Word: volstead
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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...greater part of a decade has elapsed since prohibition became national and the word Volstead was minted for household use. Yet last week while Andrew J. Volstead, three years since retired from Congress, was quietly busy in St. Paul investigating the validity of manufacturing permits for the use of industrial alcohol, a wave of anti-prohibition sentiment rose. How large the wave may have been, how much genuine and how much propaganda-made, there is no saying. But it made a big splash...
...noise made by the Wets was probably all out of proportion to the political success which they may achieve in the country at large in the immediate future. But their enthusiasm was undamped. "Down with Volstead!" was their cry. "Hurrah for Volstead!" answered the Drys enthusiastically if somewhat feebly. Each side with derision or with exultation waved in the face of the other that name, like a banner, like a symbol of its fierce spirit, like a strange mythological device...
...must be painful to a man to become a myth before he is dead. That great mythmaker, the public, is no respecter of persons, and least of all has it respected the person of Andrew J. Volstead, a little man of Scandinavian descent who was born in Minnesota in 1861. His father was a Norwegian immigrant who built the log cabin on the farm where Andrew was born. His mother was the daughter of a market gardener, who lived just outside Oslo, then Christiania. One way and another young Andrew completed his education at St. Olaf's College and prepared...
...happened that in the course of 20 years, by the workings of seniority, he became chairman of the Judiciary Committee. When the resolution for the 18th Amendment was in Congress it was of course referred to the Judiciary Committee. The Committee voted for it, and Chairman Volstead, as was his duty, reported it. After the Amendment was ratified, an enforcement act had to be drafted. That again fell to the Judiciary Committee, and Mr. Volstead as its chairman drew up the act and then reported it. So his name was attached to it?and so he became famous...
...prohibition pledge or belonged to the Prohibition party. In fact, in 1916, when he came up for election he was opposed by a prohibition candidate. How did he win? He said: "I just kept in the middle of the road." Twenty years in Washington, however, told on Mr. Volstead's hold on his constituents. Some of his old friends had died, others had moved away from Granite Falls. In 1920 along came Rev. O. J. Kvale (pronounced Quail) and contested with him for the Republican nomination. He told the electors that Volstead was an atheist. Kvale beat Volstead...