This Week in Texas Methodist History  July 12

Methodists Continue Moral Crusade in San Antonio, July 1920

It is difficult for many people in 2020 to grasp how important the issue of the prohibition of alcoholic beverages was to Methodists just one hundred years ago.  A whole generation of Methodists was consumed with the idea that banning the production, consumption, and distribution of alcoholic beverages was key to a better society.  Especially in the MECS, no other social issue attracted the concern of alcohol—not child labor, lynching, economic justice, public sanitation, ---no other social ill came close to the attention paid to alcohol.  Our difficulty in grasping the enormity of the issue lies in our living in a society saturated with alcohol.  Only a few remnants of  Prohibition survive in Texas such as the law against public consumption before noon on Sunday and the Sunday closing of liquor stores.  I guess that most teetotalers today abstain on health rather than religious reasons.

On January 17, 1920, Prohibition finally went into effect. Many Methodists felt the decades-long battle had been won, but they were mistaken.   They soon found that passing a law and enforcing that law were two different matters.   In 254 counties, one can imagine that some law enforcement officials were not very enthusiastic about enforcing laws that prevented consumption of beverages that had previously been legal.  There were plenty of examples of public corruption with local government and police forces accepting bribes to allow the sale of alcohol. 

A good illustration comes from July 1920 in San Antonio.  On July 12 of that year, the Rev. Harold Bennett (1893-?) of East End Methodist in San Antonio called a meeting to call for strict law enforcement.

The impetus for the meeting was his living in the East End and finding that the bars, brothels, gambling houses, and dance parlors barely paused their operations when Prohibition went into effect.   Elections were scheduled for July 24, and his efforts were designed to bring support to candidates most likely to crack down on the vice in the East End.  Prohibition proponents could shift their arguments from anti-alcohol to pro-law enforcement. 

Bennett enlisted the aid of C. A. Riley, pastor of the First Congregational Church, who spoke on “Forces of Evil Decry Publicity.”   They were both somewhat leery of clergy involvement in electoral politics so Bennett told the congregation, “I have finished my sermon.  I will not speak to you as President of the East End Improvement Association.”

It was a tough sell.  San Antonio, then as now, was a major tourist and military training city---with lots of potential customers for illicit pleasures.    Corruption and law enforcement continued to be important political issues in San Antonio municipal elections for decades.