- I'm John Levenstein,
and today we're going to be talking about Wayne Wheeler,
the man responsible for Prohibition.
Cheers.
- Cheers, John.
- Wayne Wheeler would have hated that.
Wayne Wheeler's family had a farmhand who was drunk,
who was swinging a pitchfork-- a hayfork--wildly.
He said, Mom, that farmhand's acting sloppy.
The farmhand stabs Wayne Wheeler in the leg.
Wayne Wheeler said
Hey.
- What are you doing?
You just stabbed me in the leg.
What, are you drunk, you farmhand?
Wayne Wheeler decided,
I'm going to spend the rest of my life
fighting against alcohol.
And that's the fornd-- the formative event
of Wayne Wheeler's life, with--of, okay.
The-- [laughs]
Okay.
The-- [laughs]
The formative event of Wayne Wheeler's life.
Wayne Wheeler, in 1893, graduated from college.
He goes to see Howard Hyde Russell,
from the Anti-Saloon League, speak.
I'm against alcohol.
I'm against the way alcohol affects the American family.
Men should not drink at the saloon,
waste away their family's money,
come home, hit their wives, hit their children.
That shouldn't happen.
After the speech he said,
I'm going to join your movement,
and I'll devote my life to making people not drink.
Now, Wayne Wheeler, with the Anti-Saloon League,
was a dynamo.
He was just biking everywhere.
He was biking from town to town,
going door-to-door,
getting people to vote against candidates
who opposed Prohibition.
And Wayne Wheeler would say,
I was stabbed by a fith-- a pitchfork when I was a child.
And then they would say,
Oh, people can be stabbed by pitchforks as children?
And Wayne Wheeler would say,
[laughs]
- Why did you laugh?
- Because I was seeing two of you.
- That's okay.
[laughs]
I-- [laughs]
Wayne Wheeler was going to churches to raise money.
He was going to arrange demonstrations,
and he was always on his bike.
He was always pedaling furiously.
Wayne Wheeler invented pressure politics.
Wayne Wheeler would say,
This person is not strongly enough in favor of temperance.
Then that person would go down.
Every time--70 for 70.
So Wayne Wheeler comes to Washington, DC
and starts fighting for a constitutional amendment
against alcohol.
Everyone is afraid of Wayne Wheeler.
Wayne Wheeler is the most successful lobbyist
in the United States.
There was another thing that happened
that I'm forgetting right now
that I'll get back to.
That I'll get back to, Derek.
But, in the meantime, Prohibition was passed,
and Wayne Wheeler won the day.
Wayne Wheeler was such a zealot,
because once Prohibition happened--
that wasn't enough for Wayne Wheeler.
He goes to see the head of the KKK.
I'm a national figure. I can't do my own bidding,
but you, Ku Klux Klan, can.
So the Ku Klux Klan did it.
They were Wayne Wheeler's private security force.
And they would go into bars
and just tear the [bleep]ing place apart.
The Ku Klux Klan was a violent organization.
They were tarring and feathering
people who were bootleggers.
[laughs]
Wha-- [laughs]
[laughter]
Wha-- [laughs]
Wayne Wheeler-- [laughs]
- Great name. - Wayne Wheeler.
Wayne Wheeler is so crazy
because there was still industrial alcohol
that was used to clean engine parts,
to make nail polish.
Wayne Wheeler said,
to make that legal alcohol poisonous.
We're going to add methanol to ethanol,
call it formula number 30,
and then anyone who drinks ethanol--
not to clean engines, but to get drunk--
will die.
And that's when the [bleep] hit the fan.
People who were drinking ethanol mixed with methanol
didn't know that that's what they were doing.
It made thousands of people sick
and hundreds of people die.
And Wayne Wheeler was saying,
You know about Prohibition. You know alcohol's illegal.
You're dead now.
And people started thinking,
Why would my own government do this to me?
Wayne Wheeler, who had been pretty much
running the government as a lobbyist, was discredited.
And that's when he went to Michigan.
And then died a few weeks later.
Just because Wayne Wheeler was stabbed in the leg
by a pitchfork by a drunken farmhand as a child,
he had to spend the rest of his life
making sure no one else had fun, no matter what.
[laughs]
I mean-- [laughs]
Oh, God. I just spilled.
- Oh, you got it.
I love that you're collecting the ice.
- All right. This is as drunk as I get.
[laughter]