Alcohol, Reform and Society: the liquor issue in social context

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Alcohol, Reform and Society: the liquor issue in social context

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Alcohol, Reform and Society THE LIQUOR ISSUE IN SOCIAL _CONTEXT_ Edited by

Jack S. Blocker Jr.

ALCOHOL & DRUG ABUSE '\' JTE UNIVERSITY OF WASHING ic.'J 3937 15THAVE. N.E. NL-15 SEATTLE, WA 93105 63-0241

ALCOHOLISM & DRUG ABUSE INSTITUTE UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON /

3937 ■ 15th AVENUE N.E., NL-15 ' SEATTLE, WASHINGTON 981Q&

Alcohol, Reform and Society

Recent Titles in Contributions in American History Series Editor: Jon L. Wakelyn The Long Shadow: Reflections on the Second World War Era Lisle A. Rose The Politics of Wartime Aid: American Economic Assistance to France and French Northwest Africa, 1940-1946 James J. Dougherty The Oil Cartel Case: A Documentary Study of Antitrust Activity in the Cold War Era Burton I. Kaufman The Social Bases of City Politics: Atlanta, 1865-1903 Eugene J. Watts Two Nations Over Time: Spain and the United States, 1776-1977 James W. Cortada Transatlantic Revivalism: Popular Evangelicalism in Britain and America, 1790-1865 Richard Carwardine The Mess in Washington: Manpower Mobilization in World War II George Q. Flynn City and Hinterland: A Case Study of Urban Growth and Regional Development Roberta Balstad Miller Biography of a Progressive: Franklin K. Lane, 1864-1921 Keith W. Olson Farmers Without Farms: Agricultural Tenancy in NineteenthCentury Iowa Donald L. Winters The Half-Opened Door: Discrimination and Admission at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, 1900-1970 Marcia Graham Synnott The Tarnished Dream: The Basis of American Anti-Semitism Michael N. Dobkowski Sobering Up: From Temperance to Prohibition in Antebellum America, 1800-1860 Ian R. Tyrrell

Alcohol, Reform and Society THE LIQUOR ISSUE IN SOCIAL --CONTEXT._ Edited by

Jack S. Blocker Jr. At r.OHOI m & DRUG ABUSE INSTITUTE UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON s 3937 - 15th AVENUE N.E., NL-15 ' . SEATTLE, WASHINGTON

Contributions in American History, Number 83 GREENWOOD PRESS WESTPORT, CONNECTICUT • LONDON, ENGLAND

S 1f\T,

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Main entry under title: Alcohol, reform, and society. (Contributions in American history; no. 83 ISSN 0084-9219) Bibliography: p. Includes index. 1. Temperance societies—United States—HistoryAddresses, essays, lectures. 2. Prohibition—United States—Addresses, essays, lectures. 3. Liquor problem—United States—History—Addresses, essays, lectures. I. Blocker, Jack S. HV5292.A384 322.4’4’0973

78-73800

ISBN 0-313-20889-1

Copyright ©1979 by Jack S. Blocker Jr. All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, by any process or technique, without the express written consent of the publisher. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 78-73800 ISBN: 0-313-20889-1 ISSN: 0084-9219 First published in 1979 Greenwood Press, Inc. 51 Riverside Avenue, Westport, Connecticut 06880 Printed in the United States of America 10

987654321

-7^

To My Grandmothers, Irene Guertler Reifenstahl and Katherine Snead Blocker

Contents

Tables Figures 1. Introduction Jack S. Blocker Jr.

ix xi

3

2. Sociological Perspectives on Drinking and Damage B. GailFrankel and Paul C. Whitehead

13

3. Temperance and Economic Change in the Antebellum North IanR. Tyrrell

45

4. “Water Is Indeed Best”: Temperance and the Pre-Civil War New England College DavidR. Huehner

69

5. A Social Profile of the Women’s Temperance Crusade: Hillsboro, Ohio Charles A. Isetts

161

6. Concerned Citizens: The Prohibitionists of 1883 Ohio George G. Wittet

111

[ viii ]

