Negative Space: America
- Alcohol Use in Euro-American Societies
- Among the interesting bits here is a catfight between William Madsen and Patricia O. Sadler on whether or not Alcoholics Anonymous is a “crisis cult” and can reasonably be compared to them. Otherwise, what we’ve got here is why the Irish drink, why the Jews don’t, and why the French are good at it.
- America’s Drug Users
- Opium was prohibited because it was used by Orientals and cocaine because it was perceived as a Negro drug. More specifically, racist views of the time saw these peoples as less able to resist the criminalizing effects of drug use. Jazz was similarly stereotyped.
- The Antiliquor Response: The Origins of the Temperance Movement
- It wasn’t long before democratic government attracted “stewards”: politicians who “honestly thought that they knew best how to order the affairs of others”.
- Appendix: Apparent Consumption of Alcoholic Beverages
- Apparent Consumption of Alcoholic Beverages and Absolute Alcohol in Each Class of Beverage, in U.S. Gallons per Capita of the Drinking-age Population, U.S.A. 1790-1978
- Bad Beer and “Hot Waters”: The First American Beverages
- As the settlers settled, they turned to local ingredients or planted foreign fruits in order to make applejack, mead, perry, and peach brandies.
- Cannabis Comes to the New World
- As with other countries, Americans had to be nearly forced to grow hemp. Drugs such as tobacco were far more lucrative than rope. War changed that temporarily, and at one point we even used hemp as money.
- Capitalism, Religion, and Reform: The Social History of Temperance in Harvey, Illinois
- Ray Hutchison writes about the “conflicts between divergent subcultures in American society” that would eventually result in prohibition. Temperance communities may have been about keeping alcohol out, or they may have been about keeping Eastern Europeans out.
- Common Sense
- The document that started the American Revolution in the minds of the colonists.
- Common Sense: The Present Ability of America: With Some Miscellaneous Reflections
- The document that started the American Revolution in the minds of the colonists. Discusses America’s ability to raise a navy.
- Common Sense: Thoughts on the Present State of American Affairs
- The document that started the American Revolution in the minds of the colonists. Discusses the irreconcilable differences between England and America.
- The Constitution of the United States
- The Constitution of the United States of America, including the Bill of Rights and other amendments.
- Decay from Within: The Inevitable Doom of the American Saloon
- Madelon Powers notes that it was the existing decline of the saloon that may have made prohibition possible.
- The Decline of Temperance
- Prohibition killed temperance.
- Drier and Drier, and Wetter and Wetter: Drinking and the Pluralist Renaissance
- Prohibition lobbyists screamed that liberalizing drinking laws would mean blood in the streets; but ending prohibition on alcohol didn’t increase violence or crime any more than liberalized concealed carry has. But fears of angry drunken blacks didn’t stop repeal, and the day after prohibition ended was just another day.
- Drinkers and Reformers: The Origins of Postbellum Temperance
- When voters start doing things you don’t like, call them unpatriotic and their actions a danger to public morals. Nineteenth-century prohibition advocates sound like Reagan-era prohibition advocates when they argue that people who use recreational drugs responsibly are a danger to the nation: they set a poor example. It’s a circular argument: they set a poor example because drinking is bad; their drinking is bad because it sets a poor example.
- Drinking in America: A History
- Mark Edward Lender & James Kirby Martin. The Free Press, New York, 1982. Seems almost pro-prohibition, and definitely pro-temperance, possibly even pro-legal-system-controlled temperance.
- Dry Debacle
- Presaging what was to end national prohibition, state interest in prohibition faded whenever there were real problems to deal with, such as slavery and secession.
- The Dry Offensive: The 1870s and 1880s
- From its beginnings, state-run public education was used as a means of shaping policy by indoctrinating students towards a particular view.
- The End of an Era
- I suspect that while the “new” drinks did come with fewer social norms to control their usage, we were also seeing worries about the drugs that other people use, especially those other people who couldn’t afford beer and wine.
- Epilogue: The Age of Ambivalence
- Following repeal, alcohol sales helped pay our way out of the Great Depression.
- The Exceptions: Indians and Blacks
- Whites were not allowed to sell liquor to blacks; and Europeans quickly took on an a paternal attitude at best towards the Natives.
- From Fasting to Abstinence: The Origins of the American Temperance Movement
- Joel Bernard writes about the “cranky fad” of enforced temperance: how it came to be so popular. Racism, of course, figured strongly.
