Pathways to Prohibition: Radicals, Moderates, and Social Movement Outcomes (review)

Years ago, Merton L. Dillon, author of The Abolitionists: Growth of a Dissenting Minority (DeKalb, 1974), fielded a phone call from anti-abortion activist Randall Terry inquiring where he could get a copy of Dillon's book. The implication of Terry's request also applies to Szymanski's work: The history of past social movements can prove helpful to current activists. Szymanski also aimed her book at testing the explanations of social scientists for the failure and successes of social movements.

Drawing extensively on the vast array of primary sources, and integrating much from the extensive secondary literature, Szymanski compares the relative successes of the prohibition movement in two periods. The first period is the 1880s when fraternal organizations, the Women's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), and the Prohibition party, which all embraced constitutional state and national prohibition, dominated the movement but achieved only limited success. The second period occurred during the Progressive era, when the Anti-Saloon League, which used a local gradualism strategy (focusing on local struggles first and emphasizing moderate goals, epitomized by the policy of local- option prohibition), predominated. These tactics achieved remarkable success in passing many state prohibition laws and the national prohibition amendment. "Simply put, it was the shift in the movement's strategy from demanding state constitutional amendments to promoting local gradualism that led to success" (198). Szymanski's work melds the insights of scholars who explained the successes of social movements by their internal dynamics and those who explained them by the external factors of political environments.

Though scholars of temperance and prohibition may think this study to be well-trodden ground, even they may acquire new insights from Szymanski's account. She shows that only after a polity (both state legislatures and state high courts) accepted a devolution of legislative power as legitimate could local option become viable as a policy. This change gave later anti-liquor moderates a significant advantage over moderates from the earlier period. Szymanski also effectively describes how moderate anti-liquor advocates, through the processes of fighting liquor at the local level, were turned into total prohibitionists—Washington Gladden, Robert Woods, and Chester Rowell being cases in point. The tactics of moderates drew people into the movement. When restrictions on saloons had a positive impact, or when liquor purveyors refused to obey moderate regulations, those who had not previously embraced prohibition were converted to the cause. Szymanski shows that where the WCTU "adhered to local gradualism," it "enjoyed steady and often dramatic growth," but where it "remained faithful" to the radical creed and strategy, it "experienced slower membership growth and even losses" (164).

For all its merits in achieving its stated goals, Szymanski's work has limits. She measures the progress of social movements by their legislative successes, but changed attitudes and behavior in society as a whole are just as important as laws enacted in measuring the effect of a social movement. On that score, all of the prohibitionists clearly failed. Moreover, the most significant drop in the consumption of alcohol in American society coincided with the early moral temperance crusades not with the later legal agitation. Szymanski fails to shed light on this larger historical picture. In other words, while activists consider the value of Szymanski's insights about the worth of moderate gradualism for their own causes, they should also reflect on the price of using the state and law to achieve their ends. They should reflect upon both the success of the moderate prohibitionists and the ultimate failure of prohibition.