Volstead Act (1919) Commentary by Michael J. O'Neal, Ph.D.

The Volstead Act was the enabling legislation for the Eighteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which prohibited the “manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors”—that is, Prohibition. The act was named for its author, Andrew Volstead, a Republican congressman from Minnesota. The formal name of the Volstead Act, passed over the veto of President Woodrow Wilson on October 28, 1919, was the National Prohibition Act.

The Prohibition movement had begun in the nineteenth century when reformers, many of them motivated by religious beliefs and by the conviction that many of the nation’s social ills could be tied to drinking, tried to reduce the demand for alcohol by persuading people to give up drinking. Early in the twentieth century, these reformers shifted their focus to curtailing the supply of alcohol by supporting passage of state laws that restricted the sale of alcohol and that shut down bars and taverns. By 1914 numerous states were “dry,” meaning...