Nearing the American prohibition era in the rural south, people in big cities needed a way to acquire alcohol. This is how the moonshining business became a booming industry. With all of this illegal liquor being produced, the distillers of this illegal liquor needed a way to move their product from rural sights to the big cities. The distillers would need to find the best most experienced and dare devilish drivers to move their illegal liquor to the cities. These bootleg drivers needed to be fast fearless and be equipped with the most state of the art equipment but also not stand out and to avoid detection. Although some NASCAR historians believe that moonshine runners were not the true roots to the multi billion-dollar industry, NASCAR came from the skilled bootleg driver's tearing around a homemade racetrack competing against other moonshine runners.
Richmond Hobson proposed the idea of Prohibition in 1913 wanting to stop all of the alcohol sale in Alabama by putting such a high tax on the alcohol that people would stop buying it. After this high tax was put on the alcohol it was actually a good thing for the government because they were making so much money that it actually funded almost 40% of the Spanish-American war. At this point the consumption and sale of alcohol was still not illegal but the government saw opportunity during WW1 to try and get alcohol consumption to go down by saying that the grain needed to make alcohol was to be used for making food for the soldiers. By 1916, 26 of 48 states had enacted there own ban on alcohol by saying that the states health would be much better if alcohol was rid of and made illegal. On January 17th, 1920 the 18th amendment was ratified which would ban the sale of beer and alcohol that had a greater alcohol content of 2.76%. Herbert Hoover who would eventually become president in 1929 was quoted saying "I don't think its possible for a person to get drunk on 2.