Category: Hypocrisy

• The Beating of the Drys

  The Beating of the Drys was a rumor complex from the late Prohibition era claiming that prominent dry politicians and Anti-Saloon League leaders were not true abstainers at all, but secret drinkers whose private habits were known to organized crime. According to the theory, the mob preserved incriminating evidence, supplied discreet liquor, and used that knowledge to blackmail supposedly upright reform leaders into silence, selective enforcement, or behind-the-scenes compromise. The theory grew in an atmosphere where “drink wet and vote dry” had become a widely recognized accusation, and where scandal, hypocrisy, and corruption were increasingly associated with Prohibition politics. In its strongest form, the story recast the dry movement not as morally rigid but as privately compromised and therefore governable by the criminal underworld.