British Joumal of Addiction 79 (1984) 109-119,

1984 Society for the Study of Addiction to Alcohol and other Drugs,

The Alcohol Problem in America: From Temperance to

Alcoholism
Harry Gene Levine
Department of Sociology, Queens College, City University of New York, Flushing, New York 11367

Summary
This paper traces the ideology and politics of the 'liquor problem' in America from its invention or discovery at the end of the 18th century
up to the present. In tke 17th and 18th centuries akohol was highly regarded, universally consumed, and even Puritans called it 'the Good
Creature of God'. In the early 19th century, physicians and laymen developed and promulgated a new scientific and popular view of
alcohol as an addicting, toxic, and dangerously unpredictable stimulant - and they organized a mass movement to spread their ideas and
to get people to give up drinking. Throughout the 19th century, temperance supporters regularly referred to alcohol addiction as a disease
beyond the control of the will and engaged in reform and treatment efforts for habitual drunkards. They campaigned against alcohol
because they believed it to be the cause of most of the major social problems in America. In short, they made alcohol a scape-goat.
The paper then discusses the passage and repeal of national Constitutional prohibition. They should be understood in the context of the
new economic and political conditions of 20th century America especially the new power of the corporation, the decline of the old middle
class, and the rapid growth of the industrial working class. The middle class supported prohibition as a panacea for many social
problems, but the 18th Amendment's passage was achieved partly through the help of the corporate sector. Similarly, the repeal effort was
led by the key elements of the corporate rich. Repeal was passed, and alcohol regulatory systems were designed and put into place, in the
midst of the Great Depression - in large part as a response to the political forces the Depression unleashed.
Since the 1930s, concerns and policies about alcohol have focused on helping to aid the treatment and recovery of 'alcoholics'. The
paper traces the development of Alcoholics Anonymous and the spread of its ideas about alcoholism and its organizational forms; it
also briefly looks at new public health and social scientific ideas about 'alcohol problems' or 'alcohol abuse'. The paper suggests that
both alcoholism and public health conceptions have much more in common with 19th century temperance ideas than is usually thought.
Indeed, nearly alt present day ideas - like addiction - are derived from temperance ideas. Further, both 19th and 20th century
forumulations have a tendency to blame drinking and individual behaviour for many problems which have much broader political and
economic causes.

The alcohol problem, or alcohol abuse, as it is commonly

understood and talked about today, is not a thing, or a
number of things - it is a relationship. Or, more
precisely, it is the relationship one sees when one views
alcohol as the cause of many personal and social problems and many diseases and illnesses.
This medical, scientific and popular way of viewing
of alcohol is nearly 200 years old - but no older,
Contemporary ideas are continuous with those first
developed at the end of the 18th century and in the early
19th century. At that time a distinct new discourse or
paradigm on alcohol was systematically developed in
Noth America and then quickly accepted in parts of
Britain and Northern Europe, The new view identified
liquor as the cause of many undesirable, unwanted and
unhappy conditions and events (especially poverty,

crime, violence, broken families and orphaned children,

personal failure and business collapse) and also many
diseases and illnesses (including ulcers, jaundice, liver
disease, consumption, leprosy, madness, epilepsy, and
gout). Liquor, it was said, caused these various conditions and events and if drinkers abstained entirely, or
drank much less, then there would be much less incidence of all these diseases and social problems [1,2,3],
In the more extreme but often most common form of
the argument, drinking became an all purpose explanation for social problems - it became a scapegoat. For
example, a circular sent out to households in New York
State in 1832 stated:
That ardent spirit makes three-fourths of our criminals is the united testimony ofjudges and lawyers

no

Harry Gene Levine

in this country and in England. . . . Almost all cases

of murder have occurred under the influence of
alcohol. Almost all the cases of assault and battery
likewise. Those guilty of burglary, larceny, counterfeiting, riots, etc. are almost uniformly ascertained
to have destroyed their moral sensibilities and
emboldened themselves for the violation of their
countries laws by the inebriating cup [4].

drinking [6,7,8,9,1,2,3]. One historian [6] concluded

that in 1776, at the time of the War for Independence,
alcohol drinking had such an important and esteemed
place in American life that it would require a revolution
in public opinion to dislodge it.

This view of alcohol as the cause of many or even most

social problems continued throughout the 19th century
and into the 20th century. In 1919, on the day that
national Constitutional prohibition went into effect in
the United States, the famous preacher Billy Sunday
repeated before 10,000 people and a huge radio audience
the central fantasy at the heart of the temperance and
prohibition crusades:

