Pro-Prohibition booth at Parents' Exposition Week, Grand Central Palace (23 February 1929)
A photograph in the Internal Revenue Service's general records of a pro-Prohibition booth in New York: signs reading "Buyers Make Bootleggers" and "Law Breakers Must Not Be Law Makers," a board of counterfeit strip stamps and labels, and a man holding a bottle of gin.
- Date
- 1929-02-23
- Kind
- photograph
- Retrieved
- 2026-10-12
- NAID
- 16972692
- Rights
- A photograph in the Records of the Internal Revenue Service (Record Group 58), series "General Records" (NAID 6172183), file unit "Exhibits." The item, the file unit and the series all read "Use Restriction: Unrestricted." A federal record, public domain under 17 U.S.C. § 105. The stored copy is an 1,800-pixel downsample of the first of the catalog's four scans.
The National Archives catalog title is “Pro-Prohibition Booth at Parents’ Exposition Week, Grand Central Palace,” with a production date of 23 February 1929. It is filed in the file unit “Exhibits” of the IRS series “General Records,” 1920 to 1934, which the catalog describes as correspondence, reports, briefs and photographic prints. The catalog holds four scans; the stored copy is one of them.
The booth carries the signs “BUYERS MAKE BOOTLEGGERS” (repeated across the top), “ALLEGIANCE TO THE CONSTITUTION OBSERVANCE OF LAW,” “LAW BREAKERS MUST NOT BE LAW MAKERS,” “LIBERTY IN LAW,” “INSURANCE RECORDS SHOW THAT DRINK SHORTENS LIFE 11%” and “Daily Drinking Impaired Memory,” and an oval sign reads “246 N.Y. Womens Committee for Law Enforcement.” A board at the left is headed “COUNTERFEIT STRIP STAMPS AND LABELS.” A man behind a table of bottles, jars and stacks of labels holds up a bottle labelled gin. Flags and framed portraits hang behind.
The man and the people in the portraits are not named in the catalog. The health claims on the signs are the exhibitors’ and are quoted as signs, not as findings.
