1. The number of saloon and hotel licenses will be cut from 15 to 9 under the new excise law. The commission will investigate and determine what applications for license shall be granted and what refused.
Malone Farmer, November 7, 1917.
There are some momentous things about the election yesterday both generally and locally, the effects of which will reach far into the future. In the first place New York state appears to have gone for Woman Suffrage by about 86,000. This will effect all future public questions, notably the great temperance issue in this state and will insure at least a dry up-state, with all the third-class cities, such as Ogdensburg, Plattsburgh, Watertown, etc, dry. In the second place all the big towns of St. Lawrence county which have been dry the past two years not only remained in the dry column, but Brasher went dry by majorities averaging at least 140, and even the town of Oswegatchie which contains the city of Ogdensburg, also went dry. The city which voted on the town propositions was earned by the wets. The no-license forces not only retained all the towns in St. Lawrence carried last winter by increased majorities, but appear to have gained Clifton and possibly Rossie in addition to Brasher and Oswegatchie, which leaves Ogdensburg the only wet spot in that county, and makes this great northern territory dry from Lake Champlain to Ogdensburg. "We understand that this takes effect in St. Lawrence January first next, so that the days of Malone's trouble from the direction of Brasher are short. Woman Suffrage means that the question of license will probably never come up in any of these northern towns again. Lake Placid, just over the line in Essex county, also went bone-dry, we understand, by an average majority of 158.
Adirondack News, September 6, 1924
Federal prohibition agents at Saranac Lake raided the American-Italian Garden restaurant and after confiscating alleged liquor arrested Jack Tanzini. Tanzini was arraigned before United States Commissioner George A. Utting and released on $1,000 ball. Dry agents claim this is the second raid to have been made at the restaurant within two months.
See also:
