_Extent and Effect of the Traffic at Flood Tide_
In 1648 one-fourth of the buildings of New Amsterdam, or New York, were
tap-houses.
In his notes on Virginia, Jefferson states that in 1682 there were in
Virginia fifty-three thousand, two hundred and eighty-nine free males
above twenty-one years of age and one hundred and ninety-one taverns.
About this time their number was so great that they were limited by law
in each county to one at the court house and one at the ferry.
The diary of Judge Sewall shows that in 1714 Boston had a population of
ten thousand, with thirty-four ordinaries, of whom twelve were women;
four common victuallers, of whom one was a woman; forty-one retailers
of liquor, of whom seventeen were women, and a few cider sellers.
As soon as the white settlers had planted themselves at Pittsburgh they
made requisition on Philadelphia for six thousand kegs of flour and
three thousand kegs of whiskey. There were distilleries on nearly every
stream emptying into the Monongahela.
The Chicago directory for 1830 classified its business interests as
taverns, two; Indian traders, three; butchers, one; merchants, one;
with a poll list of thirty-two voters.
So much seed sown from the earliest times produced a bountiful harvest.
In 1633 Winthrop complains that workmen were idle in spite of high
wages because they spent so much in tobacco and strong waters. About
this time drunkenness greatly increased and deprived the custom of
bundling of whatever innocence it may have had remaining.
Josselyn, in 1675, gives a graphic description of the extravagance
and drunkenness of the cod fishermen, stating that at the end of each
voyage they drank up their earnings. In this year Cotton Mather said
every house in Boston was an ale house. In 1696 Nathaniel Saltonstall,
of Haverhill, Massachusetts, a judge who had refused to sit in the
Salem witchcraft cases, wrote a letter to the Salem court remonstrating
against licensing public houses. In 1678 Dr. Increase Mather said:
"Many of the rising generation are profane, drunkards, swearers
licentious and scoffers at the power of godliness." Dankers and
Sluyter, in 1680, comment on the puritanical laws and say, "drinking
and fighting occur there not less than elsewhere and as to truth and
true godliness you must not expect more of them than of others."
The Reverend John Miller, in his history of New York, says: "'Tis in
this country a common thing even for the meanest persons as soon as the
bounty of God has furnished them with a bountiful crop to turn what
they can as soon as may be into money, and that money into drinks,
at the same time when their family at home have nothing but rags to
resist the winter's cold; nay if the fruits of their plantations be
such as are by their own immediate labor convertible into liquor such
as cider, perry, etc., they have scarce the patience to wait till
it is fit for drinking but inviting their boon companions they all
of them neglecting whatever work they are about, set to it together
and give not over till they have drunk it off. And to these sottish
engagements they will make nothing to ride ten or fifteen miles and at
the conclusion of one debauch another is generally appointed except
their stock of liquor fail them." In his history of New Haven Henry
Atwater states: "A brew-house was regarded as an essential part of a
homestead, and beer was on the table as regularly as bread." When in
Stuyvesant's day it was reported that fully one-fourth of the houses in
New Amsterdam were devoted to the sale of brandy, tobacco, and beer,
Mr. Roberts observed:
"Their existence tells the story of the habits of the people. It was
when Governor Sloughter was besotted with drink that he signed the
illegal death warrant of Leisler; it was when the informer Kane was
possessed by the fumes of liquor of the tavern, that he foisted upon
the terrified colonists the lying details of the shameful negro plot;
it was when the representative of the most powerful family in the
province, Chief Justice DeLancey, and Governor Clinton, the proxy
of the King, were 'in their cups' that a personal quarrel led to
antagonisms that threatened the welfare of the colony. Indeed the deep
hold that this vice had upon the morals of the entire colony seemed to
repeat and emphasize the wisdom of the name which the earlier Spanish
in an intercourse had fastened upon its leading town--Monafos--'the
place of the drunken men.'"
_Whiskey as Money_
In a large part of the territory now the United States the early
settlers lived in the rudest kind of log cabins and knew no other
money than whiskey and the skins of wild beasts. In 1780, after the
collapse of the continental currency, it seemed there was no money in
the country, and in the absence of a circulating medium there was a
reversion to the practice of barter, and the revival of business was
thus further impeded. Whiskey in North Carolina and tobacco in Virginia
did duty as measures of value. In Pennsylvania what a bank bill was
at Philadelphia or a shilling piece at Lancaster, whiskey was in the
towns and villages that lay along the banks of the Monongahela river.
