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Selected Papers of William L. White Selected Papers of William L. White www.williamwhitepapers.com Collected papers, interviews, video presentations, photos, and archival documents on the history of addiction treatment and recovery in America. Citation: White, W. (2014). The roaring twenties: A Noble Experiment changes America’s drinking patterns. Posted at www.williamwhitepapers.com The Roaring Twenties: A Noble Experiment Changes America’s Drinking Patterns William L. White Emeritus Senior Research Consultant Chestnut Health Systems [email protected] NOTE: The original 1,000+ page manuscript for Slaying the Dragon: The History of Addiction Treatment and Recovery in America had to be cut by more than half before its first publication in 1998. This is an edited excerpt that was deleted from the original manuscript. If you think this country ain't dry, just watch latter added fuel to the drive for alcohol 'em vote; if you think this country ain't wet, prohibition. just watch 'em drink. Will Rogers (Cited in America’s new immigrants clustered Sinclair, 1962, p. 195) in urban industrial areas, where the number of saloons doubled between 1880 and 1900 The Prohibition Context (Mendelson and Mello, 1985). Nowhere was the change in the urban landscape more The story of alcohol and other drug visible than in the areas that came to be prohibition movements that reached their known as “Skid Rows.” The term "Skid Row" peak in the early 1920s cannot be told dates to 1852 In Seattle, Washington. A without mention of the broader sawmill built in Pioneer Square near Puget transformations that were taking place in Sound used skids (tracks of peeled logs) to American culture. The alcohol and drug carry the timber to the mill. This area, which prohibition movements of the early 20th later became home to vagrants and destitute century reflect many larger stories. alcoholics, was known as Skid Road—and The prohibition movements reflect a later shortened to "Skid Row." A similar story of changing American demography. name was "the Bowery," a term that Seven million immigrants entered the United originally referred to a 16-block street on the States between 1865 and 1900, nearly half lower East Side of Manhattan in New York coming from Germany and Ireland. They City. The terms “Skid Row” and “Bowery” brought with them their labor and their were picked up by the national press to tendency to drink alcohol. The former describe the blighted city areas frequented helped fuel the industrial revolution, and the by alcoholics. The terms were applied to city williamwhitepapers.com 1 neighborhoods characterized by vagrants, drive was exactly what it represented itself to alcoholics, cheap hotels and lodging houses, be: an attempt to solve the problems that bars, brothels, temporary employment alcohol was creating for individuals, families, agencies, pawnshops, second-hand stores, and communities. soup kitchens, and missions. The Skid Row The fact that the prohibition and Bowery neighborhoods—and those who movement had its symbolic aspects lived there—seemed to be in the last stages shouldn’t cloud the facts that, in the decade of deterioration (Abel, 1987; Fleming, 1975; before the Eighteenth Amendment, per- Levinson, 1974). The number of these areas capita alcohol consumption had reached its in America grew dramatically between 1870 highest level in more than 50 years and and the turn of the century. alcohol-related problems were becoming The Skid-Row alcoholic, and the increasingly visible. (Blocker, 1979). In spite broader problem of increased public of the fact that America continued her intoxication, attracted more and more civic love/hate relationship with alcohol after its attention and civic resources during the last enactment, prohibition was one way the half of the 19th century. Concern with the country could address these problems by chronic alcoholic was the centerpiece of saying, “Enough!” growing worries about public order. Responsibility for public inebriates placed The Final Prohibition Campaign pressure on local police, who in turn generated pressure for new local community Although the drive to legally prohibit remedies to the problem of chronic the sale of alcohol ebbed and flowed alcoholism. The climate was ripe for the between 1850 and 1900, a new combination emergence of a new institution: the urban of arguments and circumstances in the first rescue mission. two decades of the 20th century led to the This growing national focus on urban final success of this movement. The major problems was a signal that something was thrusts of these arguments were the fundamentally shifting in America, and the following. nature of that shift became evident in the 1920 census. For the first time in American 1. Alcohol is an evil substance that history, more people lived in cities than in contributes to personal debauchery rural areas. America was shifting from a and social disorder. This argument had rural to an urban culture, and the battle over its origin in the 19th-century alcohol served perhaps more than any