- Hashish in America
- It isn’t surprising that early experimenters might find themselves mildly addicted to marijuana: some samples turned out to have up to 25% opium! Rumors also that the Pentagon is built on a great dope farm.
- Hillsboro, Ohio, 1873
- Early public protests took forms we recognize today as sit-ins and demonstrations such as those used by anti-war protesters and anti-abortion protesters.
- Immigration and Antebellum Drinking
- German immigrants adapted their favorite lagers to the needs of native-born Americans, resulting in the “light-bodied, golden brew popular today”.
- The Many Worlds of Drink in Europe and America
- Drinking in the western world was heavily influenced by the public house: the bar, tavern, or saloon.
- Metamorphosis: From “Good Creature” to “Demon Rum,” 1790-1860
- Desire for temperance led to desire for the complete abstinence from liquor; from liquor abstinence arose desire for abstinence from any alcoholic beverage. From calls for abstinence there arose calls for discouragement and finally prohibition.
- Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass, an American slave
-
Not only does slavery make life worse for slaves, it doesn’t make life better for slave-owners. And the ultimate freedom is freedom to learn.
- A Nation of Drug Takers
- When America discovered that there were foreigners in the country, they conveniently forgot how recently they themselves had come over; the drugs those foreigners used became illegal. At first the laws targeted specific races; in time, the laws targeted everyone.
- National Desk
- Hard-hitting journalism from your completely un-biased (pinky swear!) reporters in Walkerville, VA.
- The New Society, Booze, and Social Disorder
- Like those who promise to leave the country when the other candidate is elected president, Ford did not stop automobile production when repeal ended prohibition.
- Not Quite Dry: Neorepublicans in a Changing America
- Prohibition itself stimulated drinking as a status-based consumer activity.
- Plymouth, 1621
- Alcoholic beverages were a health necessity to the first European immigrants, who didn’t understand at first that water could also be a beverage.
- Portland, Maine, 1851
- Portland’s mayor Neal Dow was among the first to confuse virtue (temperance) with law (prohibition).
- Public Health, Public Morals, and Public Order: Social Science and Liquor Control in Massachusetts, 1880-1916
- Thomas F. Babor and Barbara G. Rosenkrantz note some of the battling studies in the nineteenth century; as usual there was a concentration on what I call the life preserver phenomenon: studies that focus on drownings will show that there is a much higher percentage of life preservers either nearby or in possession of the deceased.
- Puritans in Taverns: Law and Popular Culture in Colonial Massachusetts, 1630-1720
- David W. Conroy writes about the political influence of the tavern in local politics.
- Redeeming the Lost: Revivalists and Republicans
- Prohibition forces were also often anti-immigration forces. Germans and Irish might have been open to calls for moderation, but not to calls for full prohibition.
- The Return of “the Traffic”
- Taxes are apparently a good way to deal with the problems of drug use—as long as we’re willing to collect them.
- A return to dictator-friendly diplomacy?
- Is the United States returning to propping up strong-men in its foreign relations?
- The Rise of “the Demon”: Early Distilling
- The lack of good beer turned the colonists more and more to rum, and rum was a gateway drug to whiskey.
- Search for Consensus: Drinking and the War Against Pluralism, 1860-1920
- Home protection was the slogan of the anti-immigration and pro-prohibition forces; on the surface it was about saving homes from the drunken father; but that drunken father was often “a low class of foreigner”.
- Strong Drink, Strong Drinkers
- High taxes on alcohol first created rebellion; when rebellion ended, the black market began.
- Superman: An American Myth in the Movies
- Superman is an embodiment of classic American myths. He is the small town boy who comes to the big city to make a place for himself, yet never forgets his roots. He is the self-made man who can rise to become the best at his job, yet does not become corrupted. He is the man who gives up everything for the woman he loves. He is the legendary champion of Democracy: the mythic hero fighting a “never-ending battle for truth, justice, and the American way.”
- The “Good Creature of God”: Drinking in Early America
- Far away from traditional beer and wine sources, the colonies saw a lot of distilled liquor. Being on the rum route probably didn’t help.
- “Pure Water”: Temperance Becomes Total Abstinence
- As alcohol became more easily available, people drank less on average. It was no longer a draw for employers to offer alcohol on the job. But nobody stopped drinking, and that bothered prohibition advocates, for whome it was the government’s duty to take care of its citizens by infringing the rights of individuals.
- “Wo to Drunkards”: Early Use and Abuse
- Alcoholic beverages were used in political gatherings, social gatherings, and even training gatherings.
