Today in New Jersey history:
March 17, 1922: The Hobart Act, New Jersey’s implementation law for the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution, was passed. Initial arrests under this law, and the federal Volstead Act, for bootlegging numbered 91 in 1922 but, by 1932, had escalated to 996 for the year. There were a total of 4,768 arrests for manufacturing, sale, possession and transportation of alcohol in New Jersey during Prohibition, about 400 of them for traditional “Jersey Lightning” or applejack, most of the latter in Sussex, Warren and Hunterdon Counties.