other temperance movement’s struggle to absorb the struggle to see who would between the rural Protestant farming shape America’s social and moral norms. class and the urban Catholic industrial The prohibition debate, like the “Scopes class. Gusfield’s important study, The Monkey Trial” in 1925, was filled with Symbolic Crusade, presents prohibition disguised, “coded” language that allowed as a movement by the former to control much larger social issues to be played out in the latter. symbols and metaphors. The prohibition movement—and the repeal movement that 2. All other American social reform followed—reflect larger stories. These movements depend on alcohol social movements were carried by broader prohibition. The drive to prohibit the reform movement currents and filtered sale of alcohol unfolded in an era of through stormy world events. World War I reform never before seen in America. set the climate for the beginning of Alcohol prohibition arose among prohibition, and the Great Depression set the progressive movements to address climate for its end. But one should be careful such issues as civil rights, women's not to read too much into the larger forces suffrage, child labor, anti-trust that fueled the drive toward alcohol legislation, universal public education, prohibition. At its most central point, this conservation, social services for unwed williamwhitepapers.com 2 mothers and prostitutes, and prison While these were presented as reform. Alcohol laws unfolded rational arguments for alcohol prohibition, alongside parallel movements to ban the campaign to instill these beliefs was other drugs and behavior whose anything but rational. Like the prohibitionist morality was in question. “Blue laws” campaigns described in earlier chapters, the defined what people could and could campaign for alcohol prohibition used quite not do on Sundays, and other proposed inflammatory themes and images. laws sought to enforce standards of The mainstream temperance propriety in music, dress, and dance. movement, reflected in the WCTU and other Alcohol reform was only one thread in women's temperance organizations, a broader tapestry of American reform attacked alcohol for its role in corrupting the movements—but it was portrayed as morals of young women and in drawing the thread upon which the success of women into white slavery. This media all others relied. campaign helped create a sexual double standard based on the idea that men were 3. America’s industrial success hinges on lustful and women were pure. This meant the effective prohibition of alcohol. The that it was the job of the latter—whose call for alcohol prohibition came in the sexual desires did not exist—to restrain the middle of the rising American industrial former—whose sexual desires were revolution. Nothing was to interfere insatiable. Alcohol and other drugs, it was with the business of business. America argued, were the method by which otherwise was shifting from a self-employed pure women were emotionally seduced and artisan workforce (characterized by deflowered. In this view, alcohol prohibition “alternating periods of frenetic was necessary for the protection of production and self-declared holidays”) American womanhood. to an organized industrial workforce In another posted excerpt, we looked that demanded consistent sobriety and at the role of racism in the anti-opium productivity. To make this shift, the movements of the mid-1870s and the anti- capitalist economy demanded that the cocaine movements of the late 1800s and problem of alcohol-related worker early 1900s. The theme of linking a drug impairment be brought under control targeted for prohibition with a politically and—wherever possible—eliminated powerless minority or a foreign enemy (Steinsapir, 1983). Nothing—not even continued in the drive toward alcohol alcohol—would be allowed to threaten prohibition. Racial animosity and fear was productivity and profit. Alcohol exploited by groups like the Anti-Saloon threatened industrial efficiency and League, particularly in the South. The safety, and money spent on alcohol demeaning and stereotypical portrayal of was money that couldn't be spent on Blacks in this campaign was evident in the other manufactured goods. America's literature and the public pronouncements of industrialists—the Rockefellers, the the prohibition leaders. Liquor, as the story Fords, the DuPonts—passionately went, encouraged the Black man to "loose supported prohibition and waged a his libido on White women, incited....by the campaign to change their employees’ nudes on the labels of whiskey bottles." historical view of alcohol as an There were particular products, such as Mr. entitlement and a reward for hard work. Levy’s “Nigger Gin,” that were singled out for attack in this campaign. A 1908 report in Collier’s Weekly Magazine was typical of 4. Alcohol prohibition is essential as an these attacks. emergency wartime measure. Alcohol prohibition was presented as essential In every negro dive of the South, they sell for victory in World War I.
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