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From Prohibition to Liquor Dispensaries: Explaining the Rise and Fall of State and Municipal Liquor Stores, 1891–1907

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 October 2020

MICHAEL LEWIS
MICHAEL LEWIS*
Affiliation:
Christopher Newport University
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Abstract

This article investigates the reasons for the adoption and rejection of liquor dispensaries in the years prior to the adoption of national prohibition in the United States. Southern municipalities were the primary dispensary locations, largely due to the permissiveness of local option laws in the South. Municipalities with dispensaries were often retreating from prohibition and dispensary supporters argued that publically run liquor stores were the next best thing. Beyond the South, states that explored dispensary adoption also were those repealing prohibition laws, suggesting a larger pattern whereby prohibition preceded dispensaries rather than following them.

Keywords

Dispensarylocal-option legislationprohibitionliquor controlstate monopoly
Type
Article
Information
Journal of Policy History , Volume 32 , Issue 4 , October 2020 , pp. 385 - 411
Copyright
© Donald Critchlow and Cambridge University Press 2020

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References

Notes

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8. Athens Banner-Watchman, 18 August 1885, 2.

9. Athens Weekly Banner, 5 November 1889, 5.

10. Athens Weekly Banner, 19 August 1890, 3.

11. Atlanta Constitution, 11 August 1891, 3.

12. Barnesville Gazette, 24 April 1890, 3.

13. Thomas Congdon to Tillman, 14 December 1892, Governor Benjamin Ryan Tillman Letters, South Carolina Department of Archives and History.

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17. Governor Benjamin Ryan Tillman, quoted in South Carolina House Journal, 1893, 34–41.

18. Columbia Register, 25 December 1892. The Register’s editor, Larry Gantt, had formerly edited the Athens Daily Banner and subsequently took credit both for that town’s dispensary and suggesting its statewide version to Tillman.

19. The State, 25 December 1892.

20. Whitener, Prohibition in North Carolina, 135.

21. Chatham Record, 9 May 1895, 2.

22. Raleigh News and Observer, quoting the Waynesville Courier, 20 April 1897, 3.

23. Whitener, Prohibition in North Carolina, 134–38.

24. Raleigh News and Observer, 19 January 1899, 2.

25. Quoted in Whitener, 137.

26. Raleigh News and Observer, 20 January 20, 1905.

27. The Progressive Farmer, 13 October 1903.

28. Clayton Record, 17 August 1899, 1.

29. Dothan Siftings, 9 July 1899, 2.

30. Sellers, The Prohibition Movement in Alabama, 87.

31. Alabama Christian Advocate, 19 January 1899.

32. Alabama Courier, 2 February 1899, 3.

33. Sellers, Prohibition Movement in Alabama, 108.

34. Alabama Courier, 17 April 1902, 4.

35. Quoted in Montgomery Advertiser, 25 February 1905, 7.

36. Steven Kantrowitz, Ben Tillman and the Reconstruction of White Supremacy (Chapel Hill, 2000).

37. Coker, Joe L., Liquor in the Land of the Lost Cause: White Southern Evangelicals and the Prohibition Movement (Athens, GA, 2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

38. Szymanski, Pathways to Prohibition, 112.

39. Ibid., 113.

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41. Clayton Record, 17 August 1899.

42. Athens Banner, 28 February 1902.

43. Bainbridge Democrat, 27 October 1898.

44. Ibid., 10 March 1898.

45. Alexander J. McKelway, “The Dispensary in North Carolina,” The Outlook 61, no. 14 (8 April 1899): 821.

46. Clarke County Courier, 26 August 1904.

47. Waycross Journal, 31 July 1903.

48. Clarke County Courier, 30 December 1904.

49. Ibid., 1 May 1903.

50. Bainbridge Democrat, 26 January 1904.

51. Athens Banner, 7 June 1906.

52. “York” in Tuscaloosa Gazette, 24 August 1899.

