The Short Version
Wanting a law changed is one thing. Organizing votes and replacing lost tax revenue are different jobs. Daniel Okrent’s Last Call helps explain how those practical problems shaped both Prohibition and the campaign to end it.
What Okrent Argues
Okrent describes the Anti-Saloon League’s focus on a single issue, its use of church networks and its willingness to support candidates across party lines. A concentrated group could exert influence in a close contest without representing every voter.
He also treats income taxation as a way to remove a fiscal obstacle to Prohibition: replacing government revenue previously raised from alcohol. That did not make the national ban inevitable.
Later, prominent wealthy repeal organizers hoped renewed alcohol taxes would reduce their income-tax burden. Their coalition included people with other aims. Okrent contrasts those hopes with the government’s continued use of revenue after repeal; he also reports the removal of particular emergency taxes. Their wider disappointment does not mean that none of their tax objectives succeeded.
Keep Three Questions Separate
Question | Evidence to seek |
What did campaigners want? | Their correspondence, speeches and proposals |
How did they pursue it? | Organization, funding and electoral action |
What followed? | Enacted policies and observed outcomes |
Agreement on repeal does not establish agreement about the government that would follow it.
Read the Source Carefully
This is Okrent’s historical interpretation, supported by the records he discusses. It is not an independent inspection of every underlying archive. Statements by wealthy organizers cannot stand in for all repeal voters. Revenue forecasts are forecasts, not proof of eventual receipts or a single sufficient cause of repeal.
Source and Locators
Daniel Okrent, Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition (Scribner, 2010). Relevant locations in the 593-sheet digital copy: PDF sheets 49–53 and 71–72 for organization and revenue; 361–363 and 392–393 for repeal motives and fiscal outcomes. These are PDF positions, not printed-page numbers.
Publisher’s book page — a later paperback listing; pagination can differ by edition.
Try the Historian’s Question
Two groups support repeal. One wants personal freedom; another wants lower taxes. Does their shared campaign prove a shared motive?
Return to 
Prohibition and Repeal for the full lesson, or 
The History of Bourbon and Other American Whiskies to choose another period.