Did Rockefeller support prohibition to stop alcohol from being used as fuel?

Question

http://suzieqq.wordpress.com/2008/07/23/rockefeller-ford-and-the-secret-history-of-alcohol/

The above website claims Rockefeller supported prohibition to get rid of alcohol as competition for oil. Is this a conspiracy theory, or is there some truth to it? I'm looking for answers from people with a background in history. Some quick Google searching reveals that Rockefeller was a devout baptist and himself adhered to abstinence from alcohol and tobacco. I also found that Henry Ford apparently supported prohibition, which goes against this conspiracy theory. But I'd like to know what you guys think.

Answer 1

Alcohol can be used as fuel, but not that easily. In those days it would abuse engines quite a bit. You can't simply tank alcohol instead of petrol. Even mixing it doesn't work that well.

So if Rockefeller was supporting prohibition he did it for religious/moral reasons.

Pretty much the same as banning tobacco right now.

Answer 2

I believe I read in "The Log-Cabin Campaign," by Robert Gray Gunderson (1977), the comment that an ancestor of John D. Rockefeller, who was a Democrat at that time, looked with disdain at William H. Harrison, the Whig candidate, because he rode around in a float, beside a log cabin, with a jug of hard cider beside him.

That Rockefeller was a "teetotaling" Baptist, even back then.

In the 1920s, "denatured" alcohol, mixed with a bit of poisonous methyl alcohol, was not prohibited, because it was dangerous to drink. That didn't prevent its use as fuel, however.

Cans of jellied alcohol, for use in the little "Sterno" type camp stoves, were also available, at least for a while, during the Prohibition era. In 1925, or thereabouts, the Iowa Legislature busied itself in worrying whether or not hoboes might be able to get drunk, by consuming that material.

During Prohibition, the liquor manufacturers just moved to Canada, and smugglers found ways of bringing their products into the US.

It's sort of the same thing as when the US Congress enacted its hypocritical ban on sales of manufactured goods to Cuba. The sale of such goods just continued, by sales to Cuba by the Canadian subsidiaries of US corporations.

I found that out from the book, "90 Miles From Home," by Warren Miller. He died at age 44 from lung cancer, two years younger than President Kennedy was, when he died. His Wikipedia biography mentions his "outspoken political views."

Any conspiracy theories about that?