It seemed that virtually everyone, but the drinkers and alcohol manufacturers, was behind this law. Congress followed the general census. The 18th Amendment was created to outlaw alcohol use as a beverage (Antony 121). The Senate, in 1917, passed the 18th Amendment after only 13 hours of debate, and in the House it was passed after one day (Allen 248). The 18th Amendment was ratified January 16, 1922, and soon after the Volstead Act was passed to reinforce it (Kelly 78-80) . . Enacting the law was simple. The real challenge for congress would be to enforce the law. Dry leaders, had been in such a rush to make the prohibition a law, that they had failed to think about what enforcing it would actually mean. John F. Kramer, the first prohibition Commissioner, said, "This law will be obeyed in all cities large and small, and in villages, and where it is not obeyed it will be enforced," (Allen 248). The first problem of enforcing prohibition was the coast line and land borders, it was all together an 18,700 mile long open door for smugglers (Allen 243). Secondly, "near-beer" was still legal. And the only way to produce near beer was to make real beer and then remove the alcohol from it. As you can imagine it was excessively easy to forget to remove all the alcohol (Allen 249). Ultimately, the biggest problem of enforcement was the lack of funds. In 1920 there was only 1,520 prohibition agents, and still only 2,836 by the 30's (Allen 246). At most the agents were paid $50 a week, and it's not hard to imagine that these under paid workers could be easily tempted at the offer of cash (Allen 246). Professor M.L. Wilson from the Department of Agriculture was absolutely right in his comparison of the prohibition of farming and the prohibition of alcohol, "the attempt to enforce restricted production will be more difficult than the attempt to enforce prohibition. It runs foul of an instinct for production at least as deep as the desire for alcohol," (Leone 85-86).