It was the money, the circulating medium of the country. A gallon of
good whiskey at every store in Pittsburgh, and at every farmhouse in
the four counties of Washington, Westmoreland, Alleghany, and Fayette,
was the equivalent of a shilling. And when, in 1797, the government
began to coin new money for the people, the new coins did not, many
of them, go far from the seaports and great towns. In the country
districts, in the Ohio valley, on the northern border they were still
unknown. The school-master received his pittance in French crowns and
Spanish half-joes. The boatmen were paid their hire in shillings and
pence, and if perchance some traveler paid his reckoning at a tavern
with a few American coins, they were beheld with wonder by every
lounger who came there to smoke and drink.
_Temperance Societies_
The first prohibitory law was that of Georgia, in 1733, and the first
dawn of temperance sentiment was undoubtedly the pledge of Governor
Winthrop, still earlier than this, when he announced his famous
discountenance of health drinking. This first of all temperance pledges
in New England is recorded in his diary in language as temperate as his
intent:
"The Governor, upon consideration of the inconveniences which have
grown in New England by drinking one to another, restrained it at his
own table, and wished others to do the like; so it grew little by
little, into disuse."
Lyman Beecher claims the Massachusetts temperance society formed
in 1813 to be the first one, the pledge of its members being to
discontinue the use of liquor at entertainments, funerals, and auction
sales, and to abstain from furnishing laborers with grog during haying
time, as was then the custom. John B. Gough, however, mentions the
constitution of a temperance society formed in New York in 1809, one
of whose by-laws was, "Any member of this association who shall be
convicted of intoxication shall be fined a quarter of a dollar, except
such act of intoxication shall take place on the Fourth of July, or
any other regularly appointed military muster."
In 1817 a committee of New York citizens appointed to investigate the
causes of pauperism reported that seven-eighths of the paupers were
reduced to abject poverty by the sale of liquor. As far back as 1809
the Humane Society found eighteen hundred licensed dramshops scattered
over the city, retailing liquor in small quantities, and offering every
inducement to the poor to drink.
New Hampshire required a selectman of each town to post the names of
tipplers in every tavern and fined anyone ten dollars who sold them
liquor. About this same time the legislature of Pennsylvania passed
a law authorizing the governor to appoint a commission of nine to
investigate the causes of pauperism in Philadelphia, and to report
to the next legislature. The farmers of Upper Providence township,
Pennsylvania, met in the school house just before harvest time and
agreed not to give liquor to their harvest hands, nor to use it in
the hay field or during harvest, nor to allow any one in their employ
to use it. A general movement for temperance swept over the Atlantic
states. The Portland Society, auxiliary to the Massachusetts Society
for Suppressing Intemperance, reported that out of eighty-five persons
in the workhouse, seventy-one became paupers through drink. A grand
jury at Albany drew a picture of their city quite as dismal, and
presented the immense number of dramshops and corner groceries where
liquor was retailed by the cent's worth as an evil and a nuisance to
society.
One of the most interesting documents in early temperance agitation is
the letter of the mayor of Philadelphia in 1821, showing the condition
of the liquor traffic at that time. He pointed out the dangers of the
tippling houses and corner groceries, where liquor was sold by the
cent's worth to children five years old, and paid for often with stolen
goods.
The liquor traffic left an indelible impress upon the geography of
the country. The oldest American reference to the word RUM is in the
Massachusetts statute of 1657 prohibiting the sale of strong liquors
"whether known by the name of rum, strong water, brandywine, etc." The
Dutch in New York called rum brandywine, and it conferred its name upon
the river which in turn gave its name to one of the most famous battles
of the Revolution. Among places may be found such names as Rumford,
Wineland, Winesburg, and others.
When in 1828 Mr. Garrison assumed the editorial control of the _Journal
of the Times_ at Bennington, Vermont, he distinctly avowed that he
had three objects in view, "The suppression of Intemperance and its
associate vices, the gradual emancipation of every slave in the
Republic, the perpetuity of the national peace." He contributed to the
third object; he accomplished the second; the first problem he left
unsolved as a bequest to this generation.
Transcribers' Notes
Punctuation and spelling were made consistent when a predominant
preference was found in this book; otherwise they were not changed.
Simple typographical errors were corrected; occasional unbalanced
quotation marks retained.
Ambiguous hyphens at the ends of lines were retained.
Page 84: "seargeant" was spelled that way.
Page 115: The closing quotation mark for the phrase beginning 'and "Tom
the Tinker was shortly evolved' probably should follow 'the Tinker', but
was printed at the end of the sentence, and has not been moved.