system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: How did Prohibition get enough support to actually happen in the US, was public sentiment against alcohol really that high?
gpt
Yes. Prohibition was very popular (when it was enacted: it rapidly fell apart afterward). Polling as we know it today wasn't around at the time, but it passed pretty overwhelmingly: only two states (Connecticut and Rhode Island) didn't ratify it.

The early 1900s was sort of a weird period from a modern perspective. There was a great belief all around the world in a natural progression to history that matched the progression of technology, and all sorts of movements were popping up to try to reform the world. Eugenics was popular almost everywhere, racial and gender rights were on the march, the labor movement won a number of major victories. The notion of trying to improve people morally came alongside a major religious revival in the form of the original Progressives (only loosely related to the modern movement by that name), who believed in progress in all its forms (hence the name), including some we do not look back on quite so fondly today.

It's probably worth noting that people drank a *lot* at the time. Think, like, Japanese businessmen or Russians - on average, about three times more than modern Americans drink, which is more than *any* country drinks today. And that drinking came with some of the same kinds of problems we associate with it today, e.g. spousal abuse. The newfound rights of women made them a major bloc in the temperance movement, campaigning against the drunken misbehavior of the men around them. Most suffragettes were also pro-temperance, and the two movements campaigned together.