Most people understand that Prohibition was about keeping Americans from consuming alcohol, but don’t realize that when Rockefeller gave the Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) $4,000,000.00 to lobby congress to help bring about prohibition, he was more interested in stopping cars from drinking alcohol than people. In the late 1800’s and early 1900’s the primary transportation fuel was alcohol. Gasoline was a useless by product of Rockefeller’s petroleum industry. Too volatile to be used as lamp oil or other consumer products, gasoline, a then useless by-product of petroleum distillation, was commonly dumped into rivers (at night) to dispose of it.
In the United States, Prohibition was accomplished by means of the Eighteenth Amendment to the national Constitution (ratified January 16, 1919) and the Volstead Act (passed October 28, 1919). Prohibition began on January 16, 1920, when the Eighteenth Amendment went into effect. Federal Prohibition agents (police) were given the task of enforcing the law. The principal impetus for the accomplishment of Prohibition by members of the Republican Party, the Democratic Party, and the Prohibition Party, was truly a bi-partisan effort with “progressives” making up a substantial portion of both major political parties
The model T was one of the first flex-fuel vehicles. The Model T could use gasoline or alcohol as fuel. Engine spark timing adjustment and Carburetor adjustment from the driver’s seat allowed the model T to run either fuel or a combination of fuels. Rockefeller realizing the huge profit potential was not going to let alcohol stand in his way. Giving the Women’s Christian Temperance Union four million dollars in the early 1900’s was like giving a K-Street lobbyist 100 million today. You can change a lot of votes with that kind of money.
The Eighteenth Amendment was repealed December 5, 1933 with ratification of the Twenty-first Amendment, but by then the damage was done. America’s renewable transportation fuel was diverted in favor of Rockefeller’s industrial waste product. We can thank Rockefeller for much of the disinformation that still exists today about alcohol. I can only imagine where we would be today if Alcohol had been kept as the preferred transportation fuel.
