Read Online Prohibition: Thirteen Years That Changed America by Edward Behr - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Edward Behr
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unthinkable. If Prohibition was — as the excesses of the nineteenth-century preachers showed — a confused, inchoate search for material as well as spiritual order in American life, the massive influx first of beer-drinkingGermans, then of beer- and whiskey-swilling Irish, and finally of wine-drinking Italians made it at the turn of the century look like a hopeless, long-lost cause.
But the Prohibition movement would soon develop a new, and formidable, weapon. The broad-based Anti-Saloon League (ASL), established in 1893, was dependent neither on women (though it welcomed their participation) nor on political parties. Although its board of directors consisted of leading representatives of the Protestant Church, which raised considerable funds for the ASL, church control was nominal. Decision-making was in the hands of a new breed of Americans — business-oriented, sophisticated, and almost self-consciously “modern.” Religious fanatics were kept at arm’s length.
The ASL’s slow but inexorable Prohibition campaign, one of the most exemplary lobbying feats the world has ever seen, was enormously helped by the turn-of-the-century industrial revolution boom and its attendant communications revolution, bringing railroads to the remotest parts of the Northwest, then street-cars and electricity to the cities. With this revolutionary urban change came the predatory monopolies, and increasingly profit-oriented manufacturers. These in turn gave new strength to all those campaigning against child-labor abuses and for shorter working hours. The new breed of do-gooders also included socially conscious drys, intent on preserving both the physical and moral health of workers.
The “whiskey tents” of railroad workers; the rapid, nationwide industrial growth, especially in “new” territories, such as the Northwest, that had earlier been remote, rural settlements; and the influx of new Americans all contributed to a climate of fear caused by a sharp increase in crime of all types. America became increasingly aware in the nineteenth century of the havoc brought about by social and economic change: delinquency, poverty, prostitution, and excessive political corruption. It had long been a cliché that “liquor releases the brute nature in man.” It was only too easy for the new generation of Prohibitionist activists to argue that liquor provoked and exacerbated all of these scourges. In their eagerness to put an end to them, the drys demonized not only all drinkers but all saloons that dispensed liquor.
In the pre-Prohibition era, there was a saloon for every three hundred Americans, but by no means all of them corresponded to the grim picture painted by the ASL and the WCTU. Jack London described thesaloon as “a terribly wonderful place where life was different.” Coming from an underprivileged background himself, and a born outsider, he saw it as a place “where men come together to exchange ideas, to laugh and boast and dare, to relax, to forget the dull toil of tiresome nights and days.” More prosaically, a Washington State committee of prominent citizens in the 1890s wrote that the saloon “met the thirst for fellowship, or amusement and recreation.”
In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the saloon was not only the one place working-class men (the presence of women was not encouraged) got together and socialized, but it also served as their only available employment agency and club. There were newspapers, mailboxes, pencils, paper, bulletin boards advertising jobs, card tables, and sometimes bowling alleys and billiard tables. The saloons also served the much decried “free lunch,” which although invariably salty to stimulate thirst was often of reasonable quality. Not all saloon keepers were ogres, throwing out those who cost more in food than they paid back in drink. And although prostitutes used some saloons to ply their trade, most saloons did not countenance their presence, and on weekends
But the Prohibition movement would soon develop a new, and formidable, weapon. The broad-based Anti-Saloon League (ASL), established in 1893, was dependent neither on women (though it welcomed their participation) nor on political parties. Although its board of directors consisted of leading representatives of the Protestant Church, which raised considerable funds for the ASL, church control was nominal. Decision-making was in the hands of a new breed of Americans — business-oriented, sophisticated, and almost self-consciously “modern.” Religious fanatics were kept at arm’s length.
The ASL’s slow but inexorable Prohibition campaign, one of the most exemplary lobbying feats the world has ever seen, was enormously helped by the turn-of-the-century industrial revolution boom and its attendant communications revolution, bringing railroads to the remotest parts of the Northwest, then street-cars and electricity to the cities. With this revolutionary urban change came the predatory monopolies, and increasingly profit-oriented manufacturers. These in turn gave new strength to all those campaigning against child-labor abuses and for shorter working hours. The new breed of do-gooders also included socially conscious drys, intent on preserving both the physical and moral health of workers.
The “whiskey tents” of railroad workers; the rapid, nationwide industrial growth, especially in “new” territories, such as the Northwest, that had earlier been remote, rural settlements; and the influx of new Americans all contributed to a climate of fear caused by a sharp increase in crime of all types. America became increasingly aware in the nineteenth century of the havoc brought about by social and economic change: delinquency, poverty, prostitution, and excessive political corruption. It had long been a cliché that “liquor releases the brute nature in man.” It was only too easy for the new generation of Prohibitionist activists to argue that liquor provoked and exacerbated all of these scourges. In their eagerness to put an end to them, the drys demonized not only all drinkers but all saloons that dispensed liquor.
In the pre-Prohibition era, there was a saloon for every three hundred Americans, but by no means all of them corresponded to the grim picture painted by the ASL and the WCTU. Jack London described thesaloon as “a terribly wonderful place where life was different.” Coming from an underprivileged background himself, and a born outsider, he saw it as a place “where men come together to exchange ideas, to laugh and boast and dare, to relax, to forget the dull toil of tiresome nights and days.” More prosaically, a Washington State committee of prominent citizens in the 1890s wrote that the saloon “met the thirst for fellowship, or amusement and recreation.”
In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the saloon was not only the one place working-class men (the presence of women was not encouraged) got together and socialized, but it also served as their only available employment agency and club. There were newspapers, mailboxes, pencils, paper, bulletin boards advertising jobs, card tables, and sometimes bowling alleys and billiard tables. The saloons also served the much decried “free lunch,” which although invariably salty to stimulate thirst was often of reasonable quality. Not all saloon keepers were ogres, throwing out those who cost more in food than they paid back in drink. And although prostitutes used some saloons to ply their trade, most saloons did not countenance their presence, and on weekends
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