Contents

7. The Modernity of Prohibitionists: An Analysis of Leadership Structure and Background JackS. Blocker Jr.

149

Organized Thirst: The Story of Repeal in Michigan Larry Engelmann

171

Objection Sustained: Prohibition Repeal and the New Deal DavidE. Kyvig

211

The Wet War: American Liquor Control, 1941-1945 Jay L. Rubin

235

The Liquor Issue in American History: A Bibliography Jacquie Jessup

259

Index Notes on Contributors

281 287

Tables

4.1 Yale Converts, 1820-60

84

4.2 Freshman Temperance Pledges at Amherst, 1830-61

87

4.3 Amherst Converts, 1820-60

89

4.4 Membership in the Temperance Society of the New Hampshire Medical Institution, 1832-35

89

4.5 Membership in the Temperance Society of the Maine Medical School at Bowdoin, 1829-40

91

4.6 Membership in the Temperance Society of Bowdoin College, 1854-58

93

5.1 Rank and Wealth of Hillsboro Crusader Households, by Vertical Category

105

5.2 Rank and Wealth of All Hillsboro Households, by Vertical Category

105

5.3 Average Family Wealth, by Vertical Category

106

5.4 Crusader Wealth and Total Wealth, by Vertical Category

107

5.5 Ethnic Origins of the Heads of Crusader Households

107

5A.1 Occupations of Crusaders with Their Vertical Categories

HO

6.1 Coefficients of Determination Between Selected Dependent Variables and Potential Alcohol Abuse, Ohio Counties, 1883

121

[ x]

Tables

6.2 Coefficients of Determination Between the Affirmative Percentage for the Prohibition Amendment and Selected Independent Variables, Ohio Counties, 1883

126

6.3 Correlation Matrix for Selected Variables

137

6.4 Coefficients of Determination Between Selected Variables and the Affirmative Percentage for the Prohibition Amendment and the Social Acceptance of Public Drinking

138

7.1 Prohibition Party Officeholding

153

7.2 Anti-Saloon League Officeholding

155

7.3 Occupations of Prohibition Party and Anti-Saloon League Leaders

158

7.4 Highest Educational Attainments of Prohibition Party and Anti- Saloon League Leaders

160

7.5 Post-Secondary Educational Institutions Attended by Prohibition Party and Anti-Saloon League Leaders

161

7.6 Residence of Prohibition Party and Anti-Saloon League Leaders, by Population

163

7.7 Recorded Moves of Prohibition Party and Anti-Saloon League Leaders

164

10.1 Total and Per Capita Consumption of Malt Beverages in the United States, 1934-45 10.2 Total and Per Capita Consumption of Distilled Spirits in the United States, 1934-45

244 245

10.3 Results of Local Option Elections on Distilled Spirits Sales, 1940-45

247

10.4 Internal Revenue Collections on Alcoholic Beverages in the United States, 1934-45

251

Figures

Freshman Temperance Pledges at Amherst 1830-1861 Basic Behavioral Model Spatial Distribution of Prohibition Counties, Ohio, 1883

Alcohol, Reform and Society

1

JACK S. BLOCKER JR.

Introduction

The temperance movement in the United States has traditionally at¬ tracted scholars less for its intrinsic interest than for the insight it maj provide into larger social processes. This volume seeks to extend and enrich that tradition by posing new questions and finding new ways to answer old ones. The ideal inquiry would illuminate not only particular events but also the underlying structures—demographic, social, economic, po¬ litical, and cultural—shaping those events. In keeping with this ideal, this volume seeks to achieve two basic goals: 1. To explain the use of beverage alcohol and its response in terms of social structure, and 2. To identify and explain the effects of alcohol use and its response upon social structure. One shortfall from the ideal must be confessed at the outset—the lack of a cross-cultural analysis in all but the first two of our studies. This is particularly unfortunate in a field which has produced one of the first rigorous attempts at comparative explanation of reform movements.1 Ross Paulson’s example has thus far simply failed to en¬ large the parochial focus of temperance studies—or any other type of American studies, for that matter. The principal structure which has thus far gone unexamined in

[4]

