Prohibition

East Dubuque Local Area History Project

	by S.V.
	Prohibition outlawed alcohol. Prohibition is the forbidding by law of all manufacture, transportation, sale, and possession of alcoholic beverages. In 1873, some women started an Anti-Saloon League because there was too much drunkenness. In the 1820’s people in the United States drank 27 liters of pure alcohol per person. People were saying that drunkenness was a national curse. The Anti-Saloon League was a strong movement that opposed alcohol because so many people abused it. Soon the use of alcohol drinking fell to 8 liters. People opposed to alcohol started getting more and more vocal. Their leader was Carrie Nation, who fired up people in opposition to alcohol because her husband was a very bad alcoholic. Gradually, more people started supporting making alcohol illegal in the 1920’s. Beer barrels were emptied into the streets to prevent the sale of alcoholic drinks in the United States.

	13 out of the 31 states had laws like making alcohol illegal by 1855. One of these states was Iowa. Iowa declared liquor illegal and other states did the same. 31 out of 48 states by 1919 had made it illegal.

	Dubuque went its own way and did its own thing. People in Dubuque mostly ignored the Iowa laws. A few saloons became pool halls and grocery stores.

	Alcohol was still legal in East Dubuque when it was illegal in Dubuque. The East Dubuque Electric Company operated busses that took people to the bars in East Dubuque just to drink and then they took them back to Dubuque. Other people were running liquor from East Dubuque to Dubuque illegally.

	The 18th amendment that made liquor illegal everywhere was passed in 1917 and finally ratified in 1919. The demand for illegal booze increased. When prohibition was declared, there was a riot in East Dubuque where people were tearing down the City Hall. Fireman sprayed water out of hoses to calm down the crowd but some people cut the hoses so the water would turn into dribbles.

	Bootleggers made their gin in bathtubs using bootlegged alcohol and a recipe that had glycerine and juniper oil in it. They also added burnt sugar so they could make it taste like bourbon. If they added creosote oil, they could make it taste like Scotch. Hobos sometimes drank diluted canned heat that blinded the people that drank it. Near-beer was sold as non-alcoholic beer. Bootleggers added booze to it and called it Needle-beer.

	People were careful about going into the woods or islands for fear of surprising trigger happy distillers. Distillers often rented farmland because the process had a strong smell. They put their stills in silos and surrounded them with cow manure to block out the smell. One East Dubuque farmer stole a load of sugar from a bootlegger and the next day he found his barn in ashes.

	Liquor runners had clever ways of moving alcohol. One of the Dubuque’s wrecker trucks had to come to East Dubuque off and on to tow a car back to Dubuque. Rumrunners fixed up their cars with smoke screens or devices that dropped nails on the road to stop the police behind them.

	Speakeasies were very common around this time. Some bars had holes in the walls to reach the liquor truck in the alley. Buildings were covered with posters to block views of illegal activity but a special knock could get people in. The Hilltop in East Dubuque was a well known speakeasy. This club inspired the song Hernando’s Hideaway from the musical Pajama Game. This was a hang-out for Al Capone.

	Al Capone often came to East Dubuque and Dubuque to hide out. He was supposed to have an apartment over a bar. He played cards in the Captain Merry House. He never stayed anywhere that didn't have an escape way out. If his lookouts saw the police coming he went down the back steps and went through the Merry House tunnels. He was popular in this area because he paid grocery bills for poor Italian families. He fed more children then the government did.

	Prohibition produced a lot of nasty people. The crime rate rose, there were so many burglaries, hijackings and killings that people walked in the middle of the street at night to avoid the dark sidewalks.

	Mike “Bon Bon” Allegretti ran the Bon Bon Inn South of East Dubuque in the area which is now the Flats. In 1926, one of his enemies Jack Frye, came to the Bon Bon Inn to kill Mike. Jack’s gun jammed and Bon Bon shot him instead. Half an hour later the U.S. marshal showed up at the same time “Sailor John” Johns showed up to avenge Jack Frye. Allegretti shot “Sailor John” as well. A grand jury ruled it all self defense. Al Capone and Mike Allegretti are still well-known characters from East Dubuque’s past. The 18th amendment was repealed in 1933 and liquor became legal again.

	Bibliography Our Spirited Years. Dubuque Telegraph Herald, 1976. Clark, Norman H. “Prohibition,” Microsoft(R) Encarta (R) 98 Encyclopedia.(c) 1993-1997 Microsoft Corporation.