by gillmang » Thu Jan 17, 2008 10:03 am
Virginia sounds lovely, one day I'd like to spend some time there.
In reading numerous whiskey-related articles from on-line newspapers in the 1800's, I come away with an abiding impression how strong the temperance cause became as the decades wore on. And it was not just something based on the support of rural churches. There was a sense I can only call "modernist" that informed commentary in the larger centers too which went against the culture of drinking and saloons.
"King alcohol" was seen as antithetical to a society trying to create prosperous, well-regulated families. The saloon is pictured as a pure money machine, where men were forced to drink in a machine-like way without the comforts of family or communitarian spirit such as the churches and fraternal societies provided. Drinking is portrayed as occurring always in excess - to drink in America then judging by these screeds, was to get drunk almost automatically. Surely this was an exaggeration but also no doubt contained a lot of truth.
So, even the sophisticated urban viewpoint seemed, if not always in tune with Prohibitionism, somewhat sympathetic to it and certainly unwilling to stand strongly against it.
The arrival of Germans in the big cities with their cultures of beer gardens and lager beer saloons confounded for a time the Prohibition group. The beer gardens were places where families went, often after church on Sunday. It is clear that this social practice was hard to understand for the Prohibitionist mind. Either it was criticized as no better than the excesses of pre-exisiting saloon culture, with comments made on the amount of drinking that sometimes occurred (e.g., men drinking 30 or 50 glasses of beer in a session), or something that would lead people down the, well, garden path. Instead of being a model for Americans to emulate (since the German immigrants are well known for their industry and subsequent uncountable contributions to America and its prosperity), the approach to alcohol of these and other immigrant communities, based too mostly on wine or beer, was derided or ignored.
There is a particular fervour (but not always religious-based as I say) in the anti-alcohol crusade that comes through many of the tracts. It is akin today to the anti-smoking drive and to a degree to the environmental agitations. It became "the thing" in the later 1800's and even urban-oriented newspapers seemed afraid to be openly critical of the Prohibition mentality. It is no less clear that alcohol continued to be sold and advertised where permitted, as appears from numerous liquor ads that appear right though the 1800's, often in ways that little differentiate them from today's ads (serially listing rye, bourbon, their version of blends, Cognac, Champagne, Port, rums, Guinness Stout, Bass Ale, and so it goes - not that much as changed including as to aging).
Sometimes an interest in drinking subjects was conveyed subtly, as e.g., an article that treated of the supposed "day-after" remedies, which managed through this to convey many of the drinks current in the 1880's (most are known today like Martini and Manhattan although "Whiskey Skin" has disappeared). It will come as no surprise that the multiplicity of remedies was as large then as now, with as much skepticism whether any of them worked!
Reading so much Prohibition-boosting material, one comes away in part sympathetic to it. There was a concern, very real and understandable, not to see the young, especially, hurt their health and careers. Too many stories abounded of families hurt and destroyed in fact by alcohol. The reformers' solution then was to ban it. It didn't work, ultimately. A more nuanced solution would have been to encourage alcohol education. But such devices of sociology and modern education were beyond the abilities or interests at any rate of the zealots who ran and organised the Prohibition campaigns. It became an all-or-nothing proposition ultimately, with the consequences (not all bad of course) we know..
Gary