Enforcement of Prohibition was never adequately staffed or funded, and the illicit trade in alcohol contributed to the growth of organized crime. Although alcohol consumption in the United States did drop by as much as half during the '20s, people who wanted to drink found it easy to do so either by brewing their own alcohol (which was legal, as long as it was not sold) or by buying “bootleg” liquor in illegal saloons known as speakeasies that had sprung up everywhere. When the Eighteenth Amendment became effective in January 1920, Congress passed the Volstead Act to implement it. Prohibition was one of the programs the Klan supported. The Klan declined rapidly after 1925 due to scandals involving its leadership and the drop in immigration numbers caused by the National Origins Act. A potent force in American politics in the mid‐1920s with between three and eight million members, the Klan controlled the legislatures in Indiana, Oklahoma, Oregon, and Texas and was key to the election of several governors and numerous local officials. The KKK was open only to native‐born white Protestants and drew its strongest support from the working class members of that group who were in competition with blacks and new immigrants for jobs and housing. According to its supporters, it stood for law and order, “old time religion” and the moral values associated with it, immigration restriction, and opposed groups who were not 100 percent American - foreigners, Catholics, Jews, and African‐Americans. The new Klan was particularly strong in the Midwest and Southwest as well as in cities such as Atlanta, Chicago, Detroit, and Indianapolis. The Ku Klux Klan, an organization formed by white southerners during Reconstruction, was revived in Georgia in 1915. In addition to limiting immigration as much as possible, the intent of the legislation was to allow the “more desirable” immigrants from northern and western Europe to come into the United States in higher numbers. Under this formula, the quota was less than 4,000 for Italy and around 6,000 for Poland, while the quotas for Great Britain and Germany were 34,000 and 50,000 per year, respectively. Consequently, the National Origins Act of 1924 reduced the total number of immigrants to 150,000 a year, with quotas set at 2 percent of each nationality's population in the United States in 1890. However, this act still allowed for a significant immigration from southern and eastern Europe, alleged hotbeds of radicalism. Congress responded in 1921 with the Quota Act, which set the maximum number of immigrants entering the United States annually at 350,000, apportioned at 3 percent of each nationality living in the country in 1910 (based on the 1910 census). In 1920, the flow of new immigrants approached pre‐war levels. Hostility toward foreigners was also reflected in a fundamental change in American immigration policy. Sacco and Vanzetti were executed in August 1927 after all their appeals were exhausted. Their supporters claimed that they were convicted for their ethnic background and beliefs rather than on conclusive evidence. Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were Italian‐born, self‐admitted anarchists who, in 1920, were indicted for robbery and murder in Massachusetts they were found guilty and sentenced to death in July 1921. The bias against foreigners was exemplified in the Sacco and Vanzetti trial. Although the Red Scare faded quickly after 1920, it strengthened the widespread belief in a strong connection between foreigners and radicalism.
Mitchell Palmer, thousands of suspected radicals were arrested in 19 those that were aliens were deported. Under the direction of Attorney General A. Widespread labor unrest in 1919, combined with a wave of bombings, the Communists in power in Russia, and the short‐lived Communist revolt in Hungary, fed the fear that the United States was also on the verge of revolution.
In the first few years after World War I, the country experienced a brief period of antiradical hysteria known as the Red Scare. At the same time as hemlines went up and moral values seemed to decline, the nation saw the end of its open immigration policy, the revival of the Ku Klux Klan, and the trial of a Tennessee high‐school teacher for teaching evolution. Although the decade was known as the era of the Charleston dance craze, jazz, and flapper fashions, in many respects it was also quite conservative. More than half of all Americans now lived in cities and the growing affordability of the automobile made people more mobile than ever. The 1920s were a period of dramatic changes. From Vice President to President: George H.W.The United States under Ford and Carter.A New Society: Economic & Social Change.American Society and Culture, 1865–1900.