Liquor Laws and Learning Something of History

Let it never be said that law school reading isn't informative! I have to give credit to Prof. Roderick Hills, however, for hilariously teaching me something about my home state of Iowa, all while teaching me more about the dormant commerce clause and American federalism:

[In the 1890s, SCOTUS concluded that "interstate commerce," which was almost exclusively the domain of federal regulation, included the final sale of an imported article in its original package. This has a devastating effect on individual state's ability to regulate booze during the Prohibition era, including Iowa.] Taverns and liquor stores cropped up all over Iowa to sell small quantities of liquor imported from Illinois but still in their original package. To accommodate these sales – derisively dubbed “Supreme Court saloons” or “original package taverns,” the shippers obligingly created “original packages” of small size, such as a three-bottle package of beer – “the Trinity” – for shipment directly to customers in the allegedly dry state. Brewers organized mail order business just across the Iowa border in “wet” Illinois, advertising that their wares were available for immediate shipment to “our friends in Iowa.” Railroads’ station agents essentially became liquor dispensaries, handing off packages marked “groceries” to thirsty recipients in dry states. (In one case, the agent sent a note to the recipient, urging him to pick up his package because his “groceries were leaking”)

Iowa authorities did not stop cracking down on these establishments....In one case, a woman broke the bottles in a store and assaulted the owner with a buggy whip.

After nine years of Catholic schooling and then several obligatory history classes at a public high school, I feel like my primary education was lacking. Why did I not know that Iowa was a dry state at one point?

I can't even imagine what someplace like Iowa City or Ames was like without booze. Yes, students were probably more studious in the 1890s, but Iowa is a pretty cold and barren place.

But if I may rant for a moment, the fact I didn't know this says a lot about how faulty our teaching of history is. James Loewen's Lies My Teacher Told Me hit me like a sack of bricks when I first read it early in college, and he makes the very valid point that we often teach our history in such a way as to bore our kids with it.

Everybody knows something about the Teapot Dome Scandal, but our history lessons are often too ::ahem:: dry. I understand educating kids about alcohol in a history class probably presents dilemmas for teachers, but it's the type of discussion I would have enjoyed a lot in even a fifth grade social studies class.

Last night I was having a discussion with my friend's girlfriend about teaching "countries" to various nine, ten, and eleven year-olds. She wanted us to come up with "conflict free" countries outside of Western Europe; we could only really come up with the United Arab Emirates and New Zealand. (What does that say about our planet that so many places are still so seedy?) She wanted to emphasize countries with fuzzy animals and interesting cultures.

But I had to wonder: why shy away from conflict? It's unfortunate that talking about the dark side of history presents such a problem. I'd argue kids want to know about the bad stuff! It may be tragic and unsettling, but it's also interesting!

Disguising the horrors of world history and it's continuing problems doesn't protect children, it bores them. It also infuriates them when they turn twenty-five and realize their boring home state was beating people up for selling cases of leaky booze!