In the 50 years between 1785 and 1835 that revolutionary transformation in ideas and conceptions about
alcohol did occur. At the beginning of that period almost
no one believed alcohol to be a dangerous or destructive
substance, and the idea of life-long abstinence from
liquor, and regular consumption of water, would have
seemed ludicrous, bizarre. At the end of that period, a
'temperance movement' advocating exactly that programme had grown into a massive reform movement.
The temperance movement demonized alcohol, literally
referring to it as a 'demonic' substance, and became the
largest enduring middle-class mass movement of the
19th century.
The intellectual and political founder of the temperance cause was Dr Benjamin Rush, an eminent American physician, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, the Physician General of the Revolutionary Army,
and the founder of a Philadelphia medical college. Rush
published a pamphlet in 1784, 'An Inquiry Into the
Effects of Ardent Spirits on the Mind and Body', outlining the fundamental themes which temperance advocates elaborated throughout the 19th century. Rush
argued that distilled liquors were physically toxic, morally destructive and addictive. Regular drinkers, he said,
ran the serious risk of many diseases (he listed jaundice,
epilepsy, madness, and diabetes among others); they also
tended to engage in many forms of antisocial, immoral
and criminal behavior. Further, he argued, regular
drinkers become 'addicted' to alcohol, and he described
alcohol addiction in the full contemporary sense of the
term: those addicted experience uncontrollable, overwhelming and irresistible desires for drink - in other
words, they experience what today is referred to as 'loss
of control'. Finally Rush called this condition a 'disease'
and recommended total abstinence as the only remedy
for the addicted individual [1,10].

The reign of tears is over. The slums will soon be a

memory. We will turn our prisons into factories and
our jails into storehouses and corncribs. Men will
walk upright now, women will smile and the children will laugh. Hell will be forever for rent [5].
Today, alcohol problems are usually discussed in somewhat less totalistic terms, but often the impression is
given that alcohol consumption accounts for a very
substantial portion of major social problems.
It is worth repeating that this entire way of discussing alcohol is no more than 200 years old. Perhaps the
single most important but difficult to grasp point about
the development of the 'liquor question' is that it did not
exist in the 17th century or for most of the 18th century.
The 'liquor problem' was not a public issue or fact of
consciousness in colonial America. In the 17th and 18th
centuries alcoholic beverages, and especially rum, were
highly esteemed and universally valued and were in no
way stigmatized or regarded as tainted or evil. All liquor
was regarded as good and healthy; alcohol was tonic,
medicine, stimulant and relaxant. It was drunk at all
hours of the day and night, by men and women of all
social classes, and it was routinely given to children.
Legal regulations and Puritan ministers commonly referred to alcoholic drink as 'the Good Creature of God.'
During the 18th century per capita consumption was
higher than in the 19th century and higher than it is
today, and drunkenness was common. New England's
Puritan ministers praised alcohol but denounced
drunkenness as a sinful and wilful misuse of the 'Good
Greature.' Most colonials, however, regarded drunkenness as unproblematic and unsurprising; drunkenness
was seen as the natural, normal and harmless result of

The Discovery of the Liquor Problem: The

Temperance Cause in the 19th Century

Following Rush's lead, physicians were among the

early temperance spokesmen and leaders. In fact, the
role of doctors was so important that one authority [11]
called the early period 'the physicians temperance movement.' Some of the most eminent physicians in the
United States were temperance supporters including

The Alcohol Problem in America

111

enslaved- hooked. Habitual drunkenness, alcohol addiction, was therefore the common result of the regular use
of alcohol.
(2) The immediate effect of alcohol, it was said, was to
weaken the moral centres of the brain and reduce
drinkers' control over their own behaviour. Alcohol
released the animal passions and the drunken man was
naturally violent. A significant portion of poverty and
crime (usually about three-fourths) was attributed to the
moral degradation caused by alcohol.
(3) Alcohol was a poison and weakened the entire
physical constitution as well as the mental and moral
faculties; it directly caused a great many diseases and it
prepared the body for many more.
Throughout the 19th century, temperance supporters defined their task as informing people about the
destructive effects of alcohol, and encouraging everyone
to give up all use of it as a beverage. In temperance
thought poverty, crime, slums, abandoned wives and
children, business failure and personal ruin were caused
by alcohol, and not by any major flaws in the structure or
Between 1825 and roughly 1836 concern about the organization of the society and economy. Liquor was a
alcohol problem grew from an elite cause to a mass scapegoat in the classical sense of the term: something to
movement of a broad cross section of the American be sacrificed in order to rid America of its major ills and
middle class. Perhaps a million and a half merchants, problems. All would be well if only the nation were
manufacturers, industrialists, commercial farmers, totally abstinent. Pamphlets, speeches, parades, novels,
politicians, lawyers, judges, physicians, teachers, minis- poems, plays, sermons, drawings, short stories, biogters, clerks, shopkeepers, skilled artisans, and their raphical and autobiographical sketches were all used to
wives, mothers, sisters and daughters took the pledge not communicate the message. Temperance organizations
to drink. Over the course of the 19th century, many more developed an array of forms: local societies; state orgaof the middle class pledged themselves to be 'teetotal- nizations; organizations of reformed drunkards; churchlers.' In the United States, the temperance and prohibi- related and denominationally-based groups; umbrella
tion causes were predominantly, and at times over- organizations to hold conventions and co-ordinate activiwhelmingly, the concern of the middle class, with fman- ties; racially and ethnically segregated groups as well as
integrated ones; fraternal societies with secret rituals and
cial support from some elements of the upper class.
costumes; male only brotherhoods; fraternal groups open
From the beginning, temperance ideology contained
to men and women; and all women's organizations. [The
a powerful strand of fantasy. For middle class men and
rise of the temperance movement, its organizations,
women temperance provided a convincing analysis of
activities, and to some extent its ideology are discussed
almost all social problems, and it helped explain the
by 6,9,13,14,15].
increasingly apparent contradiction between the middle
class's expectations for their communities and nation,
Help and reform programmes for the habitual
and the often brutal reality of life in the industrializing, drunkard, intemperate, or inebriate (all three terms were
capitalist society. For very real social and economic used), were an important part of temperance work from
problems, temperance offered demon alcohol as the the beginning. Benjamin Rush, who is most well known
major cause, and abstinence as the major solution.
today as the 'father' of American psychiatry, advised
physicians on how to cure drunkards and proposed a
By the 1830s, the essentials of temperance thought
'sober house' for treating them. During the first wave of
were worked out, and they remained the fundamental
mental asylum construction in the 1820s and 1830s a
precepts throughout the century.
(1) Alcohol, it was said, was an inherently addicting number of important physicians urged that inebriate
substance. Though apparently harmless at first, the asylums be created. In the 1870s a separate medical
demand for it increased so that one became utterly society devoted to the study and treatment of inebriety

