As American religious and ethnic pluralism developed in the early twentieth century, public policy debates often reflected diverse and contradictory sectarian outlooks. The constitutional prohibition of beverage alcohol in the 1920s emerged in this era not only as the quintessential evangelical Protestant public policy but also, from the standpoint of other confessional traditions, as a particularly reviled state intrusion into private behavior. Among the many organized groups that channeled dry Protestant sentiment into political action, the Anti-Saloon League (ASL) stood out as the self-described agent of “the church in action against the saloon.” Jason S. Lantzer's “Prohibition Is Here to Stay” offers a detailed, local-level analysis of dry Protestant politics in action through an examination of the life and reform career of Edward S. Shumaker, a Methodist minister who achieved prominence and notoriety as the superintendent of the Indiana Anti Saloon League (IASL).

Lantzer's study strives not only to provide a close documentation of Shumaker's activism against alcohol but also to use the dry Hoosier as an exemplar of what Lantzer calls the “Midwest consensus” (6), a mixture of evangelical Protestant devotion, middle-class morality, and reform commitment that energized (and explained) the national prohibition movement. Shumaker's religiosity, moral imperiousness, and professional skill reflected the general attributes of the ASL officials who managed dry sentiment into effective legislation across the country. A native of Ohio, Shumaker grew to adulthood in Illinois, where his exposure to a variety of Protestant denominations created a “blended faith” experience (12) that later informed his ability as IASL superintendent to unite dry Protestants across doctrinal lines into focused political action. Once he experienced conversion in a Methodist revival, however, Shumaker adopted the doctrinaire outlook of his denomination, including its renunciation of amusements and its moral reformism, commitments that remained steadfast as he entered the ministry in Indiana and then left the pulpit behind to agitate for prohibition.

Lantzer is at his best in situating Shumaker in the context of Indiana politics and moral reform activism. Based on a thorough reading of numerous local newspapers, extensive manuscript collections, as well as Shumaker's draft autobiography and personal papers, Lantzer reconstructs the state-level operation of the Anti-Saloon League in helpful detail. He shows how Shumaker built the IASL organization, timed his appearances to benefit from local revivals, arranged interdenominational meetings when local information suggested that would be the more effective course, and focused local outrage over alcoholic excesses into specific proposals for county option in 1908, statewide prohibition in 1917, and a “bone-dry” (135) state prohibition enforcement bill in 1925 that was far stricter than the national Volstead Act. Lantzer successfully documents the factional complexity of Indiana politics that alternately aided and frustrated dry initiatives. Shumaker learned the subtle art of coalitions and pressure, but he also drifted into an alliance with the state Republican Party that later hampered the IASL's claim to political independence.

Internal factionalism and division also challenged the dry movement. Lantzer explores the tension between the IASL and the Prohibition Party (which considered the IASL too prone to compromise with wets), examines the incomplete and ineffective attempts of the IASL and the national Anti-Saloon League to attract African Americans and Catholics into the dry coalition, and analyzes the Ku Klux Klan as a dry Protestant rival to the IASL. The Klan, in particular, troubled Shumaker since the Invisible Empire undertook vigilante action against prohibition violators when limited funds or lack of political will weakened legal enforcement. Lantzer maintains that Shumaker avoided entanglements with the Hoosier Klan, even though the IASL and the hooded order backed many of the same politicians and initiatives. In the end, Lantzer argues, such “dangerous friends” (113) of prohibition as the Klan created a popular misconception in Indiana that Shumaker worked hood in glove with the controversial order. This perception undercut and damaged the effectiveness of the IASL and the dry coalition.

By the late 1920s, Shumaker himself became a lighting rod for criticism. Sharp in his upbraiding of public officials, intractable in his commitment to prohibition, and skilled as a lobbyist, Shumaker came to be characterized as a political dictator who was an unhealthy influence on the public life of Indiana. Shumaker's special nemesis was Republican Attorney General Arthur Gilliom, a more moderate dry who pounced upon Shumaker's harsh criticism of the Indiana Supreme Court published in an IASL report. Gilliom pursued the dry leader over a three-year legal struggle that culminated in Shumaker's sixty-day sentence to the Indiana prison farm for contempt of the high court in 1929. Broken by the experience, Shumaker died a few months after his release. Although Lantzer hints at the acerbic and unyielding quality of Shumaker's dry advocacy, the book could have provided a clearer sense of the superintendent's fussy and insistent lobbying techniques (characteristics that sometimes even irritated Shumaker's national Anti-Saloon League colleagues) to better explain the personal bitterness often expressed by Shumaker's frustrated opponents.

That shortcoming, however, is overcome by Lantzer's analytical insight into the Gilliom–Shumaker controversy. The dispute was not simply fueled by personal pique, but rather represented “the splintering of dry culture” (154). By the late 1920s, the inadequacies of national prohibition were apparent. “Hard-line drys, such as Shumaker, were becoming more rigid about enforcement and frustrated at the failure of full compliance and prosecution of the law,” Lantzer observes. “Moderate drys, such as Gilliom, were seeking to modify existing laws in order to subvert wet calls for repeal or nullification” (154). In short, the quest for a dry majority had broken apart in ways that reflected the pluralistic nature of modern American society and politics. “Prohibition Is Here to Stay” is more successful as a study of state-level dry activism (and its religious moorings) than it is as an examination of national prohibition, but Lantzer confirms the value of detailed local history in reconstructing the larger historical landscape.