When The Daily Breeze was founded by Redondo Beach pharmacist S.D. “Doc” Barkley, left, in 1894, prohibition was the hot-button issue of the day. In addition to fomenting boosterism in Redondo, Barkley aslo used the paper to promote the pro-alcohol cause.
He jumped right into the battle, aligning himself with the saloonkeepers in town who were leading The Wets. The Drys, which included ministers and other temperance advocates represented by a group called the Anti-Saloon League, were out to close the bars. The temperance movement during this era used local-option laws, which gave individual communities the power to ban the sale of alcohol if they chose.
The contentious struggle with the Anti-Saloon League finally came to a heated vote on Monday, May 16, 1910. Barkley did not shy away from using the power of the press to support his position. For 2 weeks before the election, the front page of the Breeze, which was then a weekly, sported pro-Wet articles. On May 14, it was noted on the front page that a famous U.S. president of the past supported the Wet viewpoint:
In that same issue, the Breeze also printed very helpful instructions on how to vote “Yes” on the measure:
An ad for a community forum for “the Wets” that also ran on May 14 is shown below. Note that women, while condescended to, were not excluded:
Redondo Beach voters sided with The Breeze and its Wet brethren in the May 1910 election, and the saloons stayed open. The Breeze might possibly be accused of crowing about the final results, declaring the 90-vote margin of victory as “an avalanche” and a “crushing defeat” for the Drys:
Barkley would sell the Breeze in 1913. His Redondo Beach victory would be trumped by the passage of the 18th Amendment to the Constitution imposing nationwide prohibition in 1919. It closed the bars for 14 years until it was repealed by the 21st Amendment in 1933.