Thomas Sewall of Washington, D.G., Ruben Mussey of

Dartmouth College, Walter Ghanning of Boston, Daniel
Drake of Ohio, and Samuel Woodward of the Worcester
asylum. Throughout the 19th century physicians were
prominent in temperance organizations, and authors of
many pamphlets and articles; they certified that alcohol
was indeed a poison and pointed out that 'toxic' was the
root of'intoxication' [11,12,1].
In the 40 years after 1784, after the first edition of
Rush's often reprinted pamphlet discouraging all use of
distilled liquor, temperance societies were founded in
many parts of the United States by physicians, ministers,
and some wealthy businessmen, merchants and large
farmers. During this period, the liquor problem was the
concern of the economic and political elite: the upper
classes were concerned about the drinking of the classes
under them. There was no clearly organized movement
and no mass constituency. Even the word 'temperance'
was ambiguous: some meant only moderation in all
beverages; some, following Rush, meant abstinence from
distilled liquor and moderation in beer and wine.

112

was created by physicians runhing inebriate treatment

homes and clinics; and a journal was established - the
Quarterly Journal of Inebriety. The most important leader
and theoretician of inebriety physicians was Dr T. D.
Grothers, who stands in relationship to his period in the
United States much as E. M. Jellinek does to his (the
1940s and 50s). Further, just as Jellinek was a strong
supporter of the alcoholism movement and of Alcoholics
Anonymous, Grothers was a staunch temperance man
who wrote regularly for 'scientific temperance' Dublications [16,17,1].
The 19th century temperance movement as a whole
had a very sympathetic and supportive attitude toward
habitual drunkards who they regarded as addicts with a
condition beyond the control of the will; often they called
this condition a disease. A number of temperance organizations were very concerned with helping inebriates to
give up alcohol and stay sober. The most well known
today of these is the Washingtonians, which flourished in
the 1840s. But more important and long lasting were the
fraternal groups which came after - especially the Sons of
Temperance and the Good Templars. These groups were
so involved in reclaiming inebriates, and had so many
reformed inebriates as members, that they were sometimes (wrongfully) thought of as societies of only reformed drunkards. In this period after the Givil War to
the end of the century there were probably more temperance people, including life-long abstainers, enrolled in
fraternal temperance groups than any other form of
temperance association. One present day erroneous view
of the 19th century temperance is that it was condemnatory and unsympathetic to the inebriate. In fact, the
opposite was true: temperance supporters were the most
sympathetic and helpful and are the true forerunners of
both Alcoholics Anonymous and of most contemporary
forms of alcoholism treatment [1].
By the 1850s, increasing numbers of temperance
supporters came to believe that some form of alcohol
prohibition was desirable. A first wave of state prohibition campaigns occurred in the 1850s, and a number of
states passed prohibition laws; almost all were overturned within a few years. A second wave of state
prohibition attempts occurred in the 1880s, and again all
but a handful were repealed in a few years.
The meaning of prohibition for the 19th century
temperance movement is a complicated and often confused issue. There were what Joseph Gusfield [14] has
termed 'assimilative' and 'coercive' tendencies - the
former based on the idea of convincing most people to
give up alcohol, and the latter of forcing them to. For
most of the 19th century assimilative reform was the

Harry Gene Levine

major tendency. The Prohibition party, formed in 1869,

was the major prohibitionist organization, and its view
was that prohibition would be brought about when
enough members of the party held state power. Its
critique of simply pressing for prohibition laws was that
they would not be enforced, and that prohibition would
therefore be discredited. In general, the 19th century
temperance movement saw prohibition being achieved
as part of a broad moral reformation of American
society, and not simply as the result of pressuring for
specific laws.
From the beginning, leadership and financial support for the anti-liquor movement came from wealthy
industrial, agricultural, and merchant businessmen. The
upper class was probably always more inclined to coercive policies than the middle class, but for most of the
19th century they did not push for prohibition laws
either. Partly that was due to the commitment of most
wealthy businessmen to the Republican party, which on
economic matters was more conservative and upperclass oriented than the prohibition party. Additionally, it
may have been that the upper class thought other
policies were more effective in insuring order and control
of workers. Thus for a variety of reasons in the 19th
century there was neither sufficient middle class nor
upper class support for a strictly prohibitionist movement. [The temperance movement after the Givil War
has never been fully covered; see: [14,9,2,18,19,20,5.]

