True or false: Prohibition was a failure. The average history book says true. In big cities, the attempt to outlaw the sale of alcoholic beverages led to corruption of law enforcement and disrespect for the law.

Yet when historians dig into the subject a little deeper, and look outside larger cities, crime went down, jails were emptied, and men took their paychecks home to their wives and children instead of getting drunk. Colleges didn’t worry about lacrosse teams drinking and hiring strippers who make rape accusations.

So Prohibition was a failure in the cities, but the temperance movement did help sober up a culture. Jason Lantzer, an Indiana University doctoral student, has come up with the more complex but accurate answer in his thesis on Rev. Edward Shumaker, the leader of Prohibition in Indiana and other political movements of that era. Lantzer wrote under the title: “Prohibition Is Here to Stay: The Rev. Edward S. Shumaker and the Rise and Fall of Dry ...