History of Kentucky - World War I and 1920s

World War I and 1920s

Like the rest of the country, Kentucky experienced dramatic inflation during the war years. Much infrastructure was created; the state built many roads to accommodate the increasing popularity of the automobile. The war also led to the clear cutting of thousands of acres of Kentucky timber.

The tobacco and whiskey industries had boom years during the teens, although Prohibition seriously harmed the economy when the Eighteenth Amendment took effect. Prohibition led to widespread bootlegging, which continued into the middle of the century.

Congressman Alben W. Barkley gained statewide stature by leading a crusade against the coal and gambling special interests during his 1923 campaign for Governor of Kentucky. Barkley narrowly lost the Democratic gubernatorial nomination. That sole electoral defeat helped propel him into the U.S. Senate in 1926. Barkley became US Senate leader for the Democrats in 1937 and vice president with Harry S. Truman in 1948.

In the 1920s the progressives focused their attacks on gambling. The anti-gambling crusade sprang from the religious attack on machine politics led by Helm Bruce and the Louisville Churchmen's Federation. The reformers had their greatest support in rural Kentucky, with support from the Ku Klux Klan and Fundamentalist Protestant clergymen. Barkley became the political spokesman of the anti-gambling group and nearly secured the Democratic gubernatorial nomination in 1923; four years later, former governor J. C. W. Beckham won the party's nomination as the anti-gambling candidate. Urban Democrats deserted Beckham, however, and Republican Flem Sampson was elected. Beckham's defeat marked the end of the Progressive movement in Kentucky.