NCJ Number
132556
Date Published
1989
Length
296 pages
Annotation
This history of alcohol reform and prohibition from 1800 to 1930 argues that wealthy and powerful Americans played critical roles in establishing and supporting the prohibition movement and that they did so out of their larger efforts to transform the country into an industrial capitalist social order.
Abstract
For over 100 years, employers participated in the temperance crusade because of their concern with the behavior and lifestyles of workers. Capitalists insisted that churches and other morally uplifting institutions were much better places than taverns and saloons for workers to spend their time. Employers believed that workers who did not drink were usually more efficient, disciplined, easier to manage and control, and less likely to make trouble on the job than workers who did drink. The author clearly views temperance ideology as based on fantasy and delusion about the capacity of American capitalism and the effects of drink and abstinence. Part one of the book covers the alcohol reform movement from 1800 to 1870 and emphasizes the social and ideological origins of such reform, the politics of moral reform, and social class and nonpartisanship in the temperance movement. Part two discusses temperance and the industrialization process from 1870 to 1884 and liquor control efforts between 1880 and 1890. The final two parts deal with the emergence and failure of antisaloonism from 1890 to 1914 and the re-emergence of prohibition from 1914 to 1919. Notes, sources, and index