"Prohibition Is Here to Stay": The Reverend Edward S. Shumaker and the Dry Crusade in America

7. Trials and Tribulations

133| 7 Trials and Tribulations The 1920s began on a high note for the dry crusade. Americans voted in Prohibition “hopefully” and wanted to give the reform a chance. Hoosiers in particular seemed to desire the civil order that Prohibition promised.1 These hopes meant that drys such as Edward Shumaker increasingly focused on law enforcement, which brought them into conflict not only with wets but also with the police, prosecutors , and judges who had to enforce the laws. Drys found that victory was more difficult to maintain than it had been to achieve, and for the first time questions arose about the longevity of their reform. America’s geography and its politics made total enforcement nearly impossible. States such as Florida and Rhode Island had enforcement issues different from those of Indiana, so a uniform policy was not crafted. Thus, enforcement rarely lived up to dry hopes. Fines tended to be little more than old liquor fees with new names, police seemingly targeted only those violators who were not politically connected, and sentences were often suspended. The proliferation of automobiles compounded these problems. By 1926, Indiana had one car for every four people, and the so-called crossroads of America became a bootlegger’s paradise, which prompted ­Shumaker 134 | “Prohibition Is Here to Stay” to refer to automobiles as the “old-time saloons on wheels.” Furthermore , thanks to the money made in bootlegging, corruption returned to Hoosier politics. In 1923, seventy-five defendants, including the mayor of Gary, were convicted for being part of a ring that resold confiscated liquor in Lake County. Two years later, the mayor of Bicknell in Pike County was put on trial for manufacturing and selling alcohol illegally.2 Nevertheless, enforcement was strict enough to inspire those engaged in the illegal trade to be creative. In Hamilton County, for example, bootleggers had customers paint their milk bottles white so that beer or liquor could be concealed inside. Stills were expertly camouflaged; one in Archerville was discovered under a haystack, complete with electric lights and an early-warning alarm bell.3 Many drys believed that foreign-born bootleggers were facilitating the flow of alcohol to wealthy Americans. The rich, drys argued, needed to understand that Prohibition applied to them as well. The Indiana Daily Student, in an editorial citing Shumaker, said that it was the upper 10 percent of the nation who refused to abide by the law, and it urged a crackdown to remind the wealthy that they were not above it. Drys also grew disgusted with what they saw as the wet bias of many newspapers. Some journalists only covered the complaints of wets who would not accept electoral and constitutional defeat, attacked “professional drys” and their “heavy handed” laws, and sensationalized the activities of bootleggers. Drys even found it difficult to have sympathy for those people who died from drinking poisonous home brews, since wets cited those deaths to call for repeal.4 Shumaker knew that not all Hoosiers rejoiced at Prohibition’s arrival. Areas of the state, such as the Calumet region and Dubois County, were bastions of the wet cause and places where bootlegging was tolerated, if not encouraged. Speakeasies could be found across the state from corner alleys, to American Legion posts, to the Claypool Hotel in downtown Indianapolis. Illicit drinking undermined respect for the law by making anyone who drank, by definition, a criminal. Shumaker’s answer to these problems was to call for new laws and stricter enforcement.5 Trials and Tribulations | 135 His attention was drawn to the state’s judiciary. Shumaker told a Methodist gathering in Evansville that the Indiana Supreme Court was more interested in the nuances of the law than any other legal body in the country and its members dwelt on “too many technicalities ” in deciding liquor cases. It was time to challenge lenient judges, he believed, even if they were Republicans.6 The state Supreme Court was well aware of Shumaker’s displeasure, but in the Klan dominated­-political environment, the justices were not open to his criticism. In a 1925 ruling the court said that law enforcement by any means necessary could not be “sanctioned by law-abiding citizens. Such expressions are the law of the mob, the ‘hijacker,’ the bootlegger, the professional law violator, and, in some instances, a conscience balm for the active reformer in his endeavor to mold public opinion and incite public prejudice by...