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The “Poor Man's Friend”: Saloonkeepers, Workers, and the Code of Reciprocity in U.S. Barrooms, 1870–1920

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 December 2008

Madelon Powers
Madelon Powers
Affiliation:
University of New Orleans
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Type
Drinking and the Working Class
Information
International Labor and Working-Class History , Volume 45 , Spring 1994 , pp. 1 - 15
Copyright
Copyright © International Labor and Working-Class History, Inc. 1994

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References

NOTES

1. London, Jack, John Barleycorn: Alcoholic Memoirs (1913; reprint, Santa Cruz, Calif., 1981), 206–7.Google Scholar

2. Scholarly studies of the workingmen's saloon in the late nineteenth and early twnetieth centuries include Powers, Madelon Mae, “Faces Along the Bar: Lore and order in the Workingman's Saloon, 1870–1920’ (Ph. D. diss., University of California, Berkeley, 1991);Google ScholarDuis, Perry R., The Saloon: Public Drinking in Chicago and boston, 1880–1920 (Urbana, 1983);Google ScholarRosenzweig, Roy, Eight Hours for What We Will: Workers and Leisure in an Industrial City, 1870–1920 (New York, 1983);Google ScholarNoel, Thomas J., The city and the Saloon: Dencer, 1858 –1916 (Lincoln, Nebr, 1982);Google Scholar and West, Elliott, The Saloon on the Rocky Mountain Mining Frontier (Lincoln, Nebr., 1979).Google Scholar Detailed accounts of salons by men who witnessed them firsthand include Ade, George, the Old-Time Saloon: Not Wet – Not Dry, Just History (New York, 1931);Google ScholarCalkins, Raymond, ed., Substitutes for the Saloon (Boston, 1901);Google Scholar and London, John Barleycorn. Regarding the tempernce movement during the saloon period, some of the most useful studies include Blocker, Jack S. Jr., American Temperance Movements: Cycles of Reform (Boston, 1989);Google ScholarLevine, Harry Gene, “The Discovery of Addition: Changing Conceptions of Habitual Drunkennesss in America”, Journal of Studies on Alcohol 39 (January 1978): 143–74;Google Scholarclak, Norman H., Deliver Us From Evil; An Interpretation of American Prohibition (New York, 1976);Google ScholarTimberlake, James H.Prohibition and the Progressive Movement, 1900–1920 (New York, 1970);Google ScholarGusfield, Joseph R., Symbolic Crusade; Status Politics and the American Temperance Movement (Urbana, 1963);Google Scholar and Odegard, Peter H., Pressure Politoics: the Story of the Anti-saloon League (New York, 1928).Google Scholar

3. By 1909, the major brewing companies owned or controlled approximately 70 percent of the saloons nationwide, according to Timberlake, Prohibition and the Progressive Movement, 104–6. The impact of the tied-house system on the occupation of salonkeeping is analzed in Duis, The Saloon, 15–45. The working-class origin and orientation of most barkeepers is discussed in Rosenzweig, Eight Hours for What We Will, 52–53.

4. Woods, Robert A., Americans in Process: A Settlement Study (Boston, 1902), 201. For more discussion of immigrants and urban saloonsGoogle Scholar, see Duis, The Saloon, 143–57, 160–71; Rosenzweig, Eight Hours for What We Wil, 49–53, 55; Noel, , The City and the Saloon, 9, 19–21;Google Scholar and Kornblum, William, Blue Collar Community (Chicago, 1974), 77–79. The relationship between African American and their urban saloons is discussed in Duis, 157–60.Google Scholar

5. Melendy, Royal L., “The Saloon in Chicago: Part I, ”American Journal of Sociology 6 (11 1900): 298, 299, 303–4;CrossRefGoogle ScholarRichardson, Dorothy, “The Long Day: The Story of a New York Working Girl (1905)”, in Women at Work, ed. O'Neill, William L. (Chicago, 1972), 257–59, 287;Google ScholarPeiss, Kathy, Cheap Amusement: Working Women and Leisure in Turn-of-the- Century New York (Philadelphia, 1986), 90–93;Google Scholar “The Experience and Observations of a New York Saloon-Keeper as Told by Himself”, McClure's Magazine 32 (January 1909):311; Calkins, Substitutes for the Saloon, 15 For my assessment of the few scattered references I have found regarding women in saloons, see Powers, Madelon, “Rooftop Parties and Backroom Trysts: Women, Public Drinking, and Working-Class Saloons, 1890–1920” (unpublished paper, 1993).Google Scholar

6. Hapgood, Hutchins, “McSorley's Saloon”, Harper's Weekly (10 25, 1913): 15;Google Scholar Ade, Old-Time Saloon, 101; Moore, E.C., “The Social Value of the Saloon” American Journal of Sociology 3 (07 1897): 4–5.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7. Rosenweig, Eight Hours for What We Will, 40–45; Kornblum, Blue Collar Community, 76.