Prohibitionism in the 20th Century

The prohibition campaign of the 20th century differed in
both ideology and organization from the 19th century
temperance movement, but it continued the politics in
which alcohol was a scapegoat and abstinence a
panacea, modified for the new conditions of the 20th
century. The most obvious difference was that one
organization alone - the Anti-Saloon League - dominated the period. In organization and purpose the ASL
was very different from 19th century groups. The ASL
defined itself as a strictly non-partisan organization and
used, and to some extent developed, modern lobbying
and pressure politics tactics. It had a large paid staff of
organizers as well as lawyers who wrote tightly constructed bills for ASL-allied legislators to push. In local,
county, statewide, and congressional elections the
League's staff would decide which candidate of the major
parties had the best chance of winning. They would
approach the candidate offering him their substantial
electioneering support if he promised to vote as they
wanted on liquor legislation. On all other matters he

The Alcohol Problem in America

could vote as he wished; it was not even necessary to be

an abstainer to get the League's support. If the leading
politician would not co-operate, the ASL would
approach the next strongest candidate and make the
same offer. In many elections, the League's support and
campaign activities would make the difference. The
ASL's strategy was extremely effective, and over the first
decade or so, one town, county, and state after another
went dry. In 1913, the Anti-Saloon League, which had
thus far worked only for local or statewide prohibition,
declared itself in favour of a prohibition amendment to
the national Gonstitution [20,21,22,13].
The change in ideology from the 19th to the 20th
century was more subtle than the change in organization, but it was no less profound. The traditional temperance issues - protecting the middle class home, defending women and children, aiding personal success and
health, reducing crime and poverty - were not eliminated. However, along side the classic issues another set
of values and concerns were raised. The prohibition
crusade was justified in terms of the needs of a new,
complex, heterogenous, class-stratified, industrial,
efTicency-oriented society of the 20th century. The new
prohibition ideology stressed the need to eliminate two
particularly nefarious institutions: the liquor industry
which was pictured as an enormously powerful and
corrupt force; and the saloon, especially the urban,
working class and immigrant drinking place [22, 21, 20].
In the 19th century, the American middle class
thought itself hegemonic; temperance was aimed at
bringing the lower classes and outsiders into the middle
class society and culture. In the 20th century, however,
the middle class of small businessmen and entrepreneurs
felt increasingly overwhelmed and displaced by the
growing corporate, industrial society. Enormous corporations called 'trusts' seemed more and more to
control America. Further, the undeniable presence of a
permanent industrial working class was shattering the
dream of America as the land where everyone could
achieve middle class success. The new industrial economy presumed a society not primarily of small
businessmen and farmers, but of workers. The old
middle class of small businessmen, and the new middle
class of professionals and technical experts, as well as
representatives of the corporations, all shared the concern with finding new ways of maintaining social,
political, and economic order. The growth of middle
class support for legislative and Gonstitutional prohibition should be understood, paradoxically, both as attacks
on the symbols of corporate capitalist society, and also as
part of a larger tendency that one historian [22] has

113

called the 'the search for order' in the early 20th century
[23,24].
The chief symbolic attack on the working class, and
to some extent a real attack on its culture and politics,
was captured in the name of the prohibitionist organization - the Anti-Saloon League. To the old 19th century
fear of the bar-room as the breeding ground of immorality and personal ruin^ was added the almost total
identification of it as alien and subversive; the saloon was
unmiddle class and unAmerican. Saloons were now not
only immoral, they were also political evils, where unions
were organized, where urban political machines purchased votes, and where anarchists and communists
found recruits. The obliteration of the saloon, it was
argued, was a precondition for the management of
America in the 20th century [22]. This anti-saloon
campaign was so successful that in 1933, when national
Gonstitutional prohibition was repealed, there was still
no one who would be the advocate for the saloon. It
remained the ultimate taboo, and in many places it is
still illegal today to call a public drinking place a saloon.
One of the ironies of the transformation of thought about
alcohol was that 'liquor' could be conquered and
domesticated - controlled - but not the 'saloon'.
Even given the remarkable vote-getting machinery
developed by the Anti-Saloon League, the use of Protestant churches to collect money and spread the word, and
the general ideological appeals to middle-class voters,
national Gonstitutional prohibition would not have been
possible without one other decisive intervention - the
support of wealthy businessmen. If there had been
significant opposition from this sector, as there was in the
19th century, prohibition never would have passed.
Instead, there was virtually no opposition from the
corporations and 'by 1915 business support of prohibition had become so crystallized that the Anti-Saloon
League was able to pass a resolution hailing the entry of
the new powerful ally into the reform' [22, p. 79]. John
D. Rockefeller and his son were the most famous
members of the corporate rich who financed and supported the prohibitionist drive.
Members and representatives of the corporate elite
supported prohibition in large part because they became
convinced they would receive substantial economic benefits from it: more sober and abstaining workers would
mean greater efficiency and productivity; less industrial
accidents would mean less money for worker's compensation and court settlements; workers would have
more money to spend on other commodities; there would
be fewer strikes and wage demands because workers
would not drink away their wages; the saloon would not

