The Negative effects of Prohibition Prior to the Passage of the Eighteenth Ammendment

When looking at the Library of Congress’ Chronicling America page, I saw that the time period that was chronicled ran up to 1922. So instantly I thought of prohibition, because that seemed to be the major issue during the 1920s and the time leading up to it. After scrolling through I found this page.
 
The page seems to be a paid advertisement published by the Rock Island Argus by the Cigarmakers’ International Union (CIU). It says the president of the CIU was instructed at the Baltimore Convention to find out through various locals in the US and Canada the effects of prohibition on their trade. What’s interesting is this shows how heated the debate was in the years prior to prohibition since this was published in 1917 and prohibition had not been passed at the federal level yet.

The audience is union men, and the body of the advertisement gives statistics about how Prohibition is negatively effecting unions in areas that have passed prohibition laws. At the bottom of the advertisement it proclaims that over five hundred people will be out of work if Rock Island County goes dry, and calls on the Municipal League of Rock Island County to vote early and vote no, which is repeated twice on the bottom.

If I were creating a database for this advertisement, I would have to consider many factors. There are the obvious ones like Newspaper and Date, but that is where they end. There really isn’t a title to this, but rather an audience, so that could be a column. The rest of this seems to be body though. Font would definitely be an issue since there are over ten different fonts. Justification would also need to be looked at because most of the advertisement is centered except for the statistics which are left justified with indentation. It’s actually very odd looking and would have to be described somehow.

The advertisement could be tagged in quite a few different ways. I could tag it with the obvious like Rock Island Argus, Cigarmakers’ International Union, and Municipal League of Rock Island County. It could also be tagged with prohibition, Rock Island County election, alcohol use, or unions among others.

If someone were doing an exhibit on prohibition this advertisement, or ones like it, would be essential to include because it shows a view besides that of the Temperance Movement. This would be a good piece to include when demonstrating the debate leading up to passage of the eighteenth amendment.