Alcohol, Reform and Society

American temperance studies is the structure of drinking. Even when data on aggregate consumption levels have been available, temper¬ ance scholars have preferred to emphasize other factors in explaining the temperance movement’s varying fortunes. A case in point is that starting point for modern reform studies, Richard Hofstadter’s The Age of Reform. Hofstadter explained the coming of national prohibi¬ tion by the mysterious spread of a metaphorical “rural-evangelical virus.”2 Had Hofstadter extended his pioneering foray into social sci¬ ence literature, however, he would have discovered in a classic article by E.M. Jellinek that apparent per capita consumption of absolute alcohol during the decade immediately preceding national prohibi¬ tion had reached its highest level since 1860.3 Had he looked even fur¬ ther, he would have found a well-established correlation between al¬ cohol consumption and deaths from both alcoholism and liver dis¬ eases.4 More recent studies have demonstrated similar myopia with less excuse.5 Estimates of aggregate consumption levels are now avail¬ able at five-year intervals back to 1790, although the post-1850 figures are calculated on a more solid data base than those before.6 In describing and explaining drinking patterns, it would seem obvi¬ ous that the work of historians and that of other social and medical re¬ searchers should proceed hand in hand, with medical, sociological, and anthropological theory enriching historical studies and vice versa. To advance this process B. Gail Frankel and Paul C. Whitehead have contributed to this volume a critical review of social science re¬ search on drinking and alcohol-related damage. As they show, other social scientists have attempted to explain cross-cultural and individ¬ ual variations in alcohol use; it is now for historians to explain varia¬ tion over time. In conducting our investigation, we have the advantage of begin¬ ning with a series of testable propositions generated by proponents of the two competing sociological explanations of consumption and alcoholism, the “sociocultural” and the “distribution of consump¬ tion,” as well as by attempts, such as that of Frankel and Whitehead, to reconcile the two. Our analysis could lead from known variations in alcohol use to the structural changes linked with these variations. As the rate of per capita consumption climbed from a low in 1875 (1.8 gallons of absolute alcohol per capita of the drinking age popula¬ tion, fifteen years and over) to a peak in 1910 (2.6 gallons), was it ac-

Introduction

[ 5 ]

companied by increasing integration of drinking practices into gen¬ eral social customs and by an increase in prescriptions for moderate drinking, as the Frankel-Whitehead formulation would predict?7 And were those prescriptions, assuming they appeared, accompanied by a decline in proscriptions against excessive drinking? To put the problem in terms more familiar to historians, did American Victorianism reach its peak in the 1870s? The work of cultural and intellec¬ tual historians suggests rather the opposite, that the Victorian value structure lasted into the early twentieth century.8 From this apparent disjunction between values and behavior springs a new set of ques¬ tions about elite vs. mass values, cultural lag, the effect of renewed immigration after the Civil War, and the work of the temperance movement. Such questions can be answered only when we move beyond aggre¬ gate drinking patterns to an examination of their internal structure and to an analysis of the meaning of drinking and of drunken behav¬ ior. Again, other social scientists’ research can be useful. As Frankel and Whitehead note, application of the lognormal curve to any society (or any date in U.S. history) for which the gross consumption level is known can produce estimates of the proportion of the drinking popu¬ lation consuming at any given level. In addition, any inquiry into con¬ sumption patterns must investigate changes in the type of alcohol consumed. The major change to be explained in American history is the great shift from distilled liquors, the drinkers’ favorite before the Civil War, to beer, the principal drink of Americans since then. Probably the key to the shift from liquor to beer—and by far the major unanswered question in historical temperance studies—is: Who drank? We need to know the size of the drinking population throughout American history. We need to describe that population by sex, age, location, ethnicity, class, and religion, and we need to know how each of these variables changed over time. So far as I know, only one study has begun this task, and it has been neglected by historians. A decade ago, the sociologist Robin Room used vital statistics re¬ ports from the 1890 U.S. Census to analyze alcohol-related urban death rates by sex, marital status, neighborhood status, and ethnic¬ ity.9 His findings confirm some commonsense notions, bring others into question, and pose fascinating new questions. He found that the Irish ranked highest of all groups in deaths from both alcoholism and

[6]

Alcohol, Reform and Society

liver diseases—but they showed the lowest excess of male over female deaths, with Irish females exceeding males in deaths from liver dis¬ eases. Among native-born whites of native-born mothers, Irish and Germans, the share of wives in alcohol-related deaths of married per¬ sons was far higher than that of unmarried women in alcohol-related deaths of unmarried persons. This finding parallels Durkheim’s on suicide, raising the intriguing possibility that, in the nineteenth cen¬ tury as in the twentieth, the home may have been a source of oppres¬ sion rather than the center of tranquility the protection of which, according to some historians, lay at the heart of the temperance move¬ ment. 10 As Room writes, his work “represents a small-scale strip mine on the rich lode of ‘social statistics’ on alcoholism collected around the turn of the century, but since almost totally neglected.”11 Hospital records can provide material for further comparative analysis of alco¬ hol-related death rates. Local court records often identify drinkers in the course of prosecuting them or the saloonkeepers who sold to them. Jail registers can identify drinkers considered deviant by local police authorities. With the sources at hand and the drinking surveys of the past thirty years to provide both a basis for comparison and a meth¬ odological guide, there is no reason for further neglect of the crucial question of who drank. Once we know who drank, we can proceed to ask why they drank. Historians often act as if they know the answer to this question, as¬ suming that people generally drink in order to reduce tension and positing connections between high consumption levels and wide¬ spread social stress. This is the procedure used in the most sophisti¬ cated recent interpretation of the temperance movement, Norman H. Clark’s Deliver Us from Evil A2 Unfortunately even this cherished commonplace is in doubt. As a review of the abundant experimental literature makes clear, the evidence for tension reduction as a conse¬ quence of drinking is negative, equivocal, and often contradictory.13 Other theories have been proposed, but at the moment no formula¬ tion appears to command widespread assent.14 When we know why people drink, we will still have to explain why they behave as they do when drunk. This is another of those questions whose answer has long been assumed but for which our assumptions have recently been severely shaken. In this case the agent of demoli-