53. Saint Paul Globe, 26 March 1901.

54. Minneapolis Journal, 15 March 1901.

55. Backbone, 1 March 1901.

56. Michael J. Buseman, “Vending Vice: The Rise and Fall of West Virginia State Prohibition, 1852–1934” (PhD diss., University of West Virginia, 2012), 130.

57. Ibid., 141.

58. Biennial Message of Governor A.B. White to the Legislature of West Virginia, Session of 1905. (Charleston, WV: Tribune Printing Co., 1905), 26.

59. Albert Blakeslee White, Public Addresses of Albert Blakeslee White: Governor of West Virginia (Charleston, Tribune Printing Co., 1905), 434.

60. “Minutes of the South Dakota Anti-Saloon League, December 29, 1897,” cited in Alvin Brunn, “The Prohibition Movement in South Dakota” (PhD diss., University of South Dakota, 1948).

61. Brunn, “Prohibition Movement in South Dakota,” 148.

62. Aberdeen SD Daily, 10 January 1899.

63. Ibid., 4 January 1899.

64. Mitchell SD Capital, 10 March 1899.

65. Aberdeen SD Daily, 7 March 1899.

66. Mitchell SD Capital, 10 March 1899.

67. Percival Clement, quoted in Adam Krakowski, Vermont Prohibition: Teetotalers, Bootleggers, and Corruption (Charleston: History Press, 2016), 47.

68. West Randolph VT Herald and News, 20 November 1902.

69. Barre VT Evening Telegram, 15 November 1902.

70. See Eubanks, Ben Tillman’s Baby, Hendricks, “The South Carolina Dispensary System,” Kantrowitz, Ben Tillman and the Reconstruction of White Supremacy, Lewis, The Coming of Southern Prohibition.

71. See Eubanks, Ben Tillman’s Baby; Hendricks, “The South Carolina Dispensary System”; Lewis, The Coming of Southern Prohibition.

72. Niels Christensen, “The State Dispensaries of South Carolina, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 32 (November 1908): 78.

73. Ibid., 80.

74. Ibid.

75. State of South Carolina, House Reports and Resolutions, 1906, 217.

76. Charleston News and Courier, 21 January 1907.

77. Tillman to Theodore D. Jervey, 26 December 1904. Governor Benjamin Ryan Tillman Papers, South Carolina Department of Archives and History.

78. Charleston News and Courier, 11 February 1907.

79. The Semi-Weekly Messenger, Wilmington, NC, 13 February 1906.

80. Advertiser, 4 June 1907.

81. Montgomery Advertiser, 6 October 1907.

82. Undue political influence was hardly the only antiliquor argument. Concerns about the effect of liquor on African-American men and the safety of white women, the temptation of minors, the lack of monetary support for drunkard’s families and rising crime rates were all problems dry’s linked to the presence of liquor in their communities. See Coker, Ivy, and Hamm.

83. Athens (GA) Evening Call, 8 July 1907.

84. Atlanta Georgian, 13 July 1907, 6.

85. Ibid.

86. Lewis, The Coming of Southern Prohibition.

87. Governor Haskell, in Guthrie (OK) Daily Leader, 2 April 1908.

88. Franklin, Jimmie Lewis, Born Sober: Prohibition in Oklahoma (Norman, OK, 1971)Google Scholar:

89. As of this writing, seventeen states maintain some form of state monopoly on liquor sales: Alabama, Idaho, Iowa, Maine, Michigan, Mississippi, Montana, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, West Virginia, and Wyoming.

90. Report of the National Commission on Law Observance and Enforcement (Washington, DC, 1931): 454–55.

91. Rockefeller letter to R. Fosdick, 19 January 1933, Rockefeller Archives.

92. Levine, Harry G., “The Birth of American Alcohol Control: Prohibition, the Power Elite, and the Problem of Lawlessness,” Contemporary Drug Problems (Spring 1985): 63–115 Google Scholar.