Happy Days Are Here Again—Dream of Prosperity

A Prohibition-era comic postcard that depicts a man dreaming about a change to the Volstead Act that would allow the sale of beer and create work—and prosperity—for brewers, farmers, and other laborers.

As Wikipedia explains, the Volstead Act "was enacted to carry out the intent of the Eighteenth Amendment, which established prohibition in the United States" and banned the production and sale of alcoholic beverages beginning in 1920. Prohibition lasted until 1933, when the Twenty-first Amendment was ratified in order to repeal the Eighteenth Amendment.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt used "Happy Days Are Here Again" as his presidential campaign song in 1932, and the repeal of Prohibition took place soon after Roosevelt took office.

Signs and captions: "Free lunch today. Good old time lager beer. Free beer tomorrow. Happy days are here again."

Dream of Prosperity

Last night I dreamed that the Volstead law had been amended permitting the sale of beer (Oh! what a grand and glorious feeling!). Immediately 100,000 carpenters, bricklayers, and laborers went to work building and refitting breweries; 50,000 brewery truck drivers, helpers, vatmen, and coppersmiths were hired; and 100,000 printers were put to work printing beer labels. Bottle works and barrel makers engaged thousands more. Bookkeepers, stenographers, clerks, and salesmen found ready employment by the hundreds of thousands. Thousands of farmers left the city and returned to farms to raise hops and barley. 150,000 musicians went to work in the beer gardens. There was no unemployment. The country hummed with industry. The tax secured from the sale of beer was placed in a fund that was used for an old age pension. Then the scene changed–I saw 1,000,000 bootleggers holding a protest meeting. Disgusted, I then awoke.