8. “The roots of the [treating] custom can be traced as far back as the wassail bowl and loving cup of the fifth-century Saxons and beyond them to practices of the Egyptians and Assyrians”, according to West, Saloon on the Rocky Mountain Mining Frontier, 93–94. See also, Hackwood, Frederick W., Inns, Ales, and Drinking Customs of Old England (New York, 1909), 141–52. For a comprehensive account of taverns and drinking customs in cultures worldwide over the centuriesGoogle Scholar, see Popham, Robert E., “The Social History of the Tavern”, in Research Advances in Alcohol and Drug Problems, vol. 4, ed. Israel, Yedy et al. , (New York, 1978), 225–302.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

9. London, John Barleycorn, 122–23. For a discussion of the tavernkeeper's traditional role as a hospitable and knowledgeable host, see Popham, “Social History of the Tavern”, 261–63, 271–74, 284–86.

10. London, John Barleycorn, 184.

11. Ade, Old-Time Saloon, 96–97; Plunkitt, George Washington, quoted in William L. Riodon, Plunkitt of Tammany Hall (1905; reprint, New York, 1963), 77–78; “Experience and Observations of a New York Saloon-Keeper”, 304.Google Scholar

12. Ravage, M.E., An American in the Making: The Life Story of an Immigrant (New York, 1917), 125–27.Google Scholar

13. Ade, Old-Time Saloon, 95. Frontier bartenders who appeared to keep up with their customers drink for drink “perhaps were employing a familiar deception by drawing upon a bottle of colored watr”, according to West, Saloon on the Rocky Mountain Mining Frontier, 61.

14. Ade, Old Time Saloon, 96; GeorgeHand and M. E., quoted in West, Saloon on the Rocky Mountain Mining Frontier, 60–61.

15. Bagnell, Robert, Economic and Moral Aspects of the Liquor Business (New York, 1911), 22.Google Scholar

16. For an analysis of machine politicians' methods, see Zink, Harold, City Bosses in the United States: A Study of Twenty Municipal Bosses (Durham, N.C., 1930), 194–201.Google Scholar Also informative is William L. Riordon, “When Tammany Was Supreme”, introduction to Riordon, Plunkitt of Tammany Hall, vii–xxii.

17. Wendt, Lloyd and Kogan, Herman, Bosses of Lusty Chicago: The Story of Bathhouse John and Hinky Dink (Bloomington, 1967), v–xiv.Google Scholar This work was originally published in 1943 as Lords of the Levee. Michael Kenna acquired the nickname “Hinky Dink” because of his diminutive size; John Joseph Coughlin was known as “Bathhouse John” because he started out as a Chicago bathhouse “rubber” and later acquired a string of his own establishments. For a photograph of Kenna's saloon, the Workingmen's Exchange, see Turner, George Kibbe, “The City of Chicago: A Study of the Great Immoralities”, McClure's Magazine 28 (04 1907): 577.Google Scholar For statistics on the deep involvement of salookeepers and saloons in urban politics, see Odegard, Pressure Politics, 248.

18. Bullough, William A., The Blind Boss and His City: Christopher Augustine Buckley and Nineteenth-Century San Francisco (Berkeley, 1979), 139–40; Calkins, Substitutes for the Saloon, 11, 371–72.Google Scholar

19. “To the slum dweller and especially to the recent imigrant, machine politiicians often seemed the only persons in the community who took a positive interest in their plight…. Perhaps most impotant of all, they gave the slum dweller a certain sense of power, the dignity of knowing that he counted, that at least his vote was worth something”. Garraty, John A., The New Commonwealth, 1877–1890 (New York, 1968), 218.Google Scholar

20. For more information on the free lunch, see Calkins, Substitutes for the Saloon, 15–9; Duis, The Saloon, 52–56; Richardson, “The Long Day’, 257–59; Ade, Old-Time Saloon, 34–38.

