20 Facts About Wayne Wheeler

Wayne Bidwell Wheeler was an American attorney and longtime leader of the Anti-Saloon League.

Wayne Wheeler used the story later to recruit converts to the prohibition movement and to promote a prohibition amendment to the US Constitution.

Wayne Wheeler graduated from high school in Sharon, Pennsylvania, received his teaching qualification, and taught for two years before becoming a student at Oberlin College.

In 1902, Wayne Wheeler became a leader of the Anti-Saloon League, and perfected a system of single-issue pressure politics, including media campaigns and public demonstrations, to win enactment of laws limiting or banning the sale and consumption of alcohol.

Wayne Wheeler's career hit its high point with the passage of the Eighteenth Amendment and the Volstead Act in 1920.

Wayne Wheeler's influence began to wane, and he retired in 1927.

Wayne Wheeler suffered from kidney disease, and died at a sanitarium in Battle Creek, Michigan on September 5,1927.

Wayne Wheeler studied law while working for the ASL, and in 1898, he earned his LL.

In 1903, Wayne Wheeler became acting superintendent of the Ohio ASL and its full-time executive director, and in 1904, he was appointed to the post permanently.

Wayne Wheeler advocated for prohibitionists to enforce laws strictly and unsympathetically, rather than attempting to curb alcohol consumption through treatment and education.

Unlike Francis Willards's Women's Christian Temperance Union, which dealt with many humanitarian issues, Wayne Wheeler felt that the only way to challenge the political influence of the beer, wine, and liquor makers successfully was to focus on achieving national prohibition by any means necessary.

Wayne Wheeler was able to elect politicians by encouraging the prohibitionists of both political parties to vote for candidates who supported the cause, regardless of party affiliation or position on other issues.

Wayne Wheeler was involved in drafting the Volstead Act, which provided the means for enforcing the prohibition amendment, as well as federal and state laws that refined prohibition's enforcement mechanisms.

The desire for alcohol among Americans did not dissipate as Wayne Wheeler had envisioned would occur after passage of the Eighteenth Amendment, and Prohibition became increasingly unenforceable.

Wayne Wheeler opposed the use of non-fatal substances such as soap, and argued that fatal poisons in industrial alcohol was an acceptable measure because the government was under no obligation to protect the lives of its citizens if they broke the law by consuming alcohol.

Between 10,000 and 50,000 deaths resulted, and Wayne Wheeler argued that in essence the victims had committed suicide.

Wayne Wheeler retired shortly after the public outcry over the poisoning deaths, but he continued to fight for prohibition.

Just three weeks after their deaths, Wayne Wheeler died of kidney disease while seeking treatment at Battle Creek Sanitarium.

Wayne Wheeler was buried at Green Lawn Cemetery in Columbus, Ohio.

Wayne Wheeler is not widely known today, but historians familiar with the Prohibition era regard him as playing an important role in the passage of the Eighteenth Amendment.