Welcome to the Agency

With the passage of the Volstead act in 1919, Prohibition not only became the law of the land but also a constitutional amendment. [1] With this new law, the U.S federal government required an agency dedicated to its enforcement. The first attempt would be the creation of the Prohibition Unit in 1920, which was attached to the Bureau of Internal Revenue. However this bureau was not created from within Congress but rather by the Commissioner of Internal Revenue. [2] The federally created unit functioned differently than the later Prohibition Bureau. Rather than serving as the sole office for investigations and regulations, the Prohibition Unit placed enforcement duties on State Prohibition officers and reserved the Washington branch for alcohol manufacturing regulation. [3] However, this system was not destined to last long.

Because of internal organizational problems, growing concerns about Prohibition Unit officers not taking the Civil Service exam, and confusion about the Unit’s responsibilities, Congress went forward with several proposals to establish an official Prohibition Bureau. In 1927, H.R 19729 became law and created the Prohibition Bureau, which would be situated under the Treasury Department. As opposed to the Prohibition Unit, officers were appointed and required to take the Civil Service exam.[4] According the agent manuals their stated responsibilities included “gathering, correlating, filing, and dissemination of information not strictly local in character, covering violations of the national prohibition act and the related states [and] to investigate fully all those violations of the national prohibition act and related statues not specifically entrusted to the several administrators and to the customs force.”[5] The Prohibition Bureau was designed to be headquartered in Washington with the major departments located together and twenty-seven field offices were created to be located across the nation.[6] The Bureau would remain this way until 1932.

[1] Laurence F. Schmeckebier, The Bureau of Prohibition: Its History, Activities, and Organization. Brookings Institute, Washington 1929. Page 1.

[2] Ibid, pp 7-9.

[3] Ibid, 10.

[4] Ibid, 20.

[5] Ibid, 56.

[6] Ibid, 155.