Introduction

[7 ]

tion was Craig Mac Andrew and Robert D. Edgerton’s classic, Drunken Comportment: A Social Explanation (London, 1969). Their demonstration that drunken behavior is determined culturally and not physiologically and that it varies from society to society as well as temporally and situationally within a given society, gave the field of alcohol studies a shock from which it has yet to recover. Their findings open vast and exciting new possibilities for historians in the descrip¬ tion and explanation of historical variations in drunken comport¬ ment.15 As learned behavior, drunken comportment offers another key to shifts in cultural structures. Thus our first strategy for integrating historical liquor studies into social studies must be a thoroughgoing examination of past drinking patterns with an aim to discovering who drank how much of what, when, where, and why. Other social scientists have provided us with potentially valuable clues and starting points. It is up to historians to return the favor with some solid answers and theoretical contributions based upon their special access to behavioral change over time. The history of those who produce and sell liquor is necessarily a part of any examination of the social use of and response to beverage alcohol. As a consumer goods industry, the liquor trade offers a win¬ dow onto shifts in economic and cultural structures. As a business continuously under legal restriction or the threat of it, the liquor in¬ dustry provides insight into business-government relations at various levels over several centuries. For the nineteenth and twentieth cen¬ turies, statistical sources are abundant, company records are some¬ times available, oral history is possible,16 and retailers are traceable through directories, censuses, tax and court records. Yet despite the pioneering studies listed in the Bibliography, among which Thomas C. Cochran’s study of the Pabst Brewing Company still stands out after thirty years, and some recent work on the urban saloon,17 little has been done. In this area our volume again reflects rather than ad¬ vances the state of the art. That studies of temperance reformers are far more abundant than studies of the makers, distributors, and consumers of liquor is testi¬ mony to American historians’ general fascination with movements for social change. It is not, however, a guarantee to understanding social change. It is true that from the beginning temperance historians have sought to understand their subjects in relation to widespread social

[8]

Alcohol, Reform and Society

change. The crucial question has always been which type of change provides the most appropriate context for understanding temperance reformers. Temperance historians have generally agreed that the movement was produced by nineteenth-century industrialization and urbaniza¬ tion, but there has been considerable disagreement over the specific issue of which of the many changes attendant upon these meta¬ changes was responsible. Status shifts,18 class conflict,19 and the de¬ velopment of bourgeois values20 have recently been put forward as candidates. A corollary question is whether there has been a single temperance-prohibition movement produced by a single long-term change21 or a series of different movements with different constitu¬ encies, goals, and strategies, each the product of a different social context.22 Since social change can only be expressed through social structure, the proper strategy for study of temperance reformers is to examine them within their respective social structures. Only by so doing can we fully identify temperance reformers by systematically comparing their backgrounds and behavior with those of their contemporaries. And only then can we assess the differential effects of various kinds of so¬ cial change. This effort to place temperance reformers in social context is the main thrust of the essays in this volume focusing upon the temperance movement. By studying no-license men and their opponents in an industrializing community, Ian R. Tyrrell shows that early nine¬ teenth-century temperance supporters, like abolitionists, stood in the vanguard of social change. His discussion of the motives for support of no-license by farmers, industrial entrepreneurs, and industrial workers takes us a long step forward in understanding the connec¬ tions between economic change, cultural change, and temperance re¬ form. In a less theoretical piece, Charles A. Isetts examines the social standing of women temperance reformers within the context of their community social system. Comparison of Tyrrell’s and Isetts’ findings suggests a contraction in the sources of temperance support from the early to late nineteenth century.23 One way to resolve this issue would be to meet the most urgent need in temperance movement studies today, a systematic, long-term, community-based study of the Inde¬ pendent Order of Good Templars.2