The Progressive crowd of the Progressive era just didn’t understand that to white ethnics especially groups like the Irish, Germans, Slavs, and Jews that having a drink was part of their culture and for those groups who more likely were to be blue collar and thus work longer hours and live stressful lives, sometimes a beer at the end of the day was what they needed. The efforts to get women the right to vote, the efforts against the poor treatment of workers, etc are all admirable but I really think the Progressives didn’t understand working class Americans especially those of immigrant or recent immigrant stock. Smith and FDR later especially understood them better even though FDR was an elite himself and Smith was a Wall Street lawyer too I think.