21. calkins, Substitutes for the Saloon, 16–17; Ade, Old-Time Saloon, 36–37.

22. Melendy, “Saloon in Chicago”, 297. For more on the reaction of reformers to the free lunch and their effort (mostly failures) to establish “tea saloons” to replace the food-dispensing role of barrooms, see Calkins, Substitutes for the Saloon, 15, 221–24.

23. Odegard, Pressure Politics, 45; Garraty, New Commonwealth, 202; Roberts, Peter, Anthracite Coal Communities (New York, 1904), 236;Google Scholar Konblum, Blue Collar Community, 75; Peiss, Cheap Amusements, 23; Byington, Margaret F., Homestead: The Households of a Mill Town (1910; reprint, Pittsburgh, 1974), 154–55.Google Scholar

24. Roberts, Anthracite Coal Communities, 236; Calkins, Substitutes for the Saloon, 11; Moore, “Social Value of the Saloon”, 8.

25. London, John Barleycorn, 206–17; Melendy, “Saloon in Chicago”, 297.

26. Morton, Moody, “Man's Inhumanity to Man Makes Countless Thousands Mourn”, The Trestle Board 11(04 1897): 180; “Experience and Observations of a New York Saloon-Keeper”, 310.Google Scholar

27. Calkins, Substitutes for the Saloon, 46–47.

28. Melendy, “Saloon in Chicago”, 295; Calkins, Substitutes for the Saloon, 62; Thomas I. Kidd, quoted in Edward W. Benis, “Attitude of the Trade Unions Toward the Saloon”, in Calkins, Appendix I, 312.

29. Melendy, “Saloon in Chicago”, 295; Calkins, Substitutes for the Saloon, 55–56, 62.

30. Thomas J. Morgan, quoted in Melendy, Royal L., “The Saloon in Chicago: Part II” American Journal of Sociology 6 (01 1901): 438.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

31. Duis, The Saloon, 73–76; “Jerry”, a New York bartender, quoted in Howe, Frederick C., The Confessions of a Reformer (1925; reprint, New York, 1974), 51–52.Google Scholar

32. The percentage of single men fifteen years of age and older decreased from 40.2 percent in 1900 to 38.7 percent in 1910 and then to 35. 1 percent in 1920. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Population, 1920, vol. 2 (Washington, D.C., 1922), 387.Google Scholar For a discussion of improvements in tenement housing, public parks, and other urban facilities, see Boyer, Paul, Urban Masses and Moral Order in America, 1820–1920 (Cambridge, Mass., 1978), 233–51.Google Scholar Regarding the competition that saloons faced from movies, see Sklar, Robert, Movie-Made America: A Social History of American Movies (New York, 1975), 3–17;Google Scholar from stadiums and playgrounds, see Barth, Gunther, City People: The Rise of Modern City Culture in Nineteenth- Century America (New York, 1980), 148–91.Google Scholar The growth of lodges and social clubs offering financial assistance to members is discussed in Carnes, Mark C., Secret Ritual and Manhood in Victorian America (New Haven, 1989), 8–9.Google Scholar

33. The prosecution of Boss Abraham Ruef and revelations about his betrayal of laborers' interests are detailed in Bean, Walton, Boss Ruef's San Francisco: The Story of the Union Labor Party, Big Business, and the Graft Prosecution (Berkeley, 1952), 256–60.Google Scholar For more discussion of organized labor's problems with saloons and saloon-keepers, see Brundage, David, “The Producing Classes and the Saloon: Denver in the 1880s”, Labor History 26 (Winter 1985): 44–47;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Timberlake, Prohibition and the Progressive Movement, 83–84; Calkins, Substitutes for the Saloon, 56–63.

34. For an analysis of the labor movement's support for temperance, though not necessarily abstinence or prohibition, see Benson, Ronald Morris, “American Workers and Temperance Reform, 1866–1933”(Ph.D. diss., University of Notre Dame, 1974).Google Scholar Regarding the trend toward establishing independent union halls, see Bemis, “Attitude of the Trade Unions Toward the Saloon”, 303–13.

35. “Experience and Observations of a New York Saloon-Keeper”, 310.