Prohibition
In the Prohibition era, the Butler's Rose Room "became synonymous with the city's informal night life." Victor Aloysius Meyers—later a Washington State politician—held forth as a bandleader, as did Jackie Souder. The young Bing Crosby tried out to sing at the Butler, but was told he needed more experience. John Edmondson Prim, later a founder of the Seattle Urban League and the first African American judge in the State of Washington, worked there as a waiter.
For many years, the Butler paid little or no attention to the laws against alcoholic beverages. "Liquor," Seattle businessman Henry Broderick explained decades later, "was not sold by the House, but in some devious, if not exactly mysterious way, whiskey had a habit of arriving at every one of the nearly one hundred tables in the establishment." As Seattlife magazine would comment in 1939, "…it was all in the course of an evening's fun to have the prohibition agents swoop in, seize partially concealed bottles of liquor from under the tables, perhaps arrest an employe (sic) or two, and then depart amid boos and not-too-subtle insults." This went on for roughly a decade, until in early 1929 the Butler was prohibited from allowing dancing after 9 p.m. In May 1929 the Rose Room was ordered closed for a year. When it reopened in 1930, amidst the deepening Great Depression, things were simply not the same.
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Famous quotes containing the word prohibition:
“During Prohibition days, when South Carolina was actively advertising the iodine content of its vegetables, the Hell Hole brand of ‘liquid corn’ was notorious with its waggish slogan: ‘Not a Goiter in a Gallon.’”
—Administration in the State of Sout, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“No political party can ever make prohibition effective. A political party implies an adverse, an opposing, political party. To enforce criminal statutes implies substantial unanimity in the community. This is the result of the jury system. Hence the futility of party prohibition.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“Prohibition will work great injury to the cause of temperance. It is a species of intemperance within itself, for it goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control a man’s appetite by legislation, and makes a crime out of things that are not crimes. A Prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)