114

Harry Gene Levine

be available for unions and socialist organizations; there

would be less crime, poverty, insanity, disease, and
urban disorder and therefore lower taxes for jails, mental
hospitals, police, etc. Further, at a time when corporations were feared and widely regarded as greedy and
immoral, supporting prohibition was a way for the
corporations to deflect attention from themselves and to
demonstrate a concern for the problems of American
society. As the historian Andrew Sinclair [21, p. 107] has
suggested, 'prohibition became a sort of moral mask for
big business'. It was a way to show social and moral
concern, without having to acknowledge their responsibility for the problems [21,22,25,26].
I am not suggesting that national prohibition was a
plot of rich businessmen; indeed, many of them seemed
to have been mildly opposed to prohibition until the
Anti-Saloon League built up a sizable organization and
some states had already enacted their own prohibition
laws. Clearly the century-long middle class agitation and
obsession about demon alcohol was a necessary precondition for the passage of prohibition laws. However, I am
claiming that big business made the decisive difference,
especially after 1913, in getting the law passed and on the
books. As James Timberlake concludes, 'without their
support, national prohibition could never have attained
such power and sweep'. The Reverend Harry Emerson
Fosdick made much the same point at the time:
All the churches, social reformers, WCTU's and
Anti-Saloon Leagues in the United States never
could have put the law on the statute books had not
the business motive become involved. One of the
basic facts necessary to understand the prohibitory
campaign is that American business found it impossible to run modern machines with drinkbefuddled brains. . . . Canny, shrewd, businesslike
America, knew that it would be a good fmancial
bargain . . . [quoted in 22, p. 80].
The Prohibition Era
During the period prohibition was in effect, from 1919 to
1933, there were significant changes in drinking patterns,
as well as broader social and economic changes. There
has been a tendency to attribute everything that happened in the 1920s to prohibition.
Several important changes in drinking patterns
occurred during the prohibition era. First, there was
significantly less per capita alcohol consumption among
the working class; prohibition made alcohol expensive
and many people could not afford to drink very much.
Second, under the conditions of prohibition beer and

wine were diflicult to make and ship thus distilled

liquor, easy to produce and transport, became a more
common beverage. Third, there was the increasing
acceptance of drinking among the middle class, and
some increased consumption among the middle and
upper class youth and women. And fourth, there was the
full emergence of a new institution, 'night clubs' for the
middle and upper class which served dinner and drinks,
and had jazz music and dancing [27]. Prohibition probably had little to do with these last two trends which
were rooted in broader social and economic changes.
Much the same thing occurred in European countries at
about the same time [15].
Prohibition has usually been associated, and often
confused, with the broader social trends and transformations of the 1920s especially with regard to the middle
class. The decade marked the end of Victorianism and
the rise of a new middle-class culture and life style.
Among the things often associated with prohibition are:
the increased numbers of women smoking; the novels of
F. Scott Fitzgerald; the growth in the numbers of co-ed
college youth and the visibility of their activities; changes
in women's clothing to freer, more form-fitting styles; the
acceptance of jazz and jazz dancing by white youth; the
rapid increase in the number of automobiles which
altered family life and dating behaviour; the acceptance
of less repressive sexual standards by the middle class;
the growth of the movie industry and of mass culture
idols. Prohibition was not responsible for any of these
changes, just as it did not cause the growing acceptance
of alcohol among the middle class. They were rooted in
changes in the economy and in the emergence of a new
bureaucratic, professional and technically-trained middle class. However, as in the 19th century, alcohol served
as a readily adaptable symbol of culture and life-style;
among the middle class Victorians and rebels against
Victorianism - drinking became an emblem of the larger
changes, but it did not cause them.
One famous and real result of prohibition was the
development of a whole underground system of producing and distributing alcohol. Imported liquor, especially
smuggled in from Canada, became the choice of those
who could afford it. Several Canadian whisky corporations grew rich during the 1920s. The long and unguardable border with Canada made it easy to run a truck or
car to Canada, pick up a number of cases of liquor, and
bring them back. In larger quantities boats engaged in
the same business. Small whisky stills were rapidly built
all over the United States and eventually provided
another substantial source of alcohol. 'Bathtub gin' was
the euphemism for much of the alcohol available. In

115

The Alcohol Problem in America

almost all parts of the tJnited States, with the exception

of a few cities, alcohol production, smuggling, and
distribution was carried on by individual entrepreneurs
and small (illegal) business operations. The image of
prohibition supplied mainly by gangsters and giant
organized crime syndicates was a movie and literary
invention of later years [on the change during the 1920s
and the prohibition era see: 28,29,15,21].

