History: Prohibition Of Alcoholic Beverages, Los Angeles, California, United States

In October 1930, just two weeks before the congressional midterm elections, bootlegger George Cassiday, "the man in the green hat," came forward and told how he had bootlegged for ten years for members of Congress. One of the few bootleggers ever to tell his story, Cassiday wrote five, front-page articles for The Washington Post. He estimated that eighty percent of congressmen and senators drank, even though they were the ones passing dry laws. This had a significant impact on the midterm election, which saw Congress shift from a dry Republican majority to a wet Democratic majority, who understood that Prohibition was unpopular and called for its repeal. As Prohibition became increasingly unpopular, especially in urban areas, its repeal was eagerly anticipated. Economic urgency played no small part in accelerating the advocacy for repeal. Prior to 1920 the implementation of the Volstead Act, approximately fourteen percent of federal, state, and local tax revenues were derived from alcohol commerce. The government needed this income and also felt that reinstating the manufacture and sale of alcohol would create desperately-needed jobs for the unemployed.
On March 22, 1933, President Franklin Roosevelt signed an amendment to the Volstead Act, known as the Cullen–Harrison Act, allowing the manufacture and sale of 3.2 beer (3.2 percent alcohol by weight, approximately 4 percent alcohol by volume) and light wines. The Volstead Act previously defined an intoxicating beverage as one with greater than 0.5 percent alcohol. Upon signing the Cullen–Harrison Act, Roosevelt made his famous remark: "I think this would be a good time for a beer." The Cullen-Harrison Act became law on April 7, 1933, and the following day Anheuser-Busch sent a team of Clydesdale horses to deliver a case of Budweiser beer to the White House.
• Repeal
The Eighteenth Amendment was repealed on December 5, 1933, with ratification of the Twenty-first Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Despite the efforts of Heber J. Grant, president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a Utah convention helped ratify the Twenty-first Amendment. While Utah can be considered the deciding thirty-sixth state to ratify the Amendment and make it law, both Pennsylvania and Ohio approved it the same day that Utah did.