Repeal
The process by which political opposition to prohibition
developed, and repeal was effected, is one of the least
understood aspects of the prohibition story. Usually
repeal is presented as the natural expression of the
General Will of an indignant citizenry who came to
realize that the 'noble experiment' had failed. In fact,
despite the open and widespread disobedience to prohibition there was virtually no organized opposition to prohibition until 1926 when one group - the Association Against
the Prohibition Amendment - took over. Just as the
Anti-Saloon League had dominated the making of
national prohibition, even more so did the AAPA manage the making of repeal. Not usually understood is that
the AAPA was organized, led and fmanced by some of
the wealthiest and most conservative men in America.
Headed by Pierre Du Pont of Dupont Chemicals, and
John J. Raskob of General Motors, the board of directors
of the AAPA included the presidents and chairmen of
many major corporations including: American Telephone and Telegraph, Southern Pacific Railroad, Goodrich Rubber, Anaconda Copper, United States Steel,
General Electric, Phillips Gas and Oil, Richfield Oil
Company, Boeing Aircraft, Marshall Field Department
Stores, and many others. The AAPA had a limited
membership, mainly extremely wealthy men tied to
major corporations, banks, and industrials representing
every aspect of the economy. One of the few big business
holdouts, the stalwart prohibitionist Henry M. Leland of
Cadillac and Lincoln Motors, described the AAPA and
the campaign for repeal as 'having more wealth behind it
than any propaganda ever inaugurated.' [31,32,33;
quote from 33, p. 87. The last two references are
prohibitionist accounts and have much information on
the economic and class interests of the AAPA].
Why did these men organize and lead the campaign
for repeal of prohibition. There are a number of reasons;
the original and perhaps always the most important for
many was economic: they believed that if liquor taxes
were restored their business and personal income taxes
would be significantly reduced. Because a substantial

portion of the federal budget had come from liquor taxes,

the passage of national income tax in 1913 had been a
precondition for the enactment of prohibition. By the
middle of the 1920s Pierre Du Pont had become convinced that if liquor taxes were restored he would pay
millions less in taxes. There is substantial evidence that a
great many other extremely wealthy men became similarly persuaded.
A second and increasingly important reason why
the corporate rich turned against prohibition was their
growing fear that disrespect for prohibition was producing widespread disrespect for all law including property
law. The key complaint made about prohibition during
the period was in effect that it produced 'lawlessness'. At
the time the phrase 'lawlessness' did not usually refer to
gangsterism or organized crime, but to the disrespect for
all law, and the loss of legitimacy of law, as a result of the
mass disobedience to national prohibition. This
problem was seriously aggravated by the Great Depression. From 1930 on, throughout the United States, there
were riots and looting by hungry men and women, as
well as mass demonstrations and rallies by the unemployed and by communists. A number of commentators
at the time concluded that the disrespect for law and
government, created by prohibition and aggravated by
the depression, was contributing to the real possibility of
revolt and revolution. Prohibition's fate was sealed in
1932, the worst year of the depression, when the long
time prohibitionist John D. Rockefeller J r came out for
repeal because he had concluded that prohibition was
seriously undermining respect for all law and order [26].
The final support for repeal was gathered using the
same sort of economic panacea claims that had long been
used by temperance supporters and prohibitionists. A
revived liquor industry, it was said, would put men back
to work, provide revenue for state and local governments, stimulate the economy and end the depression.
Just as prohibition had been promised to bring about a
new era of productivity and prosperity, repeal was
promised to do likewise.

Alcohol Control
Within a couple of years of repeal, the political-economic
organization of alcohol production and control ceased to
be a controversial issue. In fact, after so many years of
prominence, it became almost invisible. Alcohol production, especially of spirits, was quickly monopolized by a
handful of large corporations. By the end of the 1930s,
four corporations produced nearly all the distilled liquor
consumed. Beer production was divided by regions, and

116
a few companies controlled each local market. In recent
years the beer industry has become increasingly monopolized nationally and a few large corporations produce
most of the beer.
Repeal made alcohol regulation the domain of the
48 state governments. Nearly all states quickly established sophisticated regulatory apparatuses to handle the
distribution of alcohol. The general principles of what
was called 'alcohol control', the system adopted in 1934
after repeal and still in effect today, had been articulated
since the early 20th century by Americans and Europeans. Though adopted earlier in Europe and Ganada,
systematic regulatory schemes were ignored in the U.S.
until the very end of national Prohibition. In 1933,
Toward Liquor Control [34], a book sponsored by John D.
Rockefeller J r and written by two of his close and trusted
advisors, restated the fundamental principles of alcohol
control and outlined the details of a post-prohibition
regulatory policy. Newspapers, magazines and many
prominent oflicials and individuals hailed the book and
Rockefeller for sponsoring it. State legislators and government officials turned to the widely praised and
authoritative-sounding report; more than any other
proposal or plan, it shaped post-prohibition alcohol
regulation.
Gentral to what was called the 'Rockefeller plan'
was the idea that law was not the appropriate mechanism for handling most of the personal and social problems thought to result from drinking. Alcohol control
could only - and should only - be concerned with the
orderly and lawful distribution of alcohol. 'Temperance'
concerns, said Rockefeller, should be handled by
medical, educational, and religious agencies. (The creation of alcohol control is discussed in [26]).

The Alcoholism Movement

The organization which forged the post-prohibition way
of addressing some of the classic temperance concerns
was established in the late 1930s. Alcoholics Anonymous
was founded by two middle class habitual drunkards.
Bill Wilson, a stockbroker, and Dr Robert Smith. Both
were from Vermont, from old Yankee stock. Fifty years
earlier these men might well have been saved or reformed by joining temperance societies like the Good
Templars, or by forming a temperance group of their
own. At that time they would have understood their
compulsive drinking within a temperance framework as
caused by the naturally addictive character of alcohol.
By the 1930s, however, it was no longer possible to
convince many people that alcohol was inherently

Harry Gene Levine

addicting; in fact, that view had lost persuasiveness by

the end of the 19th century.
The heart of A.As reformulation of compulsive
drinking was to shift the locus of alcohol addiction from
the substance itself to the body of the individual addict.
Following the teachings of Dr William Silkworth, Wilson
and Smith maintained that people who became alcoholics had a disease - they had something wrong with their
bodies which eventually made them unable to control
their drinking. For a number of years this was likened to
an allergy, and often described as one. Once the shift was
made from viewing alcohol as universally addicting, to
regarding it as a substance which is addicting to only
some people (for as yet unknown reasons), other elements of the classic temperance position were brought
back: alcoholism was a progressive disease; the chief
symptom of it was compulsive drinking, usually defined
as the loss of control over drinking or the inability to
abstain; and the only remedy for this was life-long total
abstinence from alcohol.
The brilliantly original contribution of the founders
of Alcoholic Anonymous was to marry this 'new disease
conception' to a remarkable organizational form: a selfhelp network of 'recovered' alcoholics who frankly discussed their drinking and their lives, who helped each
other to stay off alcohol, who went to other alcoholics
offering help and a program that worked to maintain
sobriety, and improve one's life, and who did this all
'anonymously'. Again, there were real similarities to
19th century temperance activities: from the 1840s on,
temperance groups had engaged in reform and rescue
work; there had been a number of temperance groups
composed of reformed inebriates; some of the most
famous temperance lecturers had been reformed drunkards who talked frankly and graphically about their
drinking; like Alcoholic Anonymous, temperance had
also been based on the idea that giving up drinking was
the path to a happy, successful and prosperous life.
Alcoholic Anonymous, however, was only for alcoholics
and reached out only to people whose drinking seemed to
be uncontrolled, (or 'unmanageable' as they put it).
Further, it eschewed any political position or activity; the
only reason to be in Alcoholic Anonymous was to help
oneself stay sober and improve one's life, and to do so by
helping others whose drinking was beyond control.
Alcoholics Anonymous first received national attention in 1940 when John D. Rockefeller J r held a dinner
on their behalf. Rockefeller also contributed toward the
publication of a book about the lives of the first generation of alcoholics who had recovered through the programme. This was Alcoholics Anonymous, the famous 'big

The Alcohol Problem in America

117

their views of alcoholism, to institute education and

training programrhes, and to agitate for state alcoholism
programmes, patterned after one they had helped established in Connecticut.
These three groups. Alcoholic Anonymous, NCA,
and the Yale Center (which moved to Rutgers University
in 1958) formed the core of the alcoholism movement.
The leaders, organizers, and supporters were motivated
by a concern for the lot of the individual alcoholic, and
over the years they were extremely successful in winning
acceptance for the view of alcoholism as an addiction and
Journal of Studies on Alcohol was created with E. M.
Jellinek as editor. In 1943 the Yale Summer School in a disease. For example, in 1954 the American Medical
Alcohol Studies was established to spread the new Association declared alcoholism to be a disease, and at
medical and scientific wisdom. The Center, the Journal most every other form of significant institutional recogand the School became the intellectual centre of what has nization for the idea has followed [35,36,37].
since been called the 'alcoholism movement'.
Since its creation. Alcoholics Anonymous undoubThe ideas and programme of Alcoholics Anony- tably has been the most popular and successful programmous were completely compatible with those of the me of reform and change for habitual drunkards. What
researchers at Yale: both viewed alcoholism as ?i progres- has not usually been recognized, especially by its sciensive illness and an addiction and not as a moral failing; tific and medical supporters, is that much of Alcoholics
both were primarily concerned with the alcoholic indi- Anonymous most important and powerful aspects are
vidual. Because of the stigma attached to temperance or continuous with the temperance movement. The tempeprohibitionist activities, neither group wished to have rance movement created the addiction paradigm (incluanything to do with the problematic or controversial ding the idea of alcohol addiction as a compulsion to
aspects of 'non-alcoholic' drinking, or what was called drink and a progressive disease, and of total life-long
'social drinking' or 'normal drinking'; both wished to abstinence as the only remedy); temperance organizacompletely distinguish themselves from temperance or tions fully developed the notion and practice of staying
prohibitionist activities, and any other political associa- sober by aiding other drunkards - of helping oneself by
tion for that matter. In publications and public state- helping others; and temperance societies were organized
ments the researchers at Yale endorsed the ideas and around the idea that a commitnient to abstinence, and a
programme of Alcoholics Anonymous. Jellinek did his focus on the destructive consequences of drink, could
studies using Alcoholic Anonymous members and trans- provide a means for reorienting one's life, developing
lated their experiences and views into scientific and self-control, and achieving greater success and prospermedical terminology and categories. Other members and ity. Alcoholics Anonymous and the alcoholism moveassociates of the Center, notably Mark Keller, the long ment, I have suggested, reworked the 19th century ideas
time editor of the Quarterly Journal, and Selden Bacon, for and forms and adapted them to the new conditions of the
many years the director of the Center, continued cham- 20th century.'
pioning Alcoholics Anonymous in the 1950s and 1960s.
When asked recently in a personal interview what he Another Discourse: Beyond Alcoholism or
thought the most important development regarding alco- Alongside It?
hol had been since prohibition, Selden Bacon answered: Beginning about 1960, there has been another discourse
'Alcoholics Anonymous'.
book', the bible of Alcoholics Anonymous. In 1941 a long
article in the Saturday Evening Post gave them their most
important publicity boost. Since then Alcoholics Anonymous has been a household name in America.
Alcoholics Anonymous also received support from
another organization concerned with alcohol that had
originated in the late 1930s - a medical research study of
alcoholism at Yale University. Though begun as a
temporary project, it was extended and expanded to
become the Yale Center on Alcohol. In 1940 The Quarterly

In 1944 Marty Mann, an early member of Alcoholics Anonymous who had also been associated with the
Yale Center, established an organization to publicize the
new ideas about alcoholism. Originally called the
National Committee for Education on Alcoholism, its
name was changed in the 1950s to the National Council
on Alcoholism (NCA). Key leaders, including Bill Wilson from Alcoholics Anonymous, Selden Bacon from the
Yale Center, and Marty Mann, used the NCA to spread

' The relationship of A.A. and the temperance movement to

evangelical Christianity is also important. Both had origins or
roots in evangelicalism, emphasized spiritual concern, and made
the reform of inebriates a type of conversion experience. Further
both A.A., and many temperance organizations felt it important
to maintain some autonomy and distance from any particular
church or denomination. For an especially good discussion of the
spiritual elements in the A.A. programme see: Kurtz, E. (1979).
Not God: A History of Alcoholics Anonymous. Hazelden. Center City,
Minnesota.

118
on the relationship between alcohol drinking and
personal and social problems [38]. This new view on
alcohol was developed in Europe, Canada, and the
United States by alcohol researchers employing a broadly defined public health perspective; they have focused
on the problematic events and conditions resulting from
(or associated with) various kinds of 'normal drinking'
'social drinking', or 'non-addictive' drinking. These conditions and events have usually been called 'alcohol
problems', 'alcohol-related problems', 'alcohol abuse'.
They include: teenage drinking, fights or rowdiness
resulting from a drinking bout or party, much drinking
and driving, missed work or low productivity resulting
from drinking, various accidents which happen to or are
caused by drunken individuals (falls, fires, especially
from smoking), certain types of property and violent
crimes, and also the health related consequences of
heavy drinking.
This new discourse or view (it is not unified enough
to be termed a model or a paradigm) can be construed as
either competitive with alcoholism movement ideas,
or as complementary. Some of the United States researchers who first worked out the ideas (e.g. Cahalan
[39], Room collected in [40]), or who have recently
articulated developed versions of them (see especially,
Beauchamp [39]), consider their views as contrary to
alcoholism notions, and as a critique of them. However,
there is a great deal which is compatible and complementary between the two views. This is formally
recognized in the title of the United States federal agency
created in 1970 - the National Institute on Alcohol
Abuse and Alcoholism. The term 'alcohol abuse', not
much used before that time, and probably taken directly
from 'drug abuse', announced the institutionalization
once again of a concern with things beyond and other
than classical alcohol addiction.
Rather than replacing alcoholism conceptions, the
view and discourse on alcohol problems has more than
anything been a resurrection of some of the neglected
concerns of the temperance and prohibition movements.
One Finnish alcohol researcher (in a personal communication) explicitly recognized this and suggested that
to some extent he and his colleagues had taken up the
role of articulating the older temperance issues. For
example, some public health researchers and policy
analysts have urged that reducing alcohol consumption
(rather than alcohol 'misuse') again become public
policy; they recommend increasing liquor taxes and
reducing availability in order to stabilize or reduce per
capita alcohol consumption as a way of reducing a variety
of alcohol-related health and social problems, among

Harry Gene Levine

them alcoholism [41,42].

Whether the focus is on alcoholism, problem drinking, alcohol problems, alcohol abuse, or any other term,
the post-prohibition medical, social scientific, psychiatric, psychological and pubfic health discourse has much
in common with the ideas developed by the temperance
and prohibition movements. Alcohol drinking, it is said,
causes personal failure, poverty and crime; it destroys
family life, and it significantly reduces economic productivity and efficiency. As in the 19th and early 20th
centuries, discussions of alcohol problems rarely raise the
question of the social context in which these problems
occur - of what else is going on. That drinking is
associated with bad things (family violence, business
failure, unemployment, individual career failure, juvenile delinquency, teenage sexual activity, dropping out of
high school) is often taken to mean that drinking causes
them, and that if some people did not drink, or drank
less, these things would not happen, or would happen
much less. Unfortunately, there is still a strong element
of fantasy and scapegoating in discussions of alcohol
problems. Larger social, economic, and political issues
are often reduced to personal, medical, and administrative problems - they are turned into the consequences of
substance abuse.

Note
This is a substantially revised and expanded version of a
paper published with the title 'Temperance and Prohibition in America'. Edwards, G., Arif, A., Jaffe, J. (eds)
(1983). Drug Use and Misuse. Cultural Perspectives. Croom

Helm, London.
Work on this paper was supported, in part, by grants from
the CUNY Research Foundation and the National
Endowment